Bout Ready
Fight camp planner
Put in your fight date and this lays out your camp backwards from fight night: which block each week belongs to, your lighter weeks, when the taper starts, when heavy lifting stops and what changes in the 7 days before weigh-in.
It uses the same planning rules as the Bout Ready app, checked against published sports-science research. It works in your browser; nothing you type is sent anywhere.
Plan your camp
How it works
The planner counts the weeks from today to your fight. The week that ends on fight night is "1 week out". If the current week has 3 days or fewer left, those days join the first block as a lead-in rather than counting as a full week. Then it picks a camp shape by how much time you have:
| Weeks to the fight | What you get | Taper |
|---|---|---|
| 13-16+ | Foundation weeks (up to 4, or up to 6 if you're not training regularly), then the full 12-week camp. Any extra time beyond that is between-fights development until camp starts. | 14 days |
| 8-12 | Full camp: block 1 (general strength and muscle), block 2 (maximal strength), block 3 (power), block 4 (speed and fight-specific), taper week, fight week. With fewer than 12 weeks, block 1 shortens first. | 14 days |
| 8-10, not training regularly | 3-week foundation block, then a shorter camp, with a warning that your peak will be limited. | 10 days |
| 5-7 | Short camp: every quality trained each week on your current exercises. | 7-10 days |
| About 4 | Two normal weeks with a bit more volume, then fight-week style work from 14 days out. | 14 days |
| Under 4 | Short notice: no new loading block. Stay strong and sharp, then taper. | 7-10 days |
Inside a camp, every third week is a lighter week with about a third less strength and conditioning volume at the same loads. They're counted back from the end of camp, so a 12-week camp unloads at 10, 7 and 4 weeks out. Camp starts with a full test battery; quick checks (a jump and heart-rate recovery) sit in later lighter weeks; nothing is tested in the final 2 weeks.
Where the dates come from
- Taper of up to 14 days, volume down 40-60%, intensity kept. A meta-analysis of 27 studies in competitive athletes found the best results from a taper of about 2 weeks that cut training volume by 41-60% without cutting intensity or frequency (Bosquet 2007). Judo athletes who tapered for 12-15 days after hard training improved fight-specific fitness (Papacosta 2013; Ouergui 2021).
- Last heavy lifting. Strength athletes typically do their last heavy deadlift 6-8 days out and squat 5-6.5 days out, with volume down about 40-45% (Winwood 2026), and maximal strength holds for weeks while fitness and power fade faster (Mujika 2000). So experienced lifters can go heavy (2-3 sets of 1-3 reps) up to the day before the 7-day weigh-in window. Newer lifters stop about 10 days out, which is the cautious default.
- 7 days before weigh-in. No maximal lifts, no hard conditioning and nothing new. The ISSN position stand says weigh-in timing changes how the final days should run (Ricci 2025). The 7-day window itself is coaching judgement built on that research.
- Fight-day primer. A short primer helped sprint performance when done 8 hours or less before, and showed no effect at 20 hours or more (Kotuła 2026), so the day before stays rest or light mobility.
- Hard sparring ending 10-14 days out is current coaching practice, not a tested number. The planner shows it as advice; your coach decides.
- Camp length of 10-12 weeks is coaching convention. No study has compared camp lengths in combat sports, so we say so.
Read the reasoning in full in How long should a fight camp be? and How to taper before a fight.
What it doesn't do
It doesn't plan your weight cut. If you're cutting, plan it with WeighCamp, our sister app, and keep a bigger cut in mind when you look at the last heavy lift: anyone cutting more than 5% of body weight stops heavy lifting about 10 days out. It also doesn't set your sparring; that's your coach's job.
Questions
What does "weeks out" mean?
The number of weeks before fight night, counting the current week. The 7 days that end on fight night are 1 week out (fight week); the 7 days before that are 2 weeks out, and so on.
Why does a 12-week camp have lighter weeks?
Sparring tends to peak late in camp and is rarely deloaded, so the strength and conditioning side takes a lighter week every third week. Volume drops by about a third while the weights stay the same, so you keep your strength without adding to the pile-up.
My fight is in 3 weeks. Is it too late to build anything?
Too late to build much new strength or fitness, yes. The useful job now is staying strong and sharp: keep your current exercises, add a fight simulation if there's time, then taper. Starting a new heavy block this close tends to leave you sore and flat on the night.
Does this work for BJJ tournaments?
Yes. Put in the competition date. For smaller events you don't want to peak for, the app has a train-through option with a short 3-5 day ease-off instead of a full taper.
Is anything I type stored?
No. The calculation runs in your browser. Nothing is sent to us or anyone else.