martial arts and weights

I've been dodging the gym for a few years. Don't generally like 'gym people' and have also been avoiding the expense. However, as I rocket through my 30s I'm slowing down and changing shape and without hitting the gym, it's only going to get worse.

So I joined up, had an induction session and actually enjoyed it a lot more than I expected to.

What I'm after is advice on weights / cardio programmes for martial artists, as well as general advice for eating habits to go with the training.

I'll be doing some reading myself, but I'm keen to here any advice from the members.

Cheers

I was also thinking about joining a gym. Not long ago I went to check one out, seemed pretty cool, but I can't really afford it, so I was thinking about getting myself some dumbells. That way I can do it at home when I have time.

I know it's not as good as a gym, but it's better than nothing.

Two areas that are very important in regards to Self Protection training are Core Training and Grip Strength. These are also two areas that seem to get overlooked.
If you can, get a Stability Ball and Google "Core Training". Your core is where most of your striking power comes from along with your ass and legs. Be very carefull with squats. They will build your overall strength however, I blew my back out from too many years of them. My advice would be leg presses instead.

Train your grip strength. Get a phone book and try to tear in half. When you lift weights, grab the weight plates and use those instead of dumbells.
You can play around with certain excersises to see which ones work best with plates and which ones don't. Get a hand gripper or a rod ( about 1 foot long) and tie a cord around the rod and tie the other end around some weight. Roll the weights up and down. Grip Strength is very important in the clinch and ground fighting.

Concentrate on whole body movements. Bench Press, Pull Ups, Push Ups, Shoulder Press ( Standing Up! ) Try to stay away from Isolated movements. You are trying to build Functional Strength not "Curls for the Girls" Athough there is nothing wrong wth that!

Another good excersise is to get a 3-4 pound ( I'm not sure of the metric ) sand filled medicine ball. Century makes a good one. Get in the "Fence" position. Do 3-4 sets of 10 with each arm of throwing the ball at a wall or heavy bag. Stand back a few feet. Duplicate the palm strike motion. The 4 pound ball that Century makes fits in my hand very easily. This wil build your striking power very quickly.

Good Luck! Hopes this helps!

Depends on how you do weights..

If you want functional strength training for martial arts, DONT do bodybuilding type workouts.. I know alot of people say this.. and from my own experience I understand why..

Bodybuilding makes you more susceptable to injury instead of the other way around.. because my muscles were so tight I had several injuries in martial arts training.. knee and shoulder.. and I haven't done weights for a few years and my shoulders are still very tight and tense and sometimes sore..

I lost alot of speed and flexibility and was continually sore.. and lost alot of my smoothness in movement..

After stopping weights a few years ago I was doing some bodyweight conditioning, and I ended up in the best shape of my life, alot of functional strength and in my freestyle karate class back then I would grapple several people and they would be totally tired and I would still be ready to go..

I should revisit the same stuff again because it got me in GREAT shape.. a combination of Matt Furey - Combat Conditioning.. and also a video by Senshido functional combative fitness or something.. they got me in the best shape of my life.. but luckily I remembered I actually had to workout too

-Ben

Loki has some good advice for this kind of thing

usually for martial arts you want to think more intensity in your cardio than long slow distance work and plenty of bodyweight stuff

for eg. do burpees, but on each one as you go down knock out 5 pushups, do 10 burpees and 50 pushups like this and you will simultaneously work your strength and your heart lungs- its very hard for your body to not respond to this type of pressure

also- grappling, but deliberately sacrifice tecnhique for strength (make sure your partner is on the same page or they might get pissy!) and use each other as resistance machines... when pummeling, stiff arm each other, make each other work for everything, on the ground take a postition and CRUSH your partner with your arms or legs- and just hold it for as long as you can

its knackering for you on your heart lungs and muslces, means they get a work out as well because they have to tense to resist the crush and you end up with not just good strength and fitness but you are traning exactly the type of strength and fitness you are looking for

I'll run through some stuff with you when i come down to lincoln mate

I mentioned I was joining the gym to supliment my martial arts and both lads that work there assumed that meant I wanted to bulk up and started talking about chest days and leg days, etc. I think they were just saying wht they thought I wanted to hear.

I explained that endurance and balanced weight gain was much more the goal.
My initial programme is
5 minutes on the tread mill (bit of an incline, brisk walk/light jog for now, more later)
group of four weights exercises for chest and back 3 sets of 10 on managable weights
2000m rowing (sub 10 mins)
arm and leg exercises, same as with chest and back
finishing with 15 minutes on the cross trainer.

Read the Article Section of Streetfight Secrets beginner's fitness challenge

Loki speaks truth, heed his advice for strong results

videos to inspire you

100 burpees, much better for martial artists than sitting on a machine

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jJuAD9bvkBg&feature=related

single arm clean and press

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YD5APlgpbBQ&feature=related

Loki, tell them the secret service test for this mate

dumbell snatch
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hxX2pp-PySU&feature=related

Don't forget to include a sprint session (3-6 reps) once or twice a week. You never know when you'll need to sprint away from an attacker(s) or have to chase someone down if you're in law enforcement, or if someone has kidnapped a small child and you want to stop them. I prefer uphill sprints for developing greater power. Use a hill that takes 20 -30 seconds to sprint up, jog down and repeat. Indoors I do this on a treadmill set at the maximum incline- 30 seconds sprinting, then 30 seconds rest at 8 or 9 mph.

I also incorporate a lot of plyometric movements into my workout. Several sets of bench jumps, double bench jumps, side to side step jumps, paratroopers, weighted pushing lunges, weighted jumping press squats, weighted springing side to side rows, and other hybrid movements with DBs or a plate. These plyometric exercises not only aid in explosiveness, they also force you into your anaerobic zones just like in an attack situation.

For a good challenge, include some of these plyomentric exercises into a circuit of 4- 10 exercises (like those listed in some of the replies above) and don't rest until you complete the whole circuit. Rest for 1 minute then repeat the circuit 2 more times. Then do another circuit with 4 - 10 different exercises 2 or 3 times. Enjoy.

~

thanks for all this guys.

for the first few months I'm following their general fitness programme I put in my previous post. Seems like the best way to improve overall cardio and strength. After 6 months or so is when I'll be looking to implement some of this graet advice.

keep it coming.

I find that Burpees are a great general physical preparedness excercise. My own experience is that sprinting is more specific to combat/streetfighting , it really builds in explosiveness & quickness and really does (pardon the pun) leaves Burpees standing

paulb wrote:

My own experience is that sprinting is more specific to combat/streetfighting , it really builds in explosiveness & quickness and really does (pardon the pun) leaves Burpees standing

ah sorry NOW I know which PaulB from Glasgow this is !

Hi,

My name is Tomas, I`m from Denmark, hence my profile name. I am 41 years old. I worked as a doorman between 1989 and 2000. I`ve trained with weights since the mid 80`s, and have participated in powerlifting contests since 1991.

When it comes to doing weight-training as a supplement to other sports, there are a lot of myths involved. Some are partially based on truth, some are simply not true.

A lot of the problems involved with physical training as a whole has to do with overtraining. Many people do not realise that every physical workload should go into the equation, that includes the daily work, if one has a physically challenging profession like e.g. construction.

Size, speed and power can be combined succesfully. It all depends on being realistic as to the total workload you are putting your body through, the way you perform excersises and maybe most important; to put sufficient emphasis on R&R between workouts.

When I first began training with weights, the common rule said that the power of any given muscle would rise proportionally with the rise in diameter. As a muscle can be compared to a cylinder, that meant that the power would grow linearly while the volume/bodyweight would increse by square. Hence, to gain a 40% raise in power would mean to dubble the weight of the muscle. Bad news for speed and agility, and the primary reason why power became associated with bodybuilders walking around like they had shit themselves.

It doesn`t have to be that way! The diameter fails to reveil two crucial factors:

1) The nerve signal going from the brain to the muscles.

2) What type of fibres (slow or explosive) are predominant within the mucle.

Untill a few years ago, it was asumed that the muscle fibres worked at partial load between 0 and 100% i.e. if I lift a 50% of maxload weight, every fibre in the involved muscles would work at 50% of max load. Recent scientific results has proven that to be wrong. A muscle fibre works like an electric relay: 0 or full load, so if I lift a 50% weight, I will normaly only use half of the fibres in the muscles involved.

That`s great news, because that means, that if I can discipline my muscles to engage more musclefibres than stricktly needed, the surplus power will transform into added speed, without the muscle having to become heavier. The general laws of physics apply, why engaging 75% of all musclefibres for a 50% load will result in a 50% increase in acceleration. Applied to martial arts that will result in a 50% increase in striking force, measured in joule (power = mass x acceleration) and speed, without increase in size and bodyweight.

Submaximal training will get you far for starters.
Train only the prime movers (benchpress, deadlifts, squat and military press) and antagonists (important to maintain max control and avoid joint problems):

Benchpress as an example:

Say you can do one rep with a given weight.

5 week cycle:

week one: 8 sets with 3 reps with 70% of the 1 rep weight and reduce the pause between sets to 30-45 sec.

week two: 6 sets - 75% -

week three: 5 sets - 80%

week four: 5 sets 2 reps 85%

week five: new 1 rep max

Do 3 sets of pull down in a lat machine while laying flat on your back, pulling down to the same point from where you push the bar up during the benchpresses (antagonist).

I will sketch out three or four different workouts based on two days a week for weights, as weights are a supplement to you guys, and mail them to Richie soon.

As I am becoming older, I would like some advise as to cardio work etc. I hope we can exchance some hints along the way.

Best wishes from Denmark,

Tomas (the tank engine, ha, ha!)

that's a very interesting and well put together post.

I have to say though it differs very much to every other piece of advice and opinion I've heard on the subject.
It looks very much to my untrained eye like power lifting training, rather than the general strength, fitness and endurace training that I'm looking for.

Thanks for posting though.

Hi AdamM,

thanks a lot! The tecniques from powertraining can be used as a supplement for whatever sport one is involved with. As a marital artists, you will need more overall fitness than a powerlifter, why the explosive training can only take up a much lesser percentage of the total training volume.

A mate of mine, Christian, who used to be a great middleweight powerlifter, became strenghtcoach for the Danish National BMX-cycle croos team. By implementing two ½ hour workouts a week, of similar type to that which I mentioned in my first post - one bench+deadlift and one military press+squat - he increased the max explosive power of the top cycle cross riders with an average of about 30%, without them gaining more than a few lbs bodyweight and without any loss in cardiovascular capacity.

Each prime mover should also be broken down into three-four subcathegories: Benchpress e.g. into ordinary, closegrip, floor-press and elastic bands, thus cheating the nervous system into an overcompensating state with as little stress to the ligaments and joints as possible. Ligaments responds with 1/9 of the muscular response to the same payload x time. Ligament rupture is a bitch!

I`m off to the gym. Take care and happy training, whatever kind it is!

Tom

Richard Grannon wrote:

ah sorry NOW I know which PaulB from Glasgow this is !

You know another PaulB from Glasgow?

Only joking mate, I may have come on spouting too much shit for my first few posts.

~

I been doing workouts from these places for the last 2 years and think it good stuff.
www.rosstraining.com www.crossfit.com www.monkeybargym.com
The best is that you dont even need a gym.

Glad rosstraining was mentioned. I love that bloke's sandbag workouts, they are an absolute killer!

i hate ross enamitt

he hurts me

I use Ross Enamaits workouts! Ive got his books Infinite Intensity and Never Gymless. No excuses is a killer workout!

Yours,
Beev

Thinking more about my answer here, weights and cardio for the martial artist. That's a very broad area. I mean, do you want the cardio conditioning to dance around for multiple rounds, or are you talking about a program that will give you optimal fitness for a survival defense confrontation?
I agree core strength and grip strength are overlooked. Both can be built up significantly using free weights, and avoiding lifting aids such as straps. I think stability ball training to be ridiculous personally. You wan't to see some blokes who have strong core's? Look to the guy's that are deadlifting a shite load of weight. The only times guys like that come close to a ball that size is if the go to the beach!
As to the whole flexibility/slowing down argument. If you are lifting the weight as fast as possible (note: on a heavy weight, this might not be fast in the traditional sense, still you are lifting it as fast as you can) you won't get slow. If you stretch, and devote an equal amount of time to opposing muscle groups, you won't get tight. The reason a lot guys have success with body weight ex's over free weights, is that it forces them to do that which they were not, that being, exercising opposing muscle groups and stretch.
Weight training, if you respond to it pyschologically, as I do. Is a hell of fix. Lifting more in reps/weight is tremendously addictive. Plus, you get a descent amount of size, which is a big part of target hardening.

i can only speak for myself. when i was younger i would do both weight lifting and martial arts. but i would favor one over the other for variety, thinking they were mutually exclusive. when i was trying to get the lean look (with more reps and less food) i had loads of speed and body control but lacked in power--which wasn't reasuring when sparring big guys. then i went through a period where i only wanted power lifting (bench press; squats; deadlifts;with chin-ups and one-arm pushups for good measure) and it made a huge difference. punching and kicking was better. my only hick-up--i figured out after a broken left hand after being tired and throwing a haymaker, was that my fore-arm strength/wrist strength/etc... was uneven. it was my weakest link. now whatever i'm doing, i try and make sure this gets attention first...so i'm hitting with hammers, not cushions.
-rus