|
STRENGTH TRAINING PART 1
When it comes to weight training and the martial arts, the big question tends to be ‘should you or shouldn’t you?’
Traditional training systems haven’t in the past placed much emphasis on employing weight training to improve fighting ability. Comments such as ‘It will slow you down.’ or ‘You loose too much flexibility.’ are often heard from martial artists that don’t use weights. Rather than should you or shouldn’t you use weights, in reality the question should be ‘how should you?’
Reality of Weight Training
|
|
|
>There are a myriad of ways to employ weight training
|
|
The effect of weight training on your body will vary depending on many factors; and you’d be wrong to assume that you’ll pile on muscle mass after a few sessions in the gym. The truth is that to get really big without steroids takes a lot of hard work and attention to nutrition, rest and work out selection - but above all genetics! For most of us getting too big isn’t going to be a problem. The fact that you’re a martial artist means that you’ll also be training in ways that inhibit massive muscle growth. Body builders basically eat, sleep and weight train. If they conducted too much stamina work this would prevent them achieving maximum muscle mass, because slow twitch muscle fibres would be stimulated (which are smaller) and the wear and tear would diminish their rest quality (which is when the muscle is built).
Your body adapts to the way that you use it and fighting requires strength endurance rather than outright strength. Anyone who has got in the ring will understand that when matched with an equal sized opponent, the demands on your fitness are substantial. Being stronger will aid you but it’s not enough to have strength alone.
Fighter’s Considerations
In my opinion weight training should be used by martial artists, and the way in which it’s applied will vary for each individual. Depending on how it’s performed, weight training can either develop muscle mass or improve muscle tone and strength endurance. As a fighter considering weight training it’s important to take into account your current body weight and the relative weight division within which you compete.
Also bear in mind that heavier weight categories tend to have bigger hitters, and lower weight categories tend to have faster movers! How does this suit your own (impact) conditioning level, size and movement speed? Gaining just two kilograms of muscle could move you up a weight division, placing you with an unfamiliar type of opponent.
The main objective is to maintain a balance in your training. As long as you put in enough quality hours of padwork, sparring and running, supplementing with weight training will not adversely affect your fighting, and you’ll benefit immensely. Biasing a large proportion of your time to weight training can hinder your fight performance.
There are a myriad of weight training methods and exercises, and it’s difficult to select what is appropriate for a martial artist. The key is to see weight training as a supplement to your martial art, targeting the development of strength. Therefore an abbreviated routine is the best option. This means the selection of a low number of exercises that target a large proportion of your body in each lift, making you work very hard. As opposed to working many ‘isolation’ exercises that target small muscle groups, which unless you’re genetically gifted (thanks to your mum and dad!) you’ll not have the recovery capacity to gain from.
Next month we’ll look in more detail at the selection of some core exercises, and ways of employing them to achieve different effects on the body.
|
Next
