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STRENGTH TRAINING PART 2
Having decided what you want to achieve with your weight training, either increasing strength and muscle mass or improving strength endurance while maintaining or reducing body weight; you’ll now need to tailor your training to accomplish this.
This article aims to outline the three key areas to get results:
- The workout – selecting the right exercises, and using them correctly.
- Nutrition – getting the calorie count right and the correct balance of protein, carbohydrate and fat along with vitamins, minerals and water.
- Rest – looking at your training frequency and sleep habits.
It’s beyond the scope of this article to cover these areas in depth, but it will provide an overview.
The Workout
Exercise Selection
The following section doesn’t identify exercises that technically model fighting, but rather provides a foundation on which more specific strength and technique can be built.
There are many methods of weight training with new ones appearing every day. The truth is that what works for one person won’t necessarily work for another. However, there are some general guidelines that will help you achieve what you want as a fighter.
- Keep your routines abbreviated to just a handful of exercises and work them HARD. Keep your workouts under one hour in length, allowing you to maintain mental focus and push yourself through out.
- Select the big basic exercises that involve large muscle groups rather than isolated smaller ones. A good starting point uses the following exercises – bench press, squat, shoulder press, chins or pull-ups.
- Don’t ignore the ‘squat’. It’s the most important exercise that you can do to develop overall strength and muscle growth. It’s a very demanding exercise that releases growth hormone when worked hard, making you bigger and stronger everywhere, not just in the legs, hips and back.
Weight Training Terminology
Before outlining the core principles, let’s first establish some basic terminology. Repetitions or ‘reps’ are the number of consecutive lifts that you perform with a weight. For example, an exercise may specify that you perform 10 reps, meaning that you lift the weight 10 times!
‘Sets’ are the number times you complete a number of reps. For example, you may complete 3 sets of 10 reps. Meaning that you lifted a weight 10 times in succession, then repeated these 10 lifts another 2 times, thus 3 sets of 10 reps were completed in total.
Training for Increased Muscle Mass and Strength
The same exercises will affect your body differently depending on the number of repetitions and the amount of weight used. To develop increased muscle mass and strength you need to employ 6 to 12 reps using approximately 75 – 85% of your ‘1 Rep Max’ (the most weight that you can lift once only). If you can’t make 6 reps with a weight then it’s too heavy. If you can push more than 12 reps with a weight it’s too light. Performing 3 sets of these 6 –12 reps per exercise is a good starting point.
Training for Improved Muscle Tone and Strength Endurance
To develop improved muscle tone and strength endurance you need to use between 15 to 25 reps using approximately 50 – 60% of your 1 Rep Max. Again 3 sets per exercise is a good starting point.
Another strength endurance method employs a weight approximately 30 – 50% of your 1 Rep Max, performing as many repetitions as possible within a defined time period. 1-minute work intervals with 1-minutes rest between sets works well for this type of training. Again, it’s worth starting with 3 sets per exercise.
Strength training is also heavily dependent on two other factors, nutrition and rest.
Despite intensive weight training, if these elements aren’t also adequate then the results will be poor or non-existent.
Nutrition
Proteins provide the building blocks for tissue growth and repair – including muscle. Make sure that at least 15% of your daily total energy intake is protein. Proteins can be obtained from meat, fish, eggs, milk, cheese, peas, beans and pulses. Note that 1 gram of protein provides 4 calories of energy.
Carbohydrates provide the body with its primary source of energy. Try to ensure that around 60% of your daily total energy intake is carbohydrate. Carbohydrate can be found in pulses, cereals, bread, potatoes, pasta and root vegetables. Note that 1 gram of carbohydrate provides 4 calories of energy.
Fats are the body’s secondary source of energy, but are vital for your body’s operation. Ensure that around 20% of your of your total daily energy intake is fat. Fat can be found in butter, milk, cheese, meat etc. Note that 1 gram of fat provides 9 calories of energy.
Also ensure that you are getting adequate vitamins and minerals to maintain growth, metabolism and general life processes by having a balanced diet and perhaps taking a good multivitamin supplement. Also drink two to three litres of water a day to ensure efficient transport of nutrients and oxygen from the blood into cells and to transport waste from the cells into the blood.
Calories
If you are maintaining body weight then your energy output balances your input. To put on weight (muscle mass) you’ll need to eat more – just make sure that the balance of protein, carbohydrate and fat is right. To loose weight, cut some calories or exercise more, or both! Aim to loose a maximum of 2lbs per week. Losing more than this means that you are likely to be burning muscle protein for fuel – you’re wasting your hard earned muscle! Weigh yourself every week and monitor the effects of your training / nutrition. Adjust them to get the results that you need.
Rest
Muscle grows when you’re resting, allowing your body can repair the damage done during your training sessions. If you don’t provide enough rest, you’ll not grow! This rest comes from two sources, training frequency and sleep.
Training Frequency
As a fighter, your body will have to cope with fight training, running and weight training. Doing too much will cause your strength training to stagnate. Weight training just two or three times a week may be too much if you’re also training flat out in other areas. Don’t conduct heavy weight training on consecutive days and consider the other fight / running training you’re doing, space them sensibly throughout the week. Experiment with this and monitor results.
Sleep
How much sleep you need is an individual matter. But getting adequate quality and quantity of sleep makes a great difference to your body’s ability to grow. Usually 7 to 8 hours of sleep is deemed acceptable, but waking up naturally is ideal (if only we didn’t have jobs, children noisy neighbours etc)!
The workout, nutrition and rest are all important to your development. Get one of these wrong and you will not get results. This balance is individual to you and you’ll need to experiment to find what your body needs. Don’t shy away from abbreviated workouts with only three or four exercises – it may be the only way for a fighter to grow with such limited rest reserves. Remember to warm up your whole body and keep stretching!
Next month we will take a look at what makes a modern martial artist
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