My martial art strength training practice: how to make it functional (part 1)

I am currently not training Martial Art at the moment and I haven’t done so for many years. Nor have I been a professional competitive fighter. But I would like to share my method how I incorporate strength workout in my martial art training. I may get back into martial art training for fitness purpose and I thought it’d be nice to archive my method before I forget about it. I will cover a few points first before going into the method how I incorporate it.

Disclaimer: This advice is not from a professional fighter or trainer

Firstly, I want to make a disclaimer that I have not used these method as a professional fighter as I have not been one. So if you are aiming to be a professional fighter, I would advise you to look for a professional strength and conditional trainer. However, learning from my method may help as a professional fighter but take it with a pinch of salt and be aware it may affect your performance negatively.

Is muscle workout good or bad for Martial Arts?

There had been a debate whether muscle building is good or bad for martial art training or not. The answer is not clear cut because it depends who you are asking, the goals you want, the type of strength training you are doing and how strong you want to be.

a) Reason why strength training is unfavourable:

First I will give reason why muscular strength training may be not favourable. Firstly, the main reason it may reduce your performance. This could be for a number of reason i.e. your arm becomes too heavy, it may slow you down and it affect your ability to efficient transfer power from the ground. However, there are ways to not make you lose your speed and ability to execute your power.

Secondly, a professional fighter may not want to move up a weight class. It may not be ideal for a professional fighter to move up a class weight because it means that you have to fight bigger fighter who has longer arm reach. Unless you are already a champion and you want to dominate the next weight class.

Thirdly, some traditional Martial Artist who focus on Internal Arts i.e. Tai Chi or Chi Kung may not be interested in building muscles as it may affect their performances. They are focused on unblocking chi or prana points and using their joints and structure without using their muscles. Muscle can distract their ability to use their joint or chi/prana.

b) Reason why strength training is favourable:

Firstly, if you have certain amount of muscles you can transform it into greater explosive power if you are able transform it under certain training. Strength will also help you a lot with grappling or wrestling. However, you also have to consider the amount of muscle for optimal performance, as being above certain point will affect your performance negatively.

Secondly, just having strong physical appearance may help deter others from wanting to fight you. Criminals or sociopaths are likely to pick on victims who seems weaker than them and avoid people who are stronger and is likely to cause troubles. However, this may not always be the case as there are some people under influence on intoxicants, drugs or is trying to prove a point. But in the most case, being physically stronger are mostly likely to deter violence.

Thirdly, some people just like to have a more muscular physique for their appearance and confidence as well as knowing there are functional use such as lifting and carrying things when need to.

Reason why my strength training is good for martial art:

When I build my strength, I consider making complimentary for my martial art practice as much as I can. Here are aspect why my strength training is useful for martial arts:

•  I do not build excessive non-functional muscles like a bodybuilder which is affects performance negatively.
•  The muscle I build will have functional use. Fast twitch muscles for strikes and isometric strength for grappling or wrestling. Also some muscles are use to prevent injury such as pulling muscles (i.e. lats, rotator cuff muscles) will help balance out the frontal movement to prevent bad posture and joint injury.
• I incorporate practices to help maintain or improve speed, coordination, functional power and flexibility.

 

How I make strength training functional:

Here are ways to make the strength training functions:

a) Focus on functional muscles:

Be aware of what is functional primary muscle to focus on and what is secondary muscle to build. Example of primary muscle to work on:

• Shoulders: to help keep guard up.
• Triceps: to help with pushing/striking motion or strong cover guard
• Lats: To pull back punching and grappling
• Quads: For common front kick, round kick or knee.
• Calves: For quick dashing footwork
• Rotational Core: It is important to work on the rotational core muscle to help with strikes and condition us to take strikes.
• Forearm & hand grip: for  clinching and grappling

The other body parts can still be trained but not emphasised and can be considered as secondary priority.

b) Restriction on non-functional muscles:

There are some muscles you should limit growth as being too build will affect your performance. However, this does not mean you shoulder build up on that muscle but to not excessively build it by setting a resistant limit. Here are some examples:

• Biceps: you need sufficient bicep muscles for hooks and grappling but you don’t want excessive bicep muscle as it will affects your punching power. Big biceps will slow down your straight punches as it add extra weights and can act as a restrictor for forward triceps pushing motion. Consider limiting the weight you do for bicep curl i.e. don’t go more than 15kg or whatever limit you feel is appropriate. Going beyond your limit when performing pull ups and chin ups is fine but just be aware of how it may affect your punches. However, if may focus more on biceps strength if you want to focus more on grappling but consider how it may affect your punches.
• Chest muscle: Chest muscles are useful for hugging movements in grappling and hook punches, but again, excessively chest muscle doesn’t serves any extra benefits and can waste your energy when you can focus on primary muscles or other aspects of training.  So for example, set a limit of 20-30kg weights per arm with bench press or whatever weight limit you feel is suitable. There shouldn’t really be an emphasis on the size of your chest but should be seen as just a by product of pushing training for your punches or fly movement for grappling.

c) Knowing when to use faster or slower movement with resistant training:

It’s important to be aware of how to move when doing resistant training. Muscle that is involved in striking should incorporate a faster movement. It should be relatively faster to mimic striking movements. But it does not necessary have to be explosive like powerlifting as there will be a day specialise for explosive power training. You want to focus on muscle strength growth more but not in a slow bodybuilding hypertrophy style.

When training muscles that is involves with grappling or pulling, is should involve more slower or isometric like movement. So you can performance the strength training like a bodybuilding hypertrophy style.

d) Incorporate power training:

Incorporate power training day that convert the muscular strength into a fast twitching explosive power. In this way, you can maintain your speed and power as you strong your muscles. It is important to not to go for long period without power training otherwise it’ll slow down your performance. These involves explosive pushing and plyometric training. Equipment such as landmine bar, medicine ball and resistant band are used.

e) Incorporate training to maintain flexibility, speed, coordination & energy flow:

When building my muscular strength, you may feel that your strikes and movements becoming more slower, stiff, uncoordinated and more difficult get that flow of energy. So there are practices you do to maintain that skill and performance level.

• Flexibility: As you build more muscles, your tendons and joint will be more stiff. It is important to do regular deep stretches and deep tissue massage to loosen up the joint. Especially primary functional joints i.e. legs, hips, shoulder and elbow.
• Speed: For speed training, other than power training, you can also do shadow boxing or bag work with the intentions of throwing quick punches or blocking quickly. You want to start throwing punches with a non-contracted & relaxed way and gradually experiment where and when to contract or relax for better power punches.
• Coordination: To improve my coordination skills, I do shadow boxing & target practice. I straighten my hands and throw strikes using my index/middle fingers to help build an accurate strike on a target. You can use the dotted paper, punching bag or pad work as targets or simply use your imagination. You will feel more coordinated afterwards. Then I transition to throwing any kind of strikes such as index/middle knuckle, pinky knuckle or palm strikes.
• Energy flow: To improve my energy flow, I do these following exercises:
  1. Flicking arms and hands: Whilst being relaxed, feel the energy flowing from the torso through the arms, finger tips and then outward.
  2. Energy flow from the ground: With a relaxed body, feel the energy flow created from the ground flowing through your feet, hip rotation, shoulders and all the way through your hands. Then apply this to different strikes such as punches, elbows, palm strikes and chops.
  3. Relaxation & contraction flow: After mastering energy flow with a relaxed body, you can begin to incorporation when to relax and contract your muscles for optimal striking power. i.e. how much bicep contraction needed when throwing hooks or uppercuts.

Schedule content:

In a general sense, my schedule should include:

• 2-3 strength training day a week
• Have one strength day for unspecify training to work in weakness or any particular areas
• Include 1 session of joint strengthen
• Include 1 day of power training day
• Include skills maintenance (deep stretch flexibility, speed, coordination and energy drills)

There is no fixed schedule because it should be changing depending on the stage or objective. But eventually it should lead to an optimal schedule as listed below.

Schedule (split) for each stage:

The training schedule will depend on the different stages of strength development. Here is an outline of the stages of strength training:

1. Learning skills (no strength training):

At this stage, you shouldn’t focus on building strength but learn how to perform the martial art technique properly. For instance, learn the mechanics of generating power from the ground up in your strikes and move about. In this way, you are learning how to use your body mechanics, structure, joint and efficiently striking without using much muscles.

2. Building up basic strength (full body split):

At this point you can work on the basic strength by doing a full body workout. As you don’t have much muscles at this point, doing a full body workout is possible. Do 2-3 full body workout a week: Here is an example of what a basic workout may look like:

• Push Up (5-10 sets of 20)
• Bench Dips (5-10 sets of 20) or Dips (3-5 sets of 10)
• Pull Up/Chin Up (3-5 sets of 10)
• Invert Row (5-10 sets of 10)
• Sit Up (5-10 sets of 30)
• Leg Up (3-5 sets of 30)
• Squat Jump (5 sets of 20)

Start off with low set and rep and gradually increase it.

3. Building up optimal strength (separate days):

This is the hardest and trickest stage where you have to focus on reaching optimal strength in each body part.

You may not have time to incorporate power training days at this stage.

You will need a rest day after each workout.

Once you have mastered the basic strength of free weight training, you may want to progress to reach higher level of strength training using weights and cable resistance. It may take years to develop the optimal strength. In order to reach the optimal strength you may need to workout until failure and so it is likely to work on separate muscle group each session. However, you will need to make sure the following day is your rest day or light martial art training day. And you will also need a full 3-4 days of recovery so you won’t be training that part of the group. As you are training until failure, train this way when you are not competing.

You will need to alternate between the following body part:

• Day 1: Back (Target: Body Weight) + Rear Delts
• Day 2: Bicep/Forearm (Target: 15kg) + Core
• Day 3: Chest (Target: 25kg/arm Press) + Triceps (Target: 15kg/arm)
• Day 4: Front/Side Shoulders + Legs

Because you will be training until failure, you will need a few days of recovery before moving to the next body part. It will take 2 weeks to complete all the body parts because working until failure will put strain into your body. Here are example of what it the schedule may look like:

Week 1:

• Monday: Strength Day 1 (Back + Rear Delts)
• Tuesday: [Rest Day]
• Wednesday: Martial Art Lessons (i)
• Thursday: Martial Art Lessons (ii)
• Friday: Strength Day 2 (Bicep/Forearm + Core)
• Saturday: [Rest Day]
• Sunday: Skills Maintenance

Week 2:

• Monday: Strength Day 3 (Chest + Triceps)
• Tuesday: [Rest Day]
• Wednesday: Martial Art Lessons (i)
• Thursday: Martial Art Lessons (ii)
• Friday: Strength Day 4 (Shoulders + Legs)
• Saturday: [Rest Day]
• Sunday: Skills Maintenance

4. Semi optimal grouping (semi grouping):

Once we have reach our optimal strength with our target weights we can proceed to merge some groups together. We can merge the previous 2 weeks schedule into 1 week.

So it will looks like this:

• Day 1: Back + Rear Delts + Bicep/Forearm + Core
• Day 2: Front/Side Shoulders + Chest + Triceps + Legs

The weekly schedule will look like this:

• Monday: Strength day 1 (Back + Rear Delts + Bicep/Forearm + Core)
• Tuesday: Martial Art Lessons (i)
• Wednesday: [Rest Day]
• Thursday: Martial Art Lessons (ii)
• Friday: Strength day 2 (Front/Side Shoulders + Chest + Triceps + Legs)
• Saturday: [Rest Day]
• Sunday: Skills Maintenance

5. Strength Maintenance (optimal split):

Joint strengthening, power training and extra strength day will be incorporated at this point.

• Monday: Strength day 1 (Back + Rear Delts + Bicep/Forearm + Core)
• Tuesday: Martial Art Lessons (i)
• Wednesday: Strength day 2 (Front/Side Shoulders + Chest + Triceps + Legs)
• Thursday: Martial Art Lessons (ii)
• Friday: Joint, Power & Strength (Unspecified)
• Saturday: [Rest Day]
• Sunday: Skills Maintenance

However to day to