Strength Training For Fighters

[Cmart]

This started out rough, but I feel we have reached an understanding.

As always. Brothers in iron, and so on. It also helps that I've been around so long I remember when you first showed up, as little Belphegor.

 

[belph]

As always. Brothers in iron, and so on. It also helps that I've been around so long I remember when you first showed up, as little Belphegor.

That is legitimately terrifying.

Ha! So you know I'm an acquired flavor then. Has your avatar changed since I started posting? It's from "Scanners", right?

 

[Cmart]

That is legitimately terrifying.

Ha! So you know I'm an acquired flavor then. Has your avatar changed since I started posting? It's from "Scanners", right?

It has not changed. I come and go. I started posting here back in the days that it was Strength and Power, Urban (formerly UrbanDruid) was just another poster, and Carnal was still posting about weed and banging goth chicks.

 

[TheeFaulted]

Yeahhhhh... like this one, right?

 

[Dan O]

That escalated quickly

 

[Kiwi Tricker]

Naudi wasn't born a fucking legend, son. You gotta give this man a chance.



Btw the legend of Eric Brown now trumps Mr.Aguilars.

No. Audi is still my baby.

Jaunty showing up out of the mist dropping hammers

As he does. Nobody else is quite like Jaunty, baby.

Why all this disrespect? Nothing constructive, but lets analyze what this guys have to say in the forum:

bushman: http://forums.sherdog.com/search/29252815/

two threads about guns, in one he makes a question adding nothing to the forum, in the other thread he wants to talk about guns in general, nothing constructive.


MandirigmaFit: http://forums.sherdog.com/search/29253071/

Hes a coach who goes with his wife to asia, goes to cambodia to train, yet no one useful post. His opinion in this post is "lol". You are a coach and go to cambodia and your professional perspective about another coach is that you laught about his work.

latflare: http://forums.sherdog.com/search/29253601/

Likes to talk about cocks, dicks and chest hair, nothing that we can benefit again


wufabufa (the fuck you say): http://forums.sherdog.com/search/29253703/

He have three threads, two wondering about the future of professional fighters in a malicious perspective (who will lose the belt?) nothing down to earth or aplicable information. The other post is a question, again no adding value but requesting it.

That's a serious amount of salt.

@OP, hope to have you stick around and join in some more general discussion. Vague information doesn't really fly around here- as referenced before, EZA's thread did really well because he offered specifics. The initial post was vague and salesy, but thereafter he began talking about the differences in eccentric vs concentric cardiac hypertrophy and other stuff which was seen as being actually educational and beneficial to members. FWIW, EZA is Joel Jamieson- currently regarded as a very highly respected MMA S&C coach, but that didn't stop forum members from naysaying him when he didn't show anything of value within his first few posts.

 

[CBongelli]

CBongelli, I enjoy watching your videos and keep up the good work. You probably know this, but your last video on the secret to progress, the Russian uses that methodology for strength training.

Thank you and that's true. Almost none of my material or ideas are original, many are taken from different Russian sports scientists and tested with/slightly modified for the fighters I've worked with.

 

[CBongelli]

Yeahhhhh... like this one, right?

Also, I just had a chance to watch the Power video. In my opinion, it's bro science garbage. Especially the zero-sum "strength vs. speed" old-school myth.

Perhaps I wasn't explaining things clearly enough but it's definitely not a zero-sum situation with strength and speed - when things are done correctly.

What I'm saying is that if you focus solely on max strength you miss out on increasing your potential power as much as is possible.

 

[Cmart]

Perhaps I wasn't explaining things clearly enough but it's definitely not a zero-sum situation with strength and speed - when things are done correctly.

What I'm saying is that if you focus solely on max strength you miss out on increasing your potential power as much as is possible.

There's room for disagreement here. If you have thick skin, you'll enjoy the feedback from posting instructional videos here. I'll keep checking them to see if there's something of value. I didn't care for the power one because it (in my opinion) fed into the old "one or the other" strength and/vs speed training myth. There's only limited truth and application to the idea of curtailing strength training for athletes that need speed and power. For the most part, it's been demonstrated that stronger = faster = much more power generation. It's not a slider on a curve, it's a force multiplier. It moves the curve.

 

[Sano]

There's only limited truth and application to the idea of curtailing strength training for athletes that need speed and power. For the most part, it's been demonstrated that stronger = faster = much more power generation. It's not a slider on a curve, it's a force multiplier. It moves the curve.

How so?

 

[Cmart]

How so?

How so what? That being stronger makes someone faster? We see that with sprinters, basketball players, baseball players, football players, swimmers, sports that have incorporated resistance training to add muscular strength to their athletes over the last half century or more. The old school of thought was that lifting would leave an athlete "musclebound" and less capable. There's still remnants of that mindset today, but they're disappearing fast as trainers and coaches realize that being stronger is a definite benefit for athletes.

 

[Sano]

How so what? That being stronger makes someone faster? We see that with sprinters, basketball players, baseball players, football players, swimmers, sports that have incorporated resistance training to add muscular strength to their athletes over the last half century or more. The old school of thought was that lifting would leave an athlete "musclebound" and less capable. There's still remnants of that mindset today, but they're disappearing fast as trainers and coaches realize that being stronger is a definite benefit for athletes.

No one is arguing that lifting and getting stronger isn't beneficial most of the time, but max strenght is not the same as speed, nor explosive power. Also, how valuable max strength is as an attribute depends entirely on the activity or sport.

Swimmers barely do any really heavy resistance training, same with a lot of other athletes. Many ball players don't either, but even the ones that do, they do a lot of speed drills, jump training and plyometrics. Max strength, or rather maximal voluntary isometric contraction (MVIC) of the muscles that extends the hip (like glut. max, hammies and adductor magnus), seems to have a good carry over for sprinters. Still they do a lot of speed and explosive work, ie. sprinting. Same with track and fielders. Different attributes are worked differently, while some may carry over to certain movements well, others will not. The body adapts specificly.

Another thing to consider is that a shotputter will need to have greater max strength because of the object he's manipulating than say a spear thrower. Someone being stronger doesn't necessarily make them faster either.

Try to be a little more specific. I just recently tried to dust up any correlation between a 1RM squat and vertical jump ability and I either couldn't find one, or they were very slight. I posted about it in this thread: http://forums.sherdog.com/threads/avoid-the-olympic-lifts.3424419/page-2 - and that's an exercise which is at least somewhat simular to part of the motion of a vertical. Now, surely your potential is increased by upping your squat, but you still have to practice other attributes independently. Olympic lifting, which are very close to a vertical in terms of mechanics, seems to have great carry over to a vert.

Now with that in mind try to imagine the difference between a heavy barbell compound, and actually swimming laps, or having fast hands in boxing, and so forth. You have to think about the application and transferability to the sport. That's what it all comes down to.

Someone can be very strong, and slow, and making them stronger wouldn't help. Someone can be a lot weaker, and fast, with very limited improvements from increasing their max strength. It all depends.

PS: I'd like to add that, in my opinion, assessing an athletes individual needs is an essential part of being a good coach.

 

[DoomPatrol]

No one is arguing that lifting and getting stronger isn't beneficial most of the time, but max strenght is not the same as speed, nor explosive power. Also, how valuable max strength is as an attribute depends entirely on the activity or sport.

Swimmers barely do any really heavy resistance training, same with a lot of other athletes. Many ball players don't either, but even the ones that do, they do a lot of speed drills, jump training and plyometrics. Max strength, or rather maximal voluntary isometric contraction (MVIC) of the muscles that extends the hip (like glut. max, hammies and adductor magnus), seems to have a good carry over for sprinters. Still they do a lot of speed and explosive work, ie. sprinting. Same with track and fielders. Different attributes are worked differently, while some may carry over to certain movements well, others will not. The body adapts specificly.

Another thing to consider is that a shotputter will need to have greater max strength because of the object he's manipulating than say a spear thrower. Someone being stronger doesn't necessarily make them faster either.

Try to be a little more specific. I just recently tried to dust up any correlation between a 1RM squat and vertical jump ability and I either couldn't find one, or they were very slight. I posted about it in this thread: http://forums.sherdog.com/threads/avoid-the-olympic-lifts.3424419/page-2 - and that's an exercise which is at least somewhat simular to part of the motion of a vertical. Now, surely your potential is increased by upping your squat, but you still have to practice other attributes independently. Olympic lifting, which are very close to a vertical in terms of mechanics, seems to have great carry over to a vert.

Now with that in mind try to imagine the difference between a heavy barbell compound, and actually swimming laps, or having fast hands in boxing, and so forth. You have to think about the application and transferability to the sport. That's what it all comes down to.

Someone can be very strong, and slow, and making them stronger wouldn't help. Someone can be a lot weaker, and fast, with very limited improvements from increasing their max strength. It all depends.

PS: I'd like to add that, in my opinion, assessing an athletes individual needs is an essential part of being a good coach.

I've always considered strength to be like a cooking pot. While gaining strength doesn't necessarily give you more food (power), it gives you the ability to put more food in the pot.

The most force you can produce is going to be a limiting factor in how much power you can produce. As always, a stronger person at the same bodyweight as a weaker person will have more power potential.

I think what we can all agree on is that it is better to be a stronger version of yourself. The best way to increase strength is to do barbell resistance training. You still need to practice your sport to learn how to apply your strength gains.

 

[MandirigmaFit]

You guys are looking at strength and power as binary: 1 & 0, when it is not so black and white. There are so many different components that you guys will end up arguing back and forth, until you realize that you guys are both right in one way or another.

 

[Cmart]

No one is arguing that lifting and getting stronger isn't beneficial most of the time, but max strenght is not the same as speed, nor explosive power. Also, how valuable max strength is as an attribute depends entirely on the activity or sport.

Swimmers barely do any really heavy resistance training, same with a lot of other athletes. Many ball players don't either, but even the ones that do, they do a lot of speed drills, jump training and plyometrics. Max strength, or rather maximal voluntary isometric contraction (MVIC) of the muscles that extends the hip (like glut. max, hammies and adductor magnus), seems to have a good carry over for sprinters. Still they do a lot of speed and explosive work, ie. sprinting. Same with track and fielders. Different attributes are worked differently, while some may carry over to certain movements well, others will not. The body adapts specificly.

Another thing to consider is that a shotputter will need to have greater max strength because of the object he's manipulating than say a spear thrower. Someone being stronger doesn't necessarily make them faster either.

Try to be a little more specific. I just recently tried to dust up any correlation between a 1RM squat and vertical jump ability and I either couldn't find one, or they were very slight. I posted about it in this thread: http://forums.sherdog.com/threads/avoid-the-olympic-lifts.3424419/page-2 - and that's an exercise which is at least somewhat simular to part of the motion of a vertical. Now, surely your potential is increased by upping your squat, but you still have to practice other attributes independently. Olympic lifting, which are very close to a vertical in terms of mechanics, seems to have great carry over to a vert.

Now with that in mind try to imagine the difference between a heavy barbell compound, and actually swimming laps, or having fast hands in boxing, and so forth. You have to think about the application and transferability to the sport. That's what it all comes down to.

Someone can be very strong, and slow, and making them stronger wouldn't help. Someone can be a lot weaker, and fast, with very limited improvements from increasing their max strength. It all depends.

PS: I'd like to add that, in my opinion, assessing an athletes individual needs is an essential part of being a good coach.

If you want to be specific, you can look at every sport in a case-by-case basis, and certainly find a few that counter the idea that making the athlete stronger makes them perform better. However, you'll find more cases where increased strength is a net gain for the athlete. Often times when the talk turns to specificity, the topic is actually about training a skill, and then the debate becomes whether time spent skill training is more important than time spent improving strength or conditioning, and then we're off into the weeds.

In general, a stronger athlete will also be a faster athlete, and a better performing athlete.

There are exceptions.

The rule outweighs the exceptions, meaning you'll find more instances where stronger and faster is better.

In addition, I'm dismissing the idea that training with higher intensity or against greater resistance takes away in some other area automatically, like it's on a "slider" where the athlete gives up something in order to gain something. Marathoners have gotten great improvements from working on sprints. Golfers have gotten better by lifting weights. Oly lifters can often dunk a basketball. Weight training with heavy weights can improve more sports than they would hamper, by a long shot. And there's no having to give up one aspect of performance to gain another. The rising tide of strength can raise all the other aspects of an athlete's game.

 

[Sano]

I've always considered strength to be like a cooking pot. While gaining strength doesn't necessarily give you more food (power), it gives you the ability to put more food in the pot.

The most force you can produce is going to be a limiting factor in how much power you can produce. As always, a stronger person at the same bodyweight as a weaker person will have more power potential.

I think what we can all agree on is that it is better to be a stronger version of yourself. The best way to increase strength is to do barbell resistance training. You still need to practice your sport to learn how to apply your strength gains.

I definitely see where you are coming from and I agree with most of it. I view it as a sort of power potential as well. That being said, saying that a stronger person at the same bodyweight will always have more power potential I think is not necessarily true. I'm sorry for this because Mandirigma is right lol, but I'm going to do explain what I mean anyway.

Let's take generating punching power, which is in line with the OP and training for combat sports. We had a very interesting thread about what constitutes punching power or force. Person A might be stronger in the deadlift, squat and bench, but person B might have better leverages for punching (not technique, but levers and proportions) and therefor generates more power. Person A might be stronger in the compounds, but person B might generate more power because he has a faster turn of the hip, using the force multiplier (not technique, speed of turn). Person A might be stronger in the compounds, but person B might have more power because he has greater range of motion in his joints, allowing for both a long duration of acceleration and a greater stretch reflex. These are not technical things, these are physical attributes, some who can be worked on and improved. Some that certain athletes could benefit more from than increasing their 1RM.

Just to reiterate, I think that strength training is great, but I also think that it's part of a larger sum.

If you want to be specific, you can look at every sport in a case-by-case basis, and certainly find a few that counter the idea that making the athlete stronger makes them perform better. However, you'll find more cases where increased strength is a net gain for the athlete. Often times when the talk turns to specificity, the topic is actually about training a skill, and then the debate becomes whether time spent skill training is more important than time spent improving strength or conditioning, and then we're off into the weeds.

In general, a stronger athlete will also be a faster athlete, and a better performing athlete.

There are exceptions.

The rule outweighs the exceptions, meaning you'll find more instances where stronger and faster is better.

In addition, I'm dismissing the idea that training with higher intensity or against greater resistance takes away in some other area automatically, like it's on a "slider" where the athlete gives up something in order to gain something. Marathoners have gotten great improvements from working on sprints. Golfers have gotten better by lifting weights. Oly lifters can often dunk a basketball. Weight training with heavy weights can improve more sports than they would hamper, by a long shot. And there's no having to give up one aspect of performance to gain another. The rising tide of strength can raise all the other aspects of an athlete's game.

I disagree that max strength as a rule is the best attribute to train. It depends entirely on the sport and the athlete. Also the issue is that being strong in certain movements is not necessarily the same as being strong in others.

The examples you brought up are very sport specific. Long distance runners benefitting from sprints makes perfect sense, but making them chase heavy deadlifts on end probably wouldn't. Though I think that a generalised strength and injury prevention program would greatly benefit them (which I believe most long distance runners actually do now, but they don't lift very heavy). A golfer benefits from forceful turn of the hips as well and working the lower body might help in that regard, but a lot of other movements would certainly not help them. Oly lifters can dunk because jumping and oly lifting is as close to the same mechanical movement and force production as it gets. Triple extention especially being important. It's also not strictly an expression of 1RM strength, but rather explosive power and a fast recruitment and contraction of fibers. Another thing to keep in mind is that a lot of these examples are singular in their application. The more complex a sport gets, the more factors contribute.

I agree with you that you don't automatically lose attributes as you get stronger staying at the same bodyweight. However time invested in specific speed training will yield greater results of speed, than time invested in max strength. While max strength does compliment and creates a base for certain things, it doesn't automatically improve all your attributes.

 

[DoomPatrol]

I definitely see where you are coming from and I agree with most of it. I view it as a sort of power potential as well. That being said, saying that a stronger person at the same bodyweight will always have more power potential I think is not necessarily true. I'm sorry for this because Mandirigma is right lol, but I'm going to do explain what I mean anyway.

Let's take generating punching power, which is in line with the OP and training for combat sports. We had a very interesting thread about what constitutes punching power or force. Person A might be stronger in the deadlift, squat and bench, but person B might have better leverages for punching (not technique, but levers and proportions) and therefor generates more power. Person A might be stronger in the compounds, but person B might generate more power because he has a faster turn of the hip, using the force multiplier (not technique, speed of turn). Person A might be stronger in the compounds, but person B might have more power because he has greater range of motion in his joints, allowing for both a long duration of acceleration and a greater stretch reflex. These are not technical things, these are physical attributes, some who can be worked on and improved. Some that certain athletes could benefit more from than increasing their 1RM.

Just to reiterate, I think that strength training is great, but I also think that it's part of a larger sum.

Right, but also you have to remember that we aren't comparing two different athletes. You have to compare yourself to a stronger version of yourself. You'll still have the same physical qualities, except have a stronger muscle chain. There are dozens of variations between two different fighters that could affect power production, so I hate comparing different people like that.

I do agree that there are other factors that just raw strength that affect your ability to produce power. That's why I think it's even more important to do skills training to learn proper technique for your sport.

 

[Sano]

Right, but also you have to remember that we aren't comparing two different athletes. You have to compare yourself to a stronger version of yourself. You'll still have the same physical qualities, except have a stronger muscle chain. There are dozens of variations between two different fighters that could affect power production, so I hate comparing different people like that.

I do agree that there are other factors that just raw strength that affect your ability to produce power. That's why I think it's even more important to do skills training to learn proper technique for your sport.

ROM and speed can be improved in the same person. Technique work aside. Think of it this way, would increasing my 1RM squat and DL by 10% give me more throwing/kicking/punching power than improving the speed of my hip turn 10% and improving my ROM? I think it depends on what the sticking point is and what the sport requires, hence why you have to judge an athlete individually.

My original point was that max strength isn't equal speed, but I think we're way past that point lol!

Anyway, thanks for the intelligent exchange. I'm off to bed now as it's getting late up here in the cold north, have a pleasent evening.

 

[Cmart]

I disagree that max strength as a rule is the best attribute to train. It depends entirely on the sport and the athlete. Also the issue is that being strong in certain movements is not necessarily the same as being strong in others.

The examples you brought up are very sport specific. Long distance runners benefitting from sprints makes perfect sense, but making them chase heavy deadlifts on end probably wouldn't. Though I think that a generalised strength and injury prevention program would greatly benefit them (which I believe most long distance runners actually do now, but they don't lift very heavy). A golfer benefits from forceful turn of the hips as well and working the lower body might help in that regard, but a lot of other movements would certainly not help them. Oly lifters can dunk because jumping and oly lifting is as close to the same mechanical movement and force production as it gets. Triple extention especially being important. It's also not strictly an expression of 1RM strength, but rather explosive power and a fast recruitment and contraction of fibers. Another thing to keep in mind is that a lot of these examples are singular in their application. The more complex a sport gets, the more factors contribute.

I agree with you that you don't automatically lose attributes as you get stronger staying at the same bodyweight. However time invested in specific speed training will yield greater results of speed, than time invested in max strength. While max strength does compliment and creates a base for certain things, it doesn't automatically improve all your attributes.

You suggest training for "max strength" isn't the way to go, but "generalized strength" would be fine. Nobody trains for only max strength, not even powerlifters. I'm 21 weeks out from a comp and still training hypertrophy.

Also, heavy training increases "general" strength and general strength training (done with intensity) increases max strength. So there's little to differentiate between them. Better to not try to assign specific "flavors" to strength. Make an athlete stronger, you make them better, typically. I've already said there's exceptions.

Everything you said about specificity I already addressed. You don't disagree with it from what I'm reading in your post. You seem to want to nitpick but you're not really making a point.

 

[Noodles03]

Is kneeling jump squat a good exercise for increasing your vertical jump?