What are the benefits from deadlifting in martial arts?
i know it works your core too, but can anyone be more specific?
Aint squats better?
Something like this:
When you stand up, roughly three thing happen. First, your leg straightens out at the knee (using your quads). Second, your hips move forward (using your glutes and hams). Third, your torso will probably straighten (using muscles along the back). Squats and deadlifts train these movements and these muscles. (Actually with the back they train it more by making you hold your position rather than actively straightening up, but let's ignore that detail for a minute.)
These movements are just really useful in most sports, including fighting. Straightening the leg and pushing the hip through is involved in so many movements- running, jumping, kicking, and so on and so on. The ability to straighten the torso or to resist being pulled down and bent over is also really beneficial. If you know your sport, you should be able to figure out how these movements are needed in your sport.
As I said, squats and deadlifts involve the same basic movement and train the same basic properties. There are just a few differences. The most important ones I know of are this:
- The relative contribution of the movements, and the muscles, tends to be a bit different. Specifically, most squats are more knee extension and less hip extension than deadlifts. If you do front squats, for example, there isn't much hip extension at all, it's really knee-extension dominant. When you do a deadlift, there is always tonnes of hip extension, especially if you start with your hips high.
- Squats are usually done with much more range of motion. The amount of leg movement in a lot of deadlifts is similar to what is done in a quarter squat.
- Most people can deadlift more than they can squat, so it allows heavier loads. Some people are more confident failing a max effort deadlift than they are a max effort squat, so it can be a better choice for very high intensity work.
- In deadlifts you can end up in a more forward-leaning position than in normal squat (depending on your squat technique). With that plus the additional weight, you can get more stimulus for your back and more training for the "back straightening/not being bent over" quality.
If you had to choose between squats and deadlifts for your training program, which one would you choose? (assuming your goal is to perform better in combat sports)
It depends on your exact fighting discipline and how developed your strength is.
For how developed your strength is... Every athlete (and fighter) should have some base level of strength- roughly the amount of "noob gains" that you can get while also training your sport, pushed harder or less hard depending how important strength or power is for your sport. If you don't yet have this base of strength, you should really do both. However... if I had to pick one I would say squat. Because you are still developing basic physical qualities, and you want to develop strength over a larger Range of Motion. If you need extra back-work or grip work you can get that some other way.
Once you have the base of strength it would be quite possible to focus on just one of them. You would need to analyze the movement patterns of your sport. Especially, you would look to see how often you use leg strength over a large range of motion. If you are regularly doing it from a large knee angle, that would favour squats. If you rarely bend much at the knee, that would favour deadlifts. You would also look at how often you are leaning forward and having to straighten up or not be pulled down. If that is really important you might go for deadlifts (or low bar squats).
In practice, though, you wouldn't pick one to do for all time. Even if you have developed your strength base and decided to focus on one for sports specific reasons, you would still do the other sometimes- to avoid losing strength in the movement and for variety.
