Strength Training and Striking

Or in other words; you can have strength without speed, but there is no speed without strength.
 
Even though you are a fighter you have to look outside your field.

Being from a sports trainer background I've been exposed to other modalities in terms of how to train. So I was lucky .

Inflammation control - an active stretching and flexiable system, Ice bathes, massage are what I've seen the most of.

proper cross muscular areas references the prime muscles in your sport. For track for an example are the trucks, legs, and hips. It's not that a sprinter doesn't bench press or whatever but the goals are to build muscle in the areas that need to be stronger.

Coordination is your ability to control your body in space. Slot of coaches are using balls for and doing rope swings or some other random stuff. Personally coordination is best worked in the work up to help with injury prevention.

Hopefully I've answered your questions
Track & field is one of the most, if not the most, excellent sources for anything power related in sports. Always loved getting inspiration from track exercises and way of teaching. Generally there are many, many sports where you can take something and learn from it in regards to martial arts training. Another example is how the rotational aspects of golf and tennis actually has a great carryover to punching if practiced in isolated and with a bit of alteration.

The issue I had with your post is that your terminology is a bit all over the place. When you say "controlling inflammation", you mean soft tissue work and recovery aspects of training. Adjusting volume according to whether or not you are overusing and creating chronic inflammatory states would be another way to use the term "inflammation control". "Cross muscular areas" is not something I've heard before either. In physiology cross-sectional muscular area is the width of a muscle based on hypertrophy. If you mean that you want to train the specific muscles and muscle chains that is important for your sport, yes that's often times the goal. Problem is that low level S&C coaches don't know how to correctly identify those muscles. More importantly, a muscle works in various ways during the activity of your sport, and the way to train can be manipulated, including direction of force, velocities, tempo, intent, stability requirements and so on, in order to prepare them for a specific task or sport specific goal.

Lastly I know what coordination means, but the context in which you are using it I'm not sure I get. You mention that coordination is best to train after injury as a rehab measure, in which case I'm guessing you are talking about instability training and co-contractions, but that is something distinct. Coordination is your ability to interact with your environment, and that is always at play one way or the other. Often times you have to practice a specific set of motor skills in order to improve a specific coordination pattern or skill. You'll have to be a little more specific.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/phys.org/news/2017-01-motion-ground-patterns-runner.amp

Also for anyone who is interested.

Power ( running speed) is directly related to how much force ( strength) you put into the ground.

If you want to get faster ( more explosive) increase your strength while keeping bodyfat low then use your sport to teach your body to transfer your new strength to your sport
Really awesome article, thanks. I don't see how it pertains to this thread though.

The main thrust is the development of a new biomechanical analysis method to analyse force production in a simplified way. Greater ground reactionary forces leading to greater sprint speed is nothing new. It's the basics of Newtons law of action-reaction. Btw, I wrote a short piece on that here some time ago, in regards to power production in punching, if you want to check it out: http://forums.sherdog.com/posts/125416715/ - I will update it at some point.

The mechanics of running are not quite the same as punching, and in regards to pure speed, it's not a linear correlation between max strength and speed. A lot of other factors come into play like contractile velocity, fiber types, intra and inter muscular coordination, muscle angle, direciton of force, ROM, arousel level, genetics so on. No doubt that being "stronger" at the same BW helps with most things in sport, and especially power production, but how to aquire that strength is what we are discussing. With the powerlifting wave, most would argue that you just "increase your max on the three lifts", but that is not necessarily the case and after diminishing returns on max strength there are other qualities you'd want more. Being inspired by other sports, I'm sure you can agree with that.

I'm totally on board with looking to other sports for guidance. S&C in fight sports are sometimes way behind the curve.
 
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2 things..
1. You should try to mimic the movement of the strike like Anthony Joshua does with the cable machine
at 2:36 of the video



2. You should always do some striking immediately after the weight workout like shadowboxing or heavybag to help adaptation for functional strength.

I think that 'non-fighter' exercises like deadlift and squat can still be beneficial to an extent for developing overall muscle balance but too much emphasis on these exercises can burn energy that could be used on more fight specific training.

Yeah I agree , a powerlifting routine not well planeed made me a little bit slower for judo but I still believe in the big three, just not get to powerlifting specific.
well @pug
i think you are overthinking this quite a bit.
powerlifting is mainly for improving your strength with the main lifts that you will be competing with. No becoming stronger will improve your athletic performance and with he right instruction correct postural mistakes etc.. it won't be a 1 to 1 transfer.
Looking at top guys like Spoto who can bench over 700lbs or Kostinovs who can pull 800-900+ is not the best comparison because they are specialized completely in what they are doing so their body types, routines, etc.. reflect that.


also 1 thing that your post mentions that i disagree with is separating powerlifting and oly lifting. i am not saying there aren't differences but they are not mutually exclusive many powerlifting programs utilize oly lifts and oly lifters should have respectable time under the bar on the big 3.
For example if you look at a guy like Bill Starr (the innovator of 5x5 training) he thought that the power clean was the best indicator of what an athlete would be capable of on the field (american football). In his original variations of 5x5 training Cleans (high pulls etc..) were a big part and even replaced heavy deadlifting in some of his programs for athletes.

not to put any words in your mouth but i feel like this divide of only lifting and powerlifting really only comes up because of the availability of proper equipment and teaching of the oly lifts. its much easier to follow a routine in most gyms if your just hitting Squat, Bench, Dead followed by accessory work compared to finding the right place to do some serious cleans, jerks, etc..
Actually the problem I was having with following a strength routine like 5x5 Texas in a gym was the power clean part as in most local places they won´t let me do that.
For boxing, the best carry over that I found was the kettlebell swings. I notice very minor benefits from doing the front squats, deadlift and bench. However again, that's been my experience and your experience will differ from mine.
Mee too !
I am not doing boxing now but when I throw punches I feel them better.
 
I've only been boxing for 3 years or so, but I started at 30 so I think I've been very mindful in my approach. First and foremost, I haven't taken what coaches say as gospel because there's a lot of rubbish thrown around, dumbbell shadow boxing anyone?

My first 1-2 years bodyweight stuff was more than enough conditioning and I had some modest strength and size gains. Obviously, technique is what drove my power gains and always will imo.

Soon I felt this was too easy and my muscles werent getting stronger anymore, just better at press ups. So IIstarted powerlifting once a week with the objective of getting gradually stronger. What I found was that I got injured much less. Particularly, I wasn't tweeking my back and shoulders or jarring my wrists and elbows anymore. Better grip strength helped me make a better fist in my gloves too.

Having doubled my squat, deadlift and press, I've made little to no size gains and doubt I'm hitting much harder, but I feel like there's more snap in my punches. I guess this is from being able to retract punches better.

I reckon that from a low baseline, powerlifting is worthwhile. Not only for iniury prevention, but to retract better and add snap to punches. I now think I was pushing my punches before due to a weak back.

I'm just gonna maintain my current strength level now because I feel that I've hit the point of diminishing returns or even counterproductive returns.

Anybody else share this experience?
As I said before my powerlifting routine a few years ago made a little bit slower but now I am deciding into going back to weights or starting boxing to complement judo.
I´d like to see your program if you don´t mind please.
I would think he's basically saying like, everyone having certain affinities for certain factors of performance, and a certain degree to which they can 'retool' or 'specialize' their factors of potential to a certain area of performance.

So you know, the old 'having a given level of potential and training bringing improvement are both true', in so many words.


On the subject on the OP, i think it can be helpful to break it down first into basic principles. A simplified explanation of the dynamics underlying the effects of that set of behaviors sometimes called exercise is the stress-adaptation cycle; placing the body under a certain stress it can recover from (key qualifier), and it adapting in order to ameliorate that sort of stress in the future.

So then. If one's goal is to throw a punch harder, then it brings up the obvious consequent: how do you add increased resistance to the punching movement? Or more broadly, movements that participate in the punching movement?

People have given various answers of varying felicity over the years, such as wrist weights, or stretch bands, or so on. In my view though, the safest and most effective ways of adding significant amounts of resistance to a punching movement, would be, primarily, through sled drags or prowler pushing, and secondarily, through club/macebell swings.

I would say drags more than prowlers though, since most prowlers are fairly low to the ground and to push it you would need to hunch over like you're in a rugby scrum, while a sled can be used more sport specifically, with a rope or stirrup one handed using the same stance and form you would use in a fight, which is the most important thing you would want to add resistance too.

Exact implementation can take various forms to suit your needs, from high loads at any speed for building up maximal, to lower loads for 'sprint' bursts at high intensity at intervals, to long(er) duration works for muscular endurance. A fight itself can often demand a fighter shift rapidly between different levels of effort as dictated by his gameplan or the vagaries of the dance with his counterpart in general (which is one reason why i think the 400 meter dash is a great exercise [through perhaps not implemented through constantly running counterclockwise]; hits all three energy systems, in particular making you burn through the first two and hit 'the wall' before you can fully complete it [ https://experiencelife.com/article/all-about-your-metabolic-energy-systems/ ]).
So the longer the time I can be on sprint the more fat I burn and power I train ??
I have been doing only short ones this year.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/phys.org/news/2017-01-motion-ground-patterns-runner.amp

Also for anyone who is interested.

Power ( running speed) is directly related to how much force ( strength) you put into the ground.

If you want to get faster ( more explosive) increase your strength while keeping bodyfat low then use your sport to teach your body to transfer your new strength to your sport
Well sprints have helped me but never knew if it ehelps to upper body explosion.
 
As I said before my powerlifting routine a few years ago made a little bit slower but now I am deciding into going back to weights or starting boxing to complement judo.
I´d like to see your program if you don´t mind please.

So the longer the time I can be on sprint the more fat I burn and power I train ??
I have been doing only short ones this year.

Well sprints have helped me but never knew if it ehelps to upper body explosion.

My "program" is very minimalist because I box 2-3 times a week and I just wanna compliment that by getting stronger. Sometimes I have to lift after boxing and sometimes I don't do a split. But an IDEAL week would be as follows:
Tues morning - deadlift 1x5, chin ups 5x5.
Thurs evening - squat and overhead press 3x5

I've been doing this since January and doubled weight on everything except chin ups.
 
My "program" is very minimalist because I box 2-3 times a week and I just wanna compliment that by getting stronger. Sometimes I have to lift after boxing and sometimes I don't do a split. But an IDEAL week would be as follows:
Tues morning - deadlift 1x5, chin ups 5x5.
Thurs evening - squat and overhead press 3x5

I've been doing this since January and doubled weight on everything except chin ups.
Sounds nice and a little like Texas o Starting Strength, programs I can´t do because most gyms here don´t let you do cleans cueck hahaha.
So you can make gains with 2 days a week .
 
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Sounds nice and a little like Texas o Starting Strength, programs I can´t do because most gyms here don´t let you do ceans cueck hahaha.
So you can make gains with 2 days a week .
U certainly can as a novice lifter. Only strength gains though, not bro gains.

I don't do cleans or snatches because I would want to be shown by coach first.
 
U certainly can as a novice lifter. Only strength gains though, not bro gains.

I don't do cleans or snatches because I would want to be shown by coach first.
That´s all I am looking for , strength to be a better fighter, don´t care about my look anyway. I´ll try to experiment with you program.
 
Track & field is one of the most, if not the most, excellent sources for anything power related in sports. Always loved getting inspiration from track exercises and way of teaching. Generally there are many, many sports where you can take something and learn from it in regards to martial arts training. Another example is how the rotational aspects of golf and tennis actually has a great carryover to punching if practiced in isolated and with a bit of alteration.

The issue I had with your post is that your terminology is a bit all over the place. When you say "controlling inflammation", you mean soft tissue work and recovery aspects of training. Adjusting volume according to whether or not you are overusing and creating chronic inflammatory states would be another way to use the term "inflammation control". "Cross muscular areas" is not something I've heard before either. In physiology cross-sectional muscular area is the width of a muscle based on hypertrophy. If you mean that you want to train the specific muscles and muscle chains that is important for your sport, yes that's often times the goal. Problem is that low level S&C coaches don't know how to correctly identify those muscles. More importantly, a muscle works in various ways during the activity of your sport, and the way to train can be manipulated, including direction of force, velocities, tempo, intent, stability requirements and so on, in order to prepare them for a specific task or sport specific goal.

Lastly I know what coordination means, but the context in which you are using it I'm not sure I get. You mention that coordination is best to train after injury as a rehab measure, in which case I'm guessing you are talking about instability training and co-contractions, but that is something distinct. Coordination is your ability to interact with your environment, and that is always at play one way or the other. Often times you have to practice a specific set of motor skills in order to improve a specific coordination pattern or skill. You'll have to be a little more specific.


Really awesome article, thanks. I don't see how it pertains to this thread though.

The main thrust is the development of a new biomechanical analysis method to analyse force production in a simplified way. Greater ground reactionary forces leading to greater sprint speed is nothing new. It's the basics of Newtons law of action-reaction. Btw, I wrote a short piece on that here some time ago, in regards to power production in punching, if you want to check it out: http://forums.sherdog.com/posts/125416715/ - I will update it at some point.

The mechanics of running are not quite the same as punching, and in regards to pure speed, it's not a linear correlation between max strength and speed. A lot of other factors come into play like contractile velocity, fiber types, intra and inter muscular coordination, muscle angle, direciton of force, ROM, arousel level, genetics so on. No doubt that being "stronger" at the same BW helps with most things in sport, and especially power production, but how to aquire that strength is what we are discussing. With the powerlifting wave, most would argue that you just "increase your max on the three lifts", but that is not necessarily the case and after diminishing returns on max strength there are other qualities you'd want more. Being inspired by other sports, I'm sure you can agree with that.

I'm totally on board with looking to other sports for guidance. S&C in fight sports are sometimes way behind the curve.

Yes, cross muscular sections = bigger muscles in the often used areas. The bigger the muscle the more potential strength. I wasn't very clear so I apologize.

Next I agree a muscle works in many ways during a sporting event that doesn't change the fact that said muscle needs to be big stong and flexiable.

I will agree that some coaches lack knowledge on these matters.

In regards to coordination. My post should read " during the warm up" it was a lazy reply to an otherwise good question.

Coordination is generally worked on by standing on balls and what not.

Coordination is partly specific yes, but just like strength training general coordination training has tons of cross over. For example fighter who grew up dancing to music vs fighters who grew up without dance. Smooth vs awkward.

Kelly palvik for example always looked awkward and stiff. Good fighter but just an example.


Where we disagree is the correlation between top in speed and punching power. The easiest test is ask a power lifter to hit some mitts with you and see how your shoulders feel afterwards.

In my studies which I admit I am fairly rusty on I've not stumbled upon many examples where if power was an issue that problem couldn't be solved by lifting weights. The question is, is power your biggest problem?

Now if we are talking about building the perfect fighter lifting weights is literally the last thing on my mind.

On a optimal 20 hours a week fight camp max strength work would account for exactly zero hours.

Skill work
Mobility
Recovery
Full contact work
Roadwork
Bw conditioning circuits.

All take rank over strength work.

But if we are just talking just punching power. Then develop a huge back, huge shoulders a strong core and work on your technique.
 
I am 6 feet and 130 pounds naturally. How good of a fighter do you think i can be at these stats? Sure, staying in the 130 pounds weight class, probably I can be as good as anybody maybe. But I and i think 99% of people who start martial arts/combat sports do so to learn how to defend themselves and be a better fighter thus overall...

Last time i practiced muay thai i was 155 pounds. I put some serious pounds due to lifting. When sparring with guys 180 pounds+ my strikes seem to penetrate their guard very hard... Also their own strikes seem to penetrate MY guard very easily... And we are just talking about basic drills. I put on a double forearm guard and you hit me with a combo. You put on a double forearm guard and i hit you with a combo.

So i took some time off to increase my size and strength. Of course I am eating and training like a madman. Weight training. After i am 180 myself I plan to come back. 180 at the least. So pretty much, in my example, yes, strength and size training do help tremendously with striking...
 
Actually the problem I was having with following a strength routine like 5x5 Texas in a gym was the power clean part as in most local places they won´t let me do that.
yes it can be hard to find good gyms and appropriate gyms to do athletic related training. seriously are there any crossfit gyms in your area. while i am not a fan of crossfit, they can teach you the basics of the big 3 as well as cleans well enough to be able to progress on your own powerlifting routine.
i have been building my own home gym. right now i have a cage, barbell, bench and a bunch of plates its actually pretty convenient.
 
yes it can be hard to find good gyms and appropriate gyms to do athletic related training. seriously are there any crossfit gyms in your area. while i am not a fan of crossfit, they can teach you the basics of the big 3 as well as cleans well enough to be able to progress on your own powerlifting routine.
i have been building my own home gym. right now i have a cage, barbell, bench and a bunch of plates its actually pretty convenient.
After a few months of 5x5 I did a year of olympic lifting in a gym that lost some space due to a crossfit group so I kind of can`t stand them, in my country only what you call soccer is popular, the rest is kinda fashion oriented.
About crossfit I only know one guy I like but really want to make a good routine for judo mostly or combat sports in general.
I believe I have a decent form in the big 3 but I don`t know much about planning , that`s why I am looking for a good program here.
I liked it Starting Strength and Texas but sadly in many gyms here they won`t let me do cleans.
 
I am 6 feet and 130 pounds naturally. How good of a fighter do you think i can be at these stats? Sure, staying in the 130 pounds weight class, probably I can be as good as anybody maybe. But I and i think 99% of people who start martial arts/combat sports do so to learn how to defend themselves and be a better fighter thus overall...

Last time i practiced muay thai i was 155 pounds. I put some serious pounds due to lifting. When sparring with guys 180 pounds+ my strikes seem to penetrate their guard very hard... Also their own strikes seem to penetrate MY guard very easily... And we are just talking about basic drills. I put on a double forearm guard and you hit me with a combo. You put on a double forearm guard and i hit you with a combo.

So i took some time off to increase my size and strength. Of course I am eating and training like a madman. Weight training. After i am 180 myself I plan to come back. 180 at the least. So pretty much, in my example, yes, strength and size training do help tremendously with striking...
I did Muay Thai for over a year with 96 kilos and 1,78 kind of Fedor frame and have seem bigger guys or my equivalents with more muscle mass in aesthetic ways that didn`t strike as hard as me so I believe the specific muscle mass in some areas makes you slower. Strength on the contrary is always helpful.
 
After a few months of 5x5 I did a year of olympic lifting in a gym that lost some space due to a crossfit group so I kind of can`t stand them, in my country only what you call soccer is popular, the rest is kinda fashion oriented.
About crossfit I only know one guy I like but really want to make a good routine for judo mostly or combat sports in general.
I believe I have a decent form in the big 3 but I don`t know much about planning , that`s why I am looking for a good program here.
I liked it Starting Strength and Texas but sadly in many gyms here they won`t let me do cleans.
oh i just meant getting technical pointers on the lifts specifically. When i was states i sought out a good powerlifting gym and got instruction on how to do the big 3 and then i just recently got some instruction from a crossfit coach on cleans.
progression and a solid routine are the most important.
 
oh i just meant getting technical pointers on the lifts specifically. When i was states i sought out a good powerlifting gym and got instruction on how to do the big 3 and then i just recently got some instruction from a crossfit coach on cleans.
progression and a solid routine are the most important.
Yeah but I need to know more and related to what i said before. Sadly , crossfit teachers are not very good here and powerlifting is almost inexistent
.
 
Yeah but I need to know more and related to what i said before. Sadly , crossfit teachers are not very good here and powerlifting is almost inexistent
.
what country do you live in?
right now i am based in China, and outside of major cities gym future is basically fitness based not athletic centered at all.
 
what country do you live in?
right now i am based in China, and outside of major cities gym future is basically fitness based not athletic centered at all.
I am from Chile and well here there are few but there are. Guess we are not so bad here.
 
In my opinion strength training should only really be used as more of a injury prevention method in combat sports. I find that performing heavy compound movements like deadlift and squat just took to much out of me to the point where I would feel sluggish in my striking or grappling sessions.
People often use the "If everything is equal, the stronger fighter wins" argument, but that's the case with anything. If two fighters are indentical in skill, but one has better balance, the fighter with better balance will win. Does that mean you should spend 3 hours a week working on balance exercises? Almost definitely not.
Performing barbell lifts as a supplementary method for an hour or two per week probably won't hurt as long as your not exerting any real amount of energy. But there's a tipping point like anything else, if a person is really exerting energy trying to lift heavier weights each week and they need to spar lighter, hit mitts less often or roll shorter periods then their priorities are not right.
That's why I always find gymnastic/calisthenic based strength training to be much better for my performance. I find it really loosens and elongates my muscles, it doesn't take much out of me and it makes me feel stronger when I spar or fight than any other kind of strength training does.
Just my personal opinion from trial and error with myself.
 
Yday I did some landmine pressing with a full range of motion, mimicking a cross. I didn't put any weight on the bar so it weighed less than 10kgs and concentrated on bar speed. It felt great. What do you guys make of this? Is sport specific a myth or is this likely to improve speed and thus power?
 
Any of you guys do stair climbing?

For 6 months now I have been doing it once a week. Moving up from 20 stairs to now at around 300 stairs at one time (around 3-4 hours).

Every strikes of me get more power!!! (Roundhouse kicks, teeps, knees, elbows, punches not so much idk why)
 
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