[QUOTE=IronFist;1132343]No one is disagreeing with this.
We’re saying all else being equal, bigger and stronger will usually win.
There was a skinny dude in my MMA school. He was like 5’8" and 140 pounds. I was significantly stronger than him and 20 pounds heavier than him. I’m skinny, too, but I mostly do powerlifting type training so I’m stronger than an untrained person of my size.
Anyway, I could hold this dude down so he couldn’t move. I could muscle my way out of his submissions. But eventually he would win because he had been training for 2 years and I had been there for 2 weeks.
The disparity between his technique and my strength was enough that he would always win.
When I would grapple with other noobs who were smaller or weaker, I would almost always win. I didn’t even need technique, I would just brute force my way into submission (which was fun because I’ve always been a small skinny guy, lol, so it was fun to be the strong guy for a change).
When I’d grapple with dudes who were bigger than me and more skilled than me, they would throw me around like a ragdoll. Even if I did the escape correctly or whatever, most of the time it wouldn’t work because they were stronger and they could just toy with me and submit me at their leisure. I would do a takedown and they would just stand there unmoved. Hilarious and pathetic at the same time, yet a great learning experience.
The big guys with no skill were interesting. At 160, grappling with a 200 pound noob was interesting, because my technique had to be extra good in order to work, because he was bigger than me.
It’s about finding what works for you. If you notice that you can consistently beat people your size and smaller, but consistently lose to people who are bigger than you, maybe strength training needs a bit of emphasis. It’s all diminishing returns. A highly skilled person with little strength would see quicker gain from increasing his strength and size than he would from trying to continue to increase his technique. And vice versa for more strength than skill. A noob powerlifter who learns a few techniques will be a much better fighter than a noob powerlifter who gets stronger but doesn’t improve his technique.
“Sport specific weight training” is kind of a pseudo-science. At least it is for those guys doing golf swings on the cable machines. They’re not really improving their golf games, but they’re making their trainers rich.
Ability at a sport comes from neurological efficiency at the movement and strength of the muscles. Most exercises that “simulate your sport” are stupid. Swinging a golf club extension on a cable machine isn’t going to make your golf swing faster or more powerful, but people intuitively assume it will so companies make a ton of money promoting this stuff.
If you want to improve your golf swing, 1) get stronger so your muscles are able to generate more force, and 2) get better at swinging a golf club by refining and perfecting your technique. All these people swinging weighted baseball bats and golf clubs aren’t doing anything. They’re also promoting neural pathways which are different from what they will use when they swing a normal baseball bat or golf club, which isn’t going to improve anything anyway. In other words, they get better at swinging a weighted club… too bad they play with a normal club. It doesn’t transfer over the way people think it does.
“but the normal club feels lighter now!”
Well no kidding, you were just swinging a heavier one. But there’s no transfer of skill or power.
Want to swing a golf club or baseball bat harder?
Get strong so your muscles can generate force quickly and when you need it.
Get good at your skills and techniques.
This post is gold and should be stickied.[/QUOTE]
I’m like you in size - I’m 165lbs and I’m usually tussling with people 180 plus - the largest being 280 :eek: (except that he’s 280 and a slob - so I kill 'em). I don’t feel the strength / skill difference like you do in Jiu Jitsu - the exception being I do go against one skilled monster who ways 240 that, when he gets me in a good hold down, I’m fuked because he’ll gas me. Others, not so much a problem - could be were equal because I train harder. However - I do feel the weight difference in Judo and have to adjust massively how I play against bigger stronger people who are skilled. I go to a sacrifice game, and, because I cross train BJJ - I take 'em down and beat 'em on the floor.
You have the wrong impression of performance training. It’s not weighted golf clubs and baseball bats. It’s whole body stuff - too much to go into, but it’s correcting and training fundamental movements, endurance, balance, agility, etc. Like standing on one foot on a half balance ball. Turkish Get Ups. Standing on one leg when you do a barbell bent-over row. Throwing a medicine ball as high as you can catching it placing it on the floor in front of you doing a push up on the ball picking up the ball and throwing it up in the air again to start the next rep, olympic style lifts like the clean and jerk…