“Weight training is bad for martial arts. It decreases flexibility, makes you bulky, imbalanced, and slow.”
Wrong. Proper weight training using programs and protocols fitting your training style, proper form in execution of the weight training exercises, and a lot of common sense will improve your flexibility and strength, explosiveness, strength, power, and endurance.
“Stance training is all I need to achieve [x].”
Wrong. Without a consistently changing stimulus, your body will cease to adapt, causing you to stagnate at a particular level.
“Tendons move the body, not the muscles.”
Wrong. The tendons attach the muscles to the bones, allowing movement.
“You will learn all you need to know about the human body from martial practice, and not from medical examinations, tests, experiments, et al.”
Wrong. Wrong wrong wrong. You will learn martial arts from martial practice. Not physiology and/or biology.
Now, here’s where I get mean. If your instructor says “weight training is bad for martial arts” and gives any of the reasons I’ve noted, then he or she is wrong. If, however, the instructor says so and qualifies that statement with “there are many methods of weight training or exercises catalogued therein which should not be undertaken due to the amount of actual technical training we do,” then the instructor is not wrong.
heres another myth, if i lift weights and hit a punching bag and eat creatine and run on a treadmill, i can fight.wrong. heres another myth. sifus dont know what theyre talking about. wrong. these teachings are fighting traditions kept for generations. what works is what is kept, and added upon. you give so much credit to baby born sports like boxing and mma, yet these styles are preschool compared to the complexity and depth of any martial art. and im not talking about no fast food mc dojo. i mean some one who is a lineage holder or a disciple.go ahead and increase your strength by your conventional methods. it is all useless without knowledge and training in application and real fighting. which i doubt you have much.
weight training has been around for longer than you think. before dumbells and bench presses, buckets and bags filled with sand rocks, etc. were used. your opinion is totally wrong and you are extremely mislead. look at arnold schwarwhatever, he is not especially flexible, i do not know of any joint problems or arthritus he mightve had, but i do know all that muscle isnt really needed and isnt really functional in martial arts fighting. bruce lee was a martial artist and he also did weight training, but he did only special workouts that strengthened his functional strength, not so much for bulk or mass, which “slowed” him down. your tendons and ligaments work together to create force and speed, the muscles around them stabilize and reinforce the arm.
maybe you should challeng an instructer, do you think he would kick your asz? i bet he would… you know why? because he knows more about fighting than you do. so if he gives you some pointers, why not take some from somone who just kicked your asz?
That’s the exact opposite of how ligaments and tendons work. Follow this link to a medical article explaining the effect of an injury to the ligaments. Look at the picture. Now look at the second sentence in the first paragraph of the article which reads, “Ligaments are elastic bands of tissue that connect bones to each other and provide stability and strength to the joint.”
Biologyonline’s medical dictionary tells us that a tendon is a " fibrous, strong, connective tissue that connects muscle to bone. " They then go on to say, “A Skeletal Muscle (is)…a muscle that is connected at either or both ends to a bone and so move parts of the skeleton.”
In other words, ligaments stabalize bones, tendons attach muscle to bones, and muscle moves bones. If a bone moves, your body moves; if a bone dosen’t move, the body dosen’t move.
The people who wrote these articles and definitions were probably not martial artists, and had no interest at all in this conversation. They are professional teachers, scientists, and medical doctors. They’re an impartial source from a credible non-profit hospital and an important online medical dictionary. If you can prove them wrong with your own credible sources, I’ll send you my next pay-check.
Spiraler, you are absolutely wrong. If you feel you are not, please provide one [1] {uno} researched source for your information. Hell, it can be from a martial arts instructor, so long as he or she cites some information as reliable as Samurai Jack’s.
Oooh, another myth (thanks Mo): There are Upper and Lower sections of the Rectus Abdominus."
Actually, I’d love to. There are three schools in my area - my own, a korean style (I want to say MDK or TSD or somesuch) - instructor is very cool and exceptionally skillled. And though not h00j, very strong, and an ATA TKD school. The ATA is the only one which I don’t respect, and I would love to have a nice session o’ fisticuffs with the instructors. Unfortunately, they do not espouse their teachings as “fight oriented.” Instead, they are “morale builders.” Or something. I started to drool when they opened their mouths.
But, back to the myths.
There are olden-tyme martial arts masters who could not pick up bowling balls but could hurl young men across rooms.
I call BS. The only “olden-tyme” “masters” I’ve heard of who carry any type of general respectability were those of sound body and technique. What good is the ability to defend oneself if the body is too weak to carry out daily tasks?
The body is not a fragile thing. It is built for adversity. If it does not encounter such, it atrophies.
The belief that weight training is bad for martial arts and that it will decrease flexibility, makes you bulky, imbalanced, and slow is true if you are a bodybuilder which is what most people including old school MA instructors think of when think of “lifting weights”. However, periodization of strength conditioning in my opinion is good for athletes as well for martial artists. I do not blame MA instructors who not recommend “bodybuilding” for their students.
Mabu aka the horse stance training is the foundation to any traditional based martial arts and of course this is not the only thing that is needed in attaining good gung fu. However, I believe too many people do not have the time nor patience to seriously refine the fundamentals like in the old days. Moreover from my own personal observation, many modern martial artists have weak horses even those some can squat XXX amount of XXX reps when compare to their seniors or sibaks.
There is a new paradigm of looking at structure which believes that it is not tendons that is attached to muscles that allows movements, but myofasica. This is quite a radical paradigm shift and you can research more on this subject please read Buckminster Fullers’ body of work, Thomas W. Myers who wrote “Anatomy Trains: Myofasial Merdians for Manual and Movement Therapists,” and or check out Scott Sonnon’s “Integrating Structure” DVD.
If I want to learn to fight only than I guess all I do need to know about the human body may come from martial practice and fighting. A fighter doesnt need to know why the body works because that is not their job. They only needs to how to make it work and how to make their techniques work under real time and space. Moreover if I wanted to learn to be a coach, instructor, or trainer, then I would it would be wise and intelligent to get knowledge through studying science.
You sounded too absolute and harsh and I am only trying to per haps show that there are reasons beyond obvious results.
heres another myth, if i lift weights and hit a punching bag and eat creatine and run on a treadmill, i can fight.wrong. heres another myth. sifus dont know what theyre talking about. wrong. these teachings are fighting traditions kept for generations. what works is what is kept, and added upon. you give so much credit to baby born sports like boxing and mma, yet these styles are preschool compared to the complexity and depth of any martial art. and im not talking about no fast food mc dojo. i mean some one who is a lineage holder or a disciple.go ahead and increase your strength by your conventional methods. it is all useless without knowledge and training in application and real fighting. which i doubt you have much.
maybe you should challeng an instructer, do you think he would kick your asz? i bet he would… you know why? because he knows more about fighting than you do. so if he gives you some pointers, why not take some from somone who just kicked your asz?
Funny, every teacher I’ve known who could fight has hit stuff and done cardio, and encouraged their students to do so. In fact, I would say I have never heard of a school with a fighting reputation that does not do those things, whether it be Thai boxing, Xing Yi, Wing Chun, Shaolin, or Escrima.
As to the instructor thing- umm, while I try not to make a point of it, I am an instructor, owned and ran a school for a while, have taught for years, and I’m by no stretch the senior one lurking around here.
How old are you kid? And who do you think you’re talking to?
Indeed. However, when an instructor dismisses out of hand weight training based upon these notions, that is tantamount to lying. A trainer, instructor, or anyone involved in the physical culture should be constantly reevaluating the science and reasoning behind everything he or she does.
As for periodization, I would take it a step further and say it is absolutely essential. The need to plan the weight training around the technical training is an absolute.
2. Mabu aka the horse stance training is the foundation to any traditional based martial arts and of course this is not the only thing that is needed in attaining good gung fu. However, I believe too many people do not have the time nor patience to seriously refine the fundamentals like in the old days. Moreover from my own personal observation, many modern martial artists have weak horses even those some can squat XXX amount of XXX reps when compare to their seniors or sibaks.
Coming from a karate background, I will admit what I know of horse stance as relates to training has been gleamed from oral and written sources only, not actual practice.
I’ve heard several reasons for it’s practice: learning to sink the bodyweight, training to overcome physical discomfort, to learn to generate power more efficiently, and to learn patience. Now, some of these I agree with, others I do not. However, if this practice is recommended as a complete substitution for non-technical resistance training, then I call BS.
3. There is a new paradigm of looking at structure which believes that it is not tendons that is attached to muscles that allows movements, but myofasica. This is quite a radical paradigm shift and you can research more on this subject please read Buckminster Fullers’ body of work, Thomas W. Myers who wrote “Anatomy Trains: Myofasial Merdians for Manual and Movement Therapists,” and or check out Scott Sonnon’s “Integrating Structure” DVD.
I’ve yet to read the aforementioned book, but have heard great things about it. And I’m always chomping at the bit for new physiological knowledge.
Looking forward to Ford Prefect’s book, too. That is going to roxors boxors.
4. If I want to learn to fight only than I guess all I do need to know about the human body may come from martial practice and fighting. A fighter doesnt need to know why the body works because that is not their job. They only needs to how to make it work and how to make their techniques work under real time and space. Moreover if I wanted to learn to be a coach, instructor, or trainer, then I would it would be wise and intelligent to get knowledge through studying science.
Indeed. However, I’ve yet to speak with an athlete or martial artist who didn’t explore to some depth the nature of the body which they use.
Except, of course, for those who know teh deadly.
You sounded too absolute and harsh and I am only trying to perhaps show that there are reasons beyond obvious results.
Indeed. I am, though, a believer in absolutes and harshness. There is a right way to do things and there is a wrong way, and there are the middle paths - the less than best. And because of willful ignorance based upon stale dogma and intellectual laziness, many people already hip-deep in physicality are being drawn away from an exceptionally powerful and helpful tool which would enhance every area of their lives.
okay mister instructor. for the record im 20, ive been in countless street fights, and ill tell you this “sir” hitting a bag, runnung bla bla bla will help you learn, but nothing can substitute the knowledge and experience you gain from a real or simulated fight. that was the point that i was trying to make…“sir”. :eek: and i dont know who youre calling kid. id slap you if you said that to my face.
Coming from a karate background, I will admit what I know of horse stance as relates to training has been gleamed from oral and written sources only, not actual practice.I’ve heard several reasons for it’s practice: learning to sink the bodyweight, training to overcome physical discomfort, to learn to generate power more efficiently, and to learn patience. Now, some of these I agree with, others I do not. However, if this practice is recommended as a complete substitution for non-technical resistance training, then I call BS.
i on the other hand have actually suffered and still do to this day rigorous stance training sets that usually last about an hour and a half, plus i DONT have an INSTRUCTOR to keep me in line, it is solely out of my dedication and appreciation for stance training and how it has improved my performance in fighting and health. maybe if you trained as hard as i did you would feel the same way,lastly, you are in no position to be judging something that youn know nothing about, dont you think?
