Weight-training for martial arts?

Wai Jia: The Kung Fu Forum Kung Fu Forum
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NOT AGAIN…right…no, this is not the same old rehash of a dead topic. Weight training obviously has benefits. If you disagree then start your own thread saying how much it sucks and should never be done in conjunction with martial arts.

My opinion is that as a martial artist we should have access to both internal and external strength. We should be “fit” in both the Western and Eastern sense of the word.

My question is more specific. All Chinese styles emphasize “body unity”, “jin instead of strength”,“spiral energy”,being “like steel wrapped in cotton.”

Largely these qualities are achieved by relaxing the exterior muscles, aligning the body w/ gravity and utilizing deeper “core” muscles/tendons/ligaments coordinated with whole body movement and breathing.

Some styles work the interior muscles and exterior muscles concurrently. Think of Hung Gar’s Iron Wire, San Chin or Southern Praying Mantis’s hard chi gung sets. Some say these are purely “external.” I would say that they combine internal and external training working the interior and exterior against each other to build strength.

Contrast this with Western weight lifting/body building which is to isolate each exterior muscle/or group of muscles separately and work those muscles in a mostly linear fashion. The emphasis is on isolation rather than whole body integration.

I’ve been thinking about this lately because since the new year I’ve been lifting weights a few times a week. I recently injured my rotator cuff muscle which I’m going to largely attribute to my shoulder being tired from weight lifting. I had isolated that muscle group and worked it to exhaustion while my other groups were not tired out. The result was that my body tried to do something (block down) which my shoulder couldn’t keep up with because it was exhausted. The result was that my shoulder popped up and I bruised the supernatus muscle that runs through the shoulder.

Anyways, I’m wondering if there are weight lifting excercises that I can do that will aid in my training that are more integrative with what I’m doing as a student of martial arts and not a body builder. Is there a system of training (akin to something like the Alexander Technique/Feldincrais Method) that is more in line with natural (ie spiraling) body movement.

Previously I’ve been working on Nautilus type machines that really help you to isolate muscle groups. Which seems like a good idea at first because it helps you to do the excercise “correctly” but the “correct movement” is actually counter to what you want for martial arts (ie it is linear instead of spiral.)

I’m thinking excercises with free weights (especially barbells) may be better because you have more room to spiral and integrate the movement.

Also, I’ve heard of something called a “stone lock” which is basically an old school barbell.

For my Chen Taiji I’ve heard of Iron Ball training. But apparently this is very high level and not for the intermediate like me.

Any thoughts and advice are appreciated.

Again, please do not post your thoughts on whether weight training is good or bad. I don’t want this to turn into a flame war. I only want thoughts on ways to integrate weight training with existing martial training.

Specifically, long fist styles (like Choy Lay Fut) and internal styles (like Chen Taiji.)

Thanks in advance.
:smiley:

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You need as much big movement as you can.
The isolation stuff’s not going to have as much carry over.

On big movements you can kind of go a few routes:
power lifts
olympic lifts
old fashioned lifts
plyometrics

You can either stick wtih one methodology or blend.

Power Lifts tend to center around Squat, Deadlift, Bench, as well as bent-rows, dips, and pullups. Pace is a little slow, but can be explosive. Usually go heavy. Rep schemes can vary, the fewer the reps, the more sets.

Olympic lifts include snatches, cleans, clean & j3rk, clean & press. Pace is explosive. The form is really difficult and you need special resources like a gym with bumper plates. Not really made for doing tons of reps, probably max 6 reps if even that much. Set wise, a significant amount, but probably not a ton.

Old fashioned lifts, for lack of a better term, includes stuff like kettlebells & clubells, with exercises like 1 arm snatch, kbell swings, sidepress, as well as the gamut of clubell exercises. Rep speed should be somewhat explosive. Rep/set scheme can be high (like pavel who makes these an endurance workout).

Plyometrics are explosive, and don’t always use much weight. These type of exercises include box jumps, jumping pushups, and stuff with the medicine ball. Set and rep scheme can vary based on who your program’s from.

The general rule on reps is that you do fewer reps (and more sets), the higher the intensity. Intensity = %age of max output (weight).

Ford Prefect, IronFist and the rest from the nutrition board can clear this up. Or just post the question there.

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I’ve always concidered this to be a myth of propaganda.

Weight training in itself has never been an issue. Many exercises in the traditional way, whatever that is, included lifting weighted objects.

What most people in MA didn’t want however is the hypersized body builder type body that was way too unnatural for fighting. And by that they mean one whom has grow way too much muscle for their frame. It made them slow and inflexable. Some guys look big and ripped to shreds but they are still within the parameters of their frame and height.

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Functional strength.

MA need to be strong, and sometimes a byproduct of building strength is gaining size, but you should avoid the “gym muscles” approach of isolated movements with reps aimed at hypertrophy
(if you do want to gain size, there are better ways)

Lifting should use large groups of muscles (deadlifts, squats, snatch, clean & jerk)

An excellent article

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Touching on the ‘iron ball qigong’ that Fupow mentions briefly.

I learned a version of this, that was taught to me by my teacher and to him by Chen Qin Zhou (I hope I’m spelling that right.) It definitely fits the description of large, full-body movements that you’re talking about. I don’t know about it being high level and unfit for intermediate practitioners (I’d be hesitant to call myself intermediate, especially considering the time I’ve gone without any intesive practice lately) but Sifu Hwang typically teaches it as an accompaniment to the first set of ‘external’ kungfu a student learns - in my case, the Elephant Kungfu form.

And now, a brief description. The ‘iron ball’ I used was an ordinary bowling ball - I think a 10 or 12 pounder. The method was essentially carefully regulating breathing to coordinate with dantien motion and leg motion to achieve the goal of powering the ball around without using much if any arm strength. The ball is generally held at the dantien with one hand underneath and one hand atop. Motions to impart to the ball include up/down cycles, horizontal circles (both clockwise and counterclockwise), in front of the belly and in a semicircle around the front of the body, also ‘popping’ the ball into the air. When I did this qigong after some time off from doing it, I’d get sore in the anterior serratus, lumbars, and obliques.

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Thanks for the replies so far…the crossfit article was especially interesting although I think that they are missing the boat on
“internal strength.” Only looking at things from the Western perspective. But that is all they have probably been exposed to.

I also found this article on-line. It outlines many of the “strength training” excercises found in Taji:

http://www.geocities.com/tukylam/strength.htm

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Re: Weight-training for traditional martial arts?

Originally posted by Fu-Pow
Contrast this with Western weight lifting/body building which is to isolate each exterior muscle/or group of muscles separately and work those muscles in a mostly linear fashion. The emphasis is on isolation rather than whole body integration.

That is where EVERYONE makes a mistake… Strength training isn’t isolative. Notice that I differentiate between strength training and just weight training. You want to do big, compound exercises, like the bench press, squat and deadlift.

I’ve been thinking about this lately because since the new year I’ve been lifting weights a few times a week. I recently injured my rotator cuff muscle which I’m going to largely attribute to my shoulder being tired from weight lifting. I had isolated that muscle group and worked it to exhaustion while my other groups were not tired out. The result was that my body tried to do something (block down) which my shoulder couldn’t keep up with because it was exhausted. The result was that my shoulder popped up and I bruised the supernatus muscle that runs through the shoulder.

it may not be the weights specifically. I injured my shoulder from repetitive motion… I was doing hundreds of pushups everyday. repetitvie stress and possible overtraining injured it.

Anyways, I’m wondering if there are weight lifting excercises that I can do that will aid in my training that are more integrative with what I’m doing as a student of martial arts and not a body builder. Is there a system of training (akin to something like the Alexander Technique/Feldincrais Method) that is more in line with natural (ie spiraling) body movement.

like I said - compund movements. The three I listed are actually all you need, as between those three, you hit pretty much every muscle in the body.

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You guys still actually believe in “internal power” ?

different strokes fo’ different folks I guess..

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don’t make me hit you with a chi blast to the face.

In the sense of “internal power” being proper body mechanics, yes. But as in the mysterious energy that drives us all, no.

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Hmmmm…Seven Star you make some pretty good points. I’m gonna look into some more of these “whole body” type excercises.

They’re not as “integrative” as Taiji excercise is but they seem like they are MORE integrative than doing body building type excercises and fit better with my MA training.

I’ll ignore the comments about “internal power” as I EXPLICITLY stated that I didn’t want this to devolve into a flame war!!! Besides I explained that all in my opening.

YA DIG!:wink: :rolleyes:

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one-arm/one-leg lifts with free weights.

Shoulder rehab. do a search

No more Nautilus. Punching with cables would be all right

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I’d outline the best strength training regimen you could possibly do for your TCC, but you’d never do it. You couldn’t handle it.

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Do some heavy deadlifts or squats. You’d be surprised how “integrative” they are. Interestingly, possibly the most important area in these lifts is the buzzword alert “core” (abdomen, lower back or {if you prefer} dan tien, lower spine). Breath in conjunction with core strength is the difference between success and failure with these lifts. At the risk of being even more redundant with this post, avoid isolation exercises unless you’re addressing a specific problem.

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When I say “internal power” I just mean using the muscles between your hips and ribcage to do whatever your trying to do with the added strength of those muscles.

I also believe in an energy that powers us all, although I don’t think it’s especially mysterious. Some call it “metabolism.”

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Originally posted by Shooter
I’d outline the best strength training regimen you could possibly do for your TCC, but you’d never do it. You couldn’t handle it.

I’ll bite -

I bet I could… What is it?

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Originally posted by Chang Style Novice
[B]When I say “internal power” I just mean using the muscles between your hips and ribcage to do whatever your trying to do with the added strength of those muscles.

I also believe in an energy that powers us all, although I don’t think it’s especially mysterious. Some call it “metabolism.” [/B]

A while back, someone (I think it was omegapoint) gave a long theory of his that summed up qi as being nothing more than metabolism and everyone ridiculed him. It sounded plausible though.

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Originally posted by Fu-Pow

They’re not as “integrative” as Taiji excercise is but they seem like they are MORE integrative than doing body building type excercises and fit better with my MA training.

On the same token, taiji exercises aren’t as efficient at building strength as the exercises I mentioned.

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Seven, I have no doubts about you.

It’s just been my experience that when most TCC people ask about strength training, they don’t really wanna know. And very few of the ones who do wanna know are crazy enough to actually do it.

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Shooter.

Can you let me have the routine too, I am just about to start a new regime/routine and would be interested in it.

If it can be done at home it would be better for me, the gyms close by hardly have any free-weights. :frowning:

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T’ai Ji monkey, try these for 4 months:

Get a sledgehammer, pick-axe, and shovel. Drive to your nearest gravel pit and break rock, break ground, dig holes, fill em back up. Wear safety glasses at all times, and maybe some steel-toed boots. 4 hour sessions, twice a week.

Get a big old tractor tire - throw it, lift it, and carry it around your back yard. 2 hour sessions, 3 times a week.

Do odd carries equalling your own body weight up and down a flight of stairs. 1 hour sessions, 5 times a week.