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Bodyweight Training vs Weight Training: A Martial Artist’s Perspective

Posted February 1, 2008 at 06:00 PM by Donnell Peavy

Section: His Fitness, Cardio Training, Strength Training, Injuries & Rehab, Alt. Therapies, His Health, Physical Health

There has always been controversy amongst many martial artists and fitness buffs as to whether or not lifting weights is bad for martial arts skill.

The martial arts camp promotes the usage of bodyweight exercises to develop the strength required to adequately perform a given martial art. This same camp states that weight training makes the muscles bulky and ultimately slows a person down. In addition, the added mass is not “functional” muscle, and therefore is not as useful to a martial artist as lean, explosive muscles are.

The weight training camp has a different point of view – some of them believe that bodyweight exercises are inferior when it comes to strength building and that weights are the only way to go in terms of mass gain and strength gain. They also state that muscles don’t have to be big, slow and lack functionality.

Many old time boxers shunned weight training for the same reasons stated above. Others—like Evander Holyfield—swore by weight training. Who is right: the bodyweight camp or the weight lifters? Actually, both of them are correct.

And if you combine the principles of both schools of thought, you can increase your strength, endurance, explosiveness and speed, sending your martial skill sky rocketing – and without having to buy a truck load of expensive equipment. All you need is your body, a medicine ball, a tire and a sledge hammer.

Functional Weight Training
The term “functional muscle” has become the unofficial catch phrase of the new millennium. Athletes from all walks want to build “ functional muscle” in order to help them excel in their chosen activity. However, ALL muscle is functional, so what exactly do they mean by that term?

Look at a body builder. His goal is to become as big and as defined as possible, period. He moves heavy loads with his muscles, so obviously they function quite well. However, if you research the training methods body builders use, you will notice they perform many exercises that isolate a single muscle group – biceps curls, triceps press downs, leg extensions, etc. Now, let’s think of how martial arts works.

Total body coordination. The body works as one unit, like a well-oiled machine. Naturally, performing exercises that train the muscles to work singularly is counterproductive to a martial artist’s training – precisely why some are against weight training. From that perspective, the muscle that is built is not functional, as it is not conducive to training the body to perform as a single unit. What some people fail to realize is that the bodybuilding model is not the only method of weight training available.

Take into consideration another group of big, strong guys – power lifters. Studies show that power lifters are among the most explosive athletes on the planet. Fast sprint times, exploding out of the starting block, high vertical leaps, etc. Of course, this type of explosive power is greatly beneficial to the martial artist.

Unlike body builders, power lifters perform exercises that train multiple muscle groups of the body to work together – deadlifts, cleans, snatches, squats and other exercises which recruit several of the bodies muscles in order to properly execute the movement. This type of weight training produces extremely functional muscle qualities.

Muscular Endurance
Muscular endurance is the ability of your muscles to carry out actions over an extended period of time. This is important to us, as a street fight, ring fight, sparring match, etc may involve prolonged, repeated use of various muscles.

Think of a boxer with very little leg endurance. By the seventh round, his legs may be wobbly. This will lead to weakened techniques and slower footwork, which may result in his getting knocked out. Naturally, we want to prevent this. The way to muscular endurance is duration and high repetition.

To make things easier, you will be able to use your current skills as a base for this workout. By doing this, you are essentially killing two birds with one stone - As we know, practice makes perfect (well, perfect practice makes perfect, anyway), so the more we perform a given movement, the better we become at it. Keeping this in mind, you would be better off doing 100 punches than 100 frontal raises in terms of overall development.

Granted, they both train the deltoids, but by punching, you are improving your skill in throwing punches simultaneously. This is known as sports specificity. Efficiency is key when you want your training to be as focused as possible, making sports specific training the way to go.

Explosive Strength
Explosive strength is necessary for any martial artist. The ability to quickly generate knockout producing power goes hand in hand with muscular endurance. This type of strength can be built by adding plyometric exercises to your regimen. Plyometric exercises are basically exercises that force you to generate maximal forces in minimal time repeatedly.

Such exercises can be performed with nothing but your own body, adding to the convenience factor, however carious apparatus such as a medicine ball may be used as well. It should be mentioned that plyometric exercises can be harmful to the body when overused and should only be performed 2 – 3 times per week.

Anaerobic Endurance
Anaerobic means “without oxygen.” Webster’s dictionary defines it as an activity in which the body incurs an oxygen debt. As martial artists, we should engage in plenty of anaerobic activity, as fighting is very anaerobic. Keeping with our goals of specificity and efficiency, We have excellent ways to increase our anaerobic capacity while at the same time improving our skills and muscular endurance – forms, shadow boxing, etc! If you are training alone, these are great methods to use. Run through your forms several times - quickly.

Prolonged activities become aerobic. A good example of this is a long, slow jog.  Of course, we shouldn’t overlook aerobic activity, but that is somewhat beyond the scope of this article. It’s said that fighting is eighty percent anaerobic, making such training more specific (that term keeps popping up, doesn’t it?) to martial arts.

Skill Improvement
This one is self-explanatory. Our skills should constantly be improving. The most obvious road to this is technique practice. Footwork, forms, shadow boxing, sparring and apparatus training, such as the heavy bag or wall bag are all excellent methods by which can be worked into your training program.  Skill development training of some sort should be performed DAILY.

The Training
Okay, here is where we get down to business. I’m going to list several exercises – they may all be performed solo, and are a great addition your personal training. For this routine, you will need four things: an old tire, a sledgehammer, either a medicine ball with handles or a kettlebell and yourself. All of these things (with the exception of a kettlebell) are quite affordable and will add a new dimension to your workouts.

Exercises
Squat jumps - Stand with your feet a comfortable distance apart.  Squat down, then jump into the air as high as possible, pulling your knees into your chest as you ascend. Immediately after landing, squat and jump again. This builds explosiveness in the leg muscles.

Lateral hops - stand with your feet touching. Hop laterally, as high and as far as you can. Once you land, hop in the opposite direction, putting you back at the starting point. You will feel this in your calves as well as the rest of your legs.

Pushups - An all time classic.  Place your toes and palms on the floor. Nothing else should have contact with the floor. Keeping your body straight (having your rear end in the air is cheating), lower yourself until your chest is just barely above the floor. Next, explode back up to the starting position.

Dips - Place two chairs parallel to each other, a few feet apart. Sit on one chair facing the other, with your hands grasping the side of the chair. Lift your feet to the top of the other bench so that the rest of your body is suspended between the two benches. Cross one foot over the other. Slowly lower your body toward the floor by bending your elbows until your upper arms and forearms form a right angle. Do not go below a 90-degree angle, as this can stress your shoulders. Slowly raise back up to the start position by straightening your arms.

Squat thrusts - Stand with your feet together. Squat down, placing your hands on the floor. Thrust your legs backward, spreading them apart. You will be in a position that resembles a sprawl. Pull your legs back in and return to the starting position.

Tomahawks - lay your tire on the ground in front of you. Grip the sledgehammer with both hands and bring it behind your head. Slam the sledgehammer downward, into the tire.

Sosas – if your tire is tall enough that you can swing the sledgehammer baseball style and hit it, then lean the tire against a tree. If not, you can swing at the air.

Birdies – place your tire horizontally against a tree.  Swing the sledgehammer golf style into the tire.

Windmills – Keeping the medicine ball locked out at all times, push your glutes out in the direction of the medicine ball. Turn your feet out at a forty-five degree angle from the arm with the medicine ball. Lower yourself until you can touch the floor in the opposite direction. Pause for a second and then reverse the motion back to the starting position.

Swings - Place one medicine ball between your feet. Push back with your butt and bend your knees to get into the starting position. Make sure that your back is flat and look straight ahead. Swing the medicine ball between your legs forcefully. Quickly reverse the direction and drive though with your hips taking the medicine ball straight out. Let the medicine ball swing back between your legs and repeat. Switch arms with each set.

Skill Development
This segment of the workout is the most specific. With this in mind, you should change the exercises listed here to exercises more tailored to your style.

Skip Knees - place your palms on a wall directly in front of you, raise one knee, as if performing a skip knee from the clinch.  As you return your leg to the ground, thrust your opposite leg backward. Now, knee with this leg. Place that leg on the ground, extending the opposite leg back. Repeat.

Bob and weave - Bob and weave, repeatedly.

Shadowboxing - this should be self-explanatory. Work your techniques as if you were actually fighting an opponent. Visualize an opponent in front of you, and strike as such - don’t lackadaisically throw strikes, but rather throw them with intent. Speed and power, but don’t overdo the power, and avoid hyper extending the joints.

Heavy Bag training - Same as above, however now you CAN hit with plenty of power - do so. Keep in mind that you are fighting an opponent - do not just stand in one place and slug away at the bag. As Bruce Lee would say, “bag no hit back” - but you will act as if it can. Use your footwork to maneuver around the bag. This will not only work your movement, but will also add an extra dimension to your bag work.

Keeping it Exciting
Boredom is a natural progression that results from performing the same routine repeatedly. It doesn’t take a master of the obvious to figure out the solution to counter this problem – variation. There are several variations for all of these exercises that you can perform to keep things from getting to dull. For example, one pushup variation I prefer is close grip on a medicine ball. In the future, I may write an article containing variations of the exercises listed above.

Now that we know which exercises we are going to be performing, it’s time to set up a program. As mentioned previously, Anaerobic importance is of great importance to us, so we will create some intense intervals aimed at increasing our anaerobic capacity.

Training Program
Duration: 30 minutes

Begin with three rounds of shadowboxing. Shadowbox like you mean it - don’t half step. A round should be two minutes, with one minute of rest in between. I’m using two minutes because that is the length of the average amateur round in boxing and kick boxing. There should be one minute of rest between each round.

4 minute drill:

• Pushups
• Squat thrusts
• Sosas
• Lateral hops

Each of the above exercises should be performed thirty seconds each, with NO REST. The cycle will be repeated twice, which gives you a total duration of four minutes, hence the name. When you look at it on paper, this doesn’t sound like a lot, but this drill can really take a lot out of you. At the end of the four minutes, rest for one minute.

4 minute drill:

• Tomahawks
• Bob and weave
• Squat jumps
• Crunches

This works in the same manner as the four-minute drill above. Perform each exercise for thirty seconds, with no rest until the round is done. Next, perform three more rounds of shadowboxing, or if you have a heavy bag handy, do three rounds on the bag. That puts us at about 28 minutes. Finish up the last two with ab work, then do some stretches. If you are short on time, perform both four-minute drills and two rounds of shadowboxing. That will put you around the fifteen-minute mark.

The Mission
The mission is simple: To get in the best possible physical shape. This means you will have to challenge yourself. Dig beyond the normal routine of merely going to class a few days per week. This will require extra dedication, but the results will be well worth it – you are molding yourself into a better martial artist through enhanced physical conditioning.

Quite obviously, there is no single workout that can meet EVERY martial artist’s needs. That is fine. This program is versatile enough that you can use what is listed above as a template for creating your own program based on your own specific needs and goals.

Constant training is a necessity for all martial artists, and definitely should not be overlooked by instructors. Trying to find that extra time can be extremely difficult, as we all have lives outside of the dojo/kwoon/gym, etc. But let us remember why we began training in the first place - reflect on that and let that drive you to find the required time to train. By putting in even fifteen extra minutes per day, we can ensure quality progression in our own training for years to come.

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Tags: bjj, body weight training, bodyweight, bodyweight training, capoeira, conditioning, grappling, jiu jitsu, kickboxing, lifting weights, martial arts, muay thai, strength, strength training, weight training, weights

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