Training for combat athletes

Roper

Hi all,

There's been a few Qs popped my way in threads about the S&C training we do for fighters and martial artists. I don't always have the time to answer so here's some video and fire away with questions. The full details and more vid is on Will's blog on our site and feel free to ask questions here and I'll have Will answer here too.

Transform

good work complex! Why two pressing exercises instead of one pressing and one pulling e.g. inverted rows, band pulls as he is doing plenty of shoulder work on the punching already

Remmy

cool vids roper.What neck exercises do you get your combat athletes to do?

d-gal

Transform wrote: »

good work complex! Why two pressing exercises instead of one pressing and one pulling e.g. inverted rows, band pulls as he is doing plenty of shoulder work on the punching already

We do pretty much the same with our fighters at Results, really exhausting the muscle group.
Must throw up a video of training one of our guys.

Roper quick Q: why do ye take 30seconds rest between each exercise? We go for 4-6 exercises and then rest between rounds (between 1-3 minutes depending on their levels). Max 5 rounds.

Roper

Transform wrote: »

good work complex! Why two pressing exercises instead of one pressing and one pulling e.g. inverted rows, band pulls as he is doing plenty of shoulder work on the punching already

Because this isn't an upper body workout, this is a specific conditioning round focussing on fatiguing the muscle groups involved in punching with something heavy, something light and then asking for the same muscles to do something skillful. Will can expain the science in more detail than I can. The aim of Paddy's punching is not to work the shoulders, and to him, hitting pads is bread and butter.

cool vids roper.What neck exercises do you get your combat athletes to do?

I'm not sure if you're one of the people who have mailed, posted on my blog or pmed me about this but I just want to say that it is on our list of "to video" and I'm sorry we haven't got to doing the video on the neck prehab yet!!! I'll post it here when we do, deal?

Roper quick Q: why do ye take 30seconds rest between each exercise? We go for 4-6 exercises and then rest between rounds (between 1-3 minutes depending on their levels). Max 5 rounds.

Because 4-6 would be too much. What you have there is one heavy pressing motion, one light explosive pressing motion (though Paddy is pretty fvcked so they're not too explosive when we see them) followed by a technical movement. It's better that the punches are more perfect rather than having them wrecked and moving on straight away from each exercise. We still want to see quality.

d-gal

Roper wrote: »

Because 4-6 would be too much. What you have there is one heavy pressing motion, one light explosive pressing motion (though Paddy is pretty fvcked so they're not too explosive when we see them) followed by a technical movement. It's better that the punches are more perfect rather than having them wrecked and moving on straight away from each exercise. We still want to see quality.

I would agree in a way, disagree in others. Personally I think you need to push figthers to fatigue, and then push some more. It's a unique sport. Thinking about it I suppose if there was pad work in the round there would be only 2/3 exercises on the same muscle group before it, my bad.
On other rounds there would be extra and repacing pad work would be moving KB swings or weighted bear crawls, or something similar

Cheers Roper, good responses

Will Heffernan

Personally...I'd replace the DB Floor Press with Bench Pressing, I'd ditch the Medball Transitions and Back Squat instead....and forget the punching drills...I'd just Deadlift. Instead of fight conditioning I'd call it powerlifting and it would be awesome.

d'Oracle

Roper wrote: »

Will can expain the science in more detail than I can.

Will Heffernan wrote: »

Personally...I'd replace the DB Floor Press with Bench Pressing, I'd ditch the Medball Transitions and Back Squat instead....and forget the punching drills...I'd just Deadlift. Instead of fight conditioning I'd call it powerlifting and it would be awesome.

But won't, it would seem.

Roper

d'Oracle wrote: »

But won't, it would seem.

Actually we discussed this and decided that rather than make this a question and answer session Will would put it in a post on his blog and he'll answer any questions there where it can be more distinct and clear. With multi-quotes and cat pictures these threads can lose their way

http://informedperformance.com/will/2009/10/mixed-fight-conditioning/

I'll keep answering any questions here but I'll pass them on to Will on the blog too as I'm really only paraphrasing a lot of what he says anyway as a lot of what I know about fighter conditioning I know from him.

d'Oracle

Sounds interesting.

Roper

Got some more video done yesterday and Will has posted some more mixed conditioning stuff on his blog. Some might be interested in it http://informedperformance.com/will/2009/11/hug-a-hobbit/

d'Oracle

Roper wrote: »

Got some more video done yesterday and Will has posted some more mixed conditioning stuff on his blog. Some might be interested in it http://informedperformance.com/will/2009/11/hug-a-hobbit/

I like the explanation of the previous conditioning session.
With the presses "under different fatigues".
Cheers.

injured365

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V1XrenrTQCM&feature=PlayList&p=03DE296CFF6E1CDE&index=59

Heres a video of another fighters workout......no idea how to do the whole showing the video in the post thingy

Khannie

Looks like a very solid workout. In particular I like the band thing a lot. Might get one of those for the house. We have a small steel pillar that I could stick it on. edit: Actually, could you recommend somewhere to get one?

On the grapple part: I think Paddy would benefit from a smaller pad man.

Roper

injured365 wrote: »

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V1XrenrTQCM&feature=PlayList&p=03DE296CFF6E1CDE&index=59

Heres a video of another fighters workout......no idea how to do the whole showing the video in the post thingy

Yeah that's more of a circuit as discussed above. It also hurts my brain to watch a fighter doing punches with dumbells in their hands. It hurts bad. To my mind that looks pretty stupid but maybe there's some thinking behind it I'm not seeing.

Khannie wrote:

Looks like a very solid workout. In particular I like the band thing a lot. Might get one of those for the house. We have a small steel pillar that I could stick it on. edit: Actually, could you recommend somewhere to get one?

On the grapple part: I think Paddy would benefit from a smaller pad man.

Our bands are from Iron Woody. I can't recommend another band because I haven't really used anything other than Iron Woody. They're great though and with the dollar the way it is now is the time to get them imported.

LOL, that's why it's Hug a Hobbit