There are a lot of different strength training programs out there. Some focus on timing (when to work out as opposed to which exercises to do), some on tempo, some on poundages, and so forth. One popular type of program is to describe in detail a small set of exercises - somewhere around 2 or 3, but sometimes more, - and claim that doing these particular exercises produces an overall strength increase sufficient for most people's functional needs. Some of these programs have you build up to these exercises by starting with easier versions (so the "royal" exercise might be pullups, but if you can't do them, you do assisted pullups or body rows or whatever until you can do "real" pullups).  Some of them also overdo the promotional advertising and claim truly magical results from doing that particular combination of movements.

The first such program I heard of (although it may not be the first one) was Matt Furey's Combat Conditioning. If you're not familiar with it, he basically tells you to do Hindu Squats, Hindu Pushups, and neck bridges in large numbers (as in building up to hundreds of repetitions). Many of Pavel Tsatsouline's programs/ books take this format as well. Enter the Kettlebell? Swings and... I can't remember - is it swings and presses or swings and snatches? (sorry!). Naked Warrior? Pistols and one-armed pushups. Power to the People? Deadlift and bent press. You get the idea. Simplefit is pushups, pullups, and air squats done in a variety of routines (for time, max reps, sets, etc.) In a way, many powerlifting and O-weightlifting programs take this format, at least the ones that really emphasize the 3 core lifts, but that's more a function of the competition - if you're going to snatch in competition, you'd better make the snatch a BIG part of your regular workouts.

I like these programs a lot (although some are definitely better than others). Why?

• They're simple. There are only so many variations you can do on 2 or 3 exercises, and it's certainly many fewer than can be done with 12 or 15.
• They give you a chance to really master those movements. Look at Pavel's stuff in particular. You focus on those 2 movements, but he gets really technical about how you generate tension and so forth, so you get a chance to really master the form in a way you wouldn't if you were trying to learn many movements at once.
• They require either little or minimal equipment. By definition, you aren't going to need to buy 7 different pieces of equipment to do 2 exercises.
• They are usually brief. I imagine there are some very high volume limited exercise programs out there, but most of these programs can be accomplished fairly quickly. Compare them to a typical 75 to 90 minute bodybuilding routine with 12 exercises and you'll see what I mean.
• These programs won't overkill any particular movement pattern. It's not like you're going to overtrain your quads by hitting them 6 different ways - if you're only doing 2 exercises it's fairly easy to pick 2 that won't overlap much.
• The exercises chosen are usually efficient, compound movements that involve the core nicely.
• Once you learn these movements you can focus your skill training on mastering your martial art instead of on strength training.

Are there any downsides? I think so.

• Some people might find these boring.
• No set of 2 or 3 exercises is going to adequately build strength in every range beneficial to a martial artist. In fact, one of the planes of movement that I think is most important to a fighter is usually underworked - hip adduction and abduction. Hip abductors and adductors are both very important for lateral movement and for kicking high. You're not going to find 2 exercises that will produce the right amount of strength everywhere you might want it although some might come close.

I've been trying to come up with my own royal flush of exercises, narrowing down my routines to the smallest possible handful of exercises that cover all your strength bases. I'm not sure how successful I've been, but here's my stab at things:

I figured I'd start with the core exercise for developing punching power - the kettlebell swing. Then I needed something for hip abduction/ adduction. Isometric stretching is okay, but it won't do anything but adduction, and I wanted something more general. Then I needed an upper body exercise that would work the core nicely so you'd be able to transfer all that hip drive into your punches and blocks.

Joe Berne's patented (not really) Royal Flush of exercises:

1. Kettlebell swings - works glutes, hamstrings, lower back, and shoulders - produces the "hip snap" that drives all your strikes.
2. Side lunges - works adductors, abductors, and knee extension for high, powerful kicks.
3. Scott Sonnon's 1/4 Turkish Getup. Perfect for generating punching power with the upper body. My new favorite exercise.

Ta daa... And you can do the whole routine with a single kettlebell. You might want a few kettlebells, of different weights, but you won't need two at once.

Are these enough to develop overall strength? I don't really think so. Are they enough to get a pretty good start on striking powerfully with the hands and feet AND moving yourself out of the way of your opponent's strikes? I think so.

I'm a little concerned about hip abduction (not having your hips kidnapped, I mean lifting your legs to the side) but I have a hard time finding good abduction-centric exercises. If you know of any (other than leg weighted leg raises) please post to comments.

I'm also concerned about strength imbalances. Is there enough upper body pulling with the back hand drive on the getup and the swings? I don't really think so. I'd like to add renegade rows or bodyweight rows or pullups, but that brings us to 4 exercises. Still, this is a pretty good start.

One other option is to do these routines (Pavel's, Furey's, mine, simplefit, whatever) in a rotating way. Assuming you've learned the movements, you could pick 2 days a week for strength training and alternate these routines. Week 1 do Enter the Kettlebell, then Power to the People. Week 2 do the Royal Court, then the Royal Flush. That way, any set of muscles that are left out by any one plan will most likely get hit by another sooner or later. You'll probably make slower overall progress but might be better rounded and less bored.

I'd also like to learn more about the side lunge. I tend to get knee pain from doing them, and I don't like lifting my foot off the floor with weight in my hand. I'm considering switching to reverse side lunges (you keep the weighted, bending leg in place and slide out the straightened, non-weight bearing leg) or some other variation but haven't worked out all the details yet.

Please post any nice ideas you have for very brief strength training routines!

Osu.

When I started this blog my primary concern was increasing my high intensity endurance. This term, which I just made up as far as I know, means my ability to do high intensity work (like sparring, full speed kata, etc.) for a long (relatively speaking) time. I'm sure there are other better names for this, but you get the idea. I was also interested in increasing strength, power, and skill, but mostly in building an endurance base.

One of the tools I used to do that was Tabata intervals. In case you don't remember what they are, the Tabata protocols involve 20s of high intensity work followed by 10 s of rest, repeated some small number of times (maybe 8 or 9, although I tend to do a few big sets of 8 or 9 intervals each). They're named after a Japanese researcher who was studying cyclists.

I still think Tabatas are a great way to build up strength - endurance, or whatever you call it, certainly much better than long slow distance. I personally like them more than other protocols - 30s on/ 30s off, etc., although I'm not going to argue which type of high intensitiy interval training is better, as I'm really not sure.

I was, at the time I started this blog, using kihon (basic techniques) for my exercise. That is, I'd do 20s of roundhouse kicks, rest 10 s, etc. I was basically mixing skill training with my endurance training.

Lately I've been rethinking that approach.

Why? Well, as I learn more about skill acquisition I keep noticing that practicing a skill (like throwing a kick) when you're fatigued might not only be less productive in terms of furthering your neurological mastery of that skill, it might be counterproductive. That is, compare someone who throws 100 kicks with someone who throws 1000 kicks (assuming the 1000 kick guy would be pretty wiped out by doing all those kicks). The 100 kick guy might actually end up a better kicker, because the 1000 kick guy would have practiced a few kicks, say the first 100, while fresh, but he would have practiced many of them while tired, slow, and probably sloppy. The last 100 kicks in the longer workout are actually "teaching" the kicker to kick slowly and un-explosively. The guy who does the shorter workout doesn't practice anything but kicking while fresh.

The problem is that doing my old workout, which was basically kicking and punching oneself into exhaustion, might be bad for one's technique.

The alternative?

There are two. The first is to practice your kihon separately. Do your techniques just a few times, at full power, stop before getting tired, and repeat frequently (as in even many times a day, time permitting). To build up your stamina do something completely unrelated to karate. Sprint, use a Concept II, one armed snatches, whatever, but nothing where fatigued movements will interfere with skill acquisition.

The second, and I think better option, is to mix the two approaches. I like doing kihon to near-exhaustion for a few reasons. It builds up muscular endurance specific to the techniques. For example, nothing will prepare your upper back for high volume punching better than high volume punching. It's also more efficient - you're killing two birds with one stone.

So how to mix the two without causing skill regression? I was thinking of two methods of preventing problems. The first is to alternate upper and lower body movements (so you do 20s upper body, rest 10s, 20 s kicks, rest 10s, OR 8 sets upper body, 8 sets lower body) so the local muscle fatigue never gets high enough to interfere with skill acquisition. That is, don't do kicks until your legs are rubbery - stop and punch for a while. You might be able to get a great cardio workout (your lungs and heart will be fried) without getting enough local muscular fatigue to be a problem.

Another option is to structure your workout so you "finish off" your cardio system with a more general movement, like sprints, but start off with kihon. Say you're doing (like me) 32 overall intervals (8 sets, rest, 8 sets, rest, 8 sets, rest, 8 sets). Your legs and arms might stay fresh for the first 16 total sets, but you find that you're rubbery and slow by the end no matter what. So do your 16 sets of kihon, then move into snatches or sprints or the rower or bodyweight squats or whatever for the lat 16 (or some combination of several different movements).

What you shouldn't do is punch and kick yourself into exhaustion as a regular training method. I think. I'm not positive - I don't know everything there is to know about this whole skill thing, but guys like Pavel and other trainers seem to be pointing me in this direction.

By the way, punching and kicking yourself into exhaustion on occasion is probably good for you. Just not several times a week.

Let me know what you think.

Osu.

I'm slow. I've always been slow. I come by it honestly - I come from a long line of slow people. I contributed to it by reading a lot as a kid instead of playing tag or football or whatever. End result? I'm a fast reader, but you need a calendar to time my 40 yard dash.

The problem with being slow is that when you spar, the slower you are, the harder it is to get out of the way of the people trying to hit you. (remember: "best defense - no be there"). You can make up for it with timing, strong technique, etc., but it's still better to be fast than to be slow, all else being equal.

So, being the person that I am, and being tired of getting my ass handed to me in sparring sessions, I started looking up articles and books on training for speed, online. What I found was a preponderance of materials that focus on improving one's running-in-a-straight-line speed. They had drills for improving running form and all that so you could go 10, 40, or more yards more quickly than before.

But that's not the kind of speed I'm worried about.

There's nothing wrong with straight line speed. In fact, being able to run fast has serious self-defense implications - you get jumped by 3 guys, you might be able to stun one and run away, but if you're me, the other two will catch you (us?) before you can get to a safe place.

But if you want to get better at the stuff that happens before you run away, if you want to be a faster fighter, that's a different kind of speed.

Think about the last time you sparred. Where did you line up? 2 meters apart? 3?  I've never had a match where we started out 10, 20, or more meters away from one another. And even if you did, you don't need to close that distance quickly.

The speed you need in a sparring session is the ability to take a step or two in any direction, quickly. Think about it - you throw a kick or punch at me, if I can get one step to the side, you're going to miss. I don't need to travel 40 yards to get away or to close on you and hit you unless you're an octopus.

Fighting speed is about quickly moving from a standing fighting position to a spot one or two steps away in any direction - in some situations you need to close quickly, in some to move to the side, in some to retreat, but rarely more than one or two steps. It's also about stopping and changing direction while moving one or two steps in any direction (like when you close on someone and suddenly realize you have to sidestep or back up or whatever).

So how do you develop fighting speed? It's not by sharpening your sprinting technique - relaxing the shoulders, lifting the knees, all that. You don't do all that when you sidestep or close on someone in a fight.  Which means that all those books and DVD's on improving 40 yard sprint times aren't much use to someone who wants to get better at sparring. 

Here's what I think:

There are three parts to improving fighting speed. The first part is knowing when to move by reading your opponent, having good strategic ability, and so on. In other words, the faster you can realize that it's time to sidestep or close, by reading your opponent's position and recognizing that it's time to move. My old teacher could hit me anytime he wanted. Was he a great athlete? Well, he was, but it was more that he saw every opening in my defenses immediately, and could read my every move before I made it by noticing subtle tells and shifts in weight and so on. He also knew what to do instantly - he was so experienced that he knew if sidestepping, blocking, or closing would be more effective. I, for a contrast, often only realize that I should have sidestepped a technique after the exchange is over. No matter how strong your legs are, if you don't know which way to go, you're not going to be a fast fighter.

You develop these skills through sparring practice and through sparring related drills. It's not a function of fitness - it's all neurological, it's about how quickly you can get from seeing the guy in front of you to deciding how to move to optimize your fighting position.

The second part of fighting speed is to develop the muscles that actually move you around after your brain has decided that you need to do it. Imagine someone who is very skilled but has badly damaged knees or just weak legs or hips. They might instantly see that they should sidestep a certain attack, but if their legs give out, or can't generate much force, they can't do it.

That strength - the leg and hip strength that moves you around in a fight - is a function of fitness, and I think you can do a lot of exercises that can improve that fighting - movement - specific strength. And they're not the same as the exercises you'd do to improve your straight line sprinting speed.

What are they? Well, I have to save something for the next post. 

The third part of improving speed is minimizing your mass. For a given level of strength (the ability to generate a certain amount of force) if you can weigh less, you can accelerate more (F=ma, so a = F/m, so if m is bigger, a is less). Adding muscle mass to your hips and legs might make you faster - the increase in force generation might compensate or more than compensate for the increase in mass - but extra fat (or even long hair) does nothing but slow you down.

So lose the fat.

By the way - I'm not going to address the skill component of speed much, but I'm not knocking it at all. The skills involved - reading your opponent, timing your response, having good strategies at your fingertips - might be more important than the fitness/ strength component. I just don't have anything to contribute to anybody's ideas of how to develop those skills. There are lots of books by martial artists about how to develop fighting skills, and you should get one (or many) of them. I think I might know a little bit about the strength part, so that's what I'll write about. In the next post.

Osu.