Workout Structure for Fighters: An End to Traditional Training
If you compete as a combat athlete (or coach them), you know that endurance is important. But what is endurance? Take a moment to ask yourself. Go ahead; I’ll wait.
If you think that endurance means working as long as possible, you’re wrong. And you have to admit that you walked right into that one. The goal of endurance is not just to perform for as long as possible, it’s to perform well for as long as possible.
This may sound obvious but if everyone understood this concept, the status quo for combat training would be radically different. Take a look at most training sessions and you will see a very different story.
Whether we’re talking about boxing, Muay Thai, wrestling or any other combat sport, sessions tend to break down roughly like this:
- Warm-up pt. 1: general movement and/or stretching
- Warm-up pt. 2: high repetition calisthenics (this is often preceded by distance running)
- Warm-up pt. 3: high repetition technical drilling
- Technique
- Live practice or hard drilling
Here’s the problem: taking an athlete to fatigue prior technical training is the wrong way to train.
Before you start downloading letter bomb instructions, though, please consider this: I am talking about competitive fighters not recreational fighters.
What’s the difference?
A recreational fighter gets the majority of their physical training (including strength, mobility, etc.) from the standard training for their sport. They need to develop a basic physical toolkit and the ability to perform under fire without quitting. This makes basic skill and mental toughness more important than high-level skill or more developed physical attributes. It is an important compromise and one that will mold the highest percentage of fighters from the general population. However, competitive fighters are not part of the general population.
A competitive fighter should not be getting their strength and conditioning from their technical coach, but from a specialist. They already possess a basic physical toolkit but need to improve strength and explosiveness. They already have a great deal of mental toughness but need to emphasize the development of high-level skill and performance
What the pros need is radically different than what the Joes need. To train them in the same way is to hold them back.
So how can we do better?
1. Develop warm-ups that improve technical performance
Warm-ups should be under 15 minutes and concentrate on improving mobility, muscle activation, core integration, efficiency of power transfer and explosiveness. Athletes should not emerge from warm-ups fatigued, but with improved movement, body awareness and mental focus.
2. During technical work, limit repetition number to high-quality movement
A competitive fighter needs to continually fine-tune their movement patterns – especially when learning a new skill. You cannot expect to fatigue a fighter and then make optimal progress in this area. Instead, the emphasis should be on near flawless movement. If this work is performed, it should be done so at the beginning of a training session – when an athlete has the greatest amount of mental focus.
3. Perform explosive work in a non-fatigued state
The ability to move explosively requires an athlete to be non-fatigued. It must take place early in the training session and only allow for top-speed repetition of movement. To practice explosive movement in a fatigued state is to practice going slow.
4. Perform live drilling/sparring after power work
Fatigue levels should still be relatively low throughout this stage. This is the time for quality and speed of movement to be integrated into a progressively more realistic setting. Drilling should end before substantial degradation of technique is apparent.
Safe training practices should be emphasized and the risk of a particular modality should always be weighed against the potential reward.
5. Perform endurance work last
The beautiful thing about endurance training is that it works best when you are already fatigued. This is the time to push your athletes past their limits.
Endurance training should only last as long as a high quality of movement can be maintained. There are some important exceptions to be made here but not for someone without a competition in their immediate future. Practicing sub-optimal motor patterns should be done as little as practically possible. There are, of course, conditioning options that don’t feed dysfunctional movement.
It bears repeating that endurance isn’t just a question of performing for as long as possible, but of performing well. When athletes work within the parameters of quality movement, they ensure that everything they do is done well – right to the finish.
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Very interesting article. The problem nowadays is: Tradition has seniority over Science, and tradition is a lack of knowledge that is mistaken for actual knowledge. Very few gyms are doing it right unless the S&C coach is teaching the martial arts class. Dewey Nielsen is doing it right. I have a feeling that this article will have contribution to the “movement” of more and more gyms “doing it right” in the future.
18.10.2010, 3:54 pmNice piece, glad to see more sound thinking in this direction. We banged our heads against the “traditional” wall of martial arts training for a long time, and finally decided that the best solution was to let those folks do what they do and work on improving what we do instead of apologizing to them for paying attention to all this exercise science stuff instead of pseudo- science and outdated methodology.
15.03.2011, 2:43 pm