I just wanted to start a thread discussing the choice of exercises for a combat athlete (wrestling, judo, grappling, mma, etc.). Just list some exercises, and WHY they fit into a routine for a combat athlete. I’ll start it off:
Overhead squat: Develops overall body stability as well as balance very quickly.
Thick Bar Deadlift: It’s unquestionable that a deadlift is sport specific to a combat athlete, and the thick bar helps with grip strength tremendously.
Power Clean: A sport specific move for any athlete, trains triple extension, and the ability to control the weight better.
Saxon Side Bends- one of the best moves for the obliques. Hold two dumbbels overhead in the press position, and do side bends. Also helps with hip mobility.
Full contact twist, AKA Landmine: Allows to train rotational movement with weight. Excellent abdominal move. Probably my favorite at the moment.
I’d day your ground-based compounds would fit the bill. Strongman events are awesome as well as “Dinosaur Training” w/ sand bags, kegs and awkward objects.
Anything done on a swiss ball, wobble board, sand pit, etc. should be avoided.
[quote]Robert Monti wrote:
I’d day your ground-based compounds would fit the bill. Strongman events are awesome as well as “Dinosaur Training” w/ sand bags, kegs and awkward objects.
Anything done on a swiss ball, wobble board, sand pit, etc. should be avoided.[/quote]
I agree completely, Dino Training is supposed to be very effective for that kind of thing. The unstable surfaces increase the likelyhood of injury by alot, and they aren’t really worth the supposed balance/etc. they’re supposed to provide. There was a round table a while back I think where Coach Davies and some other guys were discussing that topic.
I would throw dive bomber pushups and knuckle pushups in there also. Fingertip pushups are also good, but be very careful with them.
The only thing I would do is some static things, like holding the top pf a pullup or the bottom of a pushup. grappling involves alot of this type of strength, especially when holding on to someone in a submission hold.
I should add that Olympic lifts, unlike most sports, are very sport specific to grappling (simultaneous upper body pulling and leg drive). Heavy grip work is a must.
I recently messed up a disc in my lower back deadlifting with bad form and too much weight (I know, I want to shoot myself too). How do you guys think that it will affect my wrestling?
Farmer’s Walks, absolutely. Especially if done in a slight zig-zag pattern as Joe DeFranco has suggested in one of his articles. It hits pretty much every muscle from traps to ankles. The zig-zag brings the abs/core into it that much more. Not to mention the mental toughness needed for those last 6 steps.
[quote]KombatAthlete wrote:
I recently messed up a disc in my lower back deadlifting with bad form and too much weight (I know, I want to shoot myself too). How do you guys think that it will affect my wrestling?[/quote]
I don’t know how it will affect your wrestling, but I think it might improve your opponents game considerably. =)
[quote]Minotaur wrote:
KombatAthlete wrote:
I recently messed up a disc in my lower back deadlifting with bad form and too much weight (I know, I want to shoot myself too). How do you guys think that it will affect my wrestling?
I don’t know how it will affect your wrestling, but I think it might improve your opponents game considerably. =)[/quote]
Was that sarcastic? Now that I think about it, lower back is involved a lot in wrestling. I guess I should learn to use the techniques more with leg and glute strength than low back from now on.
I don’t know how it will affect your wrestling, but I think it might improve your opponents game considerably. =)
Was that sarcastic? Now that I think about it, lower back is involved a lot in wrestling. I guess I should learn to use the techniques more with leg and glute strength than low back from now on.[/quote]
Yes…that was sarcasm, joking about how your bad back will be a good thing for your opponents because…never mind.
Wrestling with a sour back isn’t going to be easy to do. Rather than focusing on leg strength, glute strength, or rhomboid strength, remember that it’s a full body sport, which calls for full body coordination whenever possible.
With that said, I suppose you could try to adjust your wrestling game to work around the injury, but you’d likely end up back in this same spot again. I vote for just remembering to never deadlift with “bad form and too much weight” again.
I think you also may be generalizing a bit, because it really depends on the sport. I am from New jersey, and the papers just ran a huge spread on Arturo Gatti, the boxer from Jersey City. They went into his training a little bit, and as a 145 pound boxer, he does no weight training (I was very surprised at this).
He “does pushups and situps to exhaustion”, does a 5 mile run, and jumps rope for 15 minutes a clip. This is not just for boxers of the lightweight/welterweight classes either; very few boxers concentrate on weight training; they need endurance /strength. I thought this was interesting, and I thought of this thread when I read it.
[quote]Janoski wrote:
He “does pushups and situps to exhaustion”, does a 5 mile run, and jumps rope for 15 minutes a clip. This is not just for boxers of the lightweight/welterweight classes either; very few boxers concentrate on weight training; they need endurance /strength. I thought this was interesting, and I thought of this thread when I read it. [/quote]
As a fight myself, I must choose how I train wisely. I’m non competitive, so I train my anaerobic systems more.
I’ve seen many many training regimes by various top level combat athletes, and non of them look like that. In fact, weights are an important part of almost every skilled (skilled imo) martial artist I’ve known.
The reason many don’t, is probably due to the myth of “getting big makes you slow”
[quote]Janoski wrote:
He “does pushups and situps to exhaustion”, does a 5 mile run, and jumps rope for 15 minutes a clip. This is not just for boxers of the lightweight/welterweight classes either; very few boxers concentrate on weight training…[/quote]
I think that may be a case of Gatti being as good as he is “even though” he trains that way…not “because” of it. I believe, as was said, many boxers (especially lighter weight classes) fear strength training due to the myths perpetuated by the uninformed community. A stronger athlete is pretty much always a better athlete.
It’s interesting, though, how his workout goes against most everything he “should” be doing (like de-emphasizing muscular endurance in favor of strength endurance, and working anaerobic vs. aerobic cardio) Just goes to show you…something.