I Want My Endurance Back

Training
81

[quote]Big_Boss wrote:

[quote]peterm533 wrote:
Am I guilty of oversimplifying an oversimplification?

The exhortation was made above to Just do it. While I accept what may have been the intent behind the quote that committing to the task and working hard must triumph over endless theoretical speculation and discussion of the minutiae of a program I cannot accept that a prescription of just working out is the most useful thing that can be said. Of course wrestlers must do a lot of wrestling and boxers a lot of boxing but
to me that really does not say anywhere near enough.

You are quite right that we know little or nothing about the OPs training so inevitably we are talking generalities but in so far as we are on a conditioning forum answering a question about cardio respiratory endurance surely we have more meaningful experience to impart than simply to urge more of everything.

Did Sardines 12 say that anaerobic energy is NOT required for fight sport endurance?
What I think he said was that boxing is an aerobic alactic sport with the MAIN (my capitals) energy system utilized being the aerobic system and that if the OPs endurance was poor he had to focus on that first. Is that not a prescription straight out of Ultimate MMA conditioning?

[/quote]

Like I already mentioned…we don’t know enough about the OP’s training. If he hasn’t been training his fighting sport for past 10 weeks,the prescription before concentrating on whatever is making him gas is getting back to doing more kickboxing training(padwork,sparring,etc).

I’m not judging the OP,but anyone who has been consistently working pads,sparring,etc for some time is not going to gas two rounds into sparring. Which leads us back to square one…we don’t know enough about the OP’s training. He needs to clarify if he’s done nothing but lift weights for 10 weeks and not done any padwork,skillwork,or sparring in that time span.

Then we can say…hey you need to do more roadwork…OR sprints…OR BOTH…or whatever.

[/quote]
This is very true.

82

[/quote]

I’m not judging the OP,but anyone who has been consistently working pads,sparring,etc for some time is not going to gas two rounds into sparring. Which leads us back to square one…we don’t know enough about the OP’s training. He needs to clarify if he’s done nothing but lift weights for 10 weeks and not done any padwork,skillwork,or sparring in that time span.

[/quote]

I’ve trained first in Karate than in Kickboxing for ten years now. I started with doing semi-contact style tournaments, but now I’m preparing for light-contact.
The biggest difference between these two styles is that in half-contact the referee stops the fight after each point made.(so it is very similar to karate-competitions).So you don’t have to worry too much about endurance. But now in light-contact there are no more breaks. So my fighting style is not very energy efficent and I also waste a lot of opportunities because I still tend to draw back when I land a clear kick or punch instead of following up. Also there are a lot of boxers in our club who are very efficient because they throw no kicks at all…

So the answer could be to “simply” change my way of fighting, but it works extremely well as long as I can keep my pace up.

back to the question in this ten week period of “only” WS4SB. Lifting became something of a priority because up to then I had never been using a smart lifting program and it just rocked how well it worked. So I had a period where I only sparred once a week, and did the whole four work-outs per week of WS4SB plus some low intensity technical drills.

83

[quote]peterm533 wrote:
Silverdan7,

I am not writing for Sardines 12 but to put his argument in context you do have to appreciate that after years of emphasising anaerobic glycolytic training there has been something of a recent shift away from a heavy reliance on sprint type work for fight training (or perhaps more correctly for MMA) to an emphasis on the importance of the development of the aerobic system.

I know that you will read a lot about the need for anaerobic training and you made reference knowingly or not to the Tabata study but I tried to point you in the direction of the work of Joel Jamieon and more recent research on energy production to balance this. So whether or not you agree with him, he is representing what is pretty much a recent approach to MMA/fi

P.S. The guy is selling a product. From the phrasing I have seen him use, I do not think he would waste time with aer. spec. with any sort of real competitive fighter. The advice about subbing LSD in if you need extra end. is some bullshit suggestion for the fat drunk at the bar that buys his book to get into shape so he can “go pro.”

While I have not read Joel Jamiesons book I have looked at his philosophy and unless I am completely mistaken, he is programming muscular endurance training into the strength and conditioning workout. At no point do I see him say go waste an hour jogging at a hr of 130 instead of hitting the bags for technique and timing with a heart rate of 130. I dont think that any one would say fighting has no aerobic element. Most trainers and fighters have realized that oxidative training can be integrated into virtually all other parts of training and thus requires very little specialization. To show how obvious lets go all the way back to old school bodybuilding principles. S.A.I.D. This applies to aerobic training as well. You want to be a long distance runner, run dont swim. You want to bike, bike dont run. You want to punch, you shoukkd be getting the idea.

edit: An interesting point I wanted to add. People have mentioned how much jogging Muay thai camps do. They do not ramp up and down for fights. They are always training full time, and always in “good shape”. For them, who live and eat where they train often, running is a low intensity aer. maintainence activity to fit in between their constant aparring and bag work. Our training system and lifestyle is completely different and for that reason many parrallels will not exist.

84

I do not know what you mean by programming endurance training into the strength and conditioning workout.

You are correct that he does not say that you should spend an hour jogging at a heart rate of 130. He says that any low intensity exercise that keeps your heart rate in the corrcet range will work and that his own preference is to use a variety of MMA specific exercises each for 5-15 minutes at a time.

I am not sure what to make of your PS. You have not read his book but if I understand you correctly are suggesting that he is peddling misinformation to promote his book. That is an extraordinary assertion. For someone who has a professional reputation to protect I cannot see what purpose he would achieve by doing so.

His stance is that MMA is aerobic alactic. He believes that cardiac output training is important but ultimately this is based on an assessment of individual need. Where do you say he is wrong? To assert that LSD is the province of out of shape drunks and not used by some pro MMA fighters is absurd.

85

Silverdan7,

To round out the above I think that the following two points you make i.e:

  1. That oxidative training can be integrated into all other parts of training and thus require little specialisation and

  2. That we cannot uncritically import training models used successfully elsewhere under totally different conditions

are both worthy of consideration.

86

[quote]peterm533 wrote:
I do not know what you mean by programming endurance training into the strength and conditioning workout.

You are correct that he does not say that you should spend an hour jogging at a heart rate of 130. He says that any low intensity exercise that keeps your heart rate in the corrcet range will work and that his own preference is to use a variety of MMA specific exercises each for 5-15 minutes at a time.

I am not sure what to make of your PS. You have not read his book but if I understand you correctly are suggesting that he is peddling misinformation to promote his book. That is an extraordinary assertion. For someone who has a professional reputation to protect I cannot see what purpose he would achieve by doing so.

His stance is that MMA is aerobic alactic. He believes that cardiac output training is important but ultimately this is based on an assessment of individual need. Where do you say he is wrong? To assert that LSD is the province of out of shape drunks and not used by some pro MMA fighters is absurd.

[/quote]

  1. He uses said exercises at a certain tempo to promote slow twitch muscle growth and improved oxidation. The way I understand it, if you feel it is necessary you can add these ex. in as part of your workpout, meaning it would nt take any time.

As to the stance that there is no way he is promoting a product which may include an unecessary step for anyone who is actually fit enough to compete in a fighting event, I don’t know what to say. That is the world we live in. In addition, the MMA workout has become very trendy with non fighters and non athletes even. This means that a fair amount of books you have seen come out in the last couple of years are geared towards the avg joe as often as they are geared towards the fighter.
Just out of curiosity where are you from?

87

[quote]SILVERDAN7 wrote:

[quote]peterm533 wrote:
I do not know what you mean by programming endurance training into the strength and conditioning workout.

You are correct that he does not say that you should spend an hour jogging at a heart rate of 130. He says that any low intensity exercise that keeps your heart rate in the corrcet range will work and that his own preference is to use a variety of MMA specific exercises each for 5-15 minutes at a time.

I am not sure what to make of your PS. You have not read his book but if I understand you correctly are suggesting that he is peddling misinformation to promote his book. That is an extraordinary assertion. For someone who has a professional reputation to protect I cannot see what purpose he would achieve by doing so.

His stance is that MMA is aerobic alactic. He believes that cardiac output training is important but ultimately this is based on an assessment of individual need. Where do you say he is wrong? To assert that LSD is the province of out of shape drunks and not used by some pro MMA fighters is absurd.

[/quote]

  1. He uses said exercises at a certain tempo to promote slow twitch muscle growth and improved oxidation. The way I understand it, if you feel it is necessary you can add these ex. in as part of your workpout, meaning it would nt take any time.

As to the stance that there is no way he is promoting a product which may include an unecessary step for anyone who is actually fit enough to compete in a fighting event, I don’t know what to say. That is the world we live in. In addition, the MMA workout has become very trendy with non fighters and non athletes even. This means that a fair amount of books you have seen come out in the last couple of years are geared towards the avg joe as often as they are geared towards the fighter.
Just out of curiosity where are you from? [/quote]
If the info was solely from this guy I would believe you, but I’ve seen the same stuff from Verkhshansky and others. But you know it’s a gimmick.

88

Jamieson certainly does utilise the Tempo method to increase oxygen utilisation capacity by
way of hypetrphy of the slow twitch fibres but this is just one of many methods he uses. It certainly is not his whole system.

His book does not strike me as being targeted at the average Joe. It is fairly technical and in no way sensationalist. I cannot see that there is anything in it for anyone other than a serious athlete and as suxch I would have to reject your criticism.

As regards his emphasis on what you call the unecessary step i.e aerobic development, it is not clear to me whether you disagree with his analysis of the energy requirements of the sport or his methods or both.

89

[quote]Big_Boss wrote:

[quote]peterm533 wrote:
Am I guilty of oversimplifying an oversimplification?

The exhortation was made above to Just do it. While I accept what may have been the intent behind the quote that committing to the task and working hard must triumph over endless theoretical speculation and discussion of the minutiae of a program I cannot accept that a prescription of just working out is the most useful thing that can be said. Of course wrestlers must do a lot of wrestling and boxers a lot of boxing but
to me that really does not say anywhere near enough.

You are quite right that we know little or nothing about the OPs training so inevitably we are talking generalities but in so far as we are on a conditioning forum answering a question about cardio respiratory endurance surely we have more meaningful experience to impart than simply to urge more of everything.

Did Sardines 12 say that anaerobic energy is NOT required for fight sport endurance?
What I think he said was that boxing is an aerobic alactic sport with the MAIN (my capitals) energy system utilized being the aerobic system and that if the OPs endurance was poor he had to focus on that first. Is that not a prescription straight out of Ultimate MMA conditioning?

[/quote]

Like I already mentioned…we don’t know enough about the OP’s training. If he hasn’t been training his fighting sport for past 10 weeks,the prescription before concentrating on whatever is making him gas is getting back to doing more kickboxing training(padwork,sparring,etc).

I’m not judging the OP,but anyone who has been consistently working pads,sparring,etc for some time is not going to gas two rounds into sparring. Which leads us back to square one…we don’t know enough about the OP’s training. He needs to clarify if he’s done nothing but lift weights for 10 weeks and not done any padwork,skillwork,or sparring in that time span.

Then we can say…hey you need to do more roadwork…OR sprints…OR BOTH…or whatever.

[/quote]

I accept your point.

The problem however is that we are not his trainers and regardless of what further information
is given no one is going to be able to lay out a detailed program of training for him integrating his sparring, technical training and conditioning taking into account his age, training history, sleep, diet etc etc.

The OP made reference to his apparently poor cardio respiratory endurance. The assumption is that he will do what he can sport specfically and the conversation at least to my mind turned to what type of conditioning program he should undertake over the next 2 months. Clearly that was a divergence of opinion at this point betweeen aerobic v anaerobic methods. I laid out what I thought might be a useful balance between the two to be considered by the OP and modified or rejected by him as he saw fit.

With limited information we may be confined to generalities but I do not think that that is necessarily without value.

90

[quote]peterm533 wrote:
Jamieson certainly does utilise the Tempo method to increase oxygen utilisation capacity by
way of hypetrphy of the slow twitch fibres but this is just one of many methods he uses. It certainly is not his whole system.

His book does not strike me as being targeted at the average Joe. It is fairly technical and in no way sensationalist. I cannot see that there is anything in it for anyone other than a serious athlete and as suxch I would have to reject your criticism.

As regards his emphasis on what you call the unecessary step i.e aerobic development, it is not clear to me whether you disagree with his analysis of the energy requirements of the sport or his methods or both.

[/quote]

My only real point is that someone who is thinking about increasing their aerobic threshold for better endurance in competition should have thousands of hours of mat and bag work in. Their aerobic ab. should be great from all the practice they have already put in, and for this reason can be maintained and even improved without alot of direct focus on this system alone. For this reason I assumed (because I do not know the man) that he is putting this catch up for people who are not in comp. shape for one reason or another. People seem to not understand that hitting the bag and grappling and wrestling are all cardio and this I do not get.

91

I guess that Jamieson’s answer to that is that if testing shows that your aerobic capacity is low then you need to work on it.

Hitting the bag etc as you say may all be cardio but whether they have sufficiently stimulated the appropriate energy system will dictate the type of work you need to do.

As I have previously mentioned if your RHR is not in the low 50’s then Jamieson would say that you do need more aerobic work regardless of other training you have put in.

92

[quote]FightinIrish26 wrote:
Run. Spar. Do padwork. Fight more.[/quote]

PartyBison,
That response above is the best advice. Keep it simple.
Let’s say a round is 3 mins, a rest period is 1 minute and you have 5 rounds. Get a timer.
Practice on a heavy bag, doing loads of combinations, using proper technique, punching and kicking fast and hard, moving around the bag:

5 rounds of 3 mins with 1 min rest in between sets.

Do the same with sparring.

Keep doing anaerobic training but keep it simple and use a rep range that stimulates muscular endurance: clap pushups, jump squats, barbell squats, military presses etc…

Running: You don’t have to do just one type of running:
2-3 mile runs
Hill runs (run up and down a hill 4-6 times)
1 min sprints (sprint for 1 min, rest for 1 min, repeat 10 times)

Jump rope is good too. Do 3 mins, rest for a min, repeat 10 times.

Swimming too if you know how to.

Obviously you don’t want to overtrain, get injured and come fight time you are a walking zombie. So make yourself a simple training routine that will make you progress without putting you in a bodybag.
Keep it simple.

93

[quote]Robert A wrote:
It always seemed to me that a big part of keeping your wind with anything that resembles fighting e.g. boxing, kickboxing, martial arts sparring with at least some contact, grappling, wrestling, what have you, is staying calm yet alert. You have to have the attribute, in this case endourance. You also have to be able to relax when you can and not when it costs you. I always think of boxing. Plenty of amateurs run multiple miles every day and spend a ton of time in the gym, but they can still gas out in 4 two minute rounds. On paper they are addressing all their energy systems work and are at an age when “cardio” almost comes natural. Then you have older pros going 10-12 3 minute rounds. They aren’t doing 4x the roadwork, usually. They are efficient and relaxed until they need to be tense and explosive. One of the most dishartening things about training is getting run around, ragdolled, and raped by someone whom you know you are stronger and in better shape than. I think this same effect happens when it seems that “nerves” cause your conditioning to go to hell, or why an actural fight, or even breaking up a fight, tends to leave you huffing and puffing worse than working a “slaughter line” drill in the gym/dojo.

[/quote]

I am glad I read this paragraph. I think this would explain why I sometimes have problems with conditioning and sometimes don’t.

94

When i fought in boxing, i was in my teens. I ran cross country/track and usually went to the gym after practices and meets. On days I wasnt at the gym I would work bags for rounds. My conditioning was better than pretty much every amature i fought, though I still would get quite tired from the adrenal dump and throwing alot of punches…

Now im older, and train smarter. I do not compete in boxing anymore, but I still compete in olympic tkd, which is similar. 3x2 minute rounds, but ill have 2-5 fights in a day. Kicking uses more energy than punching. Not saying one is harder than the other, but they have similar requirements.

Rather than sprints versus roadwork, start general and then get specific. You tailor your training towards the time period you have available before competition. For me, I would go on longer aerobic runs for a month prior, and then when I was working my skills in training, do similar things, longer duration, lots and lots of repetition. Then as it came closer to tournament time i would shift over to hill sprints, about 12 seconds a piece for 20 reps, letting my HR come back down. While in my actual training session I would mirror these demands, doing short bursts on the bag/pads, as well as sparring harder and more frequent. I still did my roadwork, but cut it down to 1-2 days a week.

Nothing, and I mean nothing replaces sparring. I followed Jamisons methods and fared really well as far as endurance goes. I was also able to do this while increasing strength and speed.

Basically, alot of you guys are having a pissing contest. In some aspects it is pretty simple, but dont think science does not play a part, because it sure helped my training.

95

Irish is right.

Sardines, you’re really out of your league trying to explain to someone who’s been in the thick of it what works and doesn’t work. That’s like me telling a taxi driver of 50 years to take a specific route because it’s quicker, just because it’s the route I know. The taxi driver may be humble enough to obey but if he is honest enough he will tell me, “mate you’re wrong I’ve been doing this for quite some time, this is the quickest route”…

Like Irish, I’ve kick boxed (muay Thai) and boxed for the last 10 years at a professional level. I did it mainly as a side to my work just because I love the sports but have been involved in them for near 20 years since an early teen. My background is ‘the books’ too ie I’ve studied a bachelors of Exercise and sports science at university.

The definition of aerobic exercise is a steady state moderate exertion at a level where oxygen repletion is balanced with utilization.

Boxing or Kickboxing is anything but ‘steady state’. The ‘steady state’ of fight sports is repetitive bursts of anaerobic work.

As you may be aware, anaerobic work utilizes completely different energy pathways than aerobic work.

With aerobic work, the initial energy used is glucose before the body will flip and utilize fat as an energy source. You never continuously remain in this state in boxing. You don’t pitter patter your opponent for 12 rounds. You throw an all out power combo for a few seconds and rest for however many second. This is all followed up by 1 or 2 minute rest intervals depending on the sport.
As we mentioned, aerobic is steady state, it does not stop. The breaks in between rounds automatically defy the definition of aerobic exercise. Add to that, that the fighters throw all out power combination’s with gaps of rest, adjustment or recovery in between and you quickly see fight sports are not aerobic.

If one is a laymen and never trained in fight sports or fought before, sure, they do need an aerobic base to begin with, but once that is developed, the only thing that will help them from a physiological stand point is bucket loads of anaerobic, lactic acid threshold style training.
To add to this I would add repetitive conditioning through what Irish mentioned, pad work, bag work and loads and loads of heavy sparring to teach one economy of movement and how to relax all muscle groups except ones needed as most fighters are so tense in their movements only because of lack of motor pathway development/conditioning which in turn teaches relaxation and can be transferred over into the ring to remain calm under fire. The work should be heavy enough to light up ones fight or flight mechanisms.

Which brings me to my next point about running.
I believe running long distance only has it’s place in fight sports these days because it has a sentimental/spiritual element to it. Perhaps fighters think it connects them to the greats of old who although were good at what they did, by far did not have the intelligence we have these days. From my own perspective and this is not something I can back scientifically yet but I have given it some honest thought, I believe running is connected to the fight/flight mechanism. If anything it trains this aspect in a fighter subconsciously. When you’re in danger, the most primitive reflex is to run. I believe all forms of running train this aspect and long distance running has a spiritual/mental development capacity only. It does very little for replicating the lactic acid induced state one experiences in the fight but can help with the mental aspect of hanging in there when the shit hits the fan, or remaining calm under fire. I personally believe moderate distance to short distance sprinting is far superior in running style than long distance running as this replicates a real life situation reflex action of when you’re in danger.

This is what books/science will never teach you as they only see and can comment on data in front of them and since the spiritual-mental elements cannot really be measured, it will never truly understand these arts appropriately.

This is where someone who has been in the thick of it has the gall an nerve to straight out tell the scientist, ‘you’re wrong’.