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By Bradley J. Steiner
Since the 1960s I have been urging weight-training as the premier physical training for hand-to-hand and close combat. Today, the idea has caught on and many take it for granted that “it’s a good idea to lift weights if you want to get stronger,” but few who have jumped on the bandwagon know anything about the correct principles concerning that which they now advocate.
In the 1960s, when I wrote the first magazine article in America on “WEIGHT TRAINING FOR THE BUDO-KA” (in STRENGTH AND HEALTH) the preponderance of braindead gleefully pooh-poohed what I was advocating, and, in lock-step with the idiots with whom they were then studying, insisted that “you don’t need strength in martial arts.”
The hell you don’t!
In any case, the truth has finally won out and only the most ignorant still maintain that physical fitness, muscle power, and all-round hardihood (as well as, and in addition to skill and technique) is irrelevant in unarmed and armed hand-to-hand combat.
The problem is, again, that while weight-training has caught on, there are very few who understand its correct principles, and who advocate the correct approach to employing weights.
The advice to “go lift weights” is not sufficient guidance for students of combat disciplines. Sensible physical training with weights is a serious discipline. Unless it is followed correctly it can become at best a waste of time and at worst a harmful activity.
One of the most critical factors for successful weight-training is spending the right amount of time at the activity and not overdoing it.
One correspondent wrote: “It makes sense that weights would help me. But how can I find the time to do both weights and martial arts?”
The answer to that individual’s question—as I explained to him, personally—is that it takes little time to follow an excellent and quite complete program of weight-training.
Those whose objective is simply bolstering their combative capabilities need no more than one to one and a half hours per week total training time; and even the most serious of the serious weight-trainee/martial arts devotees need never spend more than four and a half to six hours weekly on this activity!
In most instances two or three workouts per week of never more than 45-60 minutes duration each will be sufficient. In cases where the supremely dedicated and totally committed devotee whose lifestyle revolves around training is concerned, an absolute maximum of three two-hour workouts per week will always be plenty.
Weight-training is concentrated and intensive (which is the reason for its enormous value and desirability as an exercise form). One can achieve, for example, more from doing one hard and heavy set of a dozen or so barbell squats than one could achieve from doing many hundreds of freehand knee bends.
You have the time. Just do it. You can make all the time you need by losing the stretching, the calisthenics, the acrobatics, the meditation, and all the other horse dung that is integral to so many of the so-called “martial” studies*.
*We in no sense suggest that some of the traditional exercises and calisthenic work might not be valuable for those studying with objectives OTHER THAN practical self-defense and close combat in mind. For hand-to-hand battle, however, weight training remains The Method of physical training with which to supplement martial skills work.