Hows best to balance martial arts and gymnastics?

I've been off from martial arts for a while now due to injury and have just been doing static stuff as it helps by physio a lot! But I'm getting close to be able to start fighting 3 days a week again and I wanted to know if anyone else does this aswell as another sport and how do they balance training? Am I best doing the static holds before or after martial arts training or on the rest days? Ive had problems with overtraining before and realy dont want to go down that road again. Any help would be ace.

Anyone? Or are most people on this site die hard gymnasts?

Pick what your primary goals are and adjust the rest of the work accordingly. I personally have always found that there is no substitute for raw physical power and ability, and while by no means does superior power win the fight, it is more important than any other single factor. Focus on becoming strong, with technique as a secondary. Deal with conditioning last. Conditioning is easy compared to the other two. 2-3 months hard work and you can keep up with most pros in the conditioning department, but the same is NOT true of strength or technique. Those take much longer to develop, and so they should be developed first. SOME conditioning work will help, but by no means should it be a significant part of your work until you are wildly strong for your weight class. That is my personal take on building a champion. You take your time, build him piece by piece, and then unleash him on his unfortunate opponents when he is ready, and not before. If you don't care to fight professionally, then do whatever you want. If you ant to fight professionally but don't intend to be a champion, then you clearly intend to be someone else's stepping stone to a belt, and while I don't understand that i guess you can do that if you want to. There are only two paths in fighting, learning to be beaten or learning to beat everyone. If you truly want to be dangerous, it will take time. Dangerous fighters are physically superior, intelligent fighters with superior technique who will kill you at the first opportunity. Absence of any one of those attributes limits the dominance of the fighter.

slizzardman said:

while by no means does superior power win the fight, it is more important than any other single factor. Focus on becoming strong, with technique as a secondary. Deal with conditioning last.

i'm going to disagree... technique is the most important factor in sport... if talking about fighting look at mma... bj penn beat sherk, st pierre beat alves/fitch, silva beat irvin, loyota beat sokoudjou and fedor beat hong man choi ... they don't win because they are the biggest and the strongest... what separates them is their technique... speed, strength, heart and conditioning play a role but if you want to get bettter at something make it you focus... you want to be a better fighter? then practice fighting...

there are so many elements involved its hard to make recommendations... intensity, duration, history, diet, the list goes on... i would do some conditioning after practice and do strength work maybe twice/week depending on how your body feels... fighting is very hard on the body and its easy to over train... good luck

I am not claiming that superior physical power is in any way going to overcome a combination of superior speed, technique, or conditioning. However, looking at the examples you use, you're not taking into account that I am not talking about maximal strength, but power output. Sean sherk is the one exception(though BJ in his own right is a very strong& powerful guy for his size), and bj's animalistic viciousness wins him a lot of victories. I have always thought that sokoudjou was wildly over-rated, and though he IS strong, Machida is a much more powerful striker, and he does have such a high degree of technical proficiency that sokoudjou honestly never had a chance... he just isn't that good of a fighter. But again, watch the Shogun VS Machida fight... Shogun is much stronger than Machida, and while it could be argued that machida is perhaps more technically proficient Shogun's superior power(and in my personal opinion his more intelligent fight plan) won the day. The fact that Machida retained his belt is an embarrassment to the MMA community at large. I lost a lot of respect for him. He knew damn well he had been beaten, and while at least he had enough manhood to not claim the victory, he did not say "I don't deserve this belt right now, you beat me and all the fans here know it" but instead said "The judges scored a unanimous decision for me." Or something like that I don't remember the exact words, but that's what he was saying. Not that he won, but that the judges gave him the win.

As for St. Pierre, you (respectfully of course) are completely out of your gourd if you think anyone in his weight class or the weight class above him is as strong or powerful as he is. Take a look at his training. I don't know of any 185'ers that are doing 10+ reps of bench with 100 lb dumbbells, as just one example. Check out his training videos. The man is really pushing the abilities of a body that size. St. Pierre is a shining example of what superior ability in all areas looks like. The one spot he is weak is his striking, but he has gotten better as time has progressed, to where he holds his own.

Fedor as well has unbelievable physical power. He doesn't look like it, but he's strong as hell and powerful too.

What I am basically saying is that it takes less excess power to overcome excess technique than it takes excess technique to overcome excess power. It is not by any means a perfect analogy, but if I had any one thing hugely in my favor, I would want it to be an extreme excess of physical power. That doesn't mean I don't think technique is hugely important, but out of all the factors I think power is the wildcard that matters the most. When you have KO power in a large number of positions, you are dangerous no matter how good your opponent is. In the end it is really more a matter of me liking "rock" the most in a game of paper, rock, scissors

It's perfectly valid to make the same argument for technique, they are very similar in importance. To lack either one is a terrible weakness. I have simply had the experiences of ruining people with superior technique because I can hurt them faster than they can hurt me, and I can simply take more punishment. Having said that, I also believe technique to be vitally important And I will absolutely concede that on the ground, having better technique is more important than strength or power. Even so, with almost no training I can hold my own against people who have trained for two years or so with BJJ. And that's in a Gi. I have also had the experience of having the superior technique before I had superior strength and power, but with even with that, I knew the lucky punch could take me out. Now, though my technique isn't anywhere near as good as it was, I am a better fighter overall. I am hard to get a clean hit on, and I can control the ring because I step in the way of where you want to go instead of circling with you, and since I am hitting harder you're going to want to back away. So, while they are so close in importance to me that about 47% of me wants to slap myself across the face and say "NO WAY DUDE, technique rules!" there is a slightly larger part of me that truly believes that superior strength and power are a little more important.

I do agree with the training practices, twice a week strength training is plenty. Twice a week of endurance conditioning is plenty too. At least half of your time should be focused specifically on retraining your instinctual reactions to be what you want them to be. It takes around 2000 repetitions for a reaction to replace the existing instinctual reaction, so that's 40 days at 50 repetitions a day. So take attack angles two or three at a time and train specifically to have a certain reaction to them. It doesn't matter if it's a hand, elbow, or foot, if it's coming in from the top left as you look at it you should(as an example) bring up your left arm with hand on the back of the head, elbow forward as you step as deep into it as you can, and then shove the shoulder. That's just one example. Repeat, repeat, repeat. I spent about 9 months doing 60-70% of my training in that fashion and no one could hit me, ever, and I was always hitting them when they tried. If I had spent most of my time sparring, I would not have had that level of dominance. You'll want to do the same thing on the ground. That's why multiple workouts a day are great, you spend an hour or two here and there working one or two techniques until it's automatic. You don't waste energy because you're not really doing that much work.

When I say technique should be secondary, I don't mean that it should be considered less important or that it should take up a smaller percentage of your training time, but I do mean that the bulk of your energy should be spent on your strength days, making sure that you are making the best strength and power gains you can, with your technique work occupying nearly all of the time after that, modulated to assist in the recovery process. It doesn't take more than a year or two to become a true physical powerhouse, and at that point you'll switch to maintaining strength and power while improving conditioning and perfecting technique. Your techniques should already be quite well developed at that point, so it will be polishing work, and your conditioning will already be average at the worst. With a strong body to begin with, 3-4 months is all it takes to be ready to go all out for five 5 minute rounds.

This is not a proven thing, merely my own experience, and heavily biased at that. It's easy for me to contradict myself with this and side with Griff . As good as I was, a bigger, stronger, more powerful guy could beat me with a lucky punch or kick(or elbow or knee). It is now nice to not only have the technique on my side but the ability to dish out and take more punishment as well.

Edit: I left Anderson Silva out. My bad He's by far the most polished fighter in MMA in my opinion, and I do not have confidence in anyone's ability to beat him. He fights very similarly to how I used to, and he is one of the few guys that I get all excited about when I think about fighting someone. The guy is very well drilled, he's got perfect reactions. I don't even think a lucky punch will get him, because he doesn't allow those situations to present themselves in the first place.

Lizzard and Griff, what you are talking about is "martial sport". Neither "art" nor "combatives". Let's no go into this or I will use my "MOD" powers. Yes, that's how I roll.

Longshanks, what martial pursuit are you involved in?

Longshanks said:

I wanted to know if anyone else does this aswell as another sport and how do they balance training?

does mma not qualify as another sport? sorry if you're not a fan bob

Blairbob said:

what you are talking about is "martial sport". Neither "art" nor "combatives".

i thought he said he did martial arts but will be fighting 3 days/week? doesn't say what kind of fighting he is doing... maybe you should reread my post and see that the point of it is not mma but rather how to approach training...

Blairbob said:

I will use my "MOD" powers. Yes, that's how I roll.

BlairBob stop with the power trip and grow up... or i have no problem "rolling out" of here

HAHAHAHA!!! Ah, comedy in the early morning... well, 10 am-ish. I wonder, does that clock have a beard? Wow, that was bad even for me.

Shanks, griff does have a good point. The truth is that while I have my bias, all aspects of your training are important. If I were you, I would look at my game, perhaps with someone who has no emotional attachment to you, and decide where your weakest two areas are, and spend most of your energy on those until they are above average, and then move on to two more. Of course, I personally think about this from the perspective of a) building the ultimate warrior, and b) getting into either an mma fight or a street fight with no rules. If neither of those interest you then a different approach might be a better idea.

Blair: What's the deal? As I understand it, moderators are here to mediate disputes if called upon, and perhaps to remove offensive posts(racial slurs, inappropriate language, etc). I do not believe it is the intent or function of a moderator position to try and bully two forum members into silence because the moderator does not personally approve of the terms used in a discussion, so long as they are not slurs or insults. You have every right to join the discussion and express your opinions or to be disgusted with our (in your eyes) poor choice of descriptive terms and stay silent. You do, of course, have the power to impose your will, and should you choose to do so because you do not approve of our discussion for whatever personal reason, you will be acting as nothing but a bully. I do not know why you have disrespected us with your words the way you have, but I would appreciate you not doing so in the future. I don't tolerate bullying from anyone, period, for any reason, and I currently think better of you than you being this sort of person. Please do not give me reason to think less of you. We have our discussion here, and we have every right to continue it.

MMA, does qualify as a sport to me. I think what threw me off was I saw MartialArt and didn't notice the term of "fighting".

Actually, to get on to a similar context, I would probably quantify MMA as more of a sport than gymnastics which I tend to think of as athletics endeavor. It sort of depends on your definition of sport and athletics. I think of sport as two opposing active entities. There is competition in gymnastics, team and individual but it's not of the sort that wants to actively beat you. It's passive. Apparatus is passive, a LB is not. Sports and athletics blur the line and there is much crossover.

I'm only a mod. I do not wield infinite, supreme cosmic power over the board (*itty bitty living space*) That comes with SuperMod powers. It was a bloody joke, though I guess I offended some people here. I guess I was in a rare mood last night, probably still irked from coaching my little punks. My apologies.

Currently, I only train 1-2d/w doing combatives because of schedule. There is the rare occasion there is weekend training, but it's rare. At best, I get some solo training a few days during the week to work on basics but not really partner work.

Honestly, this stuff does tire me over time (2-3 hours), but I don't consider it as tiring as working out/physical training. It's more tiring from a mental exhaustion standpoint besides getting slammed to the floor, punch, kicked, choked and getting hit with blunt objects or avoiding non-blunt objects. I find the combatives training to be more stamina than power/strength.

Generally, if I allow for appropriate rest, I can do S&C later. This generally means refueling and rehydrating. Slizzardman has talked about being able to train in different modalities 4 hours later. Without proper hydration and fueling during the day of training, I typically do not have it in me to do S&C the same day as I tend to not just not have enough calories, protein, carbs, fat in.

Way back when eons ago I trained 5-6d/w as a young'n in HS, I typically would go home, eat dinner and be able to do more S&C at night. It wasn't nearly as programmed as I would do nowadays but it would be more focused on S&C (though we generally had a bunch of S&C we did during MA training in the 45-1h WU). To also note in what I did, there was very little groundwork, none during sparring and sparring was H2H without elbows and knees (punching and kicking with a Kyokushinkai partner). It was Karate-Do, not Judo or kickboxing though I would sometimes train with a Kickboxing friend during the weekend.

When I wrestled in HS, I had weights in the morning and generally was fresh enough by afternoon. And this was without anything like even a PWO after weights (which I was never told to do). Of course, it helped being 17 back then and only going to school and doing a sport and maybe working 2-3d/w PT short shifts. And I didn't really have to worry about meals and what not since I lived at home.

Look at what time you train during the day. If it's in the early afternoon, you could probably do S&C at night. If you train at night, you could possibly fit in S&C during the morn or just after noon. Just do like I don't/am not doing well enough now and fuel and hydrate appropriately. 3d/w will sort of depend on how it's set up during the week. TuWTh would suck but MWF is decent or TuThSa. If it is TuThSa/MWF, you can either do S&C on off days and hopefully you will be recovered well enough to train or simply S&C and train on those days and use the off day to just rest. That will depend on you, sleep/eat/hydrate and life.

Bloody hell, I leave my post a couple of days and all hell breaks loose! lol. I'd have to say though from a wealth of experience in martial arts (about 20 years of verious kinds and 10 specifically in thai boxing and BJJ), I have to say knowledge and the fast reaction of that knowledge into action completely overshadows any amount of strength, stamina, fitness etc. My origional trainer who I still visit every now and then for humbling reasons is about a foot shorter than me, about 50lbs lighter, has a fairly impressive bear gut and drives a lorry all day so is very unfit. To this day he still absolutely slaughters me whenever we spar because he simply knows a hell of a lot more than I do and can counter any move I pull on him and with reaction times that are astonishing. I'll clarify this point aswell by saying that he doesn't move that fast, relatively. He just takes fractions of a second less to react and couter moves and engages the right one instantly. I think if I'm right they call this psychological refractory period. Which can only come from practicing a move thousands of times, and developing it with age. As another example I have one BJJ instructor whos a 120lb lady in her 40s who I've still never locked out despite having a 110lb advantage over her, although my strength does slow down the inevitable a little bit she does still always lock me out. This is not to say I'm an amateur either, Ive fought in a cage a few times and even on occasion when I lost I did a lot of damage, once putting a guy in crutches for a long time. Bottom line, respect your elders, they know a lot more than you! Strength, fitness, conditioning undoubtedley help in MMA and may give you an edge but without the appropriate knowledge to engage the body at the right time they're all but useless.

Thanks for finally answering my origional question Blairbob. Ill give put your suggestions into action and see how they turn out. I'm hoping I'll get a static workout in prior to or following MMa'ing on the same day because Ive noticed it doesn't tend to fatigue your body like dynamic strength work I've done in the past, and I believe rest days are important . Guess I'll just have to listen to my body and see how it goes. Ive been overzelous in the past and had a laundry-list of injuries as a result.

I have played around with actually doing static training with my boys about 60-90m into their workout (they train for 3 hours) and later hitting dynamic/isokinetic/FBE towards the end of their training workouts with success. They also have a 10m break in there typically between 75-115m into the workout so they have about an hour to recover though they are working other gymnastic events. Typically I'll set them up so they can have some downtime between events such as working on vaulting or trampoline after working on upper body focused apparatus. It's not always this way, but sometimes it is.

I've noticed after a fair amount of the dynamic/isokinetic/FBE's my statics are just barely worth bothering. Actually, it's my planche work or V-hang/straddle-L's that takes a dive as I can still do the hanging lever work to some degree. Typically, I have to scale down a planche progression or just throw out the V's and straddle-L's. I may consider doing this work in the very early stages of my own training as I have tinkered with my boy's ( I've found if we do L and straddle-L work before PL/BL/FL it's a lot more productive [i had hoped to do the same for myself and it hasn't worked out lately though I used to be able to work as assistance work after PL/BL/FL]).

There is a reason they are masters. They are just so much more efficient than us it's ridiculous. It's kind of like that story of Coach/ex gymnast Mako Sakomoto doing 160 some odd HSPU on parallettes. He was also able to do a ridiculous number of HS presses from L on PB as well. Many masters know exactly where to move you using a minimum of force or where to be. I watch many GM of combative systems and it is ridiculous though I try to find the videos where the opponent isn't just a passive entity for the ride and actually puts some "mustard" on their attacks.

Yea sounds like doing dynamic work it prior to static stuff fries you CNS a bit so I'll probly do my static holds before going training. I tend to do about 12minutes in total covering a whole body workout over about an hour. At the moment thats all i do 3 times a week and dont notice fatigue at all. If it starts getting too much I'll probably just half the volume. This is my workout at the mo':

15mins stretching + Shoulder and wrist pre-hab work

Isometric L-flys (against door frame) - 30s

Grip stength on bar - 30s *2 (Supination/protation)

Isomatric squats (back against door) - 30s*2

Isometric Hamstring curl

(against pull-up bar at knee level) - 20s*3

Front lever (Advanced tuck) - 15s*4

Back lever (Advanced tuck) - 15s*4

Handstand - 30s*2

Handstand - 20s*3

Hanging-L - 15*2

Straddle sit - 15*2

Finger holds (pressup position on fingertips) - 20s*3

And just once a week I replace lever and planche work with negatives of 1-arm negative push-ups (on stairs at about 30degrees) and pull-ups (1-arm negatives with counterbalance on one hand attached to a 15kg weight)

Thanks again for the feedback

Forgot to mention 6*10secs advanced frog stand too.

I manage to balance martial arts, tricking (trickstutorials.com), gymnastics, and weightlifting. I've recently joined my high school's wrestling team as well.

It's not about balance, so to speak, it's about moderation. If you're tired, stop. Gymnastics is the biggest of those others right now, and I use weightlifting to compliment that. Everything else compliments my martial arts. So, MA is my ultimate goal and I do all those other things to aid it. Like a big tree.

I've never encountered overtraining because I know not to exercise when I'm feeling too sore, tired, or sick. Listen to your body; it's not about numbers... Everyone is different.

Longshanks said:

(1-arm negatives with counterbalance on one hand attached to a 15kg weight)

Brilliant. You just gave me a fantastic idea on how to do one arm chin work with specific amounts of assistance. Thanks!

It helps to be 16 or 22 and not 30 or 40 when it comes to volume and recovery.

Good thing I'm 16 then LOL

EH, I'm 28 now.. Well ok, 28 on Sunday, and I'm pretty game lol But it's true, the young ones heal faster.

And that's why I train hard.

That's the spirit!!!

Yea Im 26 so hopfully that means I've a good chance of getting my injuries fully recovered and back to 100% again. I have started noticing the hangovers getting a lot worse now though.... Think I used up the alloted millage on my liver by the time I left university! lol.

lmfao

Exercise and alcohol don't mix well. Even a few days apart. Especially involving something like gymnastics and martial arts

the fact that you're birthday is on sunday does not surprise me, Slizzardman.

HAHAHAHAHAHA!!!

I have my suspicions, but why is that?!