Maximum Hypertrophy Vs Maximum Strength

Joshua Naterman said:

I added numbers to make this easy.

 

1. They are smaller, so you will get more surface area and better conformation on the hands. Other than that, I don't know.
2. I'm pretty sure you know they are no longer good for anything except whatever you'd do with bean flour.
3. Yes. I'd say this took 20-30 minutes, but I never timed it.
4. Yes, but be careful. I chose to strike my feet, instead of kicking things, with a sock I made it out of the same canvas, but it was filled with river sand. Any kind of sand would be just as good. I used this everywhere on my body except my actual genitals. This took about an hour a day. I used to kick a heavy bag that was full of sand and sawdust, but it took me almost 6 months to get to where it was safe for me to do that. Start off with a regular 6 foot bag.
5. Not for healing, no. I always wanted to make dit da jao (spelling?) but I never did. I hear it helps, but that's entirely anecdotal.
6. No, but I played lots of street fighter and Counter-strike when I wasn't training, so perhaps that had some kind of effect. *shrug*

I don't believe the steel BB bag is dangerous UNLESS you are an idiot, but you should start with the beans and a sand bucket. If you do things that hurt, you're going to have problems. This kind of thing is a gradual process. I was always patient about stuff like this.

 

I am not telling you this is safe, no one knows that for sure. I make no guarantees, or suggestions, about whether or not you will be ok training on your own, and I can't say a single thing about long term consequences. We make decisions on our own, and then we live with the fallout, whether good or bad.

That looks like some hardcore training Josh. I'm just wondering, which martial arts did you do when you were younger?

Bipocni said:

I'm assuming you did this bare knuckle, or did you tape your wrists?

 

If you went the bare hand route, what kind of exercises would you do to promote wrist stability?

I never needed any. I was always climbing trees, jumping over trash cans or into trailers with my BMX, etc. I was also doing heavy shrugs for high reps at the time (built up to 5 plates for sets of 30), and quite a lot of Plum clinch training, so there was all kinds of indirect wrist work.

Coach's wrist series is excellent for wrist stability, so I'd recommend grabbing H1 just for that. since it's all closed chain work, I think it is quite directly applicable to what we are talking about right now.

Additionally, you are only supposed to use the amount of force that allows you to maintain wrist stability AND not cause pain. Even stinging will go away after the first few weeks, and at that point everything you do should be pain free. You must satisfy BOTH of those conditions if you really intend to make meaningful progress without hurting yourself.

And no, I never taped anything.

Fluidity said:

That looks like some hardcore training Josh. I'm just wondering, which martial arts did you do when you were younger?

Muay Thai. I skipped out of school about 10 minutes early to avoid traffic, and I was at the gym from 330pm until 11 pm. Every day, monday thru friday. After about two months I started training saturday and sunday as well, but that was from 7 am until about 2 pm. Weekends were pretty light, just a one hour jog, iron body and hand (my personal training, my trainer didn't do this stuff, but thought it was smart that I did) slow[er] reaction training and studying film of great fighters from a multitude of styles.

I decided, pretty much immediately, that since the biggest risks were breaking hands, taking a body shot you weren't prepared for, and injuring one's neck or getting a concussion, I would do everything I could to prevent that.

I figured that the key was starting slowly, and having quality tools. I studied what was available and decided that the approach I described earlier was the only intelligent way to do it. At least for me, n=1, everything went perfectly.

You already know what I did for iron body and hand. Additionally, my trainer had a ~25 lb leather medicine ball that was extremely tightly packed with towels. We started out using that from about a 24 inch drop and after about 8-9 months I was doing crunches while he was standing on a chair and slamming the ball down from overhead as hard as he could. We hit all over the rib cage, which the ball did a good job of covering maybe 30% of, at least, each hit. Left, middle, right, repeat x 50.

For my neck, I used a 4 way neck machine. Ended up doing 3 sets of 20 reps with ~120 lbs, and figured that since that's all the machine had on it that it was good enough. I probably started with 10-12 reps of 20 lbs, I believe.

All this talk of real martial arts training instead of point fighting training (which, pardon the pun, feels so pointless) really makes me look forward to getting into muay thai in early 2014. =)

Nice to hear about your old training, Josh. I really hope there are still hardcore gyms like that.

Patrick Smith said:

All this talk of real martial arts training instead of point fighting training (which, pardon the pun, feels so pointless) really makes me look forward to getting into muay thai in early 2014. =)

 

Nice to hear about your old training, Josh. I really hope there are still hardcore gyms like that.

Manu was... a very effective and unique trainer. He shared an awful lot with me that I don't pass on to other people, because there's no purpose in teaching fighters things they can't use in the ring. He took me under his wing a s a kind of protege, partly because I had some talent but mostly because I was very dedicated.

I was definitely lucky to find such a good surrogate older brother, as he came to be. 

As for the hardcore training, if you want to be good you have to accept an unbelievable amount of repetition and slow progression in learning reactions. You can't learn too many at once, and you need to spend a long time on each one. Perhaps this is why he is the guy people always went to when they REALLY needed help winning a title fight.

Joshua Naterman said:

Manu was... a very effective and unique trainer. He shared an awful lot with me that I don't pass on to other people, because there's no purpose in teaching fighters things they can't use in the ring. He took me under his wing a s a kind of protege, partly because I had some talent but mostly because I was very dedicated.

 

I was definitely lucky to find such a good surrogate older brother, as he came to be. 

 

As for the hardcore training, if you want to be good you have to accept an unbelievable amount of repetition and slow progression in learning reactions. You can't learn too many at once, and you need to spend a long time on each one. Perhaps this is why he is the guy people always went to when they REALLY needed help winning a title fight.

Repetition hasn't been a problem for me (you instilled that in me back when I was doing hours and hours of slow kicks, punches, and hip work).

Right now I'm practicing sport techniques in order to win as many of the remaining three tournaments as I can (for the prize money). I'm pretty good at point fighting--they call me Flash around here because I usually win my points with 2-3 quick roundhouse kicks (that people rarely block thanks to my muscle control) but the fighting feels too artificial for me and is not satisfying. I also have to teach because I'm a black belt, but all I want to do is be the student, have to fight for my life, and train really hard at something besides point fighting. I'm thinking that the best way for me to determine which club to join in the future is by how easily the students can beat me up. The easier the better. =)

Step one: Teach yourself to keep your hands at cheek level at all times. Even when exhausted, even when you have taken a nasty body shot that puts you on your knees. This is the one thing that you will see become the downfall of just about every fighter who gets knocked out, including Roy Jones Jr.

It's great to be faster, but the other person just has to get luckier one time, and luck is never on your side 100% of the time. I prefer to earn luck with hard work, and develop habits that cover my back when Lady Luck takes a vacation.

Joshua Naterman said:

Manu was... a very effective and unique trainer. He shared an awful lot with me that I don't pass on to other people, because there's no purpose in teaching fighters things they can't use in the ring. He took me under his wing a s a kind of protege, partly because I had some talent but mostly because I was very dedicated.

 

I was definitely lucky to find such a good surrogate older brother, as he came to be. 

 

As for the hardcore training, if you want to be good you have to accept an unbelievable amount of repetition and slow progression in learning reactions. You can't learn too many at once, and you need to spend a long time on each one. Perhaps this is why he is the guy people always went to when they REALLY needed help winning a title fight.

Josh in terms of fighting ability, right now I came back from a shoulder injury that's been bothering me a long time and was able to explosively punch around 6 punches per second with my friend timing me. Would you consider that talent, considering that I haven't been able to work on my MA training for a while?  I'm working on becoming as explosive as physiologically possible both in sprinting and my martial arts training. Foundation has helped me a lot, would you recommend anything else for me to do prior or after  my foundation workouts?

Talent is more than physical ability. Talent is the ability to learn, as well.

If you believe you are talented, you will BE more talented.

My recommendations for you, as someone I don't know in person and have never seen move, are to be evaluated by people who are better than you in your sport and learn from them. Find out what weaknesses they see, and how they would fix that, and fix that. 

There will be a lot of opinion thrown around, so it's going to be a bumpy journey. Strap in, and enjoy it

Joshua Naterman said:

Talent is more than physical ability. Talent is the ability to learn, as well.

 

If you believe you are talented, you will BE more talented.

 

My recommendations for you, as someone I don't know in person and have never seen move, are to be evaluated by people who are better than you in your sport and learn from them. Find out what weaknesses they see, and how they would fix that, and fix that. 

 

There will be a lot of opinion thrown around, so it's going to be a bumpy journey. Strap in, and enjoy it

Haha Thanks Josh 

Charm said:

......there are a host of benefits aside from the conditioning.......

Anyone else get curious?

Bipocni said:

Anyone else get curious?

Charm was talking about iron shirt training

FredInChina said:

Charm was talking about iron shirt training

See, here I was hoping for more than just increased bone density and pain tolerance.  Just getting greedy now....

Bipocni said:

See, here I was hoping for more than just increased bone density and pain tolerance. Just getting greedy now....

Many traditional Chinese iron shirt approaches combine the beating with massage, hard and soft qigong, and holds derived from yoga. You also.move through beating with different materials-- bundle o bamboo sticks, steel shot bag, heavy wire etc to simulate different types of power. It depends how far you want to take it :-) many cultures use light beating or slapping to stimulate blood flow and whatnot; this kind of approach begins there and ramps it up with martial application in mind.

Sort of how taiji is of huge benefit to anyone just learning the basics, but if people want the whole hog they can then take the classical forms and learn to fight with them.

This stuff goes really well alongside daily training, as you get your direct conditioning while sparring, using the bags or dummies, three star drill, calisthenics etc, while gradually building up the more comprehensive stuff. By the time you're sparring full contact, you're a lot less afraid of that hit coming in, which is often a stumbling block for a new student. Even if you only teach basic iron body, you tend to see more students focusing on what they are doing rather than chasing hands. They also have great skin.

That's just ime anyway~

So is a makiwara bag the recommended protocol for conditioning elbows for striking as well?  I can't really picture a decent elbow strike being delivered into a bucket of sand...