Is weight training useful in martial arts?

Question

This may sound like a bit of a daft question, but I have heard and read different sides. On the one side, people say weight training will increase your strength and power and therefore will be beneficial within a martial arts application.

However, I have also heard that weight training focuses more on physical size, as opposed to strength; and that it is possible to increase your muscular strength without gaining the size. Similar arguments also suggest weight training to be less beneficial in martial arts, given that the extra mass would result in slower movements.

Does weight training benefit martial arts in terms of power, or does it actually not really introduce much benefit and instead result in slower moves?

Answer 1

What you have heard is at least partly wrong. Heavy weight lifting can be about increasing size, but it is more often about directly increasing strength (it's part of the distinction between a bodybuilder and a powerlifter). The expression is that "no one gets bulky by accident." I also have never seen any reliable evidence that it makes you slower at reasonable level, and one of the big proponents of weight lifting in the martial arts world was Bruce Lee.

You can see what the Stronglifts people say about some general weightlifting myths, and their answer is basically the same as many other sources on the subject.

You'll also see it with other sports: those that require speed still emphasize some form of strength training. That's not always weightlifting (e.g., gymnastics, and they look better built than many weightlifters I've come across) but it is still strength training. Frequently emphasizing compound motions.

Personally, I've found that strength training (again, weights are not necessary for strength training) a tremendous advantage in martial arts, helping with speed, flexibility, body awareness, and power.

Answer 2

Tom Kurz notes:

Taekwondo master Hee Il Cho, famous for his powerful and precise jumping kicks, says, “Weight lifting can help athletes in any sport, including the martial arts. The more strength and size you have, the better you will perform. If two people weigh the same, the one with more muscle can hit harder."

You should listen to Hee Il Cho. He knows what he's talking about. (Kurz gives the source as: Jeffrey, D. 1994. The Master of Devastating Kicks: Hee Il Cho's Routine for Fast, Powerful Kicks. Martial Arts Training March 1994, pp. 20–25, 62.)

What Kind of Weight Training?

Weight training only focuses on muscle size if that's what you're focusing on. Weights are a tool. You can use them to get bigger, or to develop strength or power or endurance.

It's important to distinguish the basic forms of training with weights:

• Bodybuilding - lifting for size and appearance; the goal is to look like, say, Arnold Schwarzenegger or Jay Cutler. This is the least productive form of weight training for martial arts: one is primarily trying to get bigger, using methods such as machines and isolation work that are generally sub-optimal for functional or sportive purposes.
• Powerlifting - lifting for strength; the goal is to improve one's ability to produce force. It is hard for me to conceive of a situation where, independent of other factors, strength is anything but a boon to martial arts practice. (The only possibility I've heard is that exceptionally strong individuals must make a conscious effort to rely on technique instead of physicality. This is akin to the curse of being naturally agile: cry me a river.) The basics include the slow lifts: squats, deadlifts, bench and overhead presses, pull-ups.
• Weightlifting - lifting for power; the goal is to improve one's ability to produce force quickly. The primary tools are the fast Olympic lifts: cleans, jerks, and snatches. Power is a derivative of strength, and everything I said about strength's applicability to martial arts counts triple for power. Exerting force quickly is a fundamental aspect of nearly all sports, particularly for striking and throwing techniques.

There are many programs for strength and power training that focus on developing those qualities without adding mass. (Some of them are martial-arts specific.) A certain amount of mass, however, is often a boon anyway for undernourished martial artists.

Benefits of Strength

Achieving a significant level of strength and power is one of the most straightforward ways to increase the effectiveness of your techniques. However, getting bigger for the purpose of getting bigger is not directly productive for martial arts. (Getting bigger will probably mean you'll get stronger, which would be good.)

But martial arts is about physicality combined with technique. Strength and power are essential components of the physicality necessary to execute any technique properly. Lifting weights is arguably the most efficient method for developing those qualities. People who say differently are either already athletic (either naturally or through prior training), or are inexperienced with weight training and shun the unknown.

Minimum Strength Necessary to Practice Fighting

Weak people have no business training martial arts. They are liable to get hurt, and will find themselves too weak to properly execute basic movements and techniques. Martial arts are about optimizing the use of strength. This is not the same as obviating the need for a baseline level of strength.

If you've been around a popular martial arts dojo long enough, I'm sure you can remember a new person signing up who is physically incapable of performing even the most basic techniques. Often they find themselves injured and re-injured, toughing out muscle spasms and sore joints in order to continue doing the activity they love. This is not healthy. Students should be required to achieve a basic level of physicality before joining regular class. Strength and mobility are of primary concern in this period, with conditioning a distant third since it can quickly be developed through regular class activities.

Take well the advice of Kurz (ibid):

People who can't put a barbell or a partner weighing at least as much as them on their shoulders and easily do a few squats are too weak to learn fighting techniques.

Test this hypothesis yourself: take six months to work up to a bodyweight barbell squat. (I'd add a 1.5x bodyweight deadlift, plus a dozen chin-ups and some heavy power cleans and presses.) Then, ask yourself whether it helped you hit harder, spar longer, pin people better, and keep a better grip on your opponent. If so, great. If not, go back to doing nothing, and with scant attention to the "problem" of excess strength, you will be smaller and weaker again.

Answer 3

First off I wouldn't worry about accidentally turning in to Arnold. Body builder forums are littered with people struggling to gain mass. It's much tougher than you think and you'd have to be REALLY focused on gaining mass and not just strength to even have much of a chance of that happening.

While strength is not always paramount in many martial arts, it sure doesn't hurt either. There is a reason competitions are divided by weight class. Weight (especially muscle mass vs fat) offers a large advantage - you can hit harder and you can take harder blows. I think the evidence is fairly obvious if you watch any professional fighters - none of those guys got to that size or build without some sort of weight training regimen - whether it's free weight, body weight, or machine weight exercise.

Answer 4

Absolutely it does! When I was training judo seriously, I was in the gym lifting weights 3x a week. In most martial arts, you don't want to get huge and bulky like THelper mentioned.

But it's easy to train explosive power and balance and endurance, all of which will help your martial arts training.

Answer 5

In the past weight training was almost synonymous with body building, but nowadays there is a huge difference between the two. Doing training with heavy weights will make you slower, but you can counter this by switching between heavy weights and explosive power exercises regularly. Also, there are many weight training exercises (with low weights) that can you do to increase your strength and power while keeping your speed.

Most people I know who are rather serious about their sport and are keen on improving speed and power do at least one weight training a week (unless they are in a period with many matches).

Answer 6

Bud Jeffries has a great article on this; http://www.strongerman.com/articles/martial-arts-and-strength/

He's a strongman, not a bodybuilder, so is much more in line with what martial artists should be interested in. He addresses the pros and cons, particularly noteworthy is that with his focus on strength training he doesn't train as much for skill, so from that a reasonable conclusion is up to a certain point strength training is absolutely beneficial, but after that point you make a decision as to whether you want to primarily be a martial artist or primarily a strength athlete, and dedicate your time appropriately.

I have deep interest in the martial arts, have studied several, and fought some. However, because of my heavy commitment to strength training in and of itself, competitively and my outlook toward being an all-around-athlete, I have decent, but not excessive technical skills. Nothing close to the greats as far as technical ability, but I generally do understand enough to take care of myself on a mat. Infact I have grappled some tough, very tough fighters and made quite a competitive match. Not because I had the technical ability that they had, but because their techniques are much harder to make work on a stronger opponent.

Answer 7

Toning and conditioning your muscles is very important, couple that with weight lifting and building your quick twitch muscle groups can only help you improve as a martial artist. You have to realize though that depending on the scenario the added weight and bulk of muscles can hinder you.

As a larger guy some of the leg locks I can't do because of my calfs, notably a triangle choke. Also moving my weight around in a sparing session I get winded far easier then my lighter counterparts.

I've never been a fan of 'power lifting to get ripped'. I know a number of people I train with that are stronger than me and far smaller.

Answer 8

You'll want to take a look at The Four Hour Body. It's a good book that shows a lot of interesting tidbits about ways to use weight lifting. The short of it is - you can do it for size or for power, and you can even do it for speed. Now.. Tailor this to your own training.

Answer 9

Weight training can help in martial arts, but sometimes only a "little."

Weight training improves your overall conditioning, and in that regard is helpful, particularly if it increases your endurance.

But most of martial arts is not about strength or mass, but rather about USAGE of different body parts in certain well-defined ways.

GENERALIZED weight training won't do much for these individual body parts. But SPECIALIZED training (of fingers, hands, biceps, legs etc.) might.