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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 ...

In the context of taijiquan it means power released suddenly from a correctly positioned body in the correct state of relaxation (song). The problem is that each of these steps above has to be explained. I'd rather point you at a blog post by Mike Sigman on fa jing as there are back-references there to other material. A common first step once you have ...

Before discussing what type of breathing generates power, you have to discuss how the body generates power. And even more importantly, how martial artists apply the principles of power. Martial arts is less interested in the physics definition of power--mainly because it is of little practical use. Typically, a martial artist is interested in the force ...

It seems you are suffering a rush of adrenaline when you get hit, hence why you speed up and can take (or are prepared to take) further hits. Overall, this rush of adrenaline is bad and should be avoided. Adrenaline is great when little old ladies need to lift crashed cars off people or you need to sprint into a burning building to save someone. While ...

"Jin" means a trained force, somewhat like a force vector. "Fa" is to attack. In a more practical sense, fajin is a pronounced force that involves the whole body shaking and adding to the power. On a more titillating level, fa jin implies that the body relaxes to produce this burst of force. And it's true. So look for a way to store force and then ...

@Wudang tried to explain it from the point of view of a taijiquan practitioner, but in my mind, he mostly just glossed over the description of fajing and of how to get it working. The term fajin is composed of two words fa, which means "to send out, to issue" and jin is a word used for strength (quite interestingly, one of the pinyin translations I found ...

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 ...

There is a good article I came across on this subject.... http://www.damientrainor.com/2012/you-dont-need-to-win-in-sparring Some points + some of mine you don't need to win! meaning, the mindset about what you think sparring is is going to effect how you spar and what you will get from it. It will effect your emotional reaction to getting hit. if you ...

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.

If training with a sensei is not an option at the moment, understand that it limits both your knowledge and what it takes to self-correct. A trained eye can see where you are having issues. Since that has been harped on with just about every answer, I'll move on to the technique. Use a Heavy Bag Keep in mind that there is a huge difference between ...

Around the beginning of 2012, I spent some time online trying to locate a freely available design for a martial arts board holder. At the time there was nothing available*. So after taking some inspiration from a few commercially available compact designs (see: http://www.google.com/search?tbm=isch&q=board+holder+martial+arts) I came up with my own. In ...

Coming from a taekwondo background, I see a lot of balance issues come from "banana" alignment. When you strike with your back-kick (or more commonly, side-kick), you want your body to be in a straight line from heel through your hips to your head, but it's very common for people to lean forwards to look around their body, which will lead to over-balancing ...

Tanner's Law The number of people who can self-teach martial arts is terrifically small. These people do exist. They are generally genetic freaks, established extraordinary athletes in another discipline, and/or have an unusually dedicated group to train with. This is called Tanner's Law, after one such impressive individual. It is of particular importance ...

I hate to say it, but you probably do need to train with a coach to show you why you are pushing your weight off centre. For a straight kick, you should be pushing through your centre of mass to your anchor foot - it sounds like you are aiming incorrectly, or possibly twisting your body incorrectly, but it would need someone to watch you to help you correct ...

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 ...

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 ...