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In martial art circles, we often hear that training while exhausted (or tiered) will improve your technique. The one I heard was that it will force one to stop all extraneous movement and do the minimum to get a technique to work.
Is this true? If not, when might it be a useful learning tool?
Martial arts instructors are frequently tasked with running a sport workout without having any formal training (that is, outside of their own dojo) to do so. This means that many of these instructors--my past self included--ran classes that were particularly counterproductive from a workout-design perspective.
One of the most common ways this manifests itself is with overly intensive "warm-ups". Really, these are conditioning workouts in their own right, though they are generally not structured in a progressive fashion to realize training goals over time. This is common in any widespread exercise method. For instance, this criticism of CrossFit notes that there's a distinct tendency to emphasize "beat-down" workouts instead of rationally designed progressions towards training goals. It's easy to run students through a grueling set of exercises and make them tired.
It requires time, knowledge, forethought, and effort to run a structured workout or design a training program correctly. That's why the ex-post-facto "training when you're tired will make you learn the technique better" explanation (and it's cousin the just-so story of "training when you're tired means you'll remember the technique when you're tired") is so popular.
Tom Kurz' Science of Sports Training page 267 (under Technical Exercises in a Workout) notes:
If, at the initial stages of learning a technique, athletes are allowed to get tired, their fatigue will alter the technique and incorrect technique will be learned, perhaps permanently.
(One of Kurz' articles on this topic, entitled Examples of Good and Bad Workouts, used to be available on stadion.com but is currently unavailable.)
From the same book but on the next page, it is noted that techniques the student knows and can already perform well should occasionally be trained under some degree of fatigue:
One [technical] workout can be done at the end of the [weekly] microcycle, when the athlete is tired [from previous workouts in the week], to learn how to use the technique in adverse conditions. In this workout only well-mastered techniques should be practiced.
This is contrary to the idea that one should learn the technique when tired, which interferes with learning. It only applies to techniques the athlete is proficient in, and now needs to practice under more challenging conditions.
For learning a new technique, a better approach is to run a structured workout that progresses from warm-up to directed warm-up to sport-specific movements and culminates (while the athlete is still fresh) in learning one technique. Learning multiple techniques causes interference and should be avoided.
There's a lot of things that happen when you're training, whilst being over-exhausted. Improvement of technique is NOT one of them.
There are three characteristics of good training methods - they should be effective, efficient and stretch your limits. If you're not trying to do all three you're either wasting time or you will not reach your fullest potential.
Looking at goals for training in terms of technique improvement, it is extremely inefficient to train the LEARNING of technique when you're overexhausted. You will not be able to absorp any new information, you will not be able to control your different muscle groups working together properly and you will simple have muscle fallout causing you to do things with incorrect posture, motion etc.
The main reasons why you'd every train whilst being exhausted are to train mental strength and/or be prepared for fighting extended battles.
So there can be reasons for training an experienced person who's exhausted, but you'd always have to keep the goals in mind.
Take away: for each training program there are goals. Those will be split up in sub goals and each lesson is then designed to accomplish those goals over time.
Goals can be improvement of technique (split up into different techniques), improvement of conditioning, improvement of strength, improvement of focus etc etc. Looking at those goals you then arrive at a certain drill/routine/exercise/program.
Good luck training - and always keep thinking for yourself. Not so much to second guess the trainer, but mostly to understand and aid your own training and development.
In martial arts mental strength is equally important with technique. The main advantage of Exhaustive training is increase in mental strength . We learn that we can get tired to such an extend and still be able to fight. We acquire the experience to handle such a tough situation .
I think Exhaustive training is not really good to learn a new technique. The technique must be learned slowly & properly after which can be executed in a tired condition . From my experience it teaches us to use our energy most efficiently. like throwing the punches wisely, moving around the ring with minimum energy loss etc
The point is to teach you how to function properly when you're exhausted. During army basic training recruits will be required to run a good few miles before they're taken to the shooting range for target practice. The point behind the exercise is that in a live-fire scenario, you would have been marching for half a day, or you'd have been digging foxholes and you'd be out of breath and stiff when the enemy attacks. If you haven't learned how to shoot straight with aching and protesting muscles during basic training, an actual fire fight is the most horrible place to learn this lesson.
On the flipside, my father-in-law was a sniper in the South African Defense Force (not to be confused with the South African NATIONAL Defence Force) and said that being drilled in shooting while exhausted made their unit the best at competitions. If you can control your aim when tired, you'll be able to do it so much better when you're not.
It's not a giant leap to apply this principle to unarmed martial arts: if your muscles can do it properly while tired, so much the better when they are fresh. Also keep in mind that in a tournament, especially a tough one, by the time you get to the final match, you'll have acquired many knots and bruises and your muscles will be complaining. The guy who's better able to deal with this will be the champion.
