Lessons on fitness from kickboxing and other martial arts.
Let’s look at coordinated strength versus raw strength.
Raw strength is just unharnessed power at your disposal. If you pick up a heavy weight often enough you get stronger. You have more raw strength at your disposal and can handle more mass.
Coordinated strength is different. Coordinated strength is something that we can apply in complex movements and through a wide range of motion. Martial arts are exponentially more complex in movement than something like weight lifting. This complex movement used in kickboxing leads to strength and conditioning that can adjust to meet a wide variety of demands.
We are only as resilient as we are adaptable. Injury or failure happen when the body is pushed outside of its familiar range of motion and physical demand without resources to meet the challenge. At that point our structure actually physically gives out and we are injured. Or, we simply physically fail this task that we needed to accomplish and are set back. Recovery may take days, even weeks, or longer depending on the severity of the failure.
A good fitness regimen should make you look and feel good. We all want that.
Kickboxing which develops high levels of coordinated strength makes you feel good but also, more resilient. It gives you more strength through a wider range of movement.
From this we learn that any workout plan you put together should incorporate as much variety of movement as possible.
It should utilize the core extensively.
Kickboxing uses every part of the body but the power of the movement is always connected to the core. The entire body is worked with kickboxing training.
Your workout should also try to use every intensity level, or gear the body has.
The training should have a warm up phase for more gentle movements. It should have a cruising phase, something you could maintain for hours if need be. It should have an endurance-speed phase which is physically challenging but you can still maintain for a significant amount of time. There should also be a physical red line phase where you are pushing your body absolutely to its limits. Redline training can’t be maintained for long at all. However, you want to be familiar with that zone so, if it’s ever demanded of you can rise the challenge.
Follow those simple principles as you put together a workout routine and you’ll get excellent results! Also, consider adding complex movement training like kickboxing or another martial art for developing coordinated, robust, resilient strength.
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