We’ve already the Top 10 High Protein Foods You Need To Be Eating and the Top 10 Best Carbohydrate Sources You Need To Be Eating. Now we’re going to cover the next of the three major macronutrients; Fats.
Continue reading 5 Sources of Healthy Fats You May Want To Add To Your Diet
We’ve already covered protein sources you should be eating in our article on the Top 10 High Protein Foods You Need To Be Eating, and now we’re going to cover the next of the three major macronutrients; Carbohydrates.
Continue reading Top 10 Best Carbohydrate Sources You Need To Be Eating
Tendonitis is the common name for a range of different injuries that can be caused to the tendons of the bodies various muscles – the strong cords of tissue that connect the muscle and the skeleton, and are needed to move the bones and joints when the muscles contract and relax.
Continue reading Common Training Injuries and How to Treat Them – Tendonitis
Maybe you’ve just starting training, you’ve been to a few classes and decided to start running to up your cardio. Maybe you’re a fighter and you’ve ramped up your running to get ready for a fight. Either way, you’ve been running for a while and you get this pain shooting down the front of your lower leg, and it turns your run from what could have been a personal best into a painful hobble.
Welcome to the world of shin splints.
Continue reading Common Training Injuries and How to Treat Them – Shin Splints
I’m sure you’ve heard at various different times in your training about muscle fibres, and more specifically ‘fast twitch’ and ‘slow twitch’ muscle fibres, and the importance of training specifically to develop each type. But what the hell are the different types of muscle fibre? This article is going to run through the two different types, what they do and how to develop them and most importantly what ones you want to develop to help improve your martial arts.
Continue reading The Difference Between Fast and Slow Twitch Muscle Fibres in Combat Sports
As a fighter you’re constantly looking for an edge to get you ahead of your opponent. You can drill technique constantly, but to become a complete and well rounded athlete you need to develop speed and power as well. You need to be able to go from relaxed to full power in a split second, and the way to get there is to work on becoming explosive.
Continue reading 5 Body Weight Exercises To Increase Your Explosiveness
When you walk into the gym it’s easy to be overwhelmed by the huge array of equipment for you to choose from, and find yourself faced with choosing which pieces of equipment are going to be the most effective to improve your strength and conditioning. For the most part, all the different equipment is going to improve a different area – the squat rack is going to help you develop overall strength, treadmill sprints are going to help you develop the high intensity/short burst cardio you need in the ring. But what if there was a piece of gear, just one thing, that’s going to give you game changing conditioning, explosive punching power and the kind of muscle endurance that’s going to keep you punching and kicking well after the final round. Sound too good to be true?
Meet the Kettlebell.
Continue reading Fight Quality Kettlebell Conditioning Circuit
Whether you’re a seasoned professional fighter or you’ve taken up a martial art for fitness, nutrition is important. The overused phrase is that getting in top shape is 20% gym work and 80% kitchen work, and when it comes to the nutrition side of things, high protein foods are top of the list. The benefits of protein are endless – it helps keep you feeling fuller for longer, can stop insulin spikes (believed to contribute to fat storage) and most importantly helps build and maintain muscle, and the more muscle you have the easier it is to get rid of fat.
Continue reading Top 10 High Protein Foods You Need To Be Eating
As a follow up to the article we posted a few weeks ago about why you should be strength training as a fighter, we’re going to provide you with a basic training program to help improve your strength without adding mass (assuming it’s accompanied by correct nutrition) and so increase your power to weight ratio, the ‘golden number’ as it were for a fighter.
We all know that fighting isn’t just about technique. If you have perfect technique but don’t have the stamina to keep fighting for more than 30 seconds then you’re not likely to have a very long career. Instead, fighters have to develop the endurance to last multiple rounds whilst they use their technique to outscore or knock out their opponent. It’s not that simple though, and there are numerous points of view about the best way to build up endurance, with the most common idea being regular 3-5 mile runs, otherwise known as roadwork. But running isn’t enough on it’s own.
Continue reading Why Running Isn’t Enough To Get You Fight Ready
Weightlifting for martial arts, and strength and conditioning as a whole, is a massive subject, and one that can be clouded by traditional views of training. You often hear similar arguments in all disciplines. They’re typically along the lines of ‘body weight works better than weights‘, “I can’t gain any weight because I need to fight as light as possible” or “fighters from years ago never did it”. However, I think that weightlifting is a powerful tool for any martial artist.
Continue reading Weightlifting for martial arts – should you be doing it?