Sparring is the time when you put all of your training, skills and technique into practise against another moving person. It’s not a fight, but rather a controlled chance to fill in the gaps which can’t be taught with pads or a heavy bag – reading your opponent and controlling the situation.
You see them all over the place at the moment, there’s someone in every gym with one, they’re all over instagram and you can even spot them in hollywood blockbusters like Southpaw. I’m talking about altitude training masks. That guy in the gym who looks like Bane and sounds like Darth Vader swears it’s the same as training in the Himalayas, but what’s the obsession with training at altitude? And what’re the benefits to using an altitude mask?
Continue reading How Beneficial is an Altitude Training Mask?
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
Shadow boxing is probably one of the easiest forms of training. You don’t need gloves or other gear, you don’t need a partner to hold pads, you don’t need a bag and you don’t even need to be at a gym. Shadow boxing is one of the few forms of training you could practise almost anywhere at any time. You don’t have to just focus on boxing either, it’s easy to throw in kicks, elbows and knees if you’re more of a kickboxer, or even practice stepping in for takedowns or add in a few sprawls if you’re training in MMA.
Continue reading The Benefits of Shadow Boxing in Boxing, Kickboxing, Muay Thai and MMA
BookMartialArts recently approached us asking if we’d give some of our advice on what we think makes a good MMA training camp, what you should look for and what sort of gear you’ll need to invest in before hand. We of course helped out, alongside a range of other MMA websites, in order to help build up a great guide, The Definitive Guide on Choosing the Right MMA Camp.
Continue reading The Definitive Guide on Choosing the Right MMA Camp
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
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.
