Strength Training and Sport
For the sake of keeping the physical blog as updated as my facebook page, I'll be cross-posting articles and short thoughts to this page as well.
The number of MMA and combat sports athletes who I see wasting their time with ‘weighted sport specific movement patterns’ is unfortunate. I really believe that this method, as proposed by Starting Strength – The Aasgaard Company is the most logical way for an athlete to do the strength portion of his Strength and Conditioning. I’d be happy to hear your opinions to the contrary.
Shadowboxing with 2# weights is a waste of time. It won’t make you punch harder, it’s not making you stronger, and it’s not reinforcing the motor pathways required to throw an unweighted punch. There are endless examples of this in professional sports training. Getting tired for the sake of getting tired is just energy wasted that could have gone into more sport practice, or building general strength.
Developing general strength using whatever programming you want (as long as it’s trackable and increasing over time). For the sake of time, barbell compound movements are generally better.
And the technique of your sport should be done during practice of those specific movement patterns. Hours on the mat, drilling, moving, etc.
Mixing the two is a mistake.
“The effectiveness of practice is dependent on the athlete’s ability to accumulate experience with the movement patterns to be displayed in the performance, in order to embed the motor pathways that generate these movement patterns. Accuracy is therefore exquisitely dependent on the nature of the performance, and precision (outside the context of practice) is dependent on the requirement for multiple efforts. In repetitive motor pathway sports like diving and gymnastics, the standard of execution is fixed by the rules and can be practiced effectively well in advance. In non-repeating motor pathway sports like judo and fencing, the movement patterns that have been practiced individually are assembled into the performance as it happens by the athlete, with the ability to effectively do so determining the result of the event. “
Read Mark Rippetoe’s take here:
https://startingstrength.com/article/the-two-factor-model-of-sports-performance