Weights and keeping speed up. [Archive]

smacktime

20th March 2005, 01:11 AM

I have been getting back into the gym 4-5 days a week recently. Trying to build up so I am lifting kind of low reps and heavy weights (heavy for me... maybe not you!)
I have just gone back to the dojo after 2.5 months off (due to injury) and I have lost a lot of my punching speed (obviously) but sometimes I do feel that doing heavy weights may decrease my punch speed.

What is recommended to help maintain/increase speed?
I don't have access to a sandbag (only at the dojo) so any other recommendations?

cheers

Titan

20th March 2005, 09:23 AM

Are you still on the heavy weights? There's nothing wrong in lifting that, and I do it myself, but you need to train explosivity. You need to sometimes at the gym go down on little lighter ways and like with squats go down slowly as far as you can and then try to get up with an as explosive and fast move as you can. Same thing when you do benchpresses or whatever. It's alright to max, but fighters aren't bodybuilders so the explosive motions are necessary.

That's not all to it, though. You can't emulate full punching or kicking movements at the gym really because they involve (1) relaxation and (2) tension at the right time. You need to fins somewhere to get yourself all relaxed and in that relaxed state keep throwing kicks and punches. Whenever you feel like it's streneous, it's possible you might need some more stretching to lengthen the muscles you've been training. Eventually when that's all good, you start first relaxing and then getting an as explosive kick/punch off as you can, but with maintaining a relaxed leg/arm throughout it.

With lack of equipment, I guess you can attach a string to a standard size paper. Hang it from something in the ceiling, and punch at it. The goal should be to get it to move as much as possible without hitting the actual piece of paper. Don't stretch the punches out all the way or you might hyperextend the elbow. Eventually you'll find a good snap to the punches and you can take down the paper and start shadowboxing with explosive punches. You can exchange the paper for a tennisball at a later point if you'd like and hit it. It'll bounce back at you from against the ceiling and you can use that countermove to duck to the side like you're avoiding a punch.

Kicks are more difficult. All I know you can do is train slow and relaxed kicks, unless you got something you can hit at or someone that can hold pads for you. The risks of hyperextending a knee is too great otherwise. Because of that, performing explosive moves at the weight-gym in like the squat-exercise is a find way of training the twitch in your kicking muscles without doing kicking.