Was reading this on another site t'other day and it really struck a chord in my mind, basically someone posted a clip of an (i think) MMA dude training to near exhaustion and the question was asked if this would actually be positively affective in everyday training or would it be kind of conditioning your mind to become exhausted, not conditioning your body to become fitter/better in the sport etc ? ? ? When I thought about it in the gym I tried the last couple of times to focus on NOT being exhausted after, for instance say, 100 power round kicks or another example 3 hard rounds on the pads.......anyways, it's very interesting I think so have a read and see what people think on here. If you dont get what I am getting at after reading you'll get the gist ------------------------------------------------------------------------ More is NOT better. Pushing hard has a time and place and some benefits. My opinion is most people over do it. Consider that you train your body by what you do. Ifyou train yourself to be tired you actually train yourself to be tired. If you hook up a high level runner to a heart rate monitor line him up to run, say go, in two or three steps his heart rate is already way up there loike he is working very hard. This is because his body has been conditioned to work hard and knows what to do... work hard. Its good to be able to push and work hard but it is a HUGE waste of energy to teach the body to be stressed as soon as you start training in my opinion. The body learns by doing... train tired and stressed, perform tired and stressed. I think conditioning should not be done every training session. Just like reading a paragraph where you recall best the first and last sentence the body recalls the first and last part of the round and like you recall best the first and last paragraph your body will remember the first and last round of training. When pushing to the point of performance dropping, technique dropping, being tired and maybe frustrated (frustration usually a big signal of over training) then you teach your body to have that lower performance level, poor technique and to get frustrated. Lets say you are going to do the Thai style of kicking the bag repeatedly atthe end of a round or doing sets atthe end of training. It is my opinion that this should be done only as long as speed, power and technique are still there. As soon as you slow down a hair, I believe stop. Have enough energy to recover and the next conditioning session you do it again. With enough recovery (you NEVER strengthen in training, only in recovery) over time you can do more and more before loosing speed and power. Always finish strong. I believe the same applies for weights etc Daily conditioning makes no sense to me. Alternating days of conditioning and technique, skill etc etc A lot of the older former fighters in Thailand always told me to work hard less and play more... Watch the greats perform and they are not stressing most of the time... they are cruising in a zone. Conditioning and pushing are important... daily and to the point of not recovering or feeling past it when finished training is a sign of too much... Turtle or hare... Little bit little bit and I believe you get further with conditioning... it also gives you way more time to work on actual skills and technique. Hard hard hard and pushing fatigue takes the possibility of awareness of technique (awareness needed to make conscious effort to change = improve). The excess stress response all the time also is not a conducive learning field either. Most western fighters I see look pretty much the same year after year... that suggests to me lack of growth. Do the same thing get the same results.To expect a different result is a sign of insanity. I don't know but something like this may have a place periodically. I use to do depth charges/lung busters... swimming lengths under water. IF it is done for sure it shouldn't be frequently or a base part of weekly training in my opinion. Again the biggest thing is how does YOUR body respond? Are YOU over training? If you are sacked out after weights and are not feeling like a little lovin' my bet is it is not worth the time and effort... Sex drive should go up with training, not down!!! Who would want to want sex less anyway? Stress hormones have the highest priority in terms of using building blocks to make them. If sex drive is dropping it is saying there are not enough energy or building blocks to make them. That also means that you don't have the energy and building blocks to make rest and recovery hormones. If you can do it AND recover AND do it again AND do it better AND you are feeling great and wanting some lovin' then you are probably on the right track.
maybe if you are a pro, or training many times a week. But if you are a hobbiest or Amatuer fighter then, training twice a week to exhaustion is not so bad as you get the most out of your training, and you have plenty of recovery time.
yeah but like it says if you are training so you're bloody knackered every session are you in a way training your body to be shattered when you're in the gym? after a few rounds on the pads you become tired, you're tecnique is sloppier and are those the things you remember i.e sloppy punches/kicks and breathing really heavy with a missively high heart rate, instead of controlled aggression + the best tecnique you can use, nice and relaxed? It's a funny one really isn't it but I do find the points have some validity to everyday/run-of-the-mill training that 'normal' people' encounter however manytimes a week.
A little more on this someone elses view towards the topic, in bold is a bit of what initially got me thinking about the whole thing -------------------------------------------------------------------------- I do think that trained recovery is huge... The body learns by doing, by experience, as does the mind (our minds thoughts about what we are doing are also huge). Train to have a slow use of energy for 1 hour and that is what your body learns. Train to be fatigued and tired by training till fatigued and tired and your body learns to be fatigued and tired. At least that is my limited experience. When tired we try harder, when we are tired and taught to push and try harder we do learn to keep going but we also learn to try harder... meaning we flex and strain and push what works best when relaxed. There is a line and a fighter does need to push... but always pushing teaches you to always push but also teaches you to always be tired and strain and use way more energy than is needed in my opinion
Athletes in other sports have also been experimenting with training to exhaustion in micro-cycles... For instance, marathon runners usually alternate a hard day (interval training, hard tempo runs...) with a recovery day (jog). However, recently, more and more athletes are trying micro cycles of 4/5 days of hard training, with 2 or 3 days of easy jogging recovery. Progress in sports is only achieved by stretching the body beyond its limits, then allowing just enough time for recovery... As you get fitter, it becomes increasingly easy to recover from a hard session, and the only way to stretch the body is to do several on consecutive days. Thus, training to exhaustion is not limited to those who train twice a week, but anyone can potentially benefit from it... There are several risks however, notably an increased risk of injury. It also makes you generally feel like s**t!
Any kind of training always has to be balanced. The activities we do during training damages our bodies. If you keep doing more damage without letting the body recover then sooner or later you won't be able to train properly. If you're a professional athlete retiring at 25/30 years old that might not be a problem. But for everybody else that needs to work 9 to 5, deal with the kids, the dog, the weekly shopping, check up on the parents you stashed in the old folks home, deal with university and basically life then it might not be such a good idea. If you want to train like that then you need to make serious life changes.
I personally never train to exhaustion any more because from a personal defence perspective it is not good practise.
I've got to say that I don’t totally agree with your theory. I think its just as easily tipped on its head: You are saying that training to exhaustion could train your body to GET exhausted but you could just as easily say that training to exhaustion gets your body USED to being exhausted! How can we prepare for those times of exhaustion without experiencing it? The more regularly we experience absolute fatigue the better we can learn to cope with it and fight through it. Obviously we need to allow our bodies time to heal, there is no question about that. But I think training to exhaustion is an essential part of being a top athlete. If you read Ross Enemait's book "Infinite Intensity" he includes 'finishers' in his routines. These are basically hard conditioning and endurance exercises to be done after your work out e.g. the farmers walk (walking as far as you can holding very heavy dumbbells), certain stress positions e.g. squatting until your thighs are horizontal and your back being on the wall, anything you can think of that requires you to dig down that extra little bit when you are very tired or even exhausted. His theory is that in a fight there will be a point that you do feel exhausted and by using these 'finishers' you train your body to cope with this exhaustion. I can see how your theory may work but if it was true wouldn’t the day-to-day routine of going to the gym, training and becoming generally fatigued 'train' your body to be fatigued when you exercise? No, it makes you stronger. Your thoughts?...
These aren't my views Dan bro...just somet I saw on the web and was wondering what peoples thoughts were on the subject, all valid/interesting points too . . . .
I'm not sure where I fall with this theory.I think at the moment I am pushing myself as hard as I can while maintaining a full time job. I train 5 times a week at the moment, usually between 1 and 2 hours at a time and either kung fu (1 session) muay thai (3 sessions) and mma (1 session) while trying to fit weights in too. Last week was my first week with 3 mt sessions and while I felt pretty tired I also felt as though by the end of the week I was learning to be able to keep my technique and power while being really tired. I finished the week off with an mma session on Saturday and although I was tired by the end I wouldn't say I was exhausted. At the moment it feels like I'm a cross between a hobbyist and something else. I'm not entirely sure how long I can keep this up for- it may be that I train like this for say 4 weeks then have a quieter week or something. I would worry though if my body starts to get used to being tired and my technique starts suffering. I keep a blog so I'll try and document how it goes.
I know, it'll be interesting to see how it works out. I trained hard but I'm sure keeping training made my aches go away. I would hurt in the morning from training but by evening when warming up at training I would feel lots better and less in pain.
We are not currently doing 'warm ups' as it's about -5 in our gym at the mo!! Aye, anyway the theory is a funny one really, when I was getting out on my bike often before I started going thai boxing again we would generally have 2/3 tough weeks then a chilled out one following that....seemed to work so dont spose reversing that round for muay thai (one hard week then two 'normal' paced kinda thing) Tue/Thu/Sun we train 90 mins but I've just moved so in the process of finding a gym there I can do my extra cardio inbetween gym days. Aaaah, what it would be like to be able to train full time.......
Many factors come to play in this topic,age is one i know about,when i was a young man i would run 10 mile in a morning,train in the afternoon,sprint at t.time and train again on the evening,i could recover from all this easily,now woooah no way! just a nice easy session once a day is fine! suppose its like drinking i cant recover from a hangover easy now either!. Personally i like the Thai way,which is 3 hour training session at a moderate to easy pace mixed with high intensity bursts repeated 2 x per day,seems to work for them as they produce high quality fit and conditioned athletes,most of the boxers are young with a high recovery rate of course. When i first started training in Thailand i could do 2 sessions a day and be recovered enough to do justice to the 2nd session,now i train only one time as i just cant recover quickly enough,not a lot good about being old!. Ian K,work harder in the warm up and you may get warm(a bit) lol
