Opinions please.

[zenbert]

from a practicality perspective, i would say you need to train the muscles where your techniques call for the most. in a more subtle fashion, you need to augment all the muscles required for your strikes, stances, hip strength, etc. this could not be accomplished easily with your typical gym routine. i always felt this is where MA is beautiful because it's a dance; a celebration of one's prowess.

if i wanted to be a chick magnet, then all i need is to focus on size and what is fashionable--that is ab, pects, and big biceps. i'm generalizing a bit of course.

[Urban]

Originally posted by Little Idea
Yeah, because explosive movements while keeping your balance have nothing to do with martial arts or fighting.

want to get better at keeping your balance while performing explosive movements? keep your ballance while performing the explosive movements you want to get better at.

Doing the circus act **** that I've seen surfacing in the fitness world as of late has little carry over to sports. Sure, doing KB snatches on a bongo board will improve your ballance but by the time you have goten technique down enough to use even moderate weights (not even moderately heavy) somebody training with more efficient methods will already be much stronger than you, and his progress and dominance over you as long as you keep your carnival trick training up is imminant. Yes, keeping your ballance while performing explosive movements is important, which is why I would reccomend heavy bag work, sparring, and jumping rope.

[Ronin]

Originally posted by Urban
want to get better at keeping your balance while performing explosive movements? keep your ballance while performing the explosive movements you want to get better at.

Doing the circus act **** that I've seen surfacing in the fitness world as of late has little carry over to sports. Sure, doing KB snatches on a bongo board will improve your ballance but by the time you have goten technique down enough to use even moderate weights (not even moderately heavy) somebody training with more efficient methods will already be much stronger than you, and his progress and dominance over you as long as you keep your carnival trick training up is imminant. Yes, keeping your ballance while performing explosive movements is important, which is why I would reccomend heavy bag work, sparring, and jumping rope.

:D Warms my heart :D

[Urban]

Originally posted by ronin69
I was reading a book, again, called "serious Strength training", and they have a list of exercises that they did the electromyograph crap on, to see whick exercises resulted in the highest muscle fibre recruitment, and some of the results were interesting, namely that, for example, the dumbell bench pressing recruits MORE muscle fibres than Barbell B.

Did the book mention what muscles they were looking at? Cause I read this, and just kinda accepted it, but the more I thought about it the more I began to wonder about the actual tests. If they were testing pec use, then it would make sense that it would recruit more muscle fiber because DB bench is much more pec oriented and BB bench (done as a powerlifter would do it) is very tricep oriented. so... ummm... yeah, did they talk about what muscles they were looking at at all?

[Ronin]

The targeted mucles, in the case of the bench press, the pecs.

[Ronin]

Certain exercise can't be done with DB, squats for example, perhaps even deadlifts, though I guess if you can get DB that heavy, you could do them...
I think the Squtas and DL, by there very nature, can only be done with barbells, even straps and lifting hooks, wouldn't make DB squats and DL fiasable.

[Little Idea]

I'm not advocating that wobble board one armed snatches should become the core of all workouts, but I guarantee that kind of 'circus lift' has more benefit to performance in almost any sport than benchpressing does (except maybe powerlifting).

(Not to mention the benefits of proprioceptive exercises for preventing injury.)

[Urban]

Originally posted by Little Idea
I'm not advocating that wobble board one armed snatches should become the core of all workouts, but I guarantee that kind of 'circus lift' has more benefit to performance in almost any sport than benchpressing does (except maybe powerlifting).

I'd have to disagree with you there. While I do think there are more specific exercises that can be employed than the bench press (and I don't judge somebody's strength by their bench), flat bench is a great upper body movment. It's involves many muscles in the upper body (pecs, lats, delts, triceps, etc) and can hold a substantial amount of weight. It is true however that incline press may be more appropriate for many sports (football, MMA, rugby, etc.) we're not talking about that right this second.

I would never reccomend somebody build a routine around bench press just as you wouldn't reccomend they do it against that sillly exercise I outlined earlier. But let's look at a comparison.

Bench press is an easy exercise to learn, neophytes can load up on weight early on pretty often, the risk of injury and missed lifts is minimal (making for more efficient exercise more often), and the means are available in almost any gym. It's a compound movement, but not something you would normally consider a full body exercise (despite the presence of leg drive)

Now, the KB snatch on a bongo board will take much time to learn before you can handle any real weight, has a greater frequency of missed lifts and a higher rate for injury, and (not that it's really an issue for this comparison) the means to perform them are rarely available. This IS a full body exercise, but few athletes will benefit much from it because of the greater difficulty to learn and apply.

Now, that all being said, if (for some totally bizar reason) you were to only choose one exercise between the two listed to do for the rest of your life, I would do the circus act. Because it is full body and you will eventually get better an be able to handle appropriate amounds of weight. However, assuming you are doing a complete routine (squats, deads, presses, pulls and rows, ab work, etc. in addition to all your fight training and SPP) such exercises are unneccesary in my opinion.