Strength vs Endurance

[GIJoe6186]

ugggghhhh I hate these huge posts answering the whole endurance vs strength stuff.

There all important. You also left out strength endurance. Theres no reason you can't strength train and then grapple hard in BJJ and acquire all the endurance you'll need (for the hobbyist).

If you don't have much time for outside workouts (say only 2x a week) I would suggest something along the lines of Ross Training or CrossFit (like the Fran and Grace workouts).

[Lily]

Jack...nice point about the skipping and plyometric training. I did a sold 8 months of that and weight trainingand quit my long distance running at that point. I can still crack out a good 8-10 miles without thinking about it or raising my heart rate too much.

I believe endurance is the base but strength and following on from this, being able to generate explosive power is the key to being a better MA'ist in arts like Judo, Jujitsu, BJJ etc.

[GIJoe6186]

Concerning Tabata and getting a base for cardio....

Tabata was originally designed with bikes in mind. I think running is horrible and hate it except for occasional sprinting, I don't see the point and I don't like the impact.

As far as getting a cardio base, I think thats true to some extent. You need to prepare yourself to workout and to get results from it. Take weightlifting for example. If you have never benched before, your body will not be used to it. Your body will not have the coordination to bench press efficiently. It will take a couple of benching sessions for your nervous sytem to adapt to the new movement and fire the muscles efficiently. Alot of the new gains made by new gym members is a better coordinated nervous system, not actual muscle gains.

I would think that this has the same effect for anything else. If you never run or bike for cardio, doing HIT won't help until you learn the movement correctly. I don't however see the need to develop an aerobic base before getting into anaerobic training (like sprinting or other HIT stuff). You just need time to adapt to the new movements.

[JRT6]

The goal of endurance training to raise the HR to a certain level for a specified period of time not to become effeicent at any particular exercise, ie. running. Running is such the holy grail to so many while at the same time having crippled uncountable times as many people. Runnng is fine but so is rowing, elitpical, bike, versa or whatever gets your HR up. I run once a week, on dirt and I just go as fast as I can tolerate for 20mins. That is all my body can take.

As far as Tabatas are concerned professional MMA training Joel Jamison has an interesting take on them on his site http://www.8weeksout.com/

[juszczec]

The reason i'm posting is that I would like to hear people's opinions on what they feel is more important for BJJ and why. Err.... That is, if you don't mind.

I don't do BJJ per se, we call it submission wrestling but it ends up to applying/defending submissions on the ground.

Your performance will tell you what you need to work on during your off time.

If you gas quickly - more endurance training.

If you can't dislodge the instructor's infant child who just happened to crawl onto the mat and lay on your arm, then you need more strength training.

Personally, I prefer swimming for endurance (but especially wrestling endurance) - Indian wrestlers (aka the Great Gama) called it "wrestling with the water" and my upper body grappling endurance has never been a problem since I started swimming.

For strength training, I prefer bodyweight exercises - but that may be because some types of weight training have been ruled off limits due to prior injuries to my back and shoulder.

FWIW

Mark

[Cullion]

Just to toss it out there, I suspect alot of us hobbyist types do off day cardio (and strength) because we haven't got time in our schedules for actual skills sessions 6 or 7 days a week. So it's still a reasonable question even if both strength and endurance training that way are sub-optimal.

Also, I wonder how much those pros doing running and other non skills related cardio has to do with fear of injury. I wonder if pushing themselves in sparring hard enough to really drain their tanks every day would carry an unnaceptable risk.

I think that's a lot of it. But there's also an element of morphological adaptation that you might miss without the adjunct training.

When I train my aerobic system to help me with some other activity, I'm trying to force my body to develop new blood vessels to move oxygen around the body, and be more efficient at processing the waste products.

Now, I'll get simillar morphological changes from working hard doing the target activity, such as grappling. However, I will also be improving my skill levels and training to achieve more with less effort.

Maybe pros still do their 'roadwork' because their coaches want to get them to their peak by ensuring that the maximum possible physical advantages are trained in, and doing the skill alone (as they keep getting more efficient) might not take them far enough?

Regarding diving straight into HIIT/Tabata stuff. When I talked with Omega about this a long time ago he didn't like the idea of it, said he'd talked with some high level atheletics coaches on the subject, and the concensus was that the steady aerobic training lasting 20 minutes or more is what improved your recovery time, and allowed you get the most out of the anaerobic interval training when you were ready for it.

I take the point that the steady stuff may be less necessary when somebody is conditioned enough (I don't just mean that there nervous system is used to the movements, I mean that they have sufficient vascular development and conditioned their aerobic metabolism to a good degree of efficiency) to just do lots of HIIT for their auxiliary 'cardio' training. I also take the point that you don't have to run for the steady aerobic training. It's just a simple, cheap way of getting it that requires no equipment.

I do still have a suspicion that people sometimes get too contorted in their exercise science looking for a way to avoid a few good, steady jogs or runs a week simply because it's boring and painful. I know it is for me. But that's why God made ipods.

[Jack Rusher]

a few good, steady jogs or runs a week simply because it's boring and painful. I know it is for me. But that's why God made ipods.

... and Parkour, which I find superior to jogging in every regard.

[JRT6]

From a point of view of an older 250lb guy I've tried the HIIT and LSD camps and found them both to be lacking. In HIIT I was too injured and burnt out all the time to get the bennifit out of it in sparring and in LSD I would gas anytime I went above the 160's in HR. In both cases I'm hauling around too much weight and am too old to recover fast enough to get max bennefit. So what I'm finding to work well right now is the dreaded medium distance high output cardio. I do the rower, bike and eliptical for less than an hour (20mins sets with 5min breaks) at a HR under 155 and then do one day of running where I do two laps in the park next to a ski resort and end at near max HR but still under 20 min duration. Sparring in class and squating with short rest intervals is where I get my HIIT training.

[Cullion]

... and Parkour, which I find superior to jogging in every regard.

I've never tried it. How long can you sustain a parkour session for?

[Jack Rusher]

I've never tried it. How long can you sustain a parkour session for?

If you mean me, I do parkour for 1.5-2 hours per session in the warmer months (4-6 days/week), usually mixed with some crazy-climby things on monkey bars, burpee + muscle ups, &c. If you mean "how long can one," some of my friends in Paris do it for hours on end.

The only downside is that big vertical drops can lead to nasty injuries, so I try to be careful with that sort of thing now that I'm old and feeble.