Athletic conditioning for Filipino martial arts

Build strength

More strength will help you hit harder.

Strength is one of the components you need and it’s your ability to generate power in your shots but not only. Whether you hit with a weapon or with your bare hands, if you can strike harder, you will increase the effectiveness of your shots.

Strength helps you move faster.

You have to generate high levels of strength to push your body. Strength is needed to generate high levels of explosiveness. By developing more strength, you’ll be able to generate more explosiveness and then move faster. Although there is a limit, in general, the stronger you are, the faster you can be. This allows you to have a faster “game” and faster shots.

More strength also results in better control of your opponent when using levers, imbalances and other controls.

Although these are typically leverage-based tools, if you’re stronger, you have more leeway to make the technique work, even when you’re not in the perfect angle or position to apply it. Your strength will allow you to compensate more when your technique is not performed perfectly. attention!! Good technique is important and cannot replace it. However, the technique requires strength. The more you have available, the more options you have. Land stronger people are harder to “kill.”

To build strength, find an all-round program that incorporates push ups, squats, dead endes, pull ups, parallel dips and other free-body exercises.

Barbell training combined with free body exercises can be very effective in building strength. Focus on training designed for strength and athletics, not bodybuilding.

There’s a lot of difference.

Do your research butmake sure youuse a program that produces measurable increasesin strength. At the beginning of your strength training, almost everything will work, but over time, you need a well-designed program to keep seeing progress.

Ps. I want to make a specific note for your hands, because consider that the grip strength of your hands when handling a weapon is something you can’t overlook.

Explosive power development

Explosive power helps you execute your techniques more effectively.

If you hit someone with your stick, you want the shot to be effective. You want to be able to stop your opponent with hard shots. To do this, you have to hit them using power. Power is not only useful when performing an attack, but also when performing other techniques, such as throws and takedowns.

Explosive power is the ability to produce maximum force in a minimum time.

That means you have to have strength to have power. Once you’ve developed your strength to its potential, focus on reducing the time it takes to produce this force. Reduce the time to develop more energy.

To develop power, use exercises that allow you to work on maximum output strength and speed.

Incorporate Olympic stalls, shots, jumps, plyometry, medical ball shots, kettlebells and other explosive exercises into your workout. Be sure to develop a good strength base before trying to develop “power.” Starting power training too early will lead you to injuries like trying to do these exercises without learning the right shape.

To be able to produce energy, develop the strength in your core.

The more stable your core is, the faster and more force you can use to move your limbs. In athletic movement, your core must absorb and transfer strength through your body. Imagine how your arms and legs move as you swing a stick at full force. That force must be channeled from your legs, through your core, and transported through your arm. If your core is weak, you will lose energy during the transfer by interrupting the chain.

Core strengthening exercises should focus on resistance to flexion, extension or spinal rotation. The use of traction bars, kettlebell, TRX, vPlanck airs, AB Roll or barbell stalls, battle rope are some of the functional exercises you need to use.

These exercises can be used to improve the ability to stabilize the spine during movement and thus increase the potential to generate energy.

Increase your stamina

Filipino martial arts include explosive movements performed at high speed.

The shots and techniques are executed with explosive sequences of multiple shots combined with movement and does not allow you to stop because the weapons move very fast.

In a very short period of time, you can shoot multiple shots at full speed, escape attacks with a quick footwork, and maybe take a snap or takedown.

Especially if you consider yourself prepared for multiple attackers, these combined high-intensity efforts can occur several times consecutively requiring considerable aerobic effort.

This type of physical effort must be developed with your strength and conditioning, otherwise you will find yourself after a short time with your breath and without the energy to move and become an easy target even more with weapons.

To develop this level of output or capacity, you need to take a specific approach to training because of the way your body feeds the activity.

Different types of physical exertion are powered by your body differently. The way your body feeds a slow jog or occasional bike ride is very different from how it fuels an all-round sprint, a jump for maximum height or a really heavy lift. The different systems that fuel these efforts include aerobic and anaerobic systems. Activities that are powered by the aerobic system tend to be more moderately stimulated, while activities powered by anaerobic systems tend to be at very fast rates or include maximum efforts.

For general fitness, a training balance is useful for both aerobic and anaerobic systems, but if you train specifically for better performance in Filipino martial arts, spend more time training anaerobic systems.

Performing Filipino martial arts at full speed requires greater use of the high-performance systems in which you work in anaerobic thresholds.

You must then train the same systems in your strength and conditioning.

This workout can result in multiple strokes at full speed first on the tyres when you train and then on the head/arm/hands/etc. your opponent’s, being able to continuously apply explosive movements for different rounds in a fight, or even have the energy to fight more attackers.

To develop this ability, use a combination of interval training and high-intensity workouts that are mostly 10 minutes or less but high intensity.

Circuit training, AMRAP-style workouts (as many laps as possible) and other workouts based on timed activities that focus on quick set completion (with good shape and minimal rest) are some examples that might work for you.

Include more maximal efforts with things like sprinting, jumps and medical ball shots.

As you improve the thresholds by how fast, intense and “long” you can go before you give in and the more you’ll see your Kali improve.

This improvement will make you stay cleaner for longer in the techniques, fast, accurate and powerful before fatigue spoils your technique while running the Kali.

In practice, this means that you have a better chance of winning a sports race and surviving a violent encounter.

Some tips

• It uses exercises that incorporate general athletic movements. Do not isolate but do exercises that bind muscle chains to generate movement. Don’t try to make them look like Kali’s movements. Although in specific skill training, this can be valuable, in strength and endurance training, this can really ruin your “mechanics”.
• Rather than focusing on developing a single muscle, think in terms of cultivating a good movement. For best results, use mostly exercises involving multiple joints and muscle groups rather than isolating muscles.
• Train to improve your weaknesses. Don’t get lost in doing the things you like the most. The point here is to improve your performance. Having a functional balance of strength and conditioning to support your FMA skills is important for your performance.
• Use the variation in your workout. To improve significantly, you need consistency, but you also need variations. It progressively develops strength and power, but avoids oversimpling yourself to a single routine. Vary the exercises and routines you perform to avoid certain fitness aspects. attention!! When you introduce variety, never eliminate your functional primary exercises.
• Ask an expert for help designing a program and make sure you learn how to perform the exercises correctly. Bad form and overly ambitious programs can lead to injury and poor results. Remember that you are looking for performance results, not boasting rights or self-penance. A good program will allow you to measure the results.
• Always remember the purpose for which you do it!. This means that now you don’t have to do more fitness than FMA, you work out for a purpose.

Although all this is very simple and obvious, it is actually a fundamental that will give you an advantage over your opponents and make you healthier at the same time. If you’re not already doing strength and conditioning, try for a few months and you’ll see the difference yourself. Don’t overlook this aspect, you’re always a fighter!.