Muscle Gain or Fat Loss for a Martial Artist

[straightblast]

My pont was that smaller fighters are typically faster than larger ones. Nothing wrong with building musscle mass, I encourage it but make sure you stay lean and flexable or it will slow you down. I personally am more into working on core strength and body weight exercise. When I think of speed, I think wide reciever type of body.

Bruce Lee was crazy fast but he did say that there were lots of guys faster than him, he had a unique ability with his timming. Although he lifted weights for strength it was also because he was a movie star and knew that he must look a certain way in front of the camera.

Regards.

[straightblast]

I will try to answer the origional post from my experiance.

I was obese, so my main goal was fat loss, not musscle gain.

I lost 70 pounds over the last 5 months, Am I faster? "yes"

I am now working on building lean flexable musscle,Will I get even faster?"yes"

If I stayed obese and gained musscle I probably would be a little fast but not like I am now.

[mr_obvious]

Bulky doesn't always mean slow. Just like anyone, you have to train to learn how to move your body and weight. Sumo Wrestlers can be very explosive, and are quite agile for big men. There are football players that weigh close to 300 lbs and can run a 40 yard dash in under 5 seconds. Bulky=slow is not a sound arguement, in my mind.

Steroids and HGH can do some very amazing things. It's sad to say that most of the professional strength and conditioning coaches in the country find 300 lb men moving that fast as very suspect. Testing can be tricked and avoided. When there's hundreds of millions of dollars on the line, certain things get overlooked. I'm sure some are natural....but that would be the exception, not the rule.

If that is the case, then that is too bad. Lots of kids with heros out there.

I dunno..... Just my, perhaps unique, perspective on juicing: it costs a lot, not only in money, but long range health issues. It's not something one frivolously decides to pull a Nike and just do it. In many cases, pro athletes are the first in their family tree to earn a big (let alone decent) income. A to-juice or not-to-juice decision, potentially accelerating a budding career, often times is deemed an acceptable sacrifice to ensure their family is taken care of for years to come. Especially when getting to the "bigs" they find it's a prevalent practice. It just never bothered me to hear of a pro getting caught using. For them, the gains outweigh the risk. Juicing certainly isn't without real, serious and probable medical consequences.

There were a lot of juicers at a gym I used to frequent. Most talked open and freely about it. None of them got anything for it, except moderately big, and a few stupid local bodybuilding competition titles. Big whoopee! Just my opinion, why do it unless you've got A LOT at stake...?

[ps1]

Bulky doesn't always mean slow. Just like anyone, you have to train to learn how to move your body and weight. Sumo Wrestlers can be very explosive, and are quite agile for big men. There are football players that weigh close to 300 lbs and can run a 40 yard dash in under 5 seconds. Bulky=slow is not a sound arguement, in my mind.

Steroids and HGH can do some very amazing things. It's sad to say that most of the professional strength and conditioning coaches in the country find 300 lb men moving that fast as very suspect. Testing can be tricked and avoided. When there's hundreds of millions of dollars on the line, certain things get overlooked. I'm sure some are natural....but that would be the exception, not the rule.

If that is the case, then that is too bad. Lots of kids with heros out there.

I dunno..... Just my, perhaps unique, perspective on juicing: it costs a lot, not only in money, but long range health issues. It's not something one frivolously decides to pull a Nike and just do it. In many cases, pro athletes are the first in their family tree to earn a big (let alone decent) income. A to-juice or not-to-juice decision, potentially accelerating a budding career, often times is deemed an acceptable sacrifice to ensure their family is taken care of for years to come. Especially when getting to the "bigs" they find it's a prevalent practice. It just never bothered me to hear of a pro getting caught using. For them, the gains outweigh the risk. Juicing certainly isn't without real, serious and probable medical consequences.

There were a lot of juicers at a gym I used to frequent. Most talked open and freely about it. None of them got anything for it, except moderately big, and a few stupid local bodybuilding competition titles. Big whoopee! Just my opinion, why do it unless you've got A LOT at stake...?

Most of it starts on the high school and college level. It's quite often supervised by physicians. I'm not making it up, I've seen it happen and know many people who have done it. Most often, it begins after an injury. Steroids do speed recovery time as well as the strength and power growth. People at the local gym are usually using them improperly (assuming the use of any illegal substance can be proper) and abusing them. Many physicians and coaches have trained in their use and understand how to administer them without going overboard and taking it into the abuse category. My point is that many of the pros are already using/ have used before they become pro. Again, not all of them, but many.

[ps1]

A power lifter wants to develop that huge barrel chest in order to minimize the distance between the bar and his chest for the bench press event. However, that body type is not the best for...say...a boxer. This is because it's bulky and, though powerlifters tend to be very fast, gets in the way of fluid movement through a more full range of motion.

This is what I'm talking about when I say that muscular bulk isn't necessarily the best thing for a martial artist and slows the person down. Especially since the goal of a good martial artist should be to be fluid and effective.

So does that automatically determine that a powerlifter who wants to be an MAist isn't going to reach full potential because of his bulkiness? I see Joe Lewis in my head, who was never really slow.

http://images.quickblogcast.com/5/6/9/6/6/177516-166965/PowerLifter.jpg

This is the typical power lifter build. Of course, like anything there are exceptions. But this is what they strive for.

http://www.fightingmaster.com/legends/lewis/joe10.jpg

This is Joe Lewis. He's nowhere near that.

Few other pics of him: http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.sidekickmma.com/images/Bill__Joe.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.sidekickmma.com/joelewis.htm&usg=__XdYj1_pK0Gg2nMsLKmjOhjgp8Ss=&h=234&w=360&sz=9&hl=en&start=24&itbs=1&tbnid=j8d2LN71G-w98M:&tbnh=79&tbnw=121&prev=/images%3Fq%3DJoe%2BLewis%26start%3D18%26hl%3Den%26sa%3DN%26gbv%3D2%26ndsp%3D18%26tbs%3Disch:1

To answer your question, yes. If you want to be good and reach your full potential in any sport, you don't train another sport to do it. You cross train...which is different. Keep in mind that I'm not saying they can't be a good and knowledgeable martial artist. But rarely would someone of that build be able to reach his full martial arts potential.

Let's put your question in a different context: Would a 6' 2", 160lb basket ball player be able to reach his full potential in football without putting on a little more weight? Not likely to happen.

[mr_obvious]

Most of it starts on the high school and college level. It's quite often supervised by physicians. I'm not making it up, I've seen it happen and know many people who have done it. Most often, it begins after an injury. Steroids do speed recovery time as well as the strength and power growth.

I've heard of this phenomenon (if you we could call it that). It surely didn't happen back when I was in HS; which wasn't all that long ago. Even in my middle-class-community, most HS kids' income went towards cars and going out. At the time, Andro was legal, most couldn't afford that, plus all the other supporting supps to do it right -- let alone ingestible gear (like Dianabol) or injectibles. Especially any sort of doctor supervised cycling.

College, I could see. Colleges make a ton of revenue from their sports programs. But to go through all that at the HS level seems stupid. I mean....holy smokes! Between the ages of 15-18, most guys are naturally major league anabolic to begin with.

lol....did we ever hijack this thread.

[bushido_man96]

My pont was that smaller fighters are typically faster than larger ones. Nothing wrong with building musscle mass, I encourage it but make sure you stay lean and flexable or it will slow you down. I personally am more into working on core strength and body weight exercise. When I think of speed, I think wide reciever type of body.

Bruce Lee was crazy fast but he did say that there were lots of guys faster than him, he had a unique ability with his timming. Although he lifted weights for strength it was also because he was a movie star and knew that he must look a certain way in front of the camera.

Regards.

The reality of it is that we don't get to choose if we are bigger or smaller, especially in stature. Yes, we can choose how much working out we do, and what kind, to regulate our musculature, but I don't get to choose how tall I am, and what kind of build I come with. Same thing with the muscle twitch fibers. So, if this is the case, then size isn't relative to how fast one is...the muscle fiber distribution is. Just like some people or more prone towards the power lifter build, and some to the wide receiver build. I will never have a wide receiver build. I am short and stocky, with fairly broad shoulders and wide hips. No V shaped body for me, no matter how I train.

So I guess what I am saying is that, in the end, there may be an ideal, but not everyone is going to be able to attain the same ideal. But, they can still pursue the same things, such as Martial Arts.

[ps1]

lol....did we ever hijack this thread.

Wow!! You're right. Sorry for getting off thread everyone

[jsteczko]

Yea, a big discussion was created about muscles, flexibility, speed etc.

Stamina, speed and strength are important in MA. Probably everyone agrees with that.

To gain strength you must train weight lifting (or something similar to that). People train weight lifting for one of these two purposes: increase muscle size or gain strength.

You can train so you mainly gain strength as an athlete.

Or you can train as a bodybuilder and gain muscle mass.

Which one is better? From logical perspective strength would be better for a martial artist, right? But muscle size can give you weight which some people want. Some people also want to look nice in the mirror. And you won't gain good look quickly by training strength.

I was wondering if to create a new thread about this but I decided to discuss this here. My question is, what is better from your point of view? Is it to gain strength or to gain muscle size?

[bushido_man96]

http://images.quickblogcast.com/5/6/9/6/6/177516-166965/PowerLifter.jpg

This is the typical power lifter build. Of course, like anything there are exceptions. But this is what they strive for.

This guy was know as a pretty bulky fellow:

http://www.guamkyokushinkai.com/yahoo_site_admin/assets/images/Sosai_in_seiza.16720229_std.gif

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/230/476629748_a6f9316421.jpg