Weight lifitng makes your joints weak!!

[Royal Dragon]

That depends:

Your joints and tendons work with your muscles, but in a supporting role. So if you over train you can tear dislocate and overall weaken joints and tendons.
Ex: You could possibly bench 300lbs. from the start. However, your elbow/rotator cuff/tendon in you elbow, may not yet be able to handle such a load. So rather than strengthening it, you are damaging them.

Now if you gradually increase the weight through time and work up to 300lbs. You are building your muscles in conjunction with your tendons. Thereby strengthening them.

Reply]
I'm not strong enugh to llift something heavy enough to ripp anything. And if I was to take lifting seriously, anything that WOULD rip if I was strong enough, would increase in strangth along with the muscles anyway...unless i was doi'n roids or something that threw the system artificailly out of balance.

I suppose if I did something reptedly that made a minor tear, and that slowly grew I could, but I am too lazy to ever train weights that hard

[Black Jack II]

These martial mythos tend to kinda all fall in a line, someone should list them.

You know how they go...

Weightlifting slows you down.
You don't need a weapon
Have faith in your system.
Sparring builds bad habits

yadda...yadda...yadda

[Royal Dragon]

I think the "Sparring is bad" one is really a distortion on the "Sparring too early" is bad.

You really need some tools to spar with before you do it, or you just end up unproductively flailing. It's better to learn a small handfull of techniques along with the footwork and basic positioning and timing skills through pre arranged partner drills before you jump in and spar.

I submit a cycle of learning several new skills/techniques followd by pre arranged practice of the new techniques and finally sparring with them should be a consistant, and repeted regimant.

Learn 3 techniques, 2man drill, spar/fight...learn 3 new ones, 2 man drill, spar/fight...repete.

[Black Jack II]

You really need some tools to spar with before you do it, or you just end up unproductively flailing

This makes sense but not in the fashion you see some tradional people advocating. We have all heard about people waiting for spar for absurd lengths fo time.

[Royal Dragon]

Yes, I agree here.

I think that a few months of heavy basics, and memorising a number of fundementall techniques are all you need before sparring can be productive.

Some schools say sparring is only for black belts.....which is arguably worse than sparring day one.

Some may argue with me, but I think going more than 3 months without some sort of free sparring is waiting too long. The only exception may be specific internal styles because they rely so heavily on thier specific body mechanics to function properly, which do take quite a bit of time to develop.

[xcakid]

I believe the whole "sparring is bad" thing is based on point sparring. Sure it helps on speed and timing. But a real fight is fluid and continious and its not point sparring. When I was teaching I discouraged my students from competing in a lot of tournaments that only had point sparring matches(these were mainly "hard style" tournaments). Give bad training if you have to stop once you get a point. Continious free fighting is the was to go.

Another drill I like with my current school that the sifu makes us do, is to do our defensive manuevers/one step drill in motion. Of course this is after practicing it for months static. So rather than just step forward punch and the defender does his specified technic as in static training. We move around like we are sparring, throw either a left or right hand and the defender has to react, while in motion, with his/her specified technic. This is great conditioning for sparring. It trains you to gauge distance. Trains reflexes. Lastly it emphasizes control of technic.

Sparring is bad only on two instances in my opinion: 1. starting too early without the proprer basis. 2. doing point sparring.

[David Jamieson]

attack anyone at their joints and you can break structure, break structure and yiou kill force, kill force and you dominate. doesn't matter if the dude lifts weight or not.

lifting in a controlled manner is more effective than throwing weight you can't control around. building functional strength is more valuable than body sculpting for a fighter, or for someone looking to have usefulness from their training.

but yeah, if you do anything incorrectly, you'll not get much out o it and the possibility of damaging yourself is there. I know more than a couple of guys who have over trained and now suffer because of it. i also know people who train and have trained properly and have a better physical quality of life than others.

[Iron_Eagle_76]

Weight lifting is a pretty vague term. Some people lift in bodybuilding methods, others in power lifting methods, others for simple strentgh training. Personally I do low weight, high reps which works well for me. It is pretty laughable and ignorant to say weight lifting is bad for your martial arts training.

[David Jamieson]

"martial arts" is even more vague as a term in that respect.

[AJM]

I agree that improper weight lifting is bad. Weight lifting in general is one of the best exercises anyone can do in my opinion. I personally have to be carefull because I am strong enough to tear ligiments.

[Ban-Hou]

It is pretty laughable and ignorant to say weight lifting is bad for your martial arts training.

I understand what your saying, but how could it be ignorant to say that? I'm not challenging or anything. Just asking.

[Royal Dragon]

I understand what your saying, but how could it be ignorant to say that? I'm not challenging or anything. Just asking.

Reply]
This is one of those questions that *IF* it has to be asked in the firstplace, the asker would not understand the answer.

[ittokaos]

Me like so many others on this thread believe that lifting incorrectly is bad. However weight lifting can be beneficial to your training regiment. As for the thing on flexibility, that has to do with stretches and how you lift. I know about the flexibility issue first hand. In my high school days all I was worried about was getting stronger and the only way I thought I could do that was to lift more than I should. I did get stronger but I lost a lot of my flexbility. So much so that I use to joke about how I was so buff that I couldn't wipe my ass. (I know that we've all seen those guys before) Anyway, Ive found that if one decides to lift weights they have to understand that just lifting weights will not help you in other areas. Joint loosening and stretches are key to any training regiment and more so (i my experience) in weight lifting. So, if you plan I lifting(i recommend) be safe and be smart. I hope this helps.


Have a good one.

WF

[Royal Dragon]

Back to the comment on being Ignorant. The word ignorant mwans one does not know said knowledge, so if one says that lifting wieghts is bad for martial arts, that is due to being ignorant of the facts.

ANYTHING that makes you strong is good for martial arts. now, *Some* things are better than others. For example, the body builder does get stronger, but he's not going to be as strong as the guy doing weights for strength training., so the Strength training is "Better" for martial arts then Body building, but both are better than not doing anything.

As for getting tight, in extreme cases, especially with body builders that does happen, BUT those are guys who lift heavy, often and do nothing else. A martial artist literally does not have the time to lift that much. Also, martial arts is full of flexibility increasing activities, from forms, to stretching, and various other range of motion exercises. It woould be vertually impossible for a dedicated martial artists to get tight lifting wieghts.

Now, it is also *Proven* scientifically that anything that develops the muscles, also develops the joints (So long as you are not over training). So the comments that weightlifters have weak joints is untrue. In some cases if they are obssesive about body sculpting, thier joints may be tight, and more suseptible to joint locks, but it would take an extremely dedicate regime focused ONLY on lifting over a long period of time to develop that. You wouldn't have time for martial arts in that case. And if you did do that, your joints would become much stronger, just as your muscles and bones do. Also, Raw strength helps one to resist against joint locks as well. It's MUCH harder to get a joint into the rigth positin for aaa lock on a strong person who is resisting heavily, than a weak one who does not have the strength to do so.

The other thing to think about. if you are faced with strength of muscle, and you plan to attack the joints, wouldn't someone who is muscualrly weak be even easier to attack the joints? The answer is of course yes. Why? Because the guy who has done weigth training has much stronger joints than the guy who didn't, and if HIS joints are attackable, then the weaker persons are even more so.

[Black Jack II]

No one has really mentioned a nice side effect of bodybuilding besides the vast amount of physical data one can find on the net.

Aesthetic Intimidation.