does your school have a strengh training program?

[Pork Chop]

Pork Chop, how about the fitness gyms that offer specialized classes (Karate, Yoga, etc)?

Well, the Baltimore San Shou Gym used to operate out of Gold's Gym, as did Pat Militech's team back in the day. We had a lot of headaches with them and people disrespecting our equipment - some guy thought it would be a good idea to hang from the fairtex heavy bag I bought and snapped one of the straps.

Like I said, Krav Maga's pulled off the blending of fitness and martial arts the best, imho. They have 1 small room with heavybags and weights for drop-in type workouts; the rest of their classes are all instructor-run. They have an army of instructors and sales staff. I wouldn't be surprised if there were over 1000 members at that gym.

As far as your freestyle idea:
Most boxing gyms are completely freestyle. With muay thai gyms it's about 50/50, between gyms that run classes or open workouts. MMA gyms are almost exclusively classes, except for maybe free weights, cardio, the bag room, and whenever they have open mat.

My muay thai gym used to be structured classes except for Saturday (which was usually a free-for-all), but now they've mostly done away with that (now all freestyle/at coach's discretion). Even during structured classes, there was sometimes freedom to freestyle after the group warmup.

For fitness/warmup I like a structured workout, but for skills & basics work I like freedom.

I think the only beef I have with my muay thai gym currently is the fact that it can be pretty helter-skelter. You can show up wanting to work on certain things, get a few rounds in of what you planned, and then get pulled off to do other stuff depending on who shows up and how the instructor is feeling.

[Pork Chop]

I love living in the bay area.....we got everything in close range. there's a Gracie BJJ school down the street from my apartment.

Yah, we aren't California.... yet...
You guys, especially the bay area, have it way too good.

[lance]

was talking about this with a friend of mine..i have a friend who has a kung fu school here in ny..and as far as i know he is the only kung fu teacher that has a strength training program to go with his kung fu, weights, kettle bells etc. i think alot of what mma has brought to the martial arts world needs to be incorporated into the kung fu schools..alot of karate and ofcourse muay thai schools do it...but kung fu schools lack alot of modern innovations, that will help take your students to the next level..it also raises the profile of your school. any kung fu schools out there who has a program like this?

I train in CMA and my favorite ST equipment are the kettlebells , which to me is alot heavier than those dumbells . But overall to me I would say that training with kettlebells is just as good as training with dumbells . Kettlebells go with the kilogram while dumbells go by the lb. At one time I was at a target store in Hawaii , and I tried this 15 pound dumbell , **** the same challenge I got when I was lifting up a 15 kilos of kettlebell . So I had my challenge .

[hskwarrior]

Yah, we aren't California.... yet...
You guys, especially the bay area, have it way too good.

compared to some other places, this is heaven. northern Cali baby....

[Kung Fu God]

We do stance training, lion dance, form, heavy pole work, heavy sword work.... this is all the conditioning you need to produce top quality martial artists.

That and a statue of General Kwan and three fresh oranges.

[hskwarrior]

We do stance training, lion dance, form, heavy pole work, heavy sword work.... this is all the conditioning you need to produce top quality martial artists.

That and a statue of General Kwan and three fresh oranges.

can someone say "TRANSPARENT" as the one tracked mind broken record man speaks. IT NEVER CHANGES. DUMMY. LMAO

gung fu is better off without you LMAO.....you should be p1ssed with your sifu.