Motivational Techniques for Martial Arts Training

Article by Idai Makaya

This article was written for the May 2007 edition of Martial Arts Illustrated Magazine.

In my previous article we looked at the general principles of physical conditioning for martial arts, with specific focus on training frequency and progression. We then outlined a sample cardiovascular conditioning program based on sprint drills. It’s obviously important to understand the basic principles of conditioning before actually embarking on any training program.

However, regardless of the martial art or exercise routine you may wish to participate in, you will fail to reach your goals and your true potential if you are unable to motivate yourself consistently - for long periods of your life.  This article aims to help with simple motivational techniques which will help keep you on track towards achieving your training goals. The article will conclude with a conditioning routine for the midsection - a very important area of the martial artist’s physiology.

Idai Makaya shows good midsection development

It is futile embarking on a martial arts training program without putting it into the context of your whole life. Considering that when done wrongly, certain exercises could result in permanent injury or long-term disability, it’s important that anyone who takes up training makes sure they are fully aware of what they are trying to achieve, how best to do it and the pitfalls they may meet along the way.

Martial arts training regimes are about lifestyle change or modification and should always be viewed with a long-term vision. If you plan to train for just a few months and then stop – or just plan to train to reach a specific grade before stopping - don’t even bother going through with it in the first instance. It is really just a waste of your time. Exercise only has genuine benefits when done consistently over very long periods of your life. It is never too late to start training to improve your health or build your confidence.

Your martial arts training should be viewed as one of your daily chores, such as brushing your teeth, taking a bath or shower or, indeed, having a healthy meal. When viewed in that context, the motivational techniques for sustaining a life-long habit of training become a lot more obvious.

For instance, consider the motivations one has for having a bath or taking a shower. They can actually be quite similar to those we have for exercising or training in a martial art.

• Consider the positives of the activity. What do you gain from doing it?
• Consider the consequences of not doing it.
• Consider the fact that it can be turned into a relatively pleasant daily experience.
• Always remember to prioritise it and have a place set aside for it every single day because it is important enough.

What else can we do to make sure we train regularly?

• Get it done first – Training early in the morning before the day really gets moving can be a great way to ensure it always gets done without distractions. It is a useful way to supplement your training by revising what your instructor has taught you so that your performance improves faster. This also gives you the added advantage of an early start to your day. Starting the day early has a wide range of benefits to personal and professional life, including the fact that you get to have a longer day in which to get everything else done that needs doing.
• Tell as many people about your training goals and routines as you can. This puts added pressure on you to follow through with your resolution to exercise/train, especially on those days when your motivation is flagging.
• Include a sports aspect to your training to give you that added impetus to train. For instance, joining a martial arts club and committing yourself to grading or training for a specific competition/tournament is an excellent way to ensure you do the required training.
• Join an exercise group, martial arts club, or a sports team to ensure you have lots of other people around you with similar goals who will help sustain your motivation.
• Try to do something you actually enjoy - or if you cannot possibly enjoy exercising but realise you have to do it, find the least dreadful activity you can as a means of ensuring you are less likely to lose motivation. This may sound strange to some, but the reality is that very few people actually enjoy exercising and everyone that exercises regularly goes through phases when they really do not find it enjoyable at all. This does not mean they stop; this is when they have to turn to successful motivational strategies to keep them going until they can get excited about it again.Joining a club and training in any of the various martial arts is a great way of making exercise interesting and setting goals.
• Change the way you train when it loses its lustre for you. Changing martial arts disciplines or training regimes is inevitable as life goes on. After a number of years one will lose interest in doing the same thing over and over without variety. A change, whether it is short-term, long-term or just additional, can be a great way of recharging your enthusiasm. Some people study more than one martial art or cross train (do many martial arts styles) for short spells to add variety to their training.

• Change the times you train to make the routines livelier. Studies show that just mixing up the scheduling of training routines seems to make them more refreshing for people.
• Change the volume of training you do. If you train/exercise 5 or 6 days a week, try reducing that to 2 or 3 times weekly for a period of between one and three months. The reduced volume will help raise your energy levels and will also get you to look forward to your training more than previously. Alternatively, you may want to change the length of sessions, not the number. So if you normally train for an hour, try changing that to 30 minutes for a limited period.
• Take a short break. A one-week enforced break from all training works wonders for high-level trainees who haven’t had a real break for many months and brings back enthusiasm.
• If you are beginning a training program, work well within your capacity. Do not try to challenge yourself initially. Pushing hard may initially seem rewarding, but after a few weeks overtraining inevitably results, which normally presents as a sudden lack of enthusiasm, a sudden list of excuses for not training and missed training sessions - usually leading to a total cessation of training, eventually. Instead, start out slowly; you have your whole life to get into shape and achieve your martial arts and fitness goals. Increases in intensity will occur naturally - or should be phased in very conservatively - under a strict guide. For instance, if you run, always run distances that are shorter and at speeds that are slower than your maximum ability, initially. Always train within your capacity. Training should be conservative. If you start weight-training, only work with 50% of your actual maximum poundage when you’re a beginner. Then increase in small weekly or monthly increments - after about a month of acclimatization at a low training intensity. Conservative training helps you look forward to training because you want to do more.

Use sporting events as training goals if you are the sort of person that needs that competitive sort of motivation. For instance, getting regularly graded in your martial art or competing in tournaments is a good way of forming short-term, medium-term or even long-term goals.

Now that we have looked at the motivational aspects of a training regime, let’s go into more specific details of a conditioning program useful for all martial arts. This time we will look at a midsection conditioning program…

Key to developing the midsection is an understanding of balance and symmetry. Note we speak of ‘Midsection Development’ and not just ‘abdominal development.’ There is a very good reason for this. The midsection has to be viewed as a unit by every athlete. The midsection is the flexible part of the trunk and forms the core of all athletic movements. The midsection comes into play when twisting or bending, because the upper torso, composed of the ribs or thorax, is inflexible and mainly serves as a harness for the muscles or for breathing. Whether you are a wrestler, grappler, boxer or kick boxer, you rely heavily on the midsection and core of the body to be effective in executing all defensive or offensive movements. This means that if something were to go wrong with any part of your midsection – whether that be the abdominals, the lower back muscles or the lateral muscles along the sides – you would be rendered totally defenseless.  If you are serious about your martial arts, you will take this part of your conditioning extremely seriously.

Midsection conditioning programs serve to fortify the midsection against attacks as well as to build power and endurance in attack and defense movements. They also serve to help you maintain a healthy posture and protect the integrity of the lower back and spine. A midsection conditioning program must balance strength between the front side and rear side of the trunk. If you only pay attention to one side, the imbalance caused will strain the spine during times of exertion or fatigue and the muscles will pull unevenly, leading to lower back pain or even spinal injury.

The exercises listed below are designed to maintain the strength balance as you increase the strength of your midsection. Lower back stretching is essential after every training session. Please bear this in mind. Certain of the lower back exercises listed below can also serve as stretches for the lower back; I will point these out in this article. Choose whichever lower back stretch suits you and use it at the end of every midsection training session and, if you can, at the end of every training session you do. Remember, all martial arts training involves working the midsection and lower back.

Now for the exercises:

The basis of every midsection conditioning program should involve the use of some form of crunches or sit-ups. You really only need to do one set of these exercises. Start with ten repetitions if you are new to this and add one extra repetition every week - building up to at least 25 repetitions. But the sky is the limit, really, with this sort of training. Many martial artists will do at least a hundred sit-ups at a time in a training session.

Crunches involve lying flat on a padded surface and curling the upper torso forward so the upper back and shoulders lift off the ground. The lower spine must not be lifted and must remain pressed against the mat. Return to the starting position and repeat.

Sit-ups are slightly different in that the hip flexors come into the initial crunch motion, so that the lower back is also lifted and the whole torso is raised upright. It’s preferable to use an inclined bench for sit-ups because it puts less strain on the lower back. If you do use an inclined bench, make sure you only lower the torso to parallel, don’t return all the way back down to the bench between repetitions.

To balance the strength gains from abdominal exercises, lower back strengthening is essential. The deadlift is the most effective exercise for this role. A barbell or dumbbell can be used for deadlifts. Keep your back straight when performing the deadlift, do not round it. Ideally, try to lock the lower back in a concave shape when deadlifting. The basis of the deadlift is to lift a weight off the ground until the body is upright, then lower it back under full control – without jerking. Never perform this or any other lower back exercise to muscle failure - always stop with some capacity left to do at least one more repetition. If you have no access to weights the alternative to deadlifts is to use any of the variations of the Bridge exercise. There are two main ways used by martial artists to execute a bridge. The easiest to do is the standing bridge, where the weight of the body is supported on the ands and feet. A more technical version is the neck bridge or wrestler’s bridge where the bodyweight is supported on the feet and forehead, bringing the neck into play.

The standing bridge is performed as follows:

• Lie flat on your back.
• Bring your knees up so your heels are resting just below your buttocks.
• Hold your ankles with the hand from the same side of the body and curl your pelvis upwards so that your torso is angled upwards (with the shoulders on the floor and the waist raised).
• Release your ankles at this point and place your hands with palms flat on the floor in the area just below the shoulders, with the fingers pointing towards your shoulders.
• You can raise your lower torso further off the floor by walking your feet closer towards your shoulders. This will angle the torso up to at least a 45 degree angle from the floor, with the lower abdomen and waist elevated and the shoulders still on the floor.
• From this angle it is easier to push the palms into the floor and lift the head and shoulders. The head will be almost upside down. Walk the feet closer still to the hands, increasing the angle of the arch of the body. The more vertical the trunk, the more effective the exercise and the easier it will be to complete the positioning.
• Hold the position for as long as you comfortably can. You will feel the stretch in the abdominals and the lower spine. But you will also feel the strain in the upper back muscles, shoulders, triceps muscles and the lower back muscles.

The bridge strengthens the rear of the midsection very well and can serve as a substitute to deadlifting.

The other version of the bridge fighters will find useful is the neck bridge. This is a similar sort of exercise to the standing bridge but instead of using the hands and arms for support, the weight is rested on the forehead with the strength of the neck being key to supporting the upper end of the body. You can help support the neck by using the hands, placed on the floor pretty much like you would in the standing bridge, but without extending the arms. You enter the position in the same way you would the standing bridge - but instead of fully unlocking the arms in the final position you simply angle the head back and gently rest your forehead against the mat (it goes without saying that a good cushioned surface is required for this exercise). The aim should be to rest the weight on the forehead - not the top of the head - or else the neck gets compressed instead of stretched and strengthened. It is more challenging to perform the exercise in this manner than the standing version. Learn it under experienced supervision or you can get seriously injured.

The bridge, in both its forms, can be considered to be a lower back stretch. But if you use deadlifts as your back exercise of choice, it is not appropriate to use bridges as stretches afterwards. Use the less strenuous yoga back stretch shown below. This stretch is suitable for use after every training session and returns the spine to its natural, healthy curvature – a state called lordosis. It is essential that lordosis is maintained as often and as long as possible to prevent lower back injury. Lordosis is the state of ideal spinal posture.

To perform the yoga lower back stretch, simply lie front down on a cushioned surface. Placing your hands directly below your shoulders, press down and lift the upper torso using the arms. Try to make the torso as vertical as possible and lock out your arms fully straight. Push the pelvis down against the ground if you can. If you are new to this you will mainly feel it in your abdominals as a tight stretch. But the main effect is the stretching of the lower spine musculature and the emphasis of spinal lordosis. This helps maintain good posture and fights lower back pain.

The most important consideration with midsection training is the maintenance of balance between frontal strength and back strength. The exercises do not need to be complicated or numerous. Just two good exercises will adequately strengthen and develop the muscles of both the front and back of the midsection. The frontal exercises outlined above will also work the lateral abdominal muscles (the obliques). It is not really necessary to do numerous different exercises to target all the different parts of the abdominal complex, just work diligently on the few simple ones that do the most work and aim for consistency and regularity.

Remember not to carry out any of these exercises on consecutive days, always have at least one day off in between sessions.

My next article will focus on how to gather and use information when designing a personalized conditioning program for martial arts training. Happy training until then!

If you want more specific advice on any of the issues raised in this article, or you want to find out more about martial arts fitness and conditioning, contact Idai Makaya.