Technical Conditioning - The importance of Periodisation for Martial Arts Training  | Article by Idai Makaya | | This article was written for the September 2007 edition of Martial Arts Illustrated Magazine. |
Technique is one of the most important aspects of martial arts training. Martial arts training focuses largely on technical development because the physical side of martial arts relates to the use of specific techniques to control and neutralise opponents. In my previous article I looked at conditioning of the legs/lower-body and identified some of the major aims a martial artist will have when looking at a holistic program to address these aims. I then described exercises which would progress the aspect of leg strength conditioning. This article will look at ways of improving Technical Conditioning with particular emphasis on Periodisation. Periodisation refers to the segmentation of an athlete’s full training history into phases. There are different training recommendations for the various phases of an athlete’s development and an awareness of this principle is extremely valuable for anyone who aims to extend their training career for as long as possible. If done correctly, martial arts training can form the basis of a healthy lifestyle, improving self-confidence as well as quality of life. These benefits make it worth our while to prolong our training as far into our lives as we can.  Many people who take up martial arts training with genuine zest and commitment will enter a common cycle in which their training takes up more and more of their free time and becomes more interesting and exciting over the initial eighteen months. Often, new martial artists are impressed by the skill and ability of senior students and instructors and this gives them specific goals they can begin to focus on. They will usually find the pace of learning quite slow when they first begin and that can be frustrating. But after a few months their nervous system begins to adapt and changes in coordination become discernible.
The first glimmer of these skill improvements often brings a lot of encouragement and enthusiasm tends to increase considerably at this point. However, this can be the point where students may make mistakes. Martial artists who begin training in a group will invariably find that some members of the group develop much faster than others - even if they all follow the same training. This can be discouraging for those who develop slower and a few will lose interest because of this. However, if they were to persist with training they would find that they would probably catch up with their peers – or even exceed them. The reasons why this is possible will become clear further on in this article. I often compare the martial arts journey to the journey of life. We all go through our training journey alongside other individuals with similar goals – a fact applicable to our lives in general - but we also go through the journey on our own in many ways. For instance, nobody can feel our pain for us and nobody can experience our deepest emotions and disappointments for us. There are some aspects of life which we have to go through individually - we have to work through our challenges and make our own decisions at many junctures in our lives. Similarly, we need to make the big decisions in our training for ourselves and take responsibility for the outcomes. In life, if you find that you are struggling and everyone else seems to be doing better than you are, it can be tempting to quit and resign yourself to an existence of lower expectation. In my humble opinion that attitude is wrong. A martial artist cannot take on a defeatist attitude - if fighting spirit is the one thing you ever gain from training as a martial artist then your training will have been worthwhile. The message here is that you should always complete what you have started. Anything worth doing is going to provide some challenges but once you have achieved a challenging goal the perseverance makes the achievement even more valuable. So if you find yourself in a phase where you are wondering if you should throw in the towel please reconsider and push through the challenges. Quitting becomes a habit - but so does success. Develop a habit of succeeding rather than quitting.  Advanced physical development, as displayed by Idai Maakaya, requires the correct training progression. The martial arts training journey has numerous potential drop-out points. The pitfall described in the previous paragraph is probably the most common drop-out point. Much like university academic studies, taking up martial arts training is something many people enter into without much experience and without really knowing what to expect. Often, people have very inaccurate ideas of what martial arts training is about. So once the actual training begins the revelations can either be inspiring or somewhat disappointing – depending on individual expectation, predisposition and perception. Many new trainees quickly decide that martial arts training doesn’t suit them and the evidence of this is in the drop-out rates from clubs. If you are an experienced martial artist, think back to the numbers of students who started training when you did, or who joined your club just before or just after you did. How many of them are still training now? What proportion of all the students who were part of the club then are still training now? Not all the students that drop out are unsuited to martial arts training. In fact, quite the opposite can be said. Most drop out because they were unprepared for the types of challenges they met and they did not know what to expect from martial arts classes before they started. Thus, they probably didn’t have any meaningful, defined goals for their training. Setting out on a training program without any defined goals is a lot like leaving your front door without knowing where you are going.  Idai Makaya uses a periodised training regime to maximise his flexibility development. A lack of goals is not the only setback a new student is likely to encounter. Often, training will progress well and many students will dramatically improve their abilities. At this stage many claim they were ‘bitten by the martial arts bug’ because they became deeply immersed in their training and it dominated a significant part of their life. This phase of training is rewarding because our efforts seem to match our rewards and the tendency then becomes to invest more in training to better the rewards and results. The danger at this point is burnout. Some people take advantage of their body’s initial resilience and subject themselves to a great deal of physical rigor. Socially as well - training tends to dominate in this phase of development and there is the possibility of paying too little attention to other aspects of life. The risk here is that the bubble bursts eventually because the physical rigors take their toll or social issues are forced to the fore - all at the expense of training. Maintain balance between training and the rest of your day-to-day activities and priorities. Hence, this peak period of training and learning can sometimes be a key potential dropout point in the martial artist’s training journey. The observation of many martial arts instructors is that the further along the training path one progresses the higher the likelihood of dropping out becomes. Thus, there are fewer students in the senior grades than the junior ones and fewer old students than young students. The reasons for this are numerous and sometimes complex. I will list a few of the more common ones below: 
Idai Makaya's back has developed through carefully sequenced and progressive training. Students drop out due to major changes in their life - such as moving house, starting a family or travelling abroad to study.
Students get injured due to over-enthusiasm or overtraining and take long layoffs due to their injuries. The loss of form they experience due to such long/numerous layoffs de-motivates and frustrates them and they eventually give up training altogether. This is because many of us are unaware of how to deal with training injuries and how to stop exacerbating them. Most injuries become recurrent and there is a good reason for this – the causes will not have been identified or addressed correctly. Often, the causes of injury can be avoided by training appropriately to match your current level of development – a key focus of Periodisation.
Many students set themselves very singular, measurable goals such as, for instance, achieving Black Belt status. Once such goals are achieved the students may find themselves directionless. At this stage, if new goals are not set, martial arts training will be given progressively lower priority until it eventually drops off the radar. This is why motivational techniques and long-term goal-setting are crucial.
Some students reach a stage where they feel they are no longer improving. This is the most likely cause of de-motivation martial artists will face and is the concern that is addressed by Periodisation training plans.
The issues in this discussion may sound fairly familiar to you but you may still be wondering how they relate directly to technical training and Periodisation. The reason they are stated is to help you prepare yourself to face these and other potential challenges. By preparing yourself for various future possibilities you will increase your chances of success. A few interesting facts are laid out below to help explain how to use Periodisation logic: Success in martial arts is determined largely by your mental approach to the discipline. You need to have the right mindset to be successful in any martial art because it takes a long time to develop into a well-rounded martial artist. Anyone who doesn’t develop their expectations in line with this reality is setting himself/herself up for failure. In order to be successful in martial arts training you must be prepared to endure a certain amount of drudgery and a great deal of organised repetition of certain types of training. This will be explained in greater depth later in this article when we look at the intricacies of a neurological conditioning workout.
That may explain the reasoning behind the examples used to demonstrate the need for an appropriate mental approach but how does this relate to the concept of Periodisation, you may still ask? The Periodisation concept lays out the lifetime journey of an athlete and then separates the main phases so that a mental and physical approach can be developed to ensure success during each phase. This is based on the theory that if you are prepared in advance for certain challenges you will be more likely to overcome these challenges when you encounter them.
I’m convinced that your approach to martial arts training can often closely mimic your approach to life in general. I know this is a massively sweeping statement and it may be slightly less accurate for people who have not trained for a substantial amount of time - but there is some substance to it. The reason I raise this point with regularity is because I believe training can be viewed holistically as more than just a physical endeavour... If you can master your physical and psychological martial arts training you will have learned a valuable skill which is directly transferable to the mastery of every other aspect of your life. The principles applied to overcome physical and emotional hurdles in our training are universally applicable to every other aspect of our lives.  Idai Makaya's musculature is developed for function and this can only be done through scientific training. So the holistic martial artist, instead of simply fortifying himself/herself in anticipation of some purely physical confrontation (that is unlikely to ever occur) – can actually add real meaning and value to his/her martial arts training by viewing it as training to lead a successful life. Success in your training journey can be correlated to success in your life in general due to the nurturing of a habit of perseverance and commitment to success. The philosophical aspects of the martial arts are probably the most valuable but we still have to rely on the physical aspects in order to get us there – so I will certainly not downplay their value. To further emphasise the physical side of training I will now outline a Periodisation analysis. After explaining the various considerations of the analysis I will describe a simple but essential workout for improving neurological conditioning for striking techniques. To conclude I will ‘periodise’ the workout so you can use it correctly and to its greatest effect in your own training journey. 
The workout I am about to outline is useful for conditioning the nervous system so that strikes are generated naturally, spontaneously and effectively. This is essential for performance under pressure – such as when one needs to defend oneself or when one is involved in a martial arts competition. Stress often clouds our reasoning and thought processes - as do high adrenalin levels - and at such times you need to be able to fire off techniques automatically and effectively without much thought. The basis of this sort of coordination is the repetition of techniques regularly and with great frequency during training. The focus of neurological conditioning must be on the correct execution of each technique because if techniques are poorly practiced they will still be reinforced and will become even more difficult to correct later on. My advice is that you always clarify with your instructor that your performance of a particular technique is of the correct standard before you incorporate it into a neurological conditioning program. The routine to be described should be used from beginner level through to advanced level and some of the concepts may not be new to people who have been involved in the martial arts for a long time. In the present age of commercialisation instructors find that they have had to make their classes much more fun and more interesting to hold the attention and enjoyment of their paying students – especially the young children who form the bulk of students trained in modern commercial clubs. Any drills that may come across as boring or particularly uninspiring are often downplayed or excluded from regular training for purposes of student retention. However, the hardcore traditionalists (both past and present) always included a great deal of ‘boring’ repetition work because that is the most effective way to develop physical competence. The drill I will outline must be done at least once every week and preferably twice weekly – but not more than three times weekly. As with the majority of conditioning drills don’t perform it on two consecutive days - always leave at least one day in between performances of the workout. Do some other type of training on the days in between or just leave them as rest days. 
Even the most basic exercises can work either for or against you - depending on how scientifically you sequence your drills. Begin the drill by warming up. A good way to do this is to rotate all your main joints in both directions through their natural ranges of motion. A logical progression involves working the joints along your body from head to feet – or vice versa. Use the dynamic stretches outlined below: Beginning from the top end of the body - gently turn your head from side to side through your neck’s full range of motion. Repeat at least twenty times to loosen the neck.
Next – Perform arm swings by swinging your straightened arms forward and upwards until your hands meet at the top of the movement (at a level slightly higher than the top of your head) in a sort of clapping motion, before swinging them backwards until the palms meet behind the body, again in a sort of clapping motion (your hands would meet at about waist level behind the body). Repeat the movement smoothly and gently at least twenty times to loosen the shoulders.
Wrist rotations would be the next drill. To start, hold out your arms straight in front of you with the hands at about shoulder level and approximately shoulder width apart. Rotate the hands at the wrists – twenty times in each direction. This loosens the wrists and elbows.
To loosen the hips and hamstrings perform dynamic leg raises. These involve swinging the legs forward and upwards through their comfortable range of motion – in a movement very similar to the axe-kick. Only about ten repetitions are required for each type of leg raise. There are two types of leg raise you need to perform – frontal leg raises and lateral leg raises. Frontal raises are simple lifts of the leg in the forward facing direction. Lateral raises involve a similar up-and-down motion, but with the raised leg directed sideways at an angle of seventy or eighty degrees from the frontal-facing direction. Of crucial importance is the speed of the leg raise. Never explode the leg upwards in a very fast motion - creating momentum to stretch the hamstrings and gain higher foot elevation. Instead, raise the leg slowly and smoothly under control to cancel out any extra momentum. You should aspire to get the leg as high as possible with each leg raise, but not at the expense of correct form. Within a few weeks of performing regular leg raises you will find the hamstrings will become very flexible in dynamic movements such as high kicks.
I recommend performing this drill before every workout or training session you do as the first part of your warm up. It is an especially necessary drill to perform before you practice your kicks. It’s also a good drill to do in the mornings when you start your day because it gets all the major joints lubricated and fully functional (throughout their full range of motion) for the rest of the day and it only takes three minutes to complete. Once you’ve limbered up with the exercises described above you will actually be ready to execute all your strikes at a low intensity. This low intensity is crucial for technique-development because your focus should be on how you carry out each movement and not on the speed or power involved. The dynamic warm up drill will enable you to execute your kicks through your full motion range even if you don’t do any further warm up exercises.  However, you can warm up further by doing shadow boxing for about three minutes (so that you can lightly practice all your hand techniques). Be strict with your execution of every hand strike and concentrate on your breathing as your instructor will have taught you. Only practice the hand strikes your instructor has actually taught you previously and be particular in practicing every strike you know – don’t just stick to a few that happen to be your favourites. Perform equal numbers of strikes with both hands - don’t focus more on one side of the body than the other. If you want to build further on your hand techniques you can do the formal/traditional method of martial arts strike practice where you assume a static stance and deliver the strikes rigidly - focussing on hand placement and coordination. Be careful not to fully lock out the elbows when you practice without a target and limit the speed of delivery – focus on technique in this drill. Once you’ve been through the hand strikes you can move immediately into the foot and leg strikes. Perform them in the sequence laid out below for flexibility progression and in order of increasing complexity. The sequencing is very important to aid in fully warming up as well. The focus of this technical and neurological conditioning routine is on the basic techniques which form the building blocks for all other techniques. If you can ensure that your basics are correctly ‘wired’ in you will have no difficulty doing the more complex techniques when you need to. Once ‘wired’ in correctly the techniques will come to you naturally in high pressure situations when you need to perform to defend yourself. If you use this method of neurological conditioning you will find it easy to deliver your techniques without notice and without warming up and you will have the confidence of knowing you can execute the techniques without prior preparation and without having to warm up beforehand. You don’t have to do all the kicks I’ve listed if your instructor doesn’t teach all of them - but you must use the suggested sequence for the ones you do pick. Only practice kicks your instructor has actually taught you and if you have been taught all the kicks below and your instructor is satisfied with your technique, then you must use all the kicks listed for the conditioning drill. However, if a particular technique causes you pain or injury despite correct technique and you no longer want to use that particular kick for this reason, you may omit it from all training for health and safety purposes. 
The structure of your training regime is probably more important than using advanced exercises. An alternative way to deal with techniques that cause you regular overuse injuries - which will allow you to maintain your skill in those techniques - is to only include the particular technique(s) in the routine once in a while. To do this scientifically, perform the technique(s) at the appropriate part(s) of the routine only once every fortnight, once every three weeks or once monthly – the frequency dependent on the response of the injury to each rest period. If the shorter rest periods are still causing discomfort, default to the longer ones until you find that the technique(s) in question are no longer causing injury problems or discomfort. That way you will maintain competence in the technique(s) without stressing or damaging your body. This is especially useful if you are an instructor. But note that this Periodisation technique only applies to overuse injuries (caused by doing a technique too often in past training) – it doesn’t help with injury problems caused by poor technique. Follow the sequence of strikes as described and alternate equally between both legs. All martial arts will incorporate some form of most of the kicks listed below (although different names may be used by different styles to denote the same kick). I will use the more common English terms for simplicity. The drill is as follows: Axe Kick (Start with this kick because it uses maximum range of motion and lengthens the hamstrings more than any other kick) Low-Point (knee/thigh level) Roundhouse Kick Midsection-level Roundhouse/Angle kick High Roundhouse/Angle Kick Low-Point Side Kick (knee/thigh level) Midsection-level Side Kick Hooking Kick (Heel strike) Back Kick or Spinning Back Kick Spinning Hooking or Spinning Crescent Kick (Reverse Roundhouse Kick) Once you’ve drilled the basics listed above you may want to work on other  aspects of your martial art such as forms/patterns practice (or Kata) or grappling drills. You may also use this last part of the workout to practice a particular kick that you’ve been struggling to perfect or a new technique your instructor has recently introduced to your schedule. Regular repetition (to aid neurological conditioning) is the best way to practice Kata or patterns and it helps to be fully warmed up when you do forms – so directly after a kicking session is a good time to do them. When working on forms or Kata, the best way to aid with neurological programming is to start from the most basic ones and progress through all the forms you have been taught in the same sequence they were taught to you. At the end of the sequence you can then focus on any new forms you are learning. To get the best neurological conditioning effect always do all the forms/Kata you’ve been taught, don’t just practice one pattern/Kata alone. The same is true for learning and practicing kicks. If you make a mistake while practicing a particular Kata or pattern you should still complete the whole pattern then re-start it again until you perform it fully without any mistakes. Then continue with the rest of the sequence of patterns/forms (Kata). Boring as it may seem, repetition is key to achieving your goals in martial arts. As stated earlier, always confirm with your instructor that you are actually performing a particular technique correctly before you include it in this sort of workout.
 You will never be able to do the splits if you do not follow a logically structured stretching routine. Once you have completed this part of the workout you can add a lower body strength conditioning routine and/or static stretching. Please take note of the sequencing: Limber up first - then practice Strikes/technique work - before doing Strength training and then, finally - Stretching. From a physiological standpoint, static stretching is always the last thing you do in a martial arts workout. We will now perform a Periodisation analysis on the workout so you can use it in the way that suits you best. This will advise you on the best number of repetitions to perform at the various stages of your training advancement and depending on the goals you have for your training as a whole. The basis of Periodisation is that the body responds differently to training at different phases of the developmental pathway. The body of an elite athlete, with many years of training experience, will behave differently to that of a beginner – but perhaps not in the way many people would think. Compare the human body to a car. A new car is very durable and will tolerate a certain level of abusive use without breaking down. On the other hand, a car with high mileage will be much more sensitive to abuse and will break down very easily if misused. The car analogy is a good one because the age of the car is often not as important as the mileage. A new car with very high mileage is often in a worse state than an older car of the same type with very low mileage. If you have a car on display for many years in a showroom and that car is never driven - it remains practically new. It will, in effect, be ‘newer’ than a car built a year later but then driven around the world. Referring to the analogy above, an elite athlete is similar in some ways to a car with very high mileage. For an elite athlete’s body to give the best returns it has to be trained with care and precision and with minimal abuse. On the other hand, beginners will often show progress with almost any type of rational training. For this reason, there is no need for beginners to engage in complex and very demanding conditioning drills. Any decent training will bring improvement for beginners and the only way to ensure that technical development progresses at the fastest pace possible is to use the regular repetition technique outlined earlier in this article – with focus on correct technique. Most people find that they progress well at lower levels in the martial arts but then reach a sticking point after a year or two. The sticking point is the point at which scientific principles and correct Periodisation become crucial for continued progress to be realised. 
Idai Makaya performing Taekwondo patterns for coordination. Heavy, strenuous, tiring conditioning drills will not help a beginner. Save that sort of training for the time in your career when it will count – which is when preparing for high-level competitions at the peak of your training career. Very strenuous conditioning drills have no place in the schedule of a low-level, non-competitive recreational martial artist who has not been training very long. Even experienced competitive athletes should save very hard, strenuous training for the build-up to big tournaments/fights.
From the considerations made above it is certainly important to take an athlete’s length of training into consideration. To be more specific, it takes between five and seven years of progressive training to achieve one’s full ability in any sporting discipline – including martial arts. After this time period has elapsed one should not expect dramatic improvements in any of the disciplines in which they regularly train. Initially, this may sound like a condemnation of people who have not excelled within this time period. However, this time period refers to ‘progressive’ training – that is, training correctly. If you turn up for martial arts classes two or three times a week and follow a good instructor’s advice to the letter whilst in the training hall, you will improve to a good extent as a beginner. However, if you do not do your own separate training to reverse your own particular weaknesses and to revise all your previous training, you will reach a plateau quite early in your career. The same way a medical student cannot expect to graduate and become a competent doctor by simply turning up and listening intently to his/her lecturer during classes, a martial artist needs to do separate personal revision. Your instructor cannot cover every technique you have ever been taught - every week. However, you can do so in your spare time – every week. Your instructor’s role is to teach you how to train but he/she expects you to practice appropriately in your free time so that classes can be progressive and time can be dedicated to many new and varied training aspects. For this reason, some martial artists will have been at a training plateau for many years (more than five or six years sometimes) but they actually still have a lot of potential for development because they have not really been training appropriately to maximise their development. There is still hope for a great developmental breakthrough in those sorts of cases. The drive behind the neurological conditioning routine outlined above is to give you an opportunity to revise every basic technique at least once every week. By doing that, your body will be able to develop continuously and progressively for many years and will maintain its peak abilities almost indefinitely. If you have trained in a martial art for five years or more without any significant lay-offs and you have not reached a good all round technical standard you have not been training appropriately - or you have not been customising your training to improve on your weaknesses and revise new techniques. 
Regularity of training is more important than intensity. To put this into perspective consider an athlete in a different code of sport - a Tennis player for instance. A Tennis player practices by breaking down the game into its constituent parts and practicing each part of their game repeatedly - until perfection is attained. Tennis players will practice their serving for hours every week. They will practice backhand returns for hours every week. They will practice volleying for hours every week. And so on. Martial arts training and conditioning is no different. To reach a satisfactory standard in any technique you will probably have to have repeated that technique correctly at least ten times a week for at least fifty consecutive weeks. Don’t get too fixated on the figures – they only serve as a rough guide. The concept of repetition is the basis of neurological conditioning and traditionalists will tell you that a lot of drudgery and boring repetition are an essential part of the journey to success. Also important is the ability to identify technical weaknesses and work on them specifically at the end of your neurological conditioning drill - when you will be fully warmed up and your nervous system will be well primed by the sequence of increasing complexity of techniques used in the drill. The final aspect of Periodisation training is the complexity, duration and intensity of exercises. The neurological conditioning plan outlined earlier is designed to address technique. But as you develop a greater portfolio of techniques you can use it as an aerobic or endurance workout too. How hard should you be pushing yourself, you may ask? - Ideally, you should perform the techniques at slower speed than normal, focussing on the movement trajectory and balance.
How many repetitions should be performed of each technique? – Initially, only five per leg (always perform the same number of kicks for each leg unless one leg is particularly poorer than the other, in which case you would perform ten repetitions for the weaker leg until the abilities of both sides become matched).
Beginners need to focus on technique alone to develop the correct neurological conditioning but advanced trainers (with more than five years of continuous training experience) can build on the repetitions until ten repetitions of each kick are being performed by each leg. Don’t go beyond ten repetitions per leg because neurological fatigue begins to set in as the workout progresses and technique and coordination erode somewhat if you do high numbers of repetitions (This opens up susceptibility to injury as well as technical deterioration which leads to poorer technique being practiced and reinforced).
For a Black Belt (who will be schooled in all the basic techniques) the workout listed above will take between 45 minutes and an hour to complete – without breaks. That is a lengthy period of time and allows endurance to be built up. This type of workout is essential for people who don’t do specific cardiovascular training to supplement their martial arts because a martial artist must be capable of performing for a reasonable amount of time in order to be fit enough to defend himself/herself.
Idai Makaya performs a drill with Lee Hasdell at SSJ Studio. Periodisation involves learning to train correctly to avoid injury and doing the right training at the right phase in your development to encourage your body to learn. It is based on repeating good training drills hundreds of times so that they become second nature. You will find that if you train in this way your nervous system will become naturally conditioned and you’ll be able to call upon the skills you have honed without having to think about it - in times of genuine need (This is something the older generation of martial artists considered to be the norm). However, the scientific scheduling of the training and the matching of incremental intensity and experience will make sure you progress at the correct rate for your body to develop optimally. In future articles I will look at developing more conditioning skills designed to help you along your journey to becoming a complete martial artist. 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. |