Personalise Your Training - Ask the right Questions - Part 2

Article by Idai Makaya

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

In my previous article we looked at different ways of personalising our training and conditioning through the use of investigative questioning techniques to process training information. Now it’s time to discuss an actual example of a training and conditioning challenge and put this logic into practice. Such an approach will be valid for any type of physical problem which arises during one’s training career. The main thing to be aware of is that the causes of injuries are not always obvious and the injuries may not even appear to be linked to the actual conditioning exercises that have caused them.

Consider the following example. I based it on real cases I have come across over the years which have been rectified through productive investigation and logical implementation of the solutions uncovered.

Here goes….

A very experienced martial artist began developing chronic discomfort around his Achilles tendons of both legs and, as if that wasn’t enough, he also found himself regularly waking in the morning with a painful, immobile neck. As a high level kick boxer he had been used to practicing advanced and effective conditioning techniques for many years and had been able to stay relatively injury free. Obviously, he found this new set of challenges very disheartening.

Idai Makaya under instruction from Lee Hasdell.

Initially, he just waited it out. He hoped the injuries would spontaneously resolve on their own. But he was not prepared to cut down or stop his martial arts training because he had recently become heavily involved in the competition circuit and was progressing well through the various tournaments. He felt he was close to reaching a new competitive level and he was still able to compete despite the new nagging injuries he had recently developed.

He also knew that the tendon injuries were probably going to get worse and he feared that if he left them for too long they may become irreversible and he’d eventually need surgery to set them right. He had no idea why his neck was bothering him and didn’t think it had anything to do with martial arts training .

He had been to see a chiropractor about his neck, but his chiropractor was not specially trained in sports medicine and the outcomes of their sessions were unsatisfactory (the advice he was given was that he stop training completely, something he would only consider as a last resort). He was sure there was another way. Here’s how he got to the root of his problems and decided which solutions to pursue.

Following the model outlined in my previous article, he used investigative questioning techniques to complete a full training re-assessment in the hope of uncovering the underlying problems.

Idai Makaya sparring.

As suggested in the preceding article, he asked the following questions:

• Are my current training drills helping me to improve measurably over time? Am I progressing towards my training goals at the correct pace?  The answer was a definite ‘yes,’ he was doing very well in moving closer to his goals.
  
  
• Do the moves I practice feel natural? Definitely. His training had not caused him to feel awkward in the joints and he had excellent technique.
  
  
• Do I look forward to training - month after month, year after year? He relished his training and was actually beginning to spend more time practicing and getting fitter so he could compete better.
  
  
• Am I often – or constantly – nursing injuries? Although now injured, this kick boxer generally didn’t get conditioning-related injuries very often. He would sometimes develop toe or finger injuries during periods of regular intense sparring preparation, in the build-up to a competition, but nothing unexpected or unexplained.

He asked himself the set of questions listed below:

• What are my martial arts goals?
• Are those goals realistic?
• What are the likely returns of achieving these sporting goals?
• Do these returns match the possible consequences of any potential training injuries?

Idai Makaya outdoor training.

He was satisfied that he understood his situation and was comfortable with his training routine, which had served him well for several years. But he was a little unsure of the answer to the last question. So the next thing he needed to do was evaluate his recent and long-term training history. Things had gone well over the years but recently his chronic injuries had developed and seemed to be getting gradually worse.

He wondered if it was, perhaps, the wear and tear that comes with age. He raised this possibility with a number of his training colleagues, including myself. I wasn’t convinced of this, judging by his training methods. He looked into the issue of what recent changes he may have made that could have begun the deterioration in his Achilles tendons.

The only change which could be identified was that he had increased his skipping rope sessions from once a week, before sparring class, to three times weekly. This was because the instructor advised that every serious fighter must do ‘lots of skipping rope work.’ He had been skipping for years, but not in very high volumes. Three times weekly didn’t seem much of an increase. But was it?

He normally did ten minutes of skipping, once weekly, as a warm-up before sparring. Now he was doing ten minutes three times weekly. Although only a small section of his workout had been increased, in percentage terms he had increased the volume of his skipping by 200%. That sort of increase in training volume should ring alarm bells, regardless of the type of training concerned. Progression needs to be very measured in any type of conditioning program. Even seemingly minor changes may make more of an impact on the joints and tissues than one would instinctively have thought.

Each athlete must develop his/her physique to suit his/her goals.

Well-conditioned, experienced practitioners must stick to the basics of conditioning at all times. It is easy to think that high fitness levels will allow you to do things at a faster pace than the average person, but this is not necessarily the case. Training must never be rushed because you cannot speed up adaptation. If you start anything new you should progress pretty much like a beginner would. It may seem overly conservative if you are not used to holding back, but you will definitely avoid potential setbacks in future if you use this approach.

The next investigation made was an internet search on Achilles tendon injuries. Obviously, a huge list of results came up. We looked at a number of articles and research papers and it quickly became evident that the main cause of Achilles tendon injuries is inadequate strength and endurance in the calf muscles, often combined with inadequate flexibility of the same muscle system. The martial artist in this case did schedule regular circuit training into his weekly gym regime and he would work all the muscle groups in his body routinely. So we wondered if a lack of strength could possibly be the main issue in his case. We discussed his actual martial arts training at length and tried to uncover any shortcomings in technique. There weren’t any obvious ones. Nor were there any twisting or pivoting movements practiced to excess. However, his overall training volume was relatively high because of his sporting involvement – though not too high for someone of his experience and training background.

Idai Makaya sparring.

After much consideration the only explanation had to be that the skipping had caused the problem, because that was the only discernible change in the training program. Due to the sudden increase in skipping, combined with the generally high training volume, the tendons were pushed slightly beyond their comfortable working capacity and began to inflame and tear.

In a way, this did correlate with the general view that a lack of strength and endurance causes Achilles problems. Although very strong and fit, our kick boxer had suddenly increased some of his training and his conditioning was no longer adequate because he had not given his body time to gradually acclimatise to the changes. So a ‘lack of strength’ is a relative term. You may be very strong, compared to other people, but not strong enough for what you do. Individualisation is the key to conditioning success. Your conditioning must exactly meet your needs. Every martial artist must spend a reasonable amount of his/her spare time doing additional drills to make sure their training is customised to meet the demands of their own body and their own personal situation.

Idai Makaya core-training with Lee Hasdell.

The only way to correct the imbalance that had developed and caused my colleague’s Achilles injuries was to embark on a rehabilitation program, incorporated into normal training. This would have to be combined with a cessation of the aggravating activity. This meant that skipping had to be dropped completely from his routine. If you think you have identified a particular drill to be responsible for causing you injury, you must stop that activity completely. Resume it later (at dramatically lower volumes and intensities than before) once the injury has resolved. This allows you to be sure that the actual problem has, indeed, been isolated.

Sometimes, because you have developed a certain type of injury, you will then become permanently susceptible to it. This may curtail your ability to use those drills which aggravated the injury in the first place. But don’t let that concern you too much. Many drills are useful, but not crucial, to your success. There are often substitutes available.

My kick boxing colleague dropped skipping from his routine completely and launched straight into the rehabilitation program. This simply involved doing calf-raise exercises through the full range of motion of the calf and Achilles tendon of each leg. The range of motion is crucial to this rehabilitation and prevention program, because there may be a hidden weak point along the contraction range of the muscle, caused by the way the muscle gets used during sporting activities. This weakness may have brought about the susceptibility to injury. The program required the calf-raises to be performed every other day, after any type of training session and followed by calf stretches. I also got him to do calf stretches every day, even in the absence of a training session.

How and when you stretch can allow you to develop incredible flexibility.

Passive stretches are safe to do every day because, unlike strength and fitness exercises, they do not involve systematic breakdown and rebuilding of soft tissues and they don’t require muscle contractions.

This program had to be implemented for several months before the problem was rectified and then a maintenance program (done less often, with slightly fewer repetitions) had to be permanently adopted to avoid the problem recurring.

Please note: It takes months to heal chronic injuries (long-term injuries or injuries which have recurred many times in the past). These injuries will have taken a long time to develop by the time they come to the fore, so it will take a long time to correct the imbalances which have caused them.

The second part of the injury problem was the regular neck problems the kick boxer in our example had been experiencing. He didn’t consider this to be related to martial arts training and it only came to my attention because he couldn’t attend training on a day when the neck problem was particularly bad (he couldn’t turn his head to one side that day). He revealed that the problem had only arisen relatively recently, about the same time as the tendon problems. That last statement caught my attention. I thought he needed to look into it further only because it started suddenly and at the same time as his other injuries. He had seen a specialist about it and got some temporary relief. The same specialist had also advised him to stop training in order to solve the Achilles tendon problems.

Once he started thinking about his whole injury history, my colleague once again had to clarify a few issues through investigative questioning techniques. Through his investigations to solve his Achilles problems he had realised that his increased commitment to harder training was probably the turning point at which his body started having problems. He had to consider the fact that he may be overtraining. But he didn’t feel the fatigue and demotivation one would expect from overtraining. So the problem may possibly have been related to something else. He discussed the issue with his training colleagues but no one could really isolate anything definite.

I asked him which specific aspects of his training had been intensified in his new drive for success and it appeared that he was doing everything the right way, apart from increasing his skipping very suddenly, which obviously exposed an underlying conditioning weakness. When prompted to think carefully over everything he may have changed he did then mention that he was doing more abdominal work to condition his midsection for competition. He couldn’t see how that would affect his neck, though. Neither could I, upon initial consideration.

As a last resort we thought we’d just see how he actually performed all his conditioning exercises. He showed a group of his club colleagues the different exercises he routinely performed. When he demonstrated his abdominal exercises we noticed that he interlocked his fingers behind his head when doing crunches and sit-ups. I pointed this out and he explained that he’d done it that way for years without any problem. He couldn’t see how it would suddenly be causing problems now.

However, it was revealed that he had increased his repetitions gradually over a number of months and now he was struggling to complete the last few repetitions of each exercise. Under such circumstances there is a tendency for the arms to strain against the back of the head as exercise form deteriorates. That may stress the neck and even the upper back. This partly explained why his neck was susceptible to sprains.

However, the biggest likely cause of the neck problem was revealed in his circuit training. He only used exercise machines for his strength training in the gym. As with the rest of his routine, he had been intensifying training by progressively increasing the amount of weight he lifted. However, although using machines allows you to train safely with very heavy weights, it cannot mimic natural movements and you cannot tell how symmetrical your efforts are. This gives rise to a possibility of one side of the body becoming much stronger than the other and muscle groupings in various planes across the spine/body core developing unbalanced pulling power in their opposing directions. This is very likely to be the cause of the tensing of the neck muscles overnight on days when the athlete is particularly tired. The neck rests in unnatural positions when a person sleeps exhausted and the muscles struggle subconsciously to correct it. The uneven muscle strength leads to strains which cause a stiffened neck upon waking.

Idai Makaya trains mainly for function.

The solution is to do the bulk of your resistance exercises with free weights, which will allow the body to naturally balance its exertions. This symmetrically strengthens the body as well. The kick boxer in this illustration did start doing the bulk of his strength training with free weights, not machines. He had to use much less weight in each exercise for safety and practicality purposes. But, despite lifting less weight, free weight exercises are more challenging than similar equivalents on machines because more nerve pathways are activated to coordinate balancing of the weights being lifted. So they actually cause better athletic development.

Soon, the kick boxer found that his neck problems had become far less frequent with his new training methods. But the pathway to his success was in correctly using the resources around him and implementing logical adaptations to personalise his training.

 Often, you won’t have to change a great deal of your training to make it more effective and safer. By simply focussing on a few pivotal aspects of our training we can tweak it to such an extent that we will take our performance to entirely new levels. But we need to ask ourselves and the other people around us the correct questions at the correct times, to realise these gains.

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.