Distance Running For Better Sparring Performance

Article by Idai Makaya

This article was written for the August 2008 edition of Martial Arts Illustrated Magazine.

Early in 2007 I wrote an article for Martial Arts Illustrated Magazine focussing on using sprinting for martial arts fitness and conditioning. This month’s article is aimed at teaching you an alternative method of running which will allow you to attain high levels of aerobic fitness for your sparring and combat performance - while still avoiding many of the injury pitfalls of traditional running methods and nullifying some of their potential adverse effects on martial arts training. It will also be useful for optimising your weight if you happen to be carrying excess fat or if you want to get down to an ideal weight category for competition purposes.

There are numerous advantages to be derived from running as part of martial arts and combat conditioning - which mainly relate to improving sustained combat performance (sparring or fighting). One semi-contact Karate multiple World Champion once told me he was convinced the competitive difference between him and the other competitors he’d managed to beat over five different World Championships was solely down to the amount of running that he did. He doesn’t believe that he was doing anything technically different in his Karate training but he feels that the enhanced cardiovascular fitness derived from running makes that fractional difference (as you progress through fights or long tournaments) and eventually that becomes the differentiator between two good fighters who are both very tired.

Idai Makaya trains during his run-walk endurance training experiment. 

There is a good deal of logic in that argument and running is a practice used universally by all successful professional fighters in martial arts or boxing. On that anecdotal basis of proof one would probably have to agree that running will help condition fighters to fight better.

Mainly, the benefits of running relate to increasing the output and efficiency of the heart and circulation, as well as increasing the endurance of the lower body (i.e. active time on your feet).

I must say - from my personal experience - I’ve found that one needs to be careful how much dependence is put on running as a form of combat conditioning. Depending on how you run, the level of running fitness is not always matched to your level of martial arts conditioning for sparring. If you don’t do very sports-specific conditioning as well, your running fitness may not be adequate and you could be very fit on the road or track but easily tired when you fight.

I discovered (at a time when I was conditioned to running 21km in under 90 minutes quite easily) that I could get quickly worn out during long, heavy sparring sessions with Thai boxers who did a lot of sparring and fight-conditioning - but some of whom did little or no running at all. This demonstrates a need for a combination of sport-specific work and general conditioning. Don’t rely only on running as a fitness solution for sparring, mix it with technical endurance work as well (e.g. pad work and bag work).

There are two main forms of running – both of which can be used for martial arts and combat training:

1. Sprinting (well suited to fighter conditioning)
2. Even-paced distance running (develops general fitness)

Ideally, a fighter should use both types of running to get fully conditioned. However, not all of us are professional fighters and many amateurs would be wasting their time by pushing their conditioning to the level of a professional competitor. Furthermore, if you don’t compete at all, the type of fitness required for martial arts training is different to a competitive fighter’s. Being trained to an unnecessarily high level of fitness conditioning is unnecessary and will not benefit most martial artists. You should aim to train specifically to your goals at the present time – train seasonally and follow a Periodisation program, as I’ve explained in previous conditioning articles.

Idai Makaya throws multiple techniques during a sparring session. This requires good endurance as the session progresses.

If you are preparing for a competition, train appropriate to the specific event. Non-continuous, semi-contact point fighting will not make the same demands on your body as long full contact, continuous fighting. If you trained for the endurance required for full contact bouts, it would actually put you at a disadvantage in short, point-scoring competitions that mainly require speed and technique – because heavy endurance training actually reduces speed and explosiveness in fighters.

The reason why boxers and other full contact fighters do so much heavy endurance work is that even the most skilled fighter will quickly “gas out” if his/her conditioning is poor in a 3 to 12 round fight. You cannot rely on the hope of knocking your opponent out in the first round of a fight, so you prepare for the full distance - even if that will slightly blight your absolute speed. In longer bouts the ability to throw numerous, hurtful combinations is far more important than all-out single-punch speed.

This brings us onto the issue of how to use the different types of running.

Sprinting is simply running at (or close to) maximum effort - an activity which cannot be sustained for very long spells. From a physiological viewpoint, sprinting refers to any pace of running which cannot be sustained for longer than a minute - without having to stop running completely. Maximum effort sprinting cannot be maintained for much more than ten to twenty seconds. Any longer sprinting effort is sub-maximal. Sprinting is fuelled by the body’s anaerobic respiratory system – which means the efforts are not directly dependent on the oxygenation of the blood and will quickly generate lactic acid in the bloodstream.

Increased endurance training activity will lead to a decrease in boy fat and weight loss. 

Lactic acid causes the burning sensation you get in your muscles when you work them very hard. If the effort is sustained, lactic acid usually builds up to such a high level that the exertion cannot continue due to the pain and associated muscle failure. This happens whether you are sprinting, punching or kicking – which is why bouts of carefully controlled sprinting are a good form of conditioning for competitive fighters. Sprinting, combined with short jogging breaks - much like the drills used by football players - works well for competition training for long bouts in big tournaments.

However, that sort of training can cause muscle, tendon and ligament injuries because it is so intense and it is of a high-impact nature. Even if the sprinting itself doesn’t directly cause the injuries, it may weaken the soft tissues to such an extent that martial arts practice actually causes the injuries instead. Either way, the athlete will become more injury-prone.

The vast majority of martial artists do not compete in full contact, long-duration bouts. They either compete in short, semi-contact fights or they train for self-defence only. The fitness demands for such fighters are totally different and are actually best met through even-paced running at a much lower, less intense tempo. Even competitive fighters still need to do even-paced running to increase their ability to stay mobile for long periods during fights or to recover from bouts of hard running.

Physiologically speaking, even-paced distance running is any form of running which can be maintained for longer than a minute. It is usually done at such a slow pace that it can be maintained for many minutes, if not hours. It is fuelled by the body’s aerobic systems, which means that it is directly dependent on oxygen being circulated in the blood and it doesn’t cause much of a lactic acid buildup.

Idai Makaya(R) throws a hooking kick in sparring. Complex techniques are virtually useless in a fight without adequate endurance training to back them up and allow you to repeat them as often as needed.

To sustain even-paced running requires ‘pacing’ and the pace used should be relatively easy if lactic acid production is to be avoided or minimized. Lactic acid buildup is a sign that the pace is getting so fast that the oxygen being breathed in is no longer adequate to fuel energy production for the exercise. The fitter you are, the faster you can run without reaching your lactic acid threshold. The lactic acid threshold is the barrier at which your efforts become unsustainable due to an inability for your heart and lungs to circulate enough oxygen to the muscles for them to continue to produce energy to work.

Slow, long distance running sounds like a less damaging, less intense way for martial artists to train – and in many ways it is. However, to get really fit from slow paced running, or to lose excess weight through slow paced running, will require running for anything up to an hour. In addition, if you run every day it puts you at risk of developing a slightly different form of injury to high-impact injury – called overuse injury.

So the first rule to sustainable running for martial artists is: Don’t run every day – run every other day, 2 or 3 times a week. Always have a day off between running sessions.

If controlling or reducing weight is your goal, whether it is for health or competition purposes, you will need to make your runs relatively long. That will put you at risk of developing soft tissue overuse injuries - especially when the running is combined with regular martial arts training. This is where the new technique I wrote this article for will help you. It involves interval running. Immediately, you may think this refers to sprinting. It doesn’t.

Interval running is a common method of using sprint training, which involves sprinting for a set spell and then recuperating for a set spell, before repeating the sprint again. This form of training is commonplace in athletics, boxing and professional martial arts training. However, the type of interval training I am about to recommend is very different to the traditional form.

I have been running for fitness purposes for 18 years now and sometimes, during this 18 year period, I have become more involved in the sporting aspect of running - in order to add a new element of variety and challenge to my training. This has seen me participate in different types of Athletics races over the years. One particular type of race I took an interest in (but never actually attempted to participate in) was ultra marathon running. Ultra marathons are, by definition, races longer than the 26.2 mile distance of the standard Olympic marathon. Many ‘ultras’ are 60 miles and longer in duration.

The top athletes who specialize in racing ultras tend to race in a specific way during very long ultra marathons, 100 miles or longer. Because you cannot run 100 miles all at once, the strategy is to preserve the body and its energy stores by running and then walking in a scheduled pattern. The runs and walks are predetermined in the race strategy and should last specific amounts of time. Over the last few years I have found that doing lots of running weakens the ligaments in my feet which can sometimes lead to a susceptibility to tendonitis – a common running injury of the feet. Many other runners and running textbooks will confirm this is common – probably inevitable – if you run continuously for long periods of time.

Idai Makaya(L) relies on combination strikes during fighting/sparring and this is only possible with good cardiovascular/endurance conditioning. Distance running can contribute to developing such endurance.

In 2007, as an experiment to overcome a tendonitis problem I’d recently experienced (something which has recurred a number of times over my 18 years of running) I decided to stop running completely for a few months - until the tendonitis had completely alleviated.

Discontinuing any injury-provoking conditioning activities is often the best way to eliminate the injuries caused. I must say I gained quite a few pounds of extra bodyweight during this layoff period so it does require discipline to adhere to this principle. I continued my other martial arts and conditioning activities despite cutting out the running. I then restarted running with a walking program, initially - during which I built up my walking time and frequency from twice-weekly 30 minute walks to thrice-weekly one-hour walks.

It took 3 months to get to the stage of doing the one hour walks 3 times weekly, with no indication of the tendonitis creeping back because of the gradual buildup in walking time and the low-impact nature of walking. At this stage the real experiment began – based on the ultra marathon racing strategy I described earlier. I changed my training method to one of alternating periods of slow, even-paced running with walking periods of equal duration - in a 30 minute session done every other day (one day off between sessions). I did this 3 times a week, with martial arts and other conditioning work done during the off-days between running sessions.

In order to keep the running periods short, so as to avoid the possibility of causing overuse injury (such as tendonitis), I restricted maximum running time to 10 minutes - even though I could easily run for much longer if I’d wanted to. I also restricted the running speed to a light pace which never threatened breathlessness (that’s about 65-70% of maximum heart rate for the more technical readers). Once I was comfortable with the new format, I maintained it for a while, until I started feeling the natural urge to do more and to challenge myself further. At this stage I held back and started to make slow increases by adding on a shorter run-walk session – still keeping the running and walking time periods equal at 10 minutes each. I would only increase workout duration once a month. I got the sessions up to an hour and twenty minutes long, eventually but decided to stop further increases for reasons of time constraints.

The benefits of this have been no injuries at all related to running or martial arts, steady loss of excess weight, high energy levels and increased general endurance.

This kind of training is comparatively easy so you don’t feel apprehensive before training sessions and you are less likely to drop out of training due to fatigue building up over the weeks. You can adapt it to suit your time constraints and it doesn’t require any specialized equipment - apart from a decent set of shoes and appropriate clothing. Furthermore, the odd bad night where sleep is lost will not put you into a descending cycle of fatigue or cause you to become injury prone because the workout is of a very light nature. However, it is effective. Save the hard workouts for your main sport, martial arts.

Endurance gained from distance running will transfer to the development of tactical hand techniques and combination-development through better training sessions and fitter legs (the legs play a role in punching).

If you are looking to improve your general fitness and endurance, or if you want to taper down to your ideal athletic weight, why not give this form of interval training a try. I’ll summarize the training program I used below:

Months 1-3:
Build up to walking comfortably for 1 hour - 3 times weekly.

Months 4-5:
Alternate walking and running sessions of equal duration - maximum interval time 10 minutes. Total session time should not increase beyond 30 minutes in total at this point (e.g. 10 min walk, 10 min run, 10 min walk. Total training time = 30 minutes).

Month 6 onwards:
You can maintain the training at 30 minute sessions - or begin to add on extra sessions every month, making the sessions as long as you want. Don’t add on more than 20 minutes a month to the total session length (i.e. 1 extra session of 10 min running and 10 min walking).

Always begin each session with a ten minute walk and always end each session with a walk of equal duration to the running interval immediately preceding it (e.g. 10 min walk, 10 min run, 10 min walk, 10 min run, 10 min walk, 10 min run, 10 min walk, 5 min run, 5 min walk – total training time = 80 minutes).

If you don’t already run, or if you have had injury issues with running, give this form of training a try. I am sure it will make a positive impact on your training and fitness. My future articles will continue to look into new conditioning techniques which will improve performance without compromising long-term health and wellbeing. Happy training until then!

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