Lifting weights can complement martial arts training, but only if you do the right kind of training, otherwise it could easily be a hinderance. In fact, the kind of training that most people do at the gym would almost certainly have negative impacts for someone practicing Oriental martial arts, or martial arts in general.

If you follow the advice that you might find in bodybuilding magazines, or mens health magazines, or if you follow one of the standard programes that personal trainers or the people who do your induction at the gym would give you, you will probably be doing 2-3 sets of something like 8-15 repetitions for each exercise. It is likely that you will also be using machines rather than free weights alot of the time, which are supposed to target specific muscles and improve your training.

This is exactly the kind of training that a martial artist should not be doing.

Firstly, in regards to the number of repetitions what you must remember is that there are different kinds of strength (fast and slow twitch muscle fibers and so on), and that there is not a precise correlation between muscle size and strength (have you ever noticed how power lifters are so much smaller than body builders in muscle size, despite the fact that they are stronger?). The kind of training described above, which would be used by most people who go to the gym, has one primary aim - to increase muscle size. This is an entirely superficial aim, as the size of a muscle is only a matter of appearance and nothing else. The problem for the martial artist is that larger muscles make for slower movements and a decreased range of motion. What's more the gains in strength from such training are not as significant as one may think because you would not be training for the kind of strength which is most often used in martial arts. You are training a middle range strength useful for lifting and carrying things and so on, but of little relevance to martial arts.

For a martial artist it is much more important to develop explosive power - something which relies on speed and so can actually be hindered by larger muscles! For this the training routine of a power lifter would be much more appropriate than that of the body builder. This involves low sets of less than eight repetitions with a heavier weight, and regular 1 set lifts in which you try to lift as much as possible. During these lifts you should concentrate on the speed of your lift, pushing it up with as much explosive power as possible, rather than trying to be slow and controlled. It is also important for a martial artist to have alot of stamina in the muscles, paarticularly the shoulders as keeping the guard up and throwing punches can exhaust the shoulder muscles quite rapidly. To help counter this problem very long sets of 20-50 repetitions with a light weight is very useful.

It is also quite imporant to use free weights rather than machines. This is because the kind of strength developed by using machines which isolate particular muscles is not what is known as 'functional strength'. When you lift free weights you do not just train one set of muscles at a time but many supporting muscle groups as well, and many of these are small muscle groups which none of the machines, which only concentrate on the large mucles groups that look good when built big, actually strengthen. This means that whilst you may build very stronbg chest muscles, for example, if you actually try to use them to do anything other than a machine lift you will fail - not because the chest is too weak but becuase in any natural movement these small supporting muscles groups are used, and ifv they cannot 'keep up' with the chest then you will not be abl;e to perform the movement.

I hope this artilce has been of use to you.