So I'm kind of confused what to do here.

[Ironbear24]

To compound Juany's question, you have mentioned a couple of times in threads that you consider fat (based on your profile picture I don't see this as the case, but to each his own). Would you be willing to accept that what you press might go down in order to lose weight, or would you rather gain weight if it helped you press more? Not overly important to me, especially since I don't think your fat to begin with, but may be something for you to think about as you decide your future goals.

I'm pretty bulky right now so I am working on losing body fat, which will make me appear to be more muscular. That is true though, it will affect my lifts but I plan to cut down, and once I am down to at least 195, I will follow a more careful bulking plan to build more muscle and less fat.

 

[JowGaWolf]

I'm pretty bulky right now so I am working on losing body fat, which will make me appear to be more muscular. That is true though, it will affect my lifts but I plan to cut down, and once I am down to at least 195, I will follow a more careful bulking plan to build more muscle and less fat.

Here's some questions with no wrong answers.

Why do you want to build more muscle?
Are you building more muscle to be bigger or are you just trying to be stronger?

If you are building muscle to be stronger then make sure you are becoming stronger in the correct way. Martial Art physical strength is not the same strength as lifting weight strength. The strength involved in martial arts involves working many of the smaller muscles that aren't worked through normal weight lifting. Martial arts does a lot of functional strength building. With the regular bench press your strength is going to be mainly isolated in the motion of bench pressing. You'll be considerably weaker in any other range of motion. This is why people who bench only press have to significantly reduce the weight when doing incline and decline bench presses.

 

[Ironbear24]

Here's some questions with no wrong answers.

Why do you want to build more muscle?
Are you building more muscle to be bigger or are you just trying to be stronger?

If you are building muscle to be stronger then make sure you are becoming stronger in the correct way. Martial Art physical strength is not the same strength as lifting weight strength. The strength involved in martial arts involves working many of the smaller muscles that aren't worked through normal weight lifting. Martial arts does a lot of functional strength building. With the regular bench press your strength is going to be mainly isolated in the motion of bench pressing. You'll be considerably weaker in any other range of motion. This is why people who bench only press have to significantly reduce the weight when doing incline and decline bench presses.

I want to be both stronger and larger.

 

[JR 137]

I'm pretty bulky right now so I am working on losing body fat, which will make me appear to be more muscular. That is true though, it will affect my lifts but I plan to cut down, and once I am down to at least 195, I will follow a more careful bulking plan to build more muscle and less fat.

Winstrol

 

[Flatfish]

Just to pile on from personal experience. I used to do all the compound lifts etc. Didn't like it very much...setting up the barbells, racking weights bla bla all seemed like a big waste of time (for me, for me.....I know people like to lift). Got interested in more advanced calisthenics and really like that because it seems to teach me more body control and things like weighted pullups and dips, handstand pushups and the hindu pushups I mentioned in another thread of yours or plyo pushups are seriously challenging. Also pistol squats etc (can't do those because of my stupid knee but I had been working on them before I hurt the darn thing) and a bunch of core exercises like the various flags, planks etc. tons of stuff out there. Might not be your cup of tea but you won't need a gym for those and I just wanted to mention it.

 

[Ironbear24]

Winstrol

I don't do steroids.

 

[Skullpunch]

To compound Juany's question, you have mentioned a couple of times in threads that you consider fat (based on your profile picture I don't see this as the case, but to each his own). Would you be willing to accept that what you press might go down in order to lose weight, or would you rather gain weight if it helped you press more? Not overly important to me, especially since I don't think your fat to begin with, but may be something for you to think about as you decide your future goals.

He may not be outright fat but he's certainly not so lean that losing fat cannot be done without losing strength. This is not a concern, if OP loses strength while losing fat at this point he's doing it wrong.

The fear of losing strength while losing weight is either for those who already have single digit bodyfat (more realistically, sub 8%) or the elite of the elite strength athletes - guys who are so dedicated to getting stronger that they don't have anything left in them to devote to martial arts, which I'm pretty sure is not what OP is going for.

 

[JR 137]

I don't do steroids.

It was a joke. My smiley didn't show up somehow.

 

[Ironbear24]

He may not be outright fat but he's certainly not so lean that losing fat cannot be done without losing strength. This is not a concern, if OP loses strength while losing fat at this point he's doing it wrong.

The fear of losing strength while losing weight is either for those who already have single digit bodyfat (more realistically, sub 8%) or the elite of the elite strength athletes - guys who are so dedicated to getting stronger that they don't have anything left in them to devote to martial arts, which I'm pretty sure is not what OP is going for.

I'm going for at least 12% body fat. I'm more of an endomorph body type so it is extremely hard for me to lose fat.

 

[Skullpunch]

I'm going for at least 12% body fat. I'm more of an endomorph body type so it is extremely hard for me to lose fat.

Sounds like you're a natural born strongman type athlete. Genetically, guys like you tend to have an easy time getting stronger and a hard time improving their stamina.

There are a lot of approaches you can take and as for which one is better…there's a lot of subjectivity there. Me, personally, I would recommend going with your genetics - focus on strength, use that natural inclination of yours to your advantage as much as you can, develop your style around it, and let your martial arts training cover most of your conditioning with maybe some intervals on the track here and there. As for the bodyfat, you probably already know this but that's going to be mostly based on your nutrition.

Alternatively, you can train your endurance in the most hell-bent fashion humanly possible and just let your natural strength be your natural strength, however much of it comes will come. If my guess about your genetics is right you will never have Nick Diaz type endurance no matter how you train, but there are guys who are naturally powerful athletes that have developed high stamina this way while maintaining their natural power - Bas Rutten for example.

 

[Kickboxer101]

Bit late here only just came back but the basic thing is a mans gotta do what a mans gotta do if you want something do it if you don't then don't who cares about anyone else's opinion

 

[Balrog]

So my goals as far as martial arts is to become the best I can possibly become. What I mean by that is I literally give 100% of my dedication and overall being to training and becoming better.

I have lost touch with many of my friends because all I do is train and lift weights now, my girlfriend seems unhappy too but honestly I don't care. She may not be the right one if it is too hard to accept I have goals in life.

IMNSHO, you need to seriously rework your goals. Training is great, but training is not the be-all and end-all. There is this thing called "life" that you need to put your major focus on. Otherwise, one day you will jump up and be all happy that you can benchpress some ungodly amount of weight....and you will have no one to share it with.

A strong suggestion: work out a schedule where physical training takes about 10-15 hours a week. Devote the rest of your time to your girlfriend, your job, etc.

I have seen more improvement of myself in the last 8 months since I have in my lifetime. This is all because I want to be something, I want to be somebody, Its my goal to go to competitions whether they be karate competitions, Judo competitions or mma competitions. I honestly don't care what the competition is so long as it will give me the following.

1. Credibility.

2. Proof, I want to prove to myself that I am good at what I been doing since my teen years.

And finally 3. Proof to other people that I am good at what I am doing.

You are somebody. You don't need proof or confirmation of that fact. If you are training to the best of your abilities, you really don't need anything else.

So my question is what should I do here as far as continuing my training at the Shou Shu dojo. Many of my friends say that it will never make me meet my goals and they think the teacher is not talented enough.

I honestly don't value their opinion because they are with all disrespect as possible, idiots. The common answer was "well mma would kick your *** because they throw you to the floor and go to town."

I see another problem here. Your attitude sucks. Fix it.

Yeah, so does Judo, so does mantis and bear in Shou shu, so does many things and kenpo has answers to deal with grappling. I am not the best on the floor but I would by no means feel like a fish out of water and I am not intimidated by it.

They added "people don't want to see karate, they don't want to see martial arts, they want to see wrestling and see UFC."

So I guess their idiotic opinion UFC is not martial arts and wrestling is not a martial art, which of course it is a martial art. Anyway my point is there might be some validity to their moronic statements.

If the statements have validity, then they are not moronic, are they?

The sifu does not wish to let me spar until purple belt which is like the 3rd belt, white, orange then purple. Even then I been hearing their sparring is full contact allowing anything, literally anything but the bouts are only 30 seconds long.

This of course is a concern for me because real matches are not that short. It is also annoying when it comes time to spar I have to just watch in a horse stance when I want to spar with the others. He did let me spar a few times but after hurting someone by accident he said it was a mistake to let me do that.

That I don't have enough control yet. I don't agree with this because it was an accident and the guy was smaller than me. It is very hard for me to distinguish the amount of force I should be using. I am often told not enough is being used, then when I use more force I get in trouble.

That was his mistake. You DON'T have the skills and control to spar yet. Patience is an acquired virtue, Grasshopper. I suggest you acquire it now.

I also never been clear with the sifu about my goals, which might be a problem. I now they do competitions but I am not sure what kind they are as I never been to one.

How can you be clear with him about your goals when you aren't clear with yourself about your goals? Suggestion: learn the SMART goal system, then sit down and write out your goals in the SMART style. It will take you a while but it will be very worth it.

I am wondering if I should leave and look for an mma place, which the nearest one is very far away. Or if I should stick with this so when I do go to an mma coach, I have more tools he can help me utilize.

So in your opinion what should I be doing here? Oh and also my weight lifting is still plateud and I can't seem to break a 285 bench press, but the sifu said weight lifting is point less for martial arts which I don't agree with, but that seems to be a common thing among sifus and senseis to say.

That would probably be because it is fairly correct. Weight lifting is okay as part of training, but you should also be concentrating on cardio and sudden burst movement, neither one of which is provided by weights. And work the hell out of your basics. You can never go wrong doing that.

 

[TaiChiTJ]

I just skimmed through all these pages and it looks like you've got a lot of good advice and recommendations, and some deep wisdom born of peoples' experience.

A couple of thoughts:

There are martial arts and there are martial sports. Decide which one you want. If someone wants to really knock your block off, those thirty second round robin sparring sessions sound perfect. Get in, do serious damage quickly, and get out. Your teacher is training you for a crazed attacker, not some sport fight with rules and a ref, decent lighting, a defined area to fight in and safety equipment.

If you want the mma experience you are going to have to find a gym that teaches the sport. Good luck.

 

[Juany118]

Here's some questions with no wrong answers.

Why do you want to build more muscle?
Are you building more muscle to be bigger or are you just trying to be stronger?

If you are building muscle to be stronger then make sure you are becoming stronger in the correct way. Martial Art physical strength is not the same strength as lifting weight strength. The strength involved in martial arts involves working many of the smaller muscles that aren't worked through normal weight lifting. Martial arts does a lot of functional strength building. With the regular bench press your strength is going to be mainly isolated in the motion of bench pressing. You'll be considerably weaker in any other range of motion. This is why people who bench only press have to significantly reduce the weight when doing incline and decline bench presses.

The above is why I am huge fan of the TRX system as it is free floating and uses your body weight. This is good for also training the stabilizer muscles. If I ever got strong enough to have it feel "easy", time to put on the weight vest I use for running when it's not ridiculously hot out.

Why the running with a weight vest? After about 2 days as a cop almost 20 years ago I discovered you will always find someone stronger than you, however most people you will find yourself fighting on the street usually aren't big into cardio so if you can force them to act swiftly for a period of time, or just outlast them on whatever the natural pace of the fight is, you win because eventually they are just too winded to fight effectively.

 

[JowGaWolf]

most people you will find yourself fighting on the street usually aren't big into cardio so if you can force them to act swiftly for a period of time, or just outlast them on whatever the natural pace of the fight is, you win because eventually they are just too winded to fight effectively.

I'm big on cardio too. A few years ago couple of Sanda guys showed me just how out of shape I was during a friendly sparring match. They do cardio before sparring and by the time I got to the sparring I was only 45 seconds from being out of energy. It's impossible to fight when the body is that tired.

 

[Ironbear24]

I benched 300. I am very happy now.

 

[kuniggety]

I don't understand the hate some folks are giving off on weight/strength training. I don't do a lot of traditional cardio anymore... Maybe once or twice a week and instead have been focusing on strength training. I've put on some serious muscle and while my 5 mi run time might not be as good, my cardiovascular endurance in training hasn't lessened. Unless you're sitting there for 5 min between sets, you're getting in some cardio... Explosive movements perfect for martial arts.

 

[JR 137]

I HATE cardio. It's the most boring thing to me. But I've really upped my cardio fitness by hitting a heavy bag. 10 two minute rounds with 45 seconds of rest between them. I combine speed and power in my rounds; basically as hard and fast as I can go.

It's gotten easier lately, and it's not because I'm dancing around the bag more. Not sure if I'm going to cut the rest to 30 sec, make the rounds 2:30, or add more rounds. Probably go to 12 or 15 rounds before changing times.

Doing hard rounds on a bag is interval training. Interval training is far more effective at shredding fat and getting fit than the long duration at a slower pace stuff you see the masses doing on treadmills, bikes, ellipticals, etc.

Just throwing that out there.

 

[Ironbear24]

Cardio? Is that spanish?

 

[JowGaWolf]

I benched 300. I am very happy now.

Now the question I want to know is... are you satisfied with 300 lbs or are you going to try to lift 305 now?