The distaste for strength in martial arts

[Oily Dragon]

You kind of did...

"Bigger means slower. So all that extra mass isn't very helpful if it makes you slow enough that someone else who is smaller can dance around you, checking you at will.

So there's a balance somewhere between muscle mass and speed, "

Do you disagree with what I said there? About extra mass not being helpful IF it makes you slow? I thought that was what we were discussing.

I thought that was common sense, before we get to the science stuff. You can be big but if you can't handle moving your weight around.

 

[Damien]

Do you disagree with what I said there? About extra mass not being helpful IF it makes you slow? I thought that was what we were discussing.

I thought that was common sense, before we get to the science stuff. You can be big but if you can't handle moving your weight around.

The joys of discussing on forums, easy to talk yourselves in circles if you don't read with the right inflection!

Yes, if you put on mass and don't train for speed at all, then that mass will likely slow you down due to the extra weight and lack of fast twitch fibres. So in that sense I do agree, the extra mass of muscles CAN slow you down and IF IT DOES then it does offer a disadvantage.

The implication from some of the earlier posts from various people was that muscle mass automatically makes you slower than you would be without it. But that certainly isn't true.

Right, that's that problem solved. What next? World hunger?

 

[Oily Dragon]

The joys of discussing on forums, easy to talk yourselves in circles if you don't read with the right inflection!

Yes, if you put on mass and don't train for speed at all, then that mass will likely slow you down due to the extra weight and lack of fast twitch fibres. So in that sense I do agree, the extra mass of muscles CAN slow you down and IF IT DOES then it does offer a disadvantage.

The implication from some of the earlier posts from various people was that muscle mass automatically makes you slower than you would be without it. But that certainly isn't true.

Right, that's that problem solved. What next? World hunger?

Yes, lets.

I'm definitely of the mind that strength should be functional, to that end I prefer exercises like battle rope training, and weighing myself down when doing fist sets. I use vests, rings, wristbands, and leg weights. I Iecently started using a kettlebell during slow dynamic tension Qigong routines. It's fun and I've gotten some decent gains.

But pushups and curls, yeah. Let's.

 

[skribs]

There seems to be a miscommunication. I never said anything about muscle.

Please enlighten me on how "So there's a balance somewhere between muscle mass and speed," doesn't say anything about muscle.

 

[Oily Dragon]

Please enlighten me on how "So there's a balance somewhere between muscle mass and speed," doesn't say anything about muscle.

Well, I think we established muscle mass doesn't mean it's fast muscle mass.

Right?

 

[MetalBoar]

Well, I think we established muscle mass doesn't mean it's fast muscle mass.

Right?

I'm not sure we've established this in a clear cut way. For a given individual the stronger they are the faster they will be, at the same skill level. Now, the relationship between muscle mass and strength is a bit complicated, but in general, the more muscle a person has the stronger they are. One exception to this is when the individual is over training or injured and those muscles aren't healthy or something of that sort. There may be other exceptions but I can't think of any right now.

There are individuals who are extreme genetic outliers that may get slower once they achieve extremely large muscles, but that isn't me and it probably isn't you or anyone else reading this either. There are also extremely specialized sports, like running marathons, where weight of any kind is detrimental and strength is of little to no benefit (for the sport, it's still of great benefit for daily life).

Notice I'm only comparing individuals to themselves. There may very well be people who, due to variations in muscle fiber type distribution and other genetic factors, are stronger at a smaller size than other, more muscular people. These people would be stronger still if they carried more muscle.

 

[Gyakuto]

Taken from a a university, Sports Physiology textbook:

‘The number of myosin motors is proportional to muscle fiber length. The number of myosin filaments is proportional to the cross-sectional area of the muscle. Thus, muscle force is proportional to muscle volume, and therefore to muscle mass.’

The bigger the muscle, the more force it can produce. A large-armed person will be able to expert more force than a ‘wiry-armed‘ person. Since Force = mass x acceleration, acceleration = Force/mass. Thus a bigger muscled person will be able to accelerate a fist or foot more quickly than a smaller-muscled person.

Whether being able to exert more force will make you a more affective fighter depends on multiple other factors, but all things being equal….well, I’ll allow you to make your own conclusions. Does being able to exert more force make you a better martial artist? That is a debate that probably has no clear conclusion, but I’d suggest it can’t hurt if it’s not too extreme and compromises flexibility.

 

[skribs]

Well, I think we established muscle mass doesn't mean it's fast muscle mass.

Right?

Wrong.

 

[Unkogami]

It's physics. More mass means slower to accelerate, slower to decelerate, slower to shift weight, and slower to get off the ground.

Heavyweights are much slower than lightweights.

Why is it a false assumption? I didn't say big means slow. Just slower.

There are hundreds of thousands of professional athletes in the world who I would wager a great deal are bigger, stronger, and faster than you.

 

[Oily Dragon]

There are hundreds of thousands of professional athletes in the world who I would wager a great deal are bigger, stronger, and faster than you.

I'm not sure why you're making this about me. Did I say anything about my own strength? I don't think I did. I have pretty average strength..

 

[Oily Dragon]

I'm not sure we've established this in a clear cut way. For a given individual the stronger they are the faster they will be, at the same skill level. Now, the relationship between muscle mass and strength is a bit complicated, but in general, the more muscle a person has the stronger they are. One exception to this is when the individual is over training or injured and those muscles aren't healthy or something of that sort. There may be other exceptions but I can't think of any right now.

There are individuals who are extreme genetic outliers that may get slower once they achieve extremely large muscles, but that isn't me and it probably isn't you or anyone else reading this either. There are also extremely specialized sports, like running marathons, where weight of any kind is detrimental and strength is of little to no benefit (for the sport, it's still of great benefit for daily life).

Notice I'm only comparing individuals to themselves. There may very well be people who, due to variations in muscle fiber type distribution and other genetic factors, are stronger at a smaller size than other, more muscular people. These people would be stronger still if they carried more muscle.

Yes, we've established more muscle = stronger, that's easy. What I'm interested in is speed, and whether all that extra muscle, at some point, gives a diminishing return with respect to movement.

I was referring to how bigger fighters move more slowly than smaller fighters, generally. When I watch pro combat sports, I see generally see the smaller competitors are just quicker. Maybe it's just my eyes but I always assumed it was because they weighed a lot less.

 

[Oily Dragon]

acceleration = Force/mass. Thus a bigger muscled person will be able to accelerate a fist or foot more quickly than a smaller-muscled person.

I'm terrible at math, but if mass gets bigger in that equation, doesn't that make the number on the right smaller, and acceleration on the left goes down, not up? You're dividing by mass..

So if more muscle = more force, but more mass = lower acceleration....doesn't that there's some point where mass would be too big? Is there a fine line with respect to fast mobility? That's all I'm asking.

 

[Xue Sheng]

There are a few JKD guys out there that are into building muscle that are awfully fast. Even the founder was into various types of weight training. Jason Scott Lee is also JKD and he lifts. But I think what might be getting confused here is what is meant by Muscle mass

This

or this

And I can tell you I would not want to be hit by either of them

My Taijiquan Shifu, now in his 80s, was really into body weight training that worked muscle groups. The Chen family things lifting weights is ok, but they also want muscle groups not isolations.

 

[Monkey Turned Wolf]

I'm terrible at math, but if mass gets bigger in that equation, doesn't that make the number on the right smaller, and acceleration on the left goes down, not up? You're dividing by mass..

So if more muscle = more force, but more mass = lower acceleration....doesn't that there's some point where mass would be too big? Is there a fine line with respect to fast mobility? That's all I'm asking.

Just to help the equation out, here's an example equation.
If f=5(N) and m=10(kg), then acceleration =.5(m/s^2)
if f=5(N) and m=20(kg), then acceleration =.25(m/s^2).
So yes, as mass increases, if there is no change in force (or a smaller change in force), acceleration decreases.
If muscle increases force as well, then it depends on which it increases more quickly (ratio-wise). So if it doubles force, the equation would be: 10N/20kg=.5, so no change.
But if it quadruples force as mass doubles, then 20N/20kg=1, meaning an increase in acceleration.

I'm bad at abstract things are applying it to biomechanics (not sure how muscle impacts force), and I'm pretty sure it wouldn't be a direct ratio of 2:1, 3:1, as at some point there's bound to be diminishing returns, just wanted to lay out the math with numbers.

 

[skribs]

I'm terrible at math, but if mass gets bigger in that equation, doesn't that make the number on the right smaller, and acceleration on the left goes down, not up? You're dividing by mass..

So if more muscle = more force, but more mass = lower acceleration....doesn't that there's some point where mass would be too big? Is there a fine line with respect to fast mobility? That's all I'm asking.

The average person is 40% muscle and 60% everything else (bones, organs, blood, etc). If I weigh 200 pounds, it's fair to assume I have around 80 pounds of muscle. If I work out and add on 50 pounds, I add on 50 pounds of muscle. I'm not adding on 20 pounds of muscle, 5 pounds of brain tissue, 10 pounds of bones, 5 pounds to my heart, etc. My organs and skeleton are pretty much set in their weight.

In this equation, my weight goes up by 25%, but my strength goes up by 62.5%. My strength-to-weight ratio goes up by 30%.

 

[Flying Crane]

The average person is 40% muscle and 60% everything else (bones, organs, blood, etc). If I weigh 200 pounds, it's fair to assume I have around 80 pounds of muscle. If I work out and add on 50 pounds, I add on 50 pounds of muscle. I'm not adding on 20 pounds of muscle, 5 pounds of brain tissue, 10 pounds of bones, 5 pounds to my heart, etc. My organs and skeleton are pretty much set in their weight.

In this equation, my weight goes up by 25%, but my strength goes up by 62.5%. My strength-to-weight ratio goes up by 30%.

The problem though is in where did the muscle mass get added, and so specifically what kinds of strength is being increased. I think I the true picture has a lot more nuance going on, and these kind of simple numbers have a real danger of being used to justify something that may well not be true. In fact, depending on specifics, the exact opposite could be true.

Example: if all of that new muscle mass were added to the torso and arms, and none of it was added to the legs, it would be hard to justify the argument that this newly added muscle has made the fellow into a faster runner. In this case, he is probably slower because he is running with another fifty pounds on him, none of which is increasing his leg strength.

 

[MetalBoar]

The problem though is in where did the muscle mass get added, and so specifically what kinds of strength is being increased. I think I the true picture has a lot more nuance going on, and these kind of simple numbers have a real danger of being used to justify something that may well not be true. In fact, depending on specifics, the exact opposite could be true.

Example: if all of that new muscle mass were added to the torso and arms, and none of it was added to the legs, it would be hard to justify the argument that this newly added muscle has made the fellow into a faster runner. In this case, he is probably slower because he is running with another fifty pounds on him, none of which is increasing his leg strength.

I'm about as pro weight lifting as it gets and I would agree with this. In all my posts on the subject I've specified that for best overall functional ability you have to do a full body workout, if you neglect or overemphasize certain body parts your benefits will be reduced. There may be cases where this is desirable, to some small extent, such as with fencing where leg strength is much more important than upper body strength. Even then the benefit is unlikely to be particularly large, outside of extremely specialized activities like arm wrestling.

 

[Gyakuto]

I'm terrible at math, but if mass gets bigger in that equation, doesn't that make the number on the right smaller, and acceleration on the left goes down, not up? You're dividing by mass..

So if more muscle = more force, but more mass = lower acceleration....doesn't that there's some point where mass would be too big? Is there a fine line with respect to fast mobility? That's all I'm asking.

Ah, it’s the mass being moved…the fist or the foot so it remains constant.

 

[Damien]

We have to consider two things here:

1) Acceleration= Force/Mass means that the acceleration is proportional to the force being applied to the mass being moved. This is an external force on an inert mass. When the force generated and the mass change together due to it being an increase in muscle size, it gets complicated. When you consider that force is generated from lots of muscles, not just the limb being moved, it gets more complicated, add in biomechanics, technique etc.... there's a reason people do PhD's in sports science... It just isn't as simple as A=F/M

See the cart with an engine analogy above- we could expand that to include gearing and tuning of the engine- a lorry engine can have the same power as a sports car, but be preferentially designed to pull lots of weight rather than go fast. Which leads into point 2.

2) There are 3 types of muscle fibre. Type 1 are slow twitch and have more endurance so are good for long distance running, type 2b are fast twitch and are good at exerting maximum force quickly, e.g. sprinting. Type 2a are also fast twitch, but have more endurance than 2b, making them good for medium levels of exertion, e.g. a 1km run.

Depending on how you train, you will preferentially increase different muscle fibre types. Lots of marathons, you get proportionally more type 1. Sprinting, type 2b. Type 2 fibres are generally more preferentially recruited in lifting weights due to the force requirements, but there are nuances. If you do lots of explosive weight training, you're going to get more type 2b than 2a or 1. If you do really low weight high rep count sessions you are going to build endurance and more type 2 fibres. Doing heavier weights but with very slow reps, you are probably going to be building more type 2b.

All of these activities will make you more muscular, stronger and have more muscle endurance (due to other adaptations than muscle fibre type), however you will have different proportions of each type of muscle fibre. How fast you can move comes down to your proportion of fast twitch muscle fibres. This is why some people are naturally fast without any training, they have a larger proportion of their muscle as fast twitch, whereas other people are better long distance runners naturally, they have a higher proportion of slow twitch.

So, we can weight train and get very muscly and end up being faster, just as fast, or slower than we were before based on our method of training. More muscle doesn't automatically make you faster or slower, but trained in the right way it can do both.

As with most things in training, it all comes down to intent. Know what your end goal is and train appropriately for that. You want to be strong and fast, train those fast twitch fibres. You want to be able to hold a horse stance til you can claim squatters rights, train those slow twitch fibres.

 

[JowGaWolf]

I'm about as pro weight lifting as it gets and I would agree with this. In all my posts on the subject I've specified that for best overall functional ability you have to do a full body workout, if you neglect or overemphasize certain body parts your benefits will be reduced. There may be cases where this is desirable, to some small extent, such as with fencing where leg strength is much more important than upper body strength. Even then the benefit is unlikely to be particularly large, outside of extremely specialized activities like arm wrestling.

My thoughts on body building and muscles. Build muscle according to function of the activity. Failure to do so may cause a decrease in performance. By the way, I'm not sure if that picture has been edited, but I've seen people like this in real life.

Does anyone really think that the muscles in his legs will make him a faster or slower runner?

Muscles get in the way. You can get stronger without getting bigger.

Maybe this guy is the exception? Probably not

Full video.

Maybe this?