(Printed in the Sept 2007 copy of Irish Fighter)

Aside from the obvious health benefits of conditioning and staying fit, martial artists in particular need to forge a high level of fitness and conditioning. For the purposes of this article (and I’ll admit it’s a gross over simplification) we’ll devide the martial arts world into two categories: competitive and self defence in nature.

If you’re a competitive martial artist: wrestler, thai boxer, MMAer, the need for proper conditioning should be obvious. As anyone who has ever stepped into the ring will tell you , conditioning is going to play a big part. If skill is equal, it will be the deciding factor.

Cardiovascular/respiratory endurance, stamina, strength, flexibility, power, coordination, agility, balance, and accuracy. These are the components of fitness, and it doesn’t take a genius to see that a deficiency in any one of these areas could lose you a match.

If you’re not a competitive martial artists, and train mainly for self defence, the need for you to be physically fit could be even higher than the MMAer. At least the MMAer has an idea of the challenge they face – he knows who his opponent is, when the fight will take place, and how long it will be. You do not have this luxury in a self defence environment – which means that your need for general physical preparedness is vital. Will you have to fight someone bigger than you, more than one? Will you have to run to escape, climb over a fence, carry someone with you if they’re hurt?

If a competitive martial artist loses as a result of conditioning, you may feel stupid and be sore for a couple of days. You might lose a winning bonus  and an opportunity to fight on a higher paying card. If your conditioning fails you in the street, you may end up losing your life.

Now that we’ve established the absolute necessity of fitness in the martial arts world, let’s take a look at the 10 components mentioned above and how best to train them. If you were to devote separate workouts to each component you’d never have the time or energy to do anything else. You have your skill development sessions and/or a work life as well.

The other extreme would be to concentrate to one or two aspects of fitness. But, which ones are the really vital aspects? Chances are you’ll only do the ones you like and are already good at, to the detriment of the other areas. Specialisation is for insects. Fighting is not predictable, and history has always rewarded the generalist and punished the specialist. Take MMA for example. Royce Gracie dominated the early UFCs because he had ground fighting skills. But once people adapted to the ground, learned some clinch and boxing, Gracie’s dominance quickly ended. In a recent Ring of Truth card, Tim Murphy entered with the game plan of striking. But once his opponent proved his superiority, Tim had to change tactics to grappling, where he had the advantage and won the fight. Had Tim not trained his clinch and ground, no doubt he would have been knocked out.

For a self defence encounter, you might be strong. But what if your attacker is bigger and you need to run. Failure to work your sprinting will have proved to be a big mistake. Clearly, we can’t concentrate on only one component of fitness.

Plus, training one component has knock on effects on the others. If you build up your absolute strength (e.g. one rep max of a dead lift) you’ll increase your endurance. Increased cardiovascular endurance brought about by long distance running or cycling can seriously reduce your power output, however.

So we’ve determined that we need a system of exercise that’s varied, intense (fighting is intense, light weights work will not prepare you for a max effort!), and has the most positive effect on all fitness attributes while reducing any negative impact on any one area.

Crossfit is such a system Crossfit workouts aim to combine as many components of fitness into each training session as possible, and work the body as a complete unit rather than individual parts. An example is a Crossfit workout known as “Elizabeth”, which combines the ‘Clean’ from Olympic Weightlifting and Ring Dips, which you’d find in gymnastics. This workout not only hits nearly every muscle in the body but works on your strength, power, endurance, co-ordination and balance and also has knock on effects on your cardio, accuracy and agility.

Because Crossfit style training is constantly varied in it’s approach, it never allows your body to adapt to the workouts and stop growing. One week may contain a 5K run, one rep maxes of the Snatch, Elizabeth, bodyweight squats, pushups, pull ups and sit ups, heavy deadlifts, rowing and military presses. Because of this approach, your body is better prepared to whatever challenge it’s faced with during a fight, be it in the ring or on the nite club floor.