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I had read an article in a running magazine about the benefits you get for participating in regular exercise.

This got me to thinking about my own activities and what benefits I derive.
In fact when I started writing down my thoughts I realized there are some fantastic reasons for someone who is unsure or just thinking about training in the martial arts.
So please read this it may give you the confidence or the push you need to start training in a martial art.

Underneath are my top eight, I realize we are all different and you may have other ideas that are great nothing is set in stone. We should all keep an open mind and learn together.

Respect

Respect in the gym or dojo is very important. If you do not have respect for your teacher how can you learn, no respect for your classmates can result in injury or worse.

Awareness

What I mean by this unlike a lot of activities for example running, where you often see people pounding out the miles listening to music oblivious to what’s happening around them.
In the martial arts mind and body have to work together, you have to be aware of what is happening around you for your own safety and others.

Stress Reduction

Many studies have shown that regular exercise such as cycling,running,aerobics all relieve bodily stress. The martial arts we train both the mind and body so relive stress to both.
This also gives you the added benefits of cutting down the risks of heart attacks or strokes.

Focus

With the mind and body working together you will be focused on what you are doing which allows you to progress quicker than you thought you could.
You may be surprised to learn that another benefit is that it carries on into your everyday life.  For example you may find you are doing better at work as you are able to concentrate better, even simple tasks like driving can improve.

Conditioning

With the martial arts you work your whole body so it is a more intense workout than say just going to the gym and using a treadmill for half an hour. The health benefits are as above cuts down on stress aids concentration cuts down the risk of ill health obesity helping keep you lean and healthy.

Challenge

The martial arts present a challenge every day as there is always something new to learn or achieve. We are all students who I hope are looking to expand our knowledge.
Again this can continue into our everyday lives maybe helping with our ambitions.

Self Confidence

With the mind and body working together you have the focus, conditioning and knowledge to give you automatically more self confidence. The benefits to this are enormous it helps in work, your relationships with others and you feel good.

Self Defense

You now have the awareness, the focus, the conditioning and the knowledge to defend yourself. The self confidence can stop you acting in anger and be able to let you control the outcome of any confrontation. Even if this means having the confidence to just walk away, at least with the knowledge you could have coped if things had got physical.

Well that’s my eight I am sure you could all come up with more or expand on these as I have said before nothing is set in stone except the benefits of training in the martial arts.

If you would like our free newsletter and DVD going into more detail of this amazing system just click the link below.  There you will get a free self defence report plus a DVD showing details of the work we do on power generation, pressure points balance, body alarm reaction and a whole host of other good stuff.

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This article was written by the celebrated author,dietician,trainer Mike Geary who has helped literally thousands of martial artists and non martial artists alike to achieve healthy balanced lifestyles. With the added bonus of sound and tested methods to help you achieve the kind of body you always wanted.

To find out more on this amazing coach just follow the link.

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The Front Squat:

As you may have already discovered, the squat is at the top of the heap (along with deadlifts) as one of the most effective overall exercises for stimulating body composition changes (muscle gain and fat loss). This is because exercises like squats and deadlifts use more muscle groups under a heavy load than almost any other weight bearing exercises known to man. Hence, these exercises stimulate the greatest hormonal responses (growth hormone, testosterone, etc.) of all exercises. In fact, university research studies have even proven that inclusion of squats into a training program increases upper body development, in addition to lower body development, even though upper body specific joint movements are not performed during the squat. Whether your goal is gaining muscle mass, losing body fat, building a strong and functional body, or improving athletic performance, the basic squat and deadlift (and their variations) are the ultimate solution. If you don’t believe me that squats and deadlifts are THE basis for a lean and powerful body, then go ahead and join all of the other overweight people pumping away mindlessly for hours on boring cardio equipment. You won’t find long boring cardio in any of my programs!

Squats can be done with any free weighted objects such as barbells, dumbbells, kettlebells, sandbags, or even just body weight. Squats should only be done with free weights – NEVER with a Smith machine or any other squat machines! Machines do not allow your body to follow natural, biomechanically-correct movement paths. You also perform less work because the machine stabilizes the weight for you. Therefore, you get weaker results!

The type of squat that people are most familiar with is the barbell back squat where the bar is resting on the trapezius muscles of the upper back. Many professional strength coaches believe that front squats (where the bar rests on the shoulders in front of the head) and overhead squats (where the bar is locked out in a snatch grip overhead throughout the squat) are more functional to athletic performance than back squats with less risk of lower back injury. I feel that a combination of all three (not necessarily during the same phase of your workouts) will yield the best results for overall muscular development, body fat loss, and athletic performance. Front squats are moderately more difficult than back squats, while overhead squats are considerably more difficult than either back squats or front squats. I’ll cover overhead squats in a future article. If you are only accustomed to performing back squats, it will take you a few sessions to become comfortable with front squats, so start out light. After a couple sessions of practice, you will start to feel the groove and be able to increase the poundage.

To perform front squats:

The front squat recruits the abdominals to a much higher degree for stability due to the more upright position compared with back squats. It is mostly a lower body exercise, but is great for functionally incorporating core strength and stability into the squatting movement. It can also be slightly difficult to learn how to properly rest the bar on your shoulders. There are two ways to rest the bar on the front of the shoulders. In the first method, you step under the bar and cross your forearms into an “X” position while resting the bar on the dimple that is created by the shoulder muscle near the bone, keeping your elbows up high so that your upper arms are parallel to the ground. You then hold the bar in place by pressing the thumb side of your fists against the bar for support.

Alternatively, you can hold the bar by placing your palms face up and the bar resting on your fingers against your shoulders. For both methods, your elbows must stay up high to prevent the weight from falling. Your upper arms should stay parallel to the ground throughout the squat. Find out which bar support method is more comfortable for you. Then, initiate the squat from your hips by sitting back and down, keeping the weight on your heels as opposed to the balls of your feet. Squat down to a position where your thighs are approximately parallel to the ground, then press back up to the starting position. Keeping your weight more towards your heels is the key factor in squatting to protect your knees from injury and develop strong injury-resistant knee joints. Keep in mind – squats done correctly actually strengthen the knees; squats done incorrectly can damage the knees.

Practice first with an un-weighted bar or a relatively light weight to learn the movement. Most people are surprised how hard this exercise works your abs once you learn the correct form. This is due to the more upright posture compared with back squats.

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This article was written by one of the worlds top experts in strength and conditioning for MMA fighters Eric Wong. To learn more about Eric and his methods just follow this link and it will take you to our store there you can get your Free Crazy 8 MMA workout Plus Russell Stutelys Free DVD on Pressure Point Fighting.

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When you picture most strength training exercises, you may notice that everything seems to be in straight lines. Contrast that with any mixed-martial arts technique and you may realize that there is one missing ingredient to most strength programs – rotational power. Well how exactly do you develop the ability to rotate your body explosively for knockout punches, kicks, and throws?

The key is to use tools that allow you to train the transverse plane of motion. There are planes of motion: sagittal, frontal, and transverse.

The sagittal plane is the plane that is most dominant with respect to strength training programs. Exercises like the bench press, bicep curls, squats, deadlifts, and chin-ups are all sagittal plane dominant. If you move your arms back and forth like a marching soldier, this is the sagittal plane. Unfortunately, most MMA techniques require more than just movement in the sagittal plane, which means that most strength training programs are seriously deficient, if your goal is to develop sport-specific strength and power.

The frontal plane is sometimes found in strength training routines. Exercises like side crunches and dumbbell side raises are a couple of examples. However, this plane is also highly under-trained in most athletes, and most would benefit from adding some exercises into their routine that targeted the frontal plane. Adding some suitcase deadlifts and single-leg squats would improve hip and core stability tremendously.

Now the transverse plane is where the real payoff is. But a note of caution – make sure you’ve developed a strong and stable core before aggressively training in the transverse plane. Like most things in life, high returns are generally high risk.

If you’re not stable in the core, it’s likely that you’ll blow a disc or strain a muscle in your lumbar spine when trying some of the exercises that I’ll describe below. So if you’re not stable or not sure, start off with exercises like prone bridges, side bridges, stiff-leg deadlifts, woodchops, and other exercises that promote stability in a neutral spine, then work on training powerfully in the transverse plane.

First of all, you’re going to need the proper tools. The best tools that I’ve used when training pro MMA fighters include rope balls and medicine balls. These tools allow you to develop explosive power in all planes of motion, and they allow you to release them so that you don’t slow down your movement.

Think of a bench press – if you want to train explosively, you probably aren’t going to throw the bar, so you have to slow the movement down at the top so you don’t let it go. Medicine balls don’t make you do that, so you can put all of your effort into the exercise and maximally develop your explosiveness.

Let’s focus on medicine ball exercises. Here are my top 3 medicine ball exercises for helping my athletes develop knockout power:

1) Side toss – start in an athletic stance holding the ball at your stomach. Quickly rotate to one side then explosively throw the ball sideways, keeping your body and spine tall and as neutral as possible.

2) Chop toss – start in an athletic stance holding the ball at your stomach. Lift the ball up so that it’s close to your ear and then violently throw it down on a diagonal into the ground, keeping your body and spine tall and as neutral as possible.

3) Seated side toss – start sitting tall with your legs straight out in front of you holding the ball at your stomach. Perform the same motion as the side toss.

Perform 2-3 sets of 8 repetitions of each exercise, with 1-2 minutes of rest in between. When you’re developing your power, you don’t want to train to exhaustion, instead, you want to be fresh and make each rep as fast and explosive as possible.

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As promised I will be reviewing self defence and martial art DVD’s and books, the first of which is taken from the huge collection donated by Master Russell Stutely Europe’s leading authority on the use of pressure points in the martial arts.

The first DVD I will be reviewing is titled Balance Points this DVD is available as either a download or as hard copy DVD. The viewing quality of the download version is excellent with no problem playing on full screen.

Now to the fun bit the content, as the title suggests this is about balance points and how by following simple rules you can easily unbalance an opponent whilst keeping your own. The importance of balance in any martial art be it boxing or traditional karate can not be over emphasised. Put simply if your opponent is off balance there punches or kicks carry no real power there accuracy goes out of the window in fact they are in a bad place where with you in balance can hit with full power and accuracy. The principles laid out in this amazing DVD apply to any and all martial arts and when you incorporate these principles into your own style you can not help but improve.

Russell makes learning very easy as each lesson is shown slowly from various viewing angles so that the viewer can get to grips with each lesson very easily. One thing he keeps saying is start light and slow to begin with and as your confidence grows increase the power levels. Obviously letting your training partner know as good training partners are hard to find and you do not want to break any.

I have previously stated that the principles laid out in this DVD can be adapted to any and all martial arts this is because we are talking about the body here and what will unbalance the body it means it is the same for everybody irrespective of style or art.

This is a DVD I heartily recommend to any martial artist beginner or black belt you will be bowled over by the simplicity and effectiveness of the techniques shown.

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The following article was written by Eric Wong one of the worlds top MMA strength and conditioning coaches who has been kind enough to allow us to publish for you. To receive your Free copy of Erics celebrated Crazy 8 MMA workout book just follow the link it will take you to our shop where it is available for immediate download.

http://www.russellstutely.com/ashop/catalogue.php?shop=2

If you got a chance to catch UFC 90 and saw Patrick Cote’s knee injury when he was fighting the Anderson “Spider” Silva, you were probably disappointed that the 2 warriors didn’t get a chance to properly finish what they started.

I sure was. I love getting a chance to watch Silva at work, and I thought Cote showed that he definitely has a chin.

But what I want to talk about is the knee injury that Cote suffered. You could see the shin bone kind of move forward and out laterally when he hurt himself. In some interviews he said that it’s an old meniscus, but from the way it looked, I believe that he hurt his ACL. Often with a buckling type injury, it’s a ligament that gets damaged.

The ACL functions to stop the shin (tibia/fibula) from sliding forward under the thigh bone (femur), but only when the muscles aren’t there to do their job.

Cote also mentioned in interviews that he hurt his knee when he was kicking Silva. This would correspond perfectly with the common mechanism of ACL injury – when a person kicks, their lower leg is being whipped out, and the shin bone will slide forward on the thigh bone if the muscles/ligaments don’t oppose the force.

PICTURE it this way: put your right fist up like at the top of a bicep curl, then put your left fist on top of your right fist. When you slide your right fist forward towards the computer screen, that’s the movement that the ACL prevents, and that’s what happened to Cote’s knee.

So the ACL will come into play in a really quick pivot type move, like a running back who cuts hard, or during something unexpected, like getting pushed right before you land from a jump, missing a kick completely or partially.

The ACL will also work to stabilize the joint if the muscles aren’t strong enough to do the job, so even if you’re expecting the movement or it’s a planned movement, like a hard cut in football, if you don’t have strong muscles, you can still tear your ACL.

To prevent ACL injuries, you need to make sure your hamstrings and calves (gastroc) are strong and powerful. So exercises like Stiff-leg deadlifts and Swiss ball leg curls are crucial to knee injury prevention. The muscles worked in these exercises do exactly what the ACL does, prevent anterior slide of the lower leg on the upper leg.

You must focus on 2 specific portions of each exercise: the Eccentric phase, and the transition from the Eccentric to Concentric motion.

So for the Stiff-leg deadlift, it would mean controlling the motion to the end range, then quickly changing from lowering to lifting the weight. These exercises are all a part of my MMA Strength and Conditioning program.

You must keep the muscles strong, but even more importantly, powerful. The muscles need to be able to react quickly, so doing exercises such as repetitive, explosive jumps like Lunge jumps and others found in my NRG system complexes will train this quality.

Preventing ACL injuries in MMA requires numerous specific exercises to ensure that the muscles surrounding the knee joint are strong and powerful.

Integrate these exercises into your strength and conditioning program and you can prevent buckling your knee in the middle of a fight.

If you’re interested in a complete strength and conditioning program for mixed-martial artists that will prevent injuries and improve your power and conditioning, check out the Ultimate MMA Workout Program.

http://www.ultimatemmastrength.com/

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The following article was written by Eric Wong one of the worlds top MMA strength and conditioning coaches who has been kind enough to allow us to publish for you.

Isometrics are not often used in sports specific strength and conditioning. Because most sports are dynamic in nature, isometrics aren’t obvious to they eye and thus aren’t trained.

In MMA, isometrics can add another element to your game that can help you submit your opponent, escape a submission, or achieve a dominant position whether standing or on the ground.

For example, if you get caught in an armbar and your opponent doesn’t immediately lock you in, you’ve got some time to escape. How long you have depends on your ability to keep your arm flexed using your biceps while trying to move your body around so that your arm is in a safe position.

Another example is when you’ve got a triangle locked in. Submitting an opponent with a triangle is no easy task, so you’ve got to have the ability to keep your knees squeezed tightly together for an extended period to tire your opponent out to make him tap.

A final example is in the clinch. When you’re pummeling back and forth with an opponent or you have a single-leg, you’ve got to hold your arms in a certain position against his bodyweight – this is isometrics in action.

So how do you train isometrics in the gym?

My favorite way to do it is to throw isometrics into the middle of a set. That would mean if you’re doing 12 reps of an exercise, after rep 6, you do an isometric hold at the middle of the range of motion, then finish the set off.

Or, you can break it up into thirds, so you can do an isometric hold of 5 seconds after the 4th rep, 8th rep, and at the end of the set.

But let me warn you – this method is difficult and burns, making it a great method for training mental toughness at the same time.

Here are 3 of my favorite exercises to use isometrics with:

1) Inverted Row

* Hang under a barbell with your feet on a swiss ball so your body is parallel with the floor
* Hold when your elbows are at 90 degrees

2) Push-up

* Do your standard push-up, or put your feet on a ball for an added challenge
* Hold at 90 degrees of elbow flexion

3) Leg curl on Swiss ball with knee squeeze

* For this one, you need a squishy child’s ball
* Put it between your knees and for the entire set of leg curls, squeeze the ball together as hard as you can

So now you have 3 exercises and a new method for developing your MMA strength and conditioning. Put these into your workout routine and you’ll be tapping people out when you would’ve given up before, and you’ll take your MMA game to the next level.

Isometrics are a component of a good strength and conditioning program. But there are a few things that many MMA fighters do wrong in their MMA workouts. Don’t make the same mistakes, have a look here now.

http://www.ultimatemmastrength.com/

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