I recall a post a while ago where you said that you did cardio type excercises instead of running or jumping rope. I am curious what kinds of excercises can get your wind up enough to substitute running, something I can no longer do now. I think it would be cool if you may even be able to write a book or guide on this subject.
Thanks
bob

I forgot to mention that I am referring to excercises that will get one's cardio training up to snuff for boxing, wrestling, combat sports, etc.
bob

I recommend interval training, short bursts of anaerobic activity alternating with periods of less intense activity.

Some examples are:

Stand up straight, go into a full squat, rock back onto the ground into a rear breakfall, rock back up to your feet without using the hands to push off the mat then explode into a vertical jump. Land and repeat as quickly as possible.

Stand with the legs wide, squat and put the palms on the mat, jump both feet back into a sprawl position, jump the feet back to the squat position, explode in to a vertical jump. Land and repeat as quickly as possible.

Cross the length of the mat with alternating penetration steps, turn and walk back the length of the mat on the hands.

Intervals can also be done on the heavy bag. For example, you can strike the bag with the hands only as hard and fast as possible for one minute, followed by a minute of less intense striking. The cycles can be repeated with kicks only, elbows and knees only, or striking the bag with any combination of the above.

With partners: Have two people stand about 10 feet apart. Stand in between your partners, take a long step and take the first partner down with a double leg tackle, turn and take a long step then shoot and take down the second partner, continue shooting back and forth as fast as possible.

From a standing position, squat and sprawl in front of you partner, jump back up and throw a right round kick (your partner holds focus mitts or Thai pads), immediately sprawl again, rise and throw a left round kick, alternate kicking left and right with sprawls in between as quickly as possible.

There exercises should give you some idea of martial arts specific cardio drills.

Do you have something easier that involves more chi???

Remember, there's only one Betty...

those exercises are great! im gonna try them at home. but what exactly are penetrating steps? and the second part is a walking handstand?

thanks, rob.

it's very common for athletes to do intervals with weights. Pick out 4-6 exercises, and do sets of 6-8 of all them back to back. This might take 2-3 minutes. Then take a period of rest, 30-90 secs maybe, and then repeat.

You could periodize this by incresing the length of sets, reps, weights, lifting tempo, or rest periods. If you fight San Da, it's 2-5 rounds, at 2 or 3 minutes, with one minute rest. So, if my fighter always runs out of gas, I'll have him go as long as he can at high quality, say 2 minutes. Then I'll do 7 sets of this. Same amount of work as the rounds. Then As he progress I shorten the rest, until he going 2 mins on 30 seconds off and then right back into 2 mins. If he can produce four minutes of high quality work with only thirty seconds rest, we can switch over and see how he does for three minutes periods, then increasing the rest back up to original levels, and maybe later it's four minute intervals.

This technique is nice, as there are a variety of variables that you can adjust, and it's specific to the energy systems you use, ie strength and power (anaerobic), but it's not your fighting techniques. That means you don't have to pick up bad habits with your techniques getting sloppy when you are tired, and you don't get overuse injuries from doing the same stuff so much. I've really enjoyed implementing this style of work into our training, and feel that it gives us A LOT of gas.

you could even add in some of the plyometric style exercises that TIM mentioned, but I would not recommend training power endurance if the power isn't there yet. IE: if you can't jump more than 20+ inches, say, you're not getting much out of those jumps.

Thanks a lot Tim!

btw, what do mean by penetration steps? walking on the hands?

just wondering. thanks.

Robert,

A penetration step is the used to close the distance between you and your opponent rapidly as you shoot in for a leg takedown. You can find a description of level changing and penetration steps in any wrestling book.

Right, walking on the hands.

cool, thanks.

always a privilage, rob.