Different kinds of work outs for martial arts?

Hey, my trainer got mad at me the other day because he doesnt want me benching, he says i should only be working out muscles i use to hit and kick with. i train in muay thai, i was wondering what kinds of excersises i can do to tone and build up my chest.. i dont want a huge chest or anything, but id like some muscle you know.. are push ups good? i need specific work outs i can do without weights for my chest!!

Different kinds of work outs for martial arts?
I think training your whole body is good for martial arts. You want your whole body to be strong not just the muscles that you kick or punch with. If you get hit in the abs hows that gonna feel if its jelly. I think you should train all of your muscles and maybe some bodyweight exercises. For your chest you could do push-ups or go swimming in butterfly style. Mix up the push-ups. Do some declines, inclines, on a ball, diamond, arms above your head, arms below your head, or just regular push-ups.
Reply:Hm, thats a good question, and your trainer has a good point. I don't think there s a way (at least not that i know of) to develop chest muscles without using any weight, or putting some weight in it. The only other way i can think of, is to change your whole idea about your body, so you won't need to develop chest muscles anymore.


best.
Reply:u can do like swats to strenthen up legs. swatthrust would be the best because they do both upper and lower.





you can always punch the puncing bag
Reply:training your mind will be more helpful then training your muscles
Reply:as many press ups as you can do but put your arms as WIDE as possible
Reply:Your trainer is old school and should get with the times. There is nothing wrong with using weights in your training.


I have trained several national and international champions and all of them used weights. I competed for over twenty years and always used weight training. But don’t take my word for it ask Evander Holyfield or Mike Tyson.Remember that your training for martial arts. not bodybuilding, and make sure that your doing full range of motion reps. There isn't to many top level athletes in any sport that don’t use some weight training in there routines and if it’s good enough for them then it’s good enough for the rest of us.
Reply:Wieghts are fine... People that think that lifting is bad for you should have a bit more of a logical think about so called body weight exercises. For instance, if you do a full hand stand press up and you weigh 80kg that's like doing shoulder press with 2 x 40kg dumb bells and unless you use chairs you won't get a full range of motion with the handstand presses.





The other point that people like to try is that you will lose flexibility which is also crap... Let's look at what a stretch actullay is, for instance take a chest stretch to be topical, place your forearm on the wall and turn away from it until a stretch is felt, now lie down on the bench, take a dumb bell and lower it down as far as it will go... Feel familiar? A stretch maybe? Weights work your muscles to be strong through their full range of motion, it is people's technique that makes their flexibility suffer not the weights :-)





As for just throwing the punches this will mainly just develop the neural pathways which means the nerve impulse from your brain that tells your arm to throw the punch will me faster making punches quicker, obviously very important, but it only gives minimal development to the strength of the muscles so to get even more out of it work on your strength too and the best thing for that is resistance exercise (iron, rubber bands, bodyweight, bricks, buckets of water, chairs, your mum, your dog or anything heavy will do the trick)





Punching a heavy bag will also work on strength but mainly explosive power, again this is a very important aspect but not everything, try to get a balance between strength, power, speed, accuracey and timing and you will hit like a steam train.





Anyways google some workouts of fighters that you admire and from there you do what you feel is best for you.
Reply:This is the workout I normally do. Now I am not a big guy, but I am pretty well cut and have good muscle ton.....


• Push ups- 4 sets of 20 (Knuckle pushups)…1 set normal arm width; 1 set of wide width; 1 set of legs crossed and 1 set of one arm push ups (10 on each arm)


• Jumping Jacks- 2 sets of 30; 1 set of regular and 1 set of criss crossing legs


• Reverse pushups- 2 sets of 20; set regular and 1 set of wide width.


• Squats- 2 sets of 20; 1 set slow, 1 set slow and moving side to side.


• Leg raises- 3 sets of 15; 1 set of up and down; 1 set of side to side; 1 set of circular motion (all the while keeping your upper body in a crunch position.


• Crunches- 3 sets of 20; 1 set of regular crunches; 1 set of right elbow to left knee; 1 set of left elbow to right knee.


• Running in place- 2 sets of 2 minutes-the higher up in rank you go, the longer you run in place.


• Horse stance- start out at two minutes and work your way up to 10 minutes.
Reply:push ups train shoulder more than chests, and they can be very damaging to your shoulders.





rock climibing would definitely build up your chest strength, and it would have tyhe added bonus of strengthening punching/kicking muscles.





So would taking a capoeira class