Weight Training In Muay Thai

Some people say that by using wieghts will slow you down as it bulk muscle being developed not endurance muscle. Does anyone know of any specific weight training that will not slow your speed down by the use of dumb-bells and various other weight training equipment?

thats a good question that might gather more responses under the health forum or the general forum.
if your asking specifically in relationship to muay thai, i unfortunately know very little. but i do know a good deal concerning general sports and martial arts cross training. i spent the last two years studying anatomy and excercise physiology to help my fiance through school.

weight training is funny, everyone has different results as far as building mass and how that effects quickness and range of motion, but its in almost every proffessional athletes workout regimen, so you can safely say that there is a right way to weight train for almost everything.

in my case, and this is generally true-as long as you dont overdue it, youll have nothing to worry about. most excercises can be done for mass and power, or for endurance, simply by altering the amount of sets and repetitions.without getting into all the silly details about percentage of maximum and body weight ratios, if you are just starting or getting back into it, concentrate on proper form, full range of motion, and control, many excercises, are better if performed very slowly rather than exploding through your reps.

before this gets into the ubiquitous "how to lift weights" discussion, lets talk about some martial arts specifics.
do not neglect to stretch-for many people, they lose range of motion and quickness because they dont stretch. simply put, lifting wieghts spurs new muscle growth-the new muscle fibers grow back together as tightly as possible, by stretching, you can pull them apart thus increasing your range of motion. also, keeping them stretched will keep you from getting to bulky too fast.

in addition to stretching its important to build up your quickness. because muscles have memory, if you stretch regularly they will stay stretched and if you practice explosive quickness, then they will fire quickly and the result is alot of power behind that fist or foot. or knee and elbow if you are muay thai

this is starting to run on so if you have specific questions i will try to answer them as best i can

well training for speed is a little diffrent than training for max strength though it sort of crosses over in part. for one if you are just starting resistance training, genneraly people see large strength gains in the first 6-8 weeks. This is due to an increase in your neuro-muscular coordination, or rather your ability to recruit muscle fibers increase (so you are using more of your muscle) in this period your strength increases alot relative to your mass and you will see an increase in speed also because of your increased ability to recruit muscle mass.

Now when you are training for speed specificly, you are realy training to reduce the amount of time it takes you to recruit the maximum amount of muscle fibers you can activly recruit. it's a realy big subject but to say anairobics will make you slower is somewhat untrue. When you lift weights you are targeting type 2 muscle fibers (fast twitch fibers) as aposed to type one (slow twitch, these are targeted in lower exsertion indurance work (airobic excersise)). As a resultyou are actualy strengthening thecorrect type of muscle fibers fr speed, but usualy problems occure because workouts aren't sport specific enough so you don't train to properly take advantage of your muscle.

Well reading over what I just wrote up there, looks like total giberish.. I guess I'll leave it in just incase you understand something in there ;)

if you are new to speed training a good book to read would be "warrior speed" by Ted Weimann. It's pritty easy to understand but does a good job of describing the aspects of speed and how to improve them. Has some nice drills in there too.

in the gym i train in, we use light wieghts to build little bulk muscle but also to make punches stironger and faster.

1-3lb wieghts

fighters do following for boxing component

shadow spar with 5 pound weights for 30 seconds, 30 free, 10 pounds for 30, 30 free, 15 pounds for 30 seconds, 30 free.

just keep the aerobic exercise up with the anaerobic, i do and have seen no drop in speed. i do weights 3 times a week, increasing load, but also skip and run in the mornings and afternoons and before i train 2 times a week, the rest is body resistance training and aerobic or working my combos on bag or pads.

its a falicy it slows you down basically

I don't feel weight lifting slows you down. Even Bruce Lee realized that weight lifting was required in order to provide sufficient amounts of power.

Its not so much the weight lifting, but the absence of aerobic and resistance training that tends to slow people down. At my gym, we frequently weight train as part of our training regime. One must also keep in mind, that weight training isn't merely used to bulk up. It has actually made my techniques alot faster, and deliver with more power.

Just remember not to solely use weight training to gain power in your techniques. As always remember to maintain your flexibility.

ThuNder_FoOt