In this article I will focus more on strength and muscular endurance while keeping cardiovascular endurance and flexibility for later articles. Understanding these elements of fitness is very important if you are to get the most out of your weight training or martial arts workout.

Strength is the ability of a muscle to produce force. It is measured by the amount of weight you can lift in one repetition. Pure strength is the most important ingredient in many sports: shot-putting, discus throwing, jumping high in volleyball, throwing a punch, jumping high for a kick, etc.…

In Kung Fu strength is also important where you have to meet an opponent with a lot of force, such as grappling or ground fighting. Power is something different. (Power = strength + speed). A person may have a lot of strength at the bench press or at the squat machine, but not be able to give a good punch or kick. He may not have the speed of movement that, combined with strength, generates the necessary power for a good technique.

Muscular endurance is the ability of a muscle to produce force repeatedly over a period of time. It is measured by the number of repetitions of a movement or skill. If you can only do one or two push-ups, then for you it's a strength movement. If you can do 30 to 50 push-ups, then for you it's a muscular endurance exercise. Sports requiring muscular endurance are semi-contact fighting, forms and weapons forms competitions, rowing and sprinting. These sports differ from strength sports in that you have to apply force for a longer period of time.

The most important principles in weight training for sports or martial arts are, heavy resistance with low repetition builds strength and light resistance with high repetitions builds endurance. Most martial artist need both strength and endurance, so they stay in the 7 to 20 repetitions. Ten repetitions of a given exercise generally gives you proportional amounts of strength and endurance. To determine an appropriate training load , simply use a trial load and perform as many repetitions an possible. If the number of reps completed is 10, you have found an appropriate training load to use. If you performed less than 10 reps with the trial load, it is too heavy. On the other hand, if you easily performed more than 10 reps, it is to light. So make necessary adjustments. Once training begins, if you can complete 3 sets of 10 repetitions for two consecutive workouts, for any given exercise, it would then be time to increase the working load (weight).

It is safe to say that strength in and of itself does not guarantee high performance. For example, the strongest kick boxer may not be the best. If he doesn't have enough speed, balance, flow, focus, agility, coordinate and skill he may be outmaneuvered and out boxed despite his greater strength.

In closing, strength and muscular endurance training is a welcomed training tool for the serious martial artist. So with this in mind train hard, train safely, train regularly and have fun.

Written By Sifu Rino Côté