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Originally Posted by LittleDemon
Im a little confused about power and muscular strength training, when i trained with wing tsun kung fu (7 1/2 yrs) we were always told muscle slowed you down and so we never did any strength training in classes and i found that because of this i lost conditioning, my body went catabolic, we were told if you have bicep muscle this is associated with tension in the arm and so would not enable you to punch as fast and as powerfully as you would if you had more tricep then bicep muscle.
Since training to be a personal trainer ive found out muscle is good for you depending what your aiming for be is muscular endurance, strength training or hypertertrophy.
Just confused as to why they would educate people this way i mean surely its better have good core stability and muscle strength then little or none and does muscle actually enhance power???
L.D  |
Hey Lil' Demon,
Think of strength as the maximum amount of force you can generate.
Since we are talking about force, you can think of it as mass x acceleration. The force your body can generate is a function of your body mass and its ability to speed up. Digest that for a second.
Force = mass x acceleration
You can increase force by either bulking up, using more of your body mass efficiently or speeding up. Bulking up alone requires even more speed training though, otherwise you will loose your ability to speed up or accelerate as your body adjusts.
Think of power as the ability to apply that force at a given distance under a certain amount of time.
Power = (Force x distance)/time
You can increase your power by either covering more distance with the same amount of force or by decreasing the time required to cover that distance or both.
You can increase your power while keeping your strength/size the same. This is why light weight boxers, like Ricky Hatton or Manny Pacquiao can generate knockout power.
Weight training for power is diferent than weight training for strength. Lifting for power involves moving a weight at a great length (from ground to overhead) as efficiently as possible using allmost the entire body. Strength training focuses on specific muscles, more on total weight and less on speed.
Damn, I'm a nerd. Hope this helps.