Balancing The Week
If I have one general query that people come to me with it’s about training and how they should split up the week. In my article, ‘Self or Group’ I outline my own training week what, broadly, I devote time wise to the various training blocks.
In very simple terms your training programme should be a product of two overarching issues
- Purpose
- Facilities
Purpose
What are you training for? If you are still active in competition then the very nature of that competition will determine not only when you train but what and how. Training for a non-contact traditional Karate competition, where a bout may be no longer than 2 minutes, but by contrast requires explosive speed, demands a very specific type of training.
By contrast, if you have to prepare for a full contact event then you should have a vastly different routine than would be required for the Karateka. In this training tip I just want you to think about your goals, both short and long term and in separate articles I will tackle training routines for a wide variety of purposes.
In the meantime what you should try and ponder is where conflict occurs in your training, in other words the imbalances, where old training habits may well be at odds with your current ‘purpose’. I see people training in totally inappropriate ways, but who are unlikely to achieve what they believe they are on the road to. I’ve fallen into the same trap. Not wanting to let go of a routine that I’ve done for years, but which has become more habit than part of a strategic plan.
Facilities
It should be obvious what I mean here. Very simply, where can you train, with what equipment, but also under this heading I want to include training partners as a training facility! If you have a poorly equiped gym, train on your own and have time constraints then you may have to either compromise on your ‘purpose’, or train very smart indeed. You will need to be inventive and your level of personal motivation will need to be so much stronger than the person who has on his or her doorstep a well equiped Dojo and, or Gym and who has a group of like minded people to train with.
At the moment, I fit into the second category, I’m pleased to say, but it hasn’t always been like that. Some years ago I lived in a fairly remote location on the west coast of Scotland. There was no Gym apart from some dumbells in a local tourist hotel, so I had my punchbag, Wing Chun dummy and my own free weights (not many), all in my garage and one great training partner. I used the great outdoors to its best advantage and adapted to the constrained circumstances and never felt that my training was compromised in any way. At that time I was no longer competing, but as has been the case since the early 1970’s, my ‘purpose’ and training focus was geared to full contact competition, irrespective of the fact that I wasn’t competing.
This is one great tip for your training and I’ve used it as one of my motivational foundations for years and it is this. I assume that in any given week I could get a call from someone to say I had a full contact fight lined up in two weeks time, the question being would I be ready for it? My answer to myself should be yes! The two weeks left I would devote to sparring but my fitness, power, speed and impactive capability should all be there.
There’s an article on the site about motivation so read a more thorough description of my motivational planks because I don’t just have the one system to keep me at the coal face of hard training. The article was an extract from my book Fit to Fight Purpose and Facilities are the governing factors irrespective of the outcome. If you want to become a top internationally recognised fighter but live on an island with a population of eight people, six over the age of seventy then you’re going to have to be really creative, but it’s still not impossible. As I said earlier future articles will look at specific training programmes, but in the meantime stand back from your current routine, shine the strong light of the two factors I’ve talked about and be honest with yourself about how it shapes up.
Finally, be honest about how hard you train. Don’t get this statement out of context, however, because whatever level it is this should be determined by Purpose. I can’t impose my own training regime on other people, but all I would say is that whatever your goals the first requirement is to be honest about your level of physical and mental commitment. I regularly see people who are convinced they are training hard whereas in fact the intensity is well below what they need to achieve to get anywhere near succeeding at their intended purpose.
Look forward to more training tips
Peter Consterdine