the rum soaked fist: internal martial arts forum

Was writing this in response to someone's knee pain thread but it makes a lot of sense from an IMA pov of "train your tendons" and "power in your tendons not your muscles":

some general notes from Tim Ferriss podcast w Coach Sommer (USA mens gymnastics national coach in the past; has produced elite athletes) that probably apply to your case:

- it takes 260 some days for soft tissues like ligaments and tendons to heal.
- you should NOT be doing much exercise in the meantime.
- you need to train these tissues BEFORE ever adding resistance and muscle exercise (if you get strong in a way that is imbalanced or stresses these connective tissues, you are just making your condition worse).
- you actually need to (when you are ready) put some of these tissues in slightly bad alignment in a gentle, progressive way to condition them (such as those knee rotations some people do not like) since that is going to happen in your chosen sport (although the ph and bjj went too far). if you only ever keep "neutral spine" you really don't condition the connective tissues.

The progression of all this is incredibly slow. heal with rest for a long time. start adding in very light plyometrics. do not do "strength" training for muscle belly before your joints are in good condition. probably cannot do ph or bjj for a long time. Pretty much that sounds JUST LIKE the typical traditional IMA method of conditioning doesn't it?! It's not a f**** con, it turns out. It makes sense. According to Coach Sommer that's how you build up international level gymnasts over a very long period.

Frankly it sounds like bs to me.

The guys I've met with the thickest and most integrated fasciae tissue development: Olympic weight lifters and powerlifters.

I'm not discounting that development of this kind of poorly vascularized tissue takes time. Just that resistance training is integral to an optimal development.

It's not BS, from a clinical standpoint it makes a lot of sense. In fact most soft tissue injury happens at the attachments spots because it's the weakest spot and takes the most time to strengthen. When getting stronger, the first adaptation a trainee will experience is neural adaptation, muscular adaptation, tendon/ligament adaptation, and then osseous (bone) adaptation.

Honestly, in the people I have treated, trained, and/or talked to about their bodies and injuries as shown to me that those who rushed their training the fastest were far more prone to injuries. Now this doesn't include those who may or may not have adequate rest and nutrition as that can affect it as well.

The context is gymnastic strength training for normal people but also for elite (international level competition) athletes with extraordinary strength for extraordinary applications. I don't think he said anything negative about Olympic lifting. Podcast here: http://fourhourworkweek.com/2016/05/09/ ... -training/ Tim Ferriss also has an interview with Pavel. I don't think these guys are full of b.s., quite the contrary. They seem to have produced fantastic results.

When I began to train in my youth, I was just interested in the conditioning aspect of training i.e. to be better at running, TKD, wrestling, etc
I know of no one who says I want to train 'connective tissue" or even cardio. This stuff happens after the fact...and it is still unimportant but for academic or specificity, I can see an element.

Secondly, the sport will indicate type of conditioning. In TKD, in my later years PNF (you guys can google it) was the way to go but many had the wrong process (how to do it!) as to how to do better kicking strength and even flexibility of specific muscles.

It is for training world class athletes. The knowledge comes from the practical folks not the academics, AFAIK. But I agree with your point to a degree. Of course it's different these days with the internets. People seem to know a lot more of the theory.

Connective tissue is one of those areas that some hate to think about in the Internal Arts (jin, Chi, Yi, Li are all fine, but god forbid we mention fascia!!). You can almost hear the groans of some people here when it is brought up and it sort of viewed as a bit of a Fad. But regardless of those boxed viewpoints, those of us who have researched and are teaching/training work that focuses in this area are seeing some good results.

For more information or recommended reading i would point people to the following:
Coach Sommer at GB's has excellent information on it, Also look up the Marinovich's and their method of training which is largely focused on the stretch shortening cycle and connective tissue training. Nick Curson's 'Speed of Sport' (conditioning coach of many top teir UFC fighters) training too who is a student of the Marinovoch's. Obviously the work of Thomas Meyers is siminal in this area of research. Also Schleips paper on training Fascia is a must read.

http://www.fasciaresearch.de/Schleip_TrainingPrinciplesFascial.pdf

Here is a very interesting podcast with Nick Curson where he talks about Connective tissue alot.



I have now worked with people from a variety of backgrounds from MMA, BJJ, Karate and others. All are seeing big changes in multiple areas of their training. Once I finish a few quals i am going through at the moment I will be releasing a more comprehensive and less 'internal arty' information, some of it focused in this area.

happy training all.

Peacedog wrote:fascist tissue development

What the hell?

Middleway, thanks I'll check those sources out.

And Ian it's called autocorrect screwing things up. Next time just IM me.

Connective tissue is one of those areas that some hate to think about in the Internal Arts (jin, Chi, Yi, Li are all fine, but god forbid we mention fascia!!). You can almost hear the groans of some people here when it is brought up and it sort of viewed as a bit of a Fad. But regardless of those boxed viewpoints, those of us who have researched and are teaching/training work that focuses in this area are seeing some good results.

I disagree, the "boxed" view point might be for those thinking that "fascia" is not described nor talked about.

Many of the old timers I've met also talked about it using local terminology to express the same things. To think they
were / are not aware of this seems very short sighted.

I disagree, the "boxed" view point might be for those thinking that "fascia" is not described nor talked about.

Many of the old timers I've met also talked about it using local terminology to express the same things. To think they
were / are not aware of this seems very short sighted.

I didnt say they werent aware did I? nope.

Middleway, thanks I'll check those sources out.

No worries mate. Also i think this is absolutely correct. " resistance training is integral to an optimal development." What kind of resistance and how to train it is an interesting thing to explore.

thanks.

Middleway,

The article pretty much confirms what I've seen. The better systems for doing this use both resistance training and what I can only describe as "stretching in expansion" to train this kind of tissue.

A lot of meditative phenomena become repeatable when you can master the art of tuning the fasciae into the specific energy you are looking for, but it takes time to do this. About 100 hours of practice with a specific energy while doing this seems to create the baseline.

Cheers,

Peacedog

Whatever happened to just train the the muscles and tendons? Fascia is just a membrane like a "jacket" around the muscle belly. get strong : train the muscles and tendons.

Whatever happened to just train the the muscles and tendons? Fascia is just a membrane like a "jacket" around the muscle belly. get strong : train the muscles and tendons.

It is probably worth looking into Fascia a bit more. It has many more roles than that.

Also, No one is saying dont train the muscles and tendons as far as i can tell. As is often the case, a discussion in one area of development doesnt mean that all other areas of development are neglected.

middleway wrote:

Whatever happened to just train the the muscles and tendons? Fascia is just a membrane like a "jacket" around the muscle belly. get strong : train the muscles and tendons.

It is probably worth looking into Fascia a bit more. It has many more roles than that.

Also, No one is saying dont train the muscles and tendons as far as i can tell. As is often the case, a discussion in one area of development doesnt mean that all other areas of development are neglected.

In reading your blog http://www.internalpowertraining.com/The-IPT-Blog , you have a lot of and some very intersting ideas to share.
blog has a nice lay out btw