by Blarg » Sun Aug 07, 2005 8:20 am
Very interesting thread.
I think people are seeming to gloss over previous condition, and body type.
Someone who is already in good shape may not benefit much from doing weightlifting, if his goals are MA-directed. Then again, he won't suffer from it if it's done right, either, and may find benefit. Not all strength work makes one slow or massive.
But someone naturally skinny or in poor shape will be very well served by building up a little muscle, hopefully fairly quickly. Endurance-type exercises on top of a skinny body will build muscle very slowly, perhaps taking years to add significant muscle. And even then, not much compared to weight lifting, and there won't be much strength in it. Strength only hurts if it is used as a crutch; it is not a liability in and of itself. For instance, what happens if you get knocked to the ground or someone tries to get an armbar on you? Ideally, we would all like to be able to execute flawless technique to get us out of that -- or any -- situation. But practically speaking, we are not always going to have precisely the opportunity that makes technique matter much. Sometimes the best way to handle things is to give someone a shove -- simply to manhandle him with strength. If you should be so lucky as to have the opportunity for strength to make the difference between getting hurt and not getting hurt, you'll be terrifically glad you had some strength when you needed it.
The body is a complex assemblage of qualities and assets buiilt over time, and it doesn't need just one or two most favored virtues, but as many as it can get. Strength is not a useless asset. Whether it is weilding a heavy staff in training or, in real life, jumping high and pulling yourself over a wall so the three guys chasing you get lost in the distance, it's useful to everybody.
That's why it's not at all a waste of time for beginning athletes and the natural ectomorph to put in solid time on strength work. Both strength and lean muscle mass will lead to higher athletic performance for most of them. To get huge in weightlifting takes time, voracious eating habits, specialized routines, and, if you're going by the bodybuilders you see in magazines, steroids. And most of us STILL wouldn't look like that, because we wouldn't train hard enough and aren't interested in those goals.
Lift away. Do compound lifts. If you're so lucky as to get what you would consider a "surplus" of muscles, cardio and endurance, or simply eating less, will trim them down into lean endurance-based muscle fibers in time. In fact, martial artists do so much endurance work that it's very hard for them to gain the size from weightlifting that lifters do, as slow-twitch endurance fibers don't have the growth potential that fast-twitch fibers do, and as aerobic activity burns off the massive amounts of calories a seasoned athlete needs to put on muscle.