In this article we will be taking a look at how you can transform yourself into a real athlete. We will discover practical methods that you can use to go from a soft trainer to an extreme athlete who is great at what they do.

Becoming an athlete: going from softness to greatness

When I was in high school I played a lot of soccer and did a lot of martial arts. All in all I was spending about four to eight hours a day training. Why? Because at about age 16 I decided that I didn’t want to be just like every other jock in school. I wanted to be better. I decided I was going to go from soft to extreme and become a real athlete.

However, to do that I needed to have a plan. I wasn’t going to get there by just winging it. These tips I am about to share are some of the crucial lessons and tricks that I learned along the way.

1. Discover your workout motivation

If you are going to be sweating blood and tears, working out for hours, etc. you need to have a very firm and solid reason for doing so. Do you think Bruce Lee trained eight hours a day because he had nothing better to do? No. He had a strong motivation to be the best martial artist and the best action film star.

Write down your goals and make sure you are familiar with them. Which one resonates the most with you? Spend some time really trying to discover what your motivation is. Once you know what it is you should stick with it.

2. Focus your training into specifics like Roger Federer

Martial artists are some of the worst fighters in the world. This might sound crazy but it is true. Why? Because they spend so much time dabbling in 50 different things that they never dedicate enough energy in to perfecting the one thing they want to be good at.

If you want to be the best boxer the train boxing.

If you want to be the best golf player then train golf.

If you want to be the biggest bodybuilder then learn bodybuilding.

You see, we are fickle creatures and we get bored easily. Martial artists often look to weight training and running and other sports to help improve their martial art but then they get distracted and forget to concentrate on one thing. This is where the saying “Good at lots of sports, master of none” comes from.

If you want to be an extreme athlete who is the best of the best then you need to focus your energy on what is important. Don’t waste your time with other things that will supposedly help your progress. There just aren’t enough hours in the day.

This reminds me of the champion tennis player Roger Federer. He was about to play the young Lleyton Hewitt who had been working out in the gym and was looking very fit and strong. Many people thought that the young Hewitt was going to defeat the champion Federer due to his new workout scheme. Continue Reading

When you are a martial artist you need to train hard. And to train hard you need to enlist the help of some essential pieces of fitness equipment. In this article I want to loot at five pieces of fitness equipment that every martial artist should own.

Five pieces of fitness equipment every martial artist should own

I have been training in martial arts for many years and along they way I have discovered some tools that I feel are now necessary to my martial arts development. These tools help me develop speed, power, strength and real endurance. Every martial artist or boxer should use them. Here they are:

1. A solid heavy bag

If you are a martial artist and you don’t train on a heavy bag you are kidding yourself. In order to fully develop your art you need to know what it feels like to throw your fist or elbow onto something solid. You need to be able to train your muscles to tense and the point of impact and to learn how much distance you need to land the knock out punch.

You can’t do any of these things without a heavy bag.

The heavy bag is also one of my favorite tools for developing power and real world fitness. A 30 minute workout on the heavy bag is harder than any run, sprint or bike ride you can show me. It is quite common to see aspiring boxers at the gym throwing up their lunch after a heavy bag workout because it is so intense.

2. A new-school speed rope

I used to talk a lot about skipping ropes and how the best ones are the old-school leather ones. I was wrong. These new speed ropes that are made with heavy duty heavy materials and ball bearings are so much better.

Speed ropes are designed to go as fast as possible. As such you end up getting a much harder workout because you can easily up the speed to sprinting pace. And while you might not get as much of a workout in the shoulder area as you do with a leather rope you absolutely make up for it in the jumping, running and skipping department.

Speed ropes are for more than just cardio. They are an amazing tool for developing hand eye coordination and foot agility. Double jumps, one legged jumps, side to side, etc. are all ways that the speed rope will help you become a more talented martial artist.

3. A heavy medicine ball

Medicine balls have been used for many generations by the best boxers going around. They play a crucial role in my own abdominal development and should form a crucial part of your own core strength development.

A heavy medicine ball is not a 5kg or a 8kg one. I am talking about 12kg to 20kg of solid weight being dropped onto your chest by your training partner as you pump out your sit up workout. If you are looking for sore abs then here is a method for you! When I see a person cranking out some decline sit up twists with a 12kh medicine ball on their chest I know they are hard.

Medicine balls are now being used by professional athletes to help improve their twisting power and core strength. It is the midsection twist that creates all of the power in your punches so you too should be working with the medicine ball.

They are great for partner workouts as well as solo abdominal sessions. You can throw them against a wall and catch them as you do your sit ups, throw them up in the air and then catch them… there are so many options.

4. A fitness ball

Keeping with the theme of midsection and core strength every martial artist should spend $20 and invest in a good fitness ball. These things are cheap but go a long way in helping you develop some real abdominal muscles.

However, abs exercises isn’t the only thing the fitness ball is used for. They are amazing for throwing you off balance and as such bringing other stablizing muscles into play. This means exercises like pushups, miltary presses, bicep cursl, etc. are all given a new dimension when done on a fitness ball.

5. A set of dumbbells

If you are one of those martial artists who think that using weights slows you down then it is time to grow up and get over it. They don’t. If you train with weights smartly you will find that you speed up, gain strength and can pack a heck of a lot more power into each punch.

Put things into perspective. Your punches might be super fast but without power it doesn’t mean anything. Power is everything; even if it means sacrificing a little bit of speed.

Weight training also keeps your muscles and joints healthy which is very important for martial artists and boxers who are putting them under daily stress. The added muscle is also good for weight loss and keeping your immune system healthy. At the very least every martial artist should have a set of heavy dumbbells so they can do exercises like military presses, rows, bicep curls, lunges, lateral side raises, tricep extensions, clean and jerks and so on.

Conclusion

While these pieces of fitness equipment might not actually be essential to your development I do believe that they will go a long way in helping you improve your technique, power, strength and fitness. These are tools designed to give you an edge and as such you should make use of them whenever you can.

I’m really excited about this. Now you can show your photo in your Real Muscle Online comments. Here is a screen shot to show you what I mean.

All you have to do is sign up for a Mybloglog account and upload a photo. Then when you enter in your email address in the comment form on this site it will go and fetch your photo from Mybloglog. Pretty neat huh!

I hope lots of you go an upload a photo because it would be nice to see your faces and build a greater sense of community around this site. If you have any problems let me know.