A Big Key To Hitting Harder

Hope this finds you all training hard and deep in blessings. Here’s a tip for all you martial artists out there, but it’s also a skill that applies to any athlete. Selective Tension.

If you’ve ever lifted anything heavy you know that it requires total body tightness. You just can’t perform a big lift right and be loose. If all of your muscles aren’t contracted right and firing correctly you loose energy, correct weak links and set yourself up for injury. Conversely if you’ve ever tried to move fast, or do anything that requires athletic grace you can’t do it with excess tension. Creating speed is a combination of the power stored in that tension, nervous efficiency and relaxation. You can’t muscle a big strike. The tension is too high and it slows the movement down so much that it takes away the power, but if you don’t have the explosive power of releasing the tension of the muscle to create a fast movement you don’t get much on that strike either. Also if you don’t last second tense the part of the body you strike with you set yourself up for injury and take away from the power of a strike because you’re not hitting with a hard surface.

Therefore an important skill for the martial artist is to be able to instantly, alternately and ultimately, with lightening fast float between relaxation and tension. That’s the key to a fast and powerful strike. For you other athletes its also a key to safety in competition and training and a secret to explosive endurance. If you try to do an activity that is constant motion, an endurance activity and try to maintain the same type of tension you would in heavy lifting, you’ll be exhausted very quickly, within a couple of minutes. Many fighters who are actually in descent shape fatigue themselves prematurely by not being able to relax in the ring and devastate their performance.

One of the greatest exercises you can do to practice explosive selective tension is the kettlebell swing. This exercise really has over the top benefits and carryover to martial practice. All great strikes start with the hips which is the primary target point of the swing. By doing this exercise correctly you’re working on strength, endurance, cardiovascular conditioning, speed, selective explosive tension, abdominal development, hip extension, and transfer of power. All keys to hitting harder. If you haven’t done this one you need to learn how because it’s a big blockbuster of a movement.

If you want to learn more about how to hit so hard that people will swear you’re on roids, and how to train for maximum martial strength and endurance, how to do and what the greatest exercises for your combat training are then you should have Super Strength & Endurance for Martial Arts.