Are you progressing as a martial artist?

Ask yourself the question. Are you getting better day after day, week after week year after year? Has your progression become stale or are you becoming faster, stronger and more knowledgeable as time goes on?.

Training is all about progression. After every training session you should have progressed and improved in some way. Whether it is becoming faster, stronger or even more knowledgeable... we train for progression, not for the hell of it.

If you are not pushing yourself harder every work out then you will fail to progress. It's that simple.

So many people train day after day and run through the same old motions. They do a gentle meaningless warm-up that involves some 2 second random stretching, a bit of a jog on the spot and then after complaining about how "tight" they are, they begin to train. After their training (or chatting) session, they put their focus pads away and go home.

What's wrong with this type of training?

The warm-up is unfocused and slack. There is no record of what type of training they did and with all that chatting, there is no way these people are pushing their bodies to the limit.

So how should these people train?

There is no perfect way to train. However, there are some key things we can do.

1. Perform a focused warm-up - If you have tight hamstrings, work on stretching them for a good ten minutes. Focus mentally on the stretch and think of this 10 minutes as an important part of training time. If it's your hips, stretch your hips.
2. Train intensely - Whether it's pushing your body to it's limit with boxing drills, or training a small isolated technique, training with 100% focus, dedication and intensity will help you progress.
3. Record your progress - Write down what technique you worked on and elements you need to improve on. If you did a weight training session write down how many reps for what weight and exercise you performed. If you went running or did circuit training, time it and write down how fast you completed it.

Beat your personal bests

Once you start keeping a record of your times, weights and training you can attempt to set new personal bests. If you ran 5 miles in 45 minutes in your last training session, you can try to run it in 44 minutes or under. Even if you run it in 44minutes 50 seconds - it's progress.

This my fellow trainers is real progression - This is how we can truly progress in martial arts, fitness & endurance and as human beings.

Some helpful tools to keep records of progress

1. Stopwatch/ Sports watch - Time is one of the biggest measures of fitness. Some guys can fight for 1 minute rounds and some guys can fight for 5 minutes rounds. Some people run 1 mile in 6-7 minutes, others it takes 20 minutes. By progressively increasing or decreasing the times of our training we can progress.
2. Pen & Paper - Keeping an organized list of records is extremely important - with just a pen and paper you will be able to record a personal best for every type of training you do.
3. Weight training program - If your goal is to build muscle OR strength, you need a solid weight training program like Fightscopes bodybuilding program.