Martial art is the path to health. Strength in muscles or tendons?

Types of muscle hypertrophy

Muscle structure

There are two types of muscle growth (hypertrophy):

myofibrillar . It is through this type of growth that strength and power increase. This hypertrophy is inherent in fast (white) fibers, capable of generating the maximum amount of energy for a short period of time. Effective in disciplines such as powerlifting, weightlifting and arm wrestling;
sarcoplasmic . Creates voluminous muscle relief. This growth is characteristic of slow (red) fibers, creating a small amount of energy, but for a long time (endurance). Used primarily in bodybuilding.

Both types of hypertrophy do not exist separately. If one type predominates, the second also develops, but to a lesser extent. Strength increases regardless of the type of hypertrophy, just at different intensities.

Which muscles are stronger and how to pump them up

From Latin the word muscle is translated as mouse. Without them, it is impossible to stand on your feet, strike, or even stick your tongue out at the enemy. They are not visible, but they control every movement of a person. Muscles, otherwise known as muscles, are human organs made of elastic elastic tissue that contract due to nerve impulses. Muscles are always involved during any work: crying, laughing, smiling, running. It is known that the strongest muscle of a person is the tongue - the strongest muscle of the body.

The number of homo sapiens muscles is 640. The smallest ones are attached to small ear bones. The largest muscles are the gluteus maximus, which controls the legs. The shape of the body is determined by the muscles and skeleton. Good food, an active life, and sports develop them by burning fat, increasing the strength and power of a fighter.

In women, muscles make up 30% of the total body weight, in men 40. More than 50% of the total muscle mass is in the legs, 30% in the arms, 20% in the head and torso.

Muscles are made up of muscle tissue. Its two main properties are excitability and contractility. Depending on what kind of martial arts a person practices. Wrestlers have more developed muscles that allow them to maintain balance in their typical stances. This is usually a stance with a low center of gravity. That is, static muscular endurance is important for wrestlers, when muscles do not change their length. They show their greatest strength in this mode.

For drummers, everything is different. When overcoming external resistance, their muscles contract and shorten. When stressed, they lengthen. Cyclic endurance is important for them. Boxers have more developed muscles of the upper shoulder girdle and the upper half of the body.

It’s hard to say which ones are more useful to develop. As well as answering the age-old question: who is stronger as a wrestler or as a striker. A boxer only needs one precise move to knock out a fighter. But if the wrestler goes a short distance, he will break the boxer and he will do nothing.

Everyone needs their own approach. It is impossible to pump them up without training. After all, only hard training brings them into tone. And even then not all. There is one that practically does not sway - the internal oblique abdominal muscle. It provides support for all the muscles of the abdominal wall.

During competitions, there are no less problems with muscles than with bones. Sprains, bruises, tears, microtraumas—whatever fighters have to endure on the battlefield. It happens that during training an athlete overdoes the weight (both powerlifters and wrestlers), and the muscles tear away from their attachment point. The first signs of muscle injuries: pain, swelling, redness at the site of injury, cannot be ignored. Recovery of muscle tissue can last from 2-3 days to a week. The triceps recover the fastest, while the lower back muscles recover the slowest. At the same time, prolonged muscle loads can cause an increase in body temperature up to 40 degrees!

How to pump them up correctly

You may or may not like to fight, but in any case you need to be able to do it. The struggle is about overcoming the enemy's resistance. The opponent is usually not inferior in strength and the load on all muscle groups during the fight is enormous. All parts of the body are involved: arms, back, stomach, legs. After all, they are needed to fully support the fighter’s weight. The body doesn’t care what kind of resistance it has to overcome, as long as it happens regularly, then it develops and grows.

Any attack, any defense in wrestling is moving on your feet and correct back position. If a person has fast and agile legs, he can move competently and maintain balance, which means he can defend himself correctly and in time, and be ready for attack and counterattack. But legs aren't everything. The hands also do a lot of work. Capture, movement. Taking a hold, breaking a hold.

In addition to strength, endurance is also important for a person. Therefore, it is almost impossible to identify which muscles are more important. But here’s the paradox: during training, a lot of attention is paid to the neck and back. The back is a general croak, and if it is weak, the usefulness of training other parts of the body is lost. Among the exercises, there are especially many for bending arms, dragging each other around the hall, ropes, weights, and barbells. The main places of influence are grip, biceps, back. That is, those muscles that will help you lift and pull. In general, you need running, jumping, squatting, jumping. Plus special exercises that are directly related to wrestling.

When you see a wrestler on the street, you won’t confuse him with anyone else. And although these athletes show different body types - both massive with very voluminous muscles, and dry, sinewy, when they are like ropes - there is still something special. A wrestler sees a wrestler from afar: by his gait, by his movements.

What unites boxers, kickboxers, Thai... and Kyokushin fighters? They all practice striking techniques and the same muscle groups are important for them all. First of all, these are the muscles of the upper shoulder girdle: pectoralis major, anterior deltoid and triceps. Abdominal and back obliques work the same way.

For an athlete who kicks, the levators of the fascia lata, which are responsible for lifting the leg or knee, are no less important; quadriceps and calf muscles. And professionals have developed special exercises for all these groups. The best mode for developing a fighter's speed and strength abilities is dynamic strength.

Training of athletes practicing punches and kicks consists of general and special physical training. The first exercise is push-ups in dynamic mode: you can do it simply, you can do it with transitions, or you can do it on balls. Stabilizing muscles work here, which fix the shoulder joint and, as a rule, are not involved in exercises on power equipment, but only work in similar exercises.

It is also important for fighters to strengthen their hands so that at the moment of impact the limbs do not become twisted and injured. Speed is equally important. When choosing exercises, athletes work in the same speed modes that are present at the time of real combat.

So, to get into good physical shape, drummers use strength and dynamic exercises. You can't build strong muscle mass that way. But she is not the main thing. The main thing is speed, technique and talent. In striking martial arts, tall height is considered an advantage. But some short people do not agree with this and constantly prove that it is still possible to fight.

Bruce Lee and the fighting nunchucks
Black belt. Karate and sash

Author of the material: Kolesnikov A.V.

Research on the Correlation of Strength and Muscle Size

Based on several studies, the following patterns can be observed:

in people who do not exercise regularly, the increase in muscle mass and strength is actually not interrelated;
with increasing frequency of training, the connection between muscle volume and strength increases and strengthens;
in experienced athletes, an increase in muscle volume gives a 65-90% increase in strength.

Research shows that during the first 1.5-2 months from the start of exercise, muscle mass remains virtually unchanged, while strength begins to increase from the first workout. This fact explains why in a study of untrained people there was such a weak relationship between strength and muscle mass gains.

The correlation between strength and volume is easier to observe for each individual than for several people. This is explained by the fact that the accumulation of strength is not only muscle building; it is influenced by several other parameters.

tendons

Fascia connects muscles to tendons and is a direct continuation of the tendons . Fascia is activated in extreme stretched and twisted positions and is a powerful source of additional energy. This is often found in Khi Kong and Qigong practices. The static work itself is divided into two stages: tension statics and compression statics.

The fact that true strength lies in tendons was known back in ancient times. In India, there is such a method as “Slow Yoga Gymnastics”. The point of this method is to perform exercises in front of a mirror, simulating any movement with maximum body tension. Let's say throwing a javelin, 1 minute before throwing the javelin, 1 minute fixing the position and 1 minute returning to the starting position at the end, the “birch” is performed.

about true strength . He proposed a training method where he first creates the foundation ( tendons ) and then builds the frame ( muscles ). Its method is divided into static and dynamic. The static method consists of bending what does not bend (a metal rod) and tearing what does not break (chains) in different planes and at different angles. Many have probably heard about the strength of Grigory Ivanovich Kotovsky, who cut a horseman to the saddle with his saber, but few people know that while in prison he was engaged in static practices.

In martial arts, static training methods are present in literally any technique and are the fundamental basis. Only static and static dynamic exercises develop endurance and true strength !!!

You can create different training schemes yourself, combining static and dynamic, there are many options. You can combine static and dynamic exercises (working with weights in place or in motion, performing different orbits of movement for 10 - 30 minutes), for example, holding a 16 kg weight between your forearms and twisting it like in a millstone.

Think for yourself, decide for yourself!

Best regards, Andrey Sankov

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Discussion: 2 comments

Hovhannes:
07/09/2013 at 20:03
Hello Andrey, I read your article (STRENGTH IN MUSCLES OR TENDONS?) a very good article. I had a question. You wrote that <>. I know about statistical exercises, these are isometric exercises.
And about static and dynamic exercises, I don’t understand what they are?
Answer
Andrey:
07/09/2013 at 20:06
Hello. Isometrics is essentially just static tension, which trains strength at a given point and in a specific position of the body; in other words, this strength will manifest itself only in those positions and vectors in which you developed it. This is true for some specific provisions. In martial art, it is important that strength can be manifested at any moment and along any trajectory of movement. And here Khi Kong, static-dynamic and dynamic-static, comes to the rescue - this is the pair Am and Duong.
The first option is visible movement outside and tension inside, for example, you make any movement in space with maximum tension (working on the basic technique or orbit of movement), this is included in the second stage of training Cham, manh, deo
The second option is static tension on the outside and invisible movement on the inside, the so-called Zik Kan Kin.
Next comes the dynamic Zuk Kan Kin, this is the basis of strength in battle. Absolutely all techniques, all movements and trajectories are passed through the dynamic Zuk Kan Kin. How to prepare for the dynamic Zuk Kan Kinh can be found in the article “The Birth of Strength”
By performing any trajectories of movement with tension with a ball or with a belt, you will train strength on any part of the trajectory of movement; this is essentially static-dynamic training. Difficult work requiring special training. In short, that's probably all.
Best regards, Andrey Sankov
Answer

What else affects strength?

In addition to muscle size, the following parameters influence the level of strength:

tendon thickness is a genetic indicator. Muscle strength will increase as long as the tendon can bear the load. Tendons can only be slightly strengthened by training;
the ratio of red and white fibers is a genetic indicator. White (fast) fibers are responsible for explosive short-term strength, red (slow) for duration and endurance;
muscle elasticity - the greater the difference between the stretching of a muscle and its contraction, the greater the force they can produce. With regular stretching, you can increase muscle elasticity;
the site of tendon attachment is a genetic indicator. The farther the muscle is attached from the joint, the more weight it can lift;
the number of muscle fibers is a genetic indicator that cannot be changed;
psycho-emotional state - the stronger the emotional arousal, the “louder” the signal from the brain to the muscles. In an excited state, muscles contract more intensely, this increases strength;
muscle innervation . The brain signal to the muscle fibers travels along the motor neurons (motor nerves), causing them to contract. The more motor neurons that come to a muscle, the more motor units that can be recruited. With regular training, motor neurons weave a dense network around the muscles.

Muscle strength also depends on gender (due to testosterone, men are stronger than women) and age (the fastest results can be achieved between 15-25 years). Genetic predisposition also has a major influence on the maximum possible level of strength.

Despite gender differences and innate physical abilities, everyone, having set a goal, is able to achieve significant results.

Muscle fibers grow faster in cross-sectional area than in strength

So, both of these studies showed that as the size of muscle fibers increases, their strength in relation to thickness decreases . That is, they grow more in size than in strength .

The dependence is as follows: when the cross-sectional area of a muscle doubles, its strength increases only by 41%, and not 2 times .

In this regard, the strength of the muscle fiber is better correlated with the diameter of the fiber, rather than the cross-sectional area (correct this in your school biology textbooks!)

Ultimately, scientists reduced all the indicators to this graph:

Horizontal: increase in cross-sectional area of the muscle. The blue line is the increase in diameter, the red line is the overall increase in force, the yellow line is the increase in specific force (how much the force increases with increasing cross-sectional area).

The conclusion that can be drawn is that as muscle volume increases, so does strength, but the increase in muscle size (i.e., cross-sectional area) outpaces the increase in strength . These are averages collected from a number of studies and some studies have different data.

For example, in this study, over 12 weeks of training in experimental subjects, the cross-sectional area of the muscles increased by an average of 30%, but the specific strength did not change (that is, we read between the lines, the strength also increased by about 30%).

The results of this study are similar: cross-sectional area of the muscle increased by 28-45% in participants after 12 weeks of training, but specific force did not change.

On the other hand, these 2 studies (one and two) showed an increase in specific muscle strength in the absence of growth in the muscles themselves in volume. That is, the strength has increased, but the volume has not, and thanks to this combination, it turns out that the specific force has increased.

In all 4 of these studies, strength increased relative to muscle diameter, but relative to cross-sectional area, strength increased only when muscle fibers did not grow.

So let's recap the important topic with muscle fibers:

People differ greatly in the number of muscle fibers of one type or another . Remember: the specific strength of muscle fibers in lifters (training strength) is on average 61% greater than in bodybuilders (training volume). Roughly speaking, with muscles of the same volume, lifters are stronger by an average of 61%.
The weakest muscle fibers are 3 times weaker than the strongest . Their number in each person is determined genetically. This means that the hypothetically maximum possible difference in muscle strength of the same volume varies up to 3 times.
Specific strength (force per square centimeter of cross-section) does not always increase with training . The fact is that muscle cross-sectional area grows, on average, faster than strength.