Weight Training vs Cardiovascular conditioning?

Let's not forget that heavy bag training is "weight training", in a sense. It's resistance training.

If the question is between strength/resistance training and cardiovascular conditioning, IMO it's a tossup. If the question is cardiovascular condition vs just simply "pumping iron", then it's obvious which is more useful.

 

Have you read anyones posts? Weight training doesn't always lead to muscle mass. Hell, I prove this with my own body. I've lifted weights religiously for about five years now, I'm 18, 5ft 11in and I weight 156ilbs.I lift for muscular power and don't gain muscle weight.

 

Agreed

 

My point in using weights is to gain power (fast twitch muscle fibers) not to increase endurace, thats what runnings for. Power is very much developed by weights so long as you use proper movement (power cleans FTW).

Fast twitch muscle fibers equal really fast and really strong muscles and power is force times velocity or p=fv. Thus I have more power behind the punch due to my ability to generate power.

You are right that large muscles hinder endurance, but as I've said before, weight training doesn't nessacarily increase mass, just power.

BTW, I'd like to mention my point in supporting weight training isn't to claim that weight training is supierior to cardio. Rather, my point is to dispell myths that weight training won't help a fighter. In the absense of the other cardio is superior.

 

To choose one, I'd take cardio every time.

 

The abolishment of the 15-round distance opened the door to the current, previously unnecessary, muscle craze.

What I love about classic boxing training, to which cardio is key, is it builds your body up naturally, endowing with great strength along with great endurance; plus, this is the way the great legends of the ring trained. Young Ali and Tyson trained naturally and could beat anyone around today.

Weight training is not essential to being a great, complete fighter; but the sport no doubt is evolving towards a muscle bias and, with the shorter championship distance, it is a good idea to increase your power via bulking up.

But boxing skills are the ultimate trump card.

 

Here's my story: At 18 I was 6' and weighed 140lbs, by 21 I walked around at 165 and fought at 156 and I was able to maintain that weight until I joined The Army at 28. Never lifted weights - did everything with bodyweight exercises and other methods which I'll describe in another post.

Within 2 years of joining The Army I was over 200lbs and today, at 38 I am still 6' and I now weigh 233 lbs. (And for those of you who are tempted to call my conditioning into question, don't; although I admit it's harder to move 233lbs on 38 year old knees than it was to move 156 on 21 year old knees, but I digress...)

So why did this happen to me? 2 reasons I think - 1. Ruck marches. Carrying 50-100lbs ten miles at a stretch tends to bulk you up (but a 10 mile walk is aerobic exercise, isn't it?), and 2... I got old.

I reckon if I had been doing weights throughout my twenties today I'd weigh... oh god only knows... like 260? I wouldn't be able to reach my backside most likely. Why would I get that big? Muscle memory. My body would have been accustomed to lifting weights and my adaptive response to the specific demands of military training coupled with my newly slowed metabolism would have been much greater than what it actually was (and it actually was quite dramatic).

 

Now to the question at hand: To me the focus when conditioning a fighter should not be on "strength" or "cardio", it should be on intensity during the round and recovery between rounds. By training your body to work hard for three minutes and by concurrently training it to fully recover in one minute a 12 round fight will not be a 1 x 40 minutes affair, rather it will be 12 x 3 minutes affairs. Intensity and recovery are gained through anaerobic conditioning which is achieved mostly through anaerobic endurance training combined with power training(plyometrics, sprinting drills, medicine ball, and of course bag work - weight training can be included in the form of cleans etc as couch13 pointed out, and complex training is also useful in building power).

But ultimately, if you want a gold medal in sprinting, you sprint, if you want a gold in swimming you swim, and if you want to get in shape for a fight, you fight, or spar in this case. You have to simulate fight conditions as closely as possible. Neither weightlifting nor running achieves this.

But of course, the argument is not between weightlifting and running, nor is it between cardio training and strength training, and this gets to the heart of the matter in that the argument has already been decided in the asking of the question. As we say in The Army, "The estimate has been situated":

The thread's author offers a choice between 'cardiovascular training' which encompasses a huge range of activities on the one hand, but on the other hand rather than offering 'strength training' he offers 'weight training' as the only option. Thus we are asked to evaluate a vast array of training methods against a limited array of training methods. Cardio training vs strength training would be a more balanced question.

So since my estimate has already been thoroughly situated, my preference would be that I enter the ring fully confident that I can fight hard for an entire round and equally confident that I will fully recover in one minute. If you want to call that cardio, I won't try to stop you. If you want to say you can achieve that with weights, I won't argue with you.

At the end of the day, while I'm happy to discuss the topic at length, for some reason I'm having trouble answering the question...

(And I'm enjoying the thread - thanks.)

 

If there's ever a fight between a guy who can run 10 miles but can't crack an egg and a guy who can wreck the heavy bag, I'm laying my money on the latter

 

For who dislike long posts, I just told Couch13 that he'll bulk up from the weights when he gets older, and then I called 'bulls**t on the premise of the thread, but I did it all friendly-like.

 

And a translation for those visiting from the lounge:

couch13 gonna git big when he older bruv. Dis treds whhack, like, da way da questin was aksed, know am sayin?

 

As I told RoccoMarcianco, I don't lift for mass, I lift for power. There is a difference in how your muscles breakdown and adapt. The ruck marches would most likely be a musclar size and endurance increase with only a portion going to overall strength due to the distance that you had to travel and the fact that you were doing this around your bodies physical prime (25-30) didn't help.