Customer Reviews

Complete Conditioning for Martial Arts (Complete Conditioning for Sports Series)

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

If you are new to the world of strength and conditioning then this book is for you. It is very basic and easy to understand. The introductions to each chapter are very comprehensive and provide a good rationale for the exercises to follow. The pictures would also be very helpful for beginners. I would have liked to have seen some more creative and advanced strength and conditioning exercises that were less general and more specific to martial arts, but as I read I quickly realized that this book is not geared toward strength coaches, but rather those students who may not know too much about strength, flexibility, nutrition, or plyometrics. This book would be great for any martial artist who doesn't know how to supplement their in class training with an out of class workout.

Regardless of system, progress in the martial arts requires not only proper instruction, but a high level of general fitness. Many martial arts instructors neglect to tell this to their students, probably because they stick to "traditional" training techniques that were developed before the discoveries of sports science.

It is not enough to go to class 3 times a week and expect your body to perform at a high level when you need it to. The masters of old trained every day, and with the exercises in this book, you can too, and get even better results.

Read this and you will have the basic, scientific principles of athletic training at your fingertips. You will learn about the basic components of fitness (flexibility, muscular strength, muscular endurance, muscular power, muscle balance, speed, agility, aerobic and anerobic capacity), and how various systems emphasize different aspects of fitness.

Especially important--the joint stabilization exercises. You won't find very many instructors teaching these. I wish I knew these, as I dislocated my shoulder a few times doing judo and kung fu. They will improve your muscle balance and prevent dislocations. I've incorporated them into my workout routine.

I should say I don't study martial arts. I use this book just for it's good strengthening exercises (although it has good stretches in it, too.) This is a great book for strengthening, especially the torso. I like it because first, the things necessary to do the exercises are inexpensive, second it gives sets of exercises in 4s and 5s, so you can do 2 sets of exercises (I do one upper, one lower body) in about 20-25 minutes. They're very doable, and have a range of reps so you can do what you feel good about without overdoing it. I've been using it for about 6 months now and I love it. In fact, I'm here now because I accidently recycled my copy, so I have to get a new one!

Complete Conditioning For Martial Arts by certified strength and conditioning specialist and black belt holder Sean Cochrane is a solid, "user friendly" guide to stretching exercises and training techniques to build the strength, flexibility, endurance, balance, speed, and agility that, in turn, can be applied to improve one's command of martial arts. Black-and-white photographs along with helpful text, warnings of health hazards and art-specific advice characterize this highly recommended addition to personal and professional Martial Arts reference collections and supplemental reading lists.

In Complete Conditioning For Martial Arts, Taekwondo second-degree black belt and NSCA-certified Sean Cochran presents an indispensable reference for the aspiring martial arts students for developing and maintaining the physical conditioning necessary to all martial arts forms including karate, taekwondo, judo, aikido, jujitsu, and kempo. The exercises are specifically designed for practitioners of martial arts techniques and are enhanced with guides to proper nutrition, recovery, and sample workout programs. Complete Conditioning For Martial Arts is very highly recommended as being both user friendly and an ideal text for use by martial arts instructors, sports conditioning specialists, fitness instructors, and physical education teachers.

It's a decent book. None of the material in it is blatantly wrong. It's just not terribly informed or inspired. Also, it's much more about strength training than actual combat conditioning. Go check out Ross Enamait's web site & books for really useful information on these topics. Seriously, there's nothing horribly wrong with this book, but you can get so much more for your money.

This is a worthwhile book if you seek basic but general exercises for strength, power and flexibility. Unfortunately, the authors don't emphasize much martial arts conditioning used by boxers, wrestlers and other fighters. Fighters tend to integrate physical conditioning into actual fighting skills and drills. If you want to build speed, strength and flexibility also consider using the speed and heavy bags, weighted vests, kata practise with dumb bells, crowbars and other weights. A good instructor will focus on physical conditioning and diet/nutrition as an important part of any martial art.

This is a pretty good all around guide for conditioning and performance health for a martial artist. I have certainly seen some more advanced information elsewhere, but this is very understandable general guide that will certainly help give any martial artist an excellent foundation of information on conditioning for his art. Most more experienced martial artists could certainly benefit a lot from this information as well, as unfortunately most are still far too ignorant about the finer details of athletic science. I would recommend this to any friend or colleague (in fact I forced it on some one to read already!).

Bought this book with the idea that maybe it contain methods, ideas, or techniques to improve martial ability, but it turned out to be a basic cardio, resistance training primer. It has a lot of holes in its presentation and really needs some intense updating to discuss how to design, evaluate and adapt a workout program. The majority of this book is a how-to guide on doing exercises. Whoopy!!!! You can go to any internet site and get that info.

This book needs more discussion on how to actually do and design workouts; not learn exercise forms. Besides, the only useful part of the book is that is does a very brief evaluation of the kids of training a martial artist would/should do for their style, but again too broad and no useful take away info.

DO NOT BUY THIS BOOK!!!!!

This book is dated. It's old and out of date information about working out is not helpful. Based on the cover it appears to be just the ticket for a martial artist wanting to build strength, but the reality is that this book is a blast from the past. After reading it I found that I had been transported to the 70s and that I would also have to purchase a complete universal gym as well as some odd medicine balls and Gawd knows what else. I do not feel it is useful book.