Without doubt some of the fittest people on the planet are people participating in combat sports like wrestling, boxing, Jiu jets, martial arts, and of course Mixed Martial Arts (MMA). Unlike other sports where fitness is a very similar standard, athletes in these sports are also some of the strongest and most powerful. Trying to combine incredible strength with fitness is extremely difficult to do, and if you add the complexity of skills required for each sport you have a great appreciation of how committed and disciplined these athletes really are. Oh yeah, did I mention the fact that there is a good chance you can get hurt in competition from an opponent trying to take you out! We know that strength training is essential for these sports but how much is enough? The biggest mistakes we see are where people forget that the strength workout is meant to complement the sports training, not take its place. In this article we drill down deep into the specific demands of these various sports and examine what are the best exercises and methods with strength training to enhance your sporting performance. Make sure you check out the video at the bottom of the page with a gruelling circuit workout.

I will be the first to admit I labelled the upper trapezius muscle as a problem muscle that needed to be weakened, more than strengthened. I always thought exercises like shrugs were to be avoided and could not see why anyone would ever want to target a muscle known for developing stiffness and trigger points with a strengthening exercise. I thought this was the fast way to developing chronic neck pain. However, over time I learned there is more to this muscle than many realise and I began to appreciate the importance of the upper traps during movement. I came to see how vital the strength of this muscle is to health of the neck and shoulder and how many of us are trying to weaken this muscle when what it really needs is to be strengthened. Just like the hamstrings, it is fair to say it has unfairly copped a bad rap for a long time and is really misunderstood. In this article I am going to share with you the things I learned the hard way and what the true role of the upper traps is. I will also show how to identify weakness, and most importantly how you can strengthen this muscle without aggravating your neck or shoulder.

Without a doubt the most difficult movement to help someone improve is WALKING. There is so many moving parts within the gait cycle that the use of simple isolated exercises do very little to improve the motor program. But due to this complexity it makes it very difficult to find exercises that are both useful and safe to do. The two main problems associated with loss of stability in the gait cycle are smaller stride lengths and a loss of speed. A slowing of neural firing speed, (the brains message to the nerves within muscles for movement) from lack of exercise produces a slower response time for the initiation of movement. To make up for the body’s lost reaction it compensates by slowing everything down and shortening our stride to overcome our lost reflexes and reaction times. In theory this sounds like a good thing, but in reality this sets people up for disastrous accidents. In this article we show you some simple tests to use for identifying exactly where your loss of stability is that is affecting how you walk, and how these tests can then become a great exercise for significantly improving your walking ability.