The Relationship Between Weight-training and Tricking

[anfeyd]

The Relationship Between Weight-training and Tricking

Introduction

The purpose of this guide is to explain how weight training and tricking can be used together to create the best possible scenario for gains in either discipline. I will explain different scenarios for both the novice and intermediate lifter who are having a difficult time finding a balance between weight-training and tricking.

Why?

First, weight-training is not necessary in order to become a good trickster. Looking at those who are considered the ‘best’ tricksters, (Anis, DeVera, Gary Ip, etc), it can be inferred that they spend most of their time with martial arts and the sport of tricking itself. I doubt Anis cares about how much he can bench, how high his box jump is, or how much he can box squat. Juji is an example of how weight-training can help build speed, power, and strength which can assist tricking, but it is not necessary.

With that being said, weight-trainings still has specific benefits. Individual motivation will ultimately decide why one trains with weights. Many relish the physique that weight-training in conjunction with diet can bring about. Aside from aesthetics, weight training can increase overall body strength, power, and speed. Weight-training can also strengthen the bones and connective tissue of the body aiding with injury prevention. However, accidents happen. Iif you participate in weight-training or tricking, injuries are apart of the sport so you have to be prepared to deal with them.

The Relationship

The relationship between weight-training and tricking is one that is often misunderstood. Chicanerous wrote a very good guide regarding how a trickster should organize a weight-training routine: link. I suggest you look at this article after you complete reading this if you already haven’t read it.

A trickster has many different options in regards to weight-training. It is important to choose those which will improve the desired attributes in the least amount of time. Keeping in mind that the sport of tricking itself improves certain attributes, some weight-training methods may be unnecessary. I remember Juji posting on the forums something of this sorts regarding box squatting, “I realized that instead of wasting my time box squatting I could just spend that time practicing the trick itself..”

Because tricking is usually performed often and speed/power/plyometric in nature, trying to develop these attributes in the weight room may be a waste of time. In this situation focusing on maximum strength may be more appropriate. To paraphrase Kelly Bagget in one of his recent articles, Are Cleans and Other Olympic Lifts Necessary, “who do you think can power clean more; a man who has a 317 kg deadlift, or one that has a 136 kg deadlift?

Like most other sports, tricking is largely dependant upon skill. In order to get better at a trick one must practice the trick: this practice is commonly called drilling a trick. It is the non-glorious, essential part of tricking. The following example may make it easier to understand why Juji said box squatting was a waste of time for him, and why I am making similar comments. Take this example. Person A drills his 540 for 30 minutes 3 times a week. Person B practices his 540 for 30 minutes once a week and does power cleans the other 60 minutes. Who do you think will have a better/cleaner 540? The same can be applied with all tricks.

Types of Training That are Potentially Wasting Time

Dynamic Effort: If you are one of the lucky people that live in a nice climate or have access to a gym and can trick all year round this type of training may not be extremely beneficial. Dynamic effort training was created for power lifters in attempt to mimic the effect of Olympic lifts. What this means is that people who had 317 kg squats/deadlifts used this to help with their power production, whether it be out of the hole or sticking point. Without any further explanation, I doubt anyone reading this has the strength of an elite power lifter, which helps explain why this training may not be for you. On top of this, power lifters squat, deadlift, and bench press in contest, so this training is very specific to their sport whereas drilling tricks is specific to tricking.

However, if tricking is impossible for you to do year round due to a bad climate or no indoor facilities, this type of training may prove to be beneficial in order to retain your speed and power that you received from tricking. In conjunction, be sure to keep doing your basic kicks and maintain your flexibility. As mentioned before, this type of training can help increase the strength of your lifts via increased power, but I doubt many are at the level of training where this needs to be employed.

Speed Training: I’m not sure if I need to dig further into this because most people don’t do this type of training. Basically doing shoulder press throws with 30% 1RM is not going to get you a better back handspring. However, doing back handsprings will. See the pattern?

[anfeyd]

Good training

I hope that the above implied the principle of specificity as far as training for tricking is concerned. The methods below do not involve training with weights; however, they are more specific to the sport of tricking.

Basic basics: I believe Juji mentioned this in one of his previous articles; however, there are some idiots who have not read all of the articles available on the main webpage. A tricksters main goal is to progressively increase skill in a certain movement. A roundhouse or crescent kick becomes a tornado kick then a 540 then a jackknife and so on. More often than not, a trickster will attempt a trick he cannot do. Keeping in line with the previous example, let’s take the jackknife. Often the athlete will practice the jackknife and to no avail, cannot perform the trick. A good idea is to go back to the root of the move. How is your 540? How is your tornado kick? It may sound silly, but a lot of people neglect the fundamentals of a trick despite them being the building blocks of a trick they are failing to perform.
Basic kicks: If you have never taken martial arts before work on your dynamic stretches/kicks (front, side, back) as well as working on some basic kicks (hook, crescents, roundhouse). The reason for this is that the basic kick or the flexibility needed is at the root of many tricks. I suggest doing the dynamic stretches/kicks as a warm up to lifting and tricking. They can also be performed at a lower volume during a cool down. If your inside crescent or roundhouse kick is poor, your 540 will also be poor. If you are a novice in the realm of martial arts training it may be wise to do some conditioning to your kicking muscles in your spare time, check Felipe’s Guide for more information: link.


Back on Track

The above information may confused many of the readers but do not neglect the underlying message: tricking is very specific. If you are blessed and can trick any time you please, box squats, speed squats, plyometrics, and dynamic effort lifting will not increase your tricking performance. Focusing on maximal strength in the basic lifts (squats, deadlifts) will provide more benefits because the sport of tricking does not increase your strength. Since strength is a component of power (an important component in tricking), increasing maximal strength will be more time efficient (because power is already being increased through tricking).

For the Novice

If you have never lifted before or it has been years since you have picked up a weight consider yourself lucky. In my opinion, you will be able to progress in both weight-training and tricking at the same time. For a novice, over complication will bring about nothing but wasted time and effort. For this reason I suggest , Mark Rippetoe’s Starting Strength: link. Even though this guide is available online it would be wise to buy the book as the information on how to lift correctly is invaluable and will help you tremendously in the long run. It may seem like overkill to squat three times a week and trick as well but your body will adapt and you won’t regret it. If you are questioning the program via, “so when should I do bicep curls?” Stop and rethink about your life.

Milk the Starting Strength program as much as you can. This program should take you a long ways, be strict with your volume, meaning no more no less. Follow his advice, buy the book, read it. Sets across will take you a long way. I believe Rippetoe says it is not uncommon for some to get 136 kg squats on this program providing adequate diet and rest. Drink your gallon of whole milk daily.


For the Intermediate

The intermediate lifter has more options to his training. However, for a trickster there is still a need to preserve energy for the sport itself so simplicity is a must. Using the above routine in through your intermediate days is easy to do and also keeps the training simplistic. Commonly called the Texas method, the routine would look something like this

Monday - 5x5 (volume, straight)
Wednesday - 2x5 (light/recovery at 80% Monday)
Friday - 1x5 (intensity, working up to a top set of 5)

I’d recommend keeping with the sets across theme on Monday as it is very easy to track your progress.
You can work your way up to a 2x body weight squat and even a higher deadlift on a progression like this as long as you are diligent and systematic.

If you are tricking intensely during this time you may want to reconsider lifting three days a week. Two days will suffice and still bring about gains. The above program can be used with a two day routine by taking out the light day. At this stage you may find it hard to progress in both tricking and strength. If you are prioritizing tricking you want to maintain your strength. Always strive to increase strength, but if you cannot, do not worry as it is simply a matter of priority.

Accessory Work

Accessory work should be kept to a minimum for the intermediate lifter. I’d recommend a movement like a glute ham raise, romanian deadlift or another hamstring involved movement. Also at this time you can incorporate different squats and deadlifts if you are becoming bored. If you are a novice and doing Starting Strength, accessory work is unnecessary. Bill Starr in, The Strongest Shall Survive, wrote something along the lines of, “if you let your athletes do curls after their main workout it will soon turn into curls and french presses. The next thing you know they will doing a bodybuilding routine after their main workout.” As a trickster you need to save your energy for the sport of tricking itself. Bicep curls are unnecessary.

Training is Stagnant


If you hit a plateau in either lifting or tricking, follow the advice of Dan John, “do less, not more, keep it simple.” Whenever you plateau on a lift do not add more work to break the plateau, back off for a week doing the lift at a lighter intensity and then come back. For tricking, focus on the basics of the tricks for a week and then come back to the tricks that you are struggling with. Drilling a trick into the ground for four hours is not going to yield improvement. In fact it will cause more harm than good.

If you are making progress in tricking but not lifting and you want it to be the other way around look at your training. You are probably exerting a lot of energy tricking and doing it often--you need to switch the gears and prioritizing lifting while trying to maintain your tricking skills.


In Season/Off Season Approach
The inseason/offseason approach can be used for those who enjoy tricking and weight-training equally. This method involves spending time prioritizing tricking and another period of time prioritizing weight-training. It can be something as simple as a three month switch--every three months switch your focus. To give an example of how this approach can be used, Bill Starr’s athletes would do power cleans, bench press, and squats 5x5 on the same day in the off season three times a week. During the season he has his athletes do one exercise per day, 5x5.First, I will cover the athlete that has access to a tricking facility year round. Second, I will cover the athlete that is not as lucky.
For those who have access to a year round tricking facility and are using the inseason/offseason approach, it is important to maintain one ability while devoting most of their energy on improving the other ability. When prioritize tricking, I suggest lifting twice a week with no more than three work sets per exercise if doing multiple exercises in that day. If you want to follow a routine like Bill Starr, I would suggest no more than five work sets. For a trickster, maintaining lower body strength is the main priority while trying to improve your tricking ability. Keep this focus in your mind when trying to maximize time and energy.
If the focus is on increasing strength, do the opposite of what is suggested above. Since this athlete has a gym available, tricking should be maintained by drilling the skills already mastered and going for a new trick only if the athlete feels comfortable.

If you’re like me, then you have limited access to a tricking friendly environment. This entails no gym nearby and only the summer months to trick. I have around five months to trick due to weather conditions. The other seven months cannot be wasted and are needed to retain abilities.
In this situation, the Olympic lifts and dynamic effort exercises would be very nice supplemental exercises because the athlete cannot maintain his speed and power with tricking alone.
For this athlete it important to become more flexible with their schedule during the inseason. Avoid having set days to lift because that day may be a beautiful day outside, perfect for tricking. Just lift the next day, trying get in two sessions per week in order to maximize strength maintenance.

[anfeyd]

Where my opinions came from

The opinions and methods that I presented are largely from my own experiences. I’ve been tricking for around five years and have been lifting for a little over two years (one year where I actually knew what I was doing I suppose). I’ve talked to Juji at length on the topic and we both found that after trial and error and years lost that the above inseason/offseason approach is an effective way to program if you like tricking and weight-training equally. I’ve wasted a year of tricking progress going about things all wrong, which is why I hope this guide helps others not make the same mistake. If anyone else had any different experiences or opinions, please feel free to share and I will update/include these in this guide. Visit the main Tricks Tutorials webpage and read all of the articles Juji has created. All them will help you become a better trickster.

Conclusion

While I didn’t want to make the Olympic lifts and other similar lifting techniques look useless I think I may have downplayed them more than they should have been downplayed. The main message I want everyone to get is that cleans and snatches will not make you a better trickster. They will not get you a better 540 or butterfly twist. The only thing that can do that is by practicing the skills themselves while fresh.

This applies especially to those who are not confident in their technique in the lift (commonly snatch and clean) as well as those who have bad technique. Learning these lifts can take quite some time but as with every other weighted exercise, progression is key. Those who are afraid of performing the lift will not be able to constantly strive to add weight, which will waste valuable time.

I personally love Olympic lifting as a sport and love performing the lifts. Because of this I implement them into my training whenever I have the time to do them. However, whenever my priorities stray away from them (prioritizing tricking), it is important for me to take a break from them and focus on what needs to focused on.

Hopefully this helps some understand the balance necessary and will help put a plan together. I wrote this rather fast and I may have many typo’s and incorrect statements--please correct me to help this guide become better.

[anfeyd]

place holder

[Syn]

I actually thought this was some noob question again, until I saw who made the thread... good job once again anfeyd

[JacktheHero]

Didn't read the text yet, but already love it. Do you trick yourself? HAHA, I 'm going to read it later on...

[Rahf]

Nice read and good points that are struck.

A thing I noticed: When giving the examples (300lbs vs 700lbs etc etc) be extra clear about what is correct and what is not. Younger people and those who do not speak native English can have a slightly tougher time with it.

It has been said multiple times before but actually having a reference to link in, if someone asks these questions in the future, is a good thing.

[Ashtar]

The relationship is strained, but they're still talking.

[anfeyd]

Originally Posted by JacktheHero

Didn't read the text yet, but already love it. Do you trick yourself? HAHA, I 'm going to read it later on...

Yes I have been tricking for probably around 4-5 years now.

[anfeyd]

Originally Posted by Rahf

Nice read and good points that are struck.

A thing I noticed: When giving the examples (300lbs vs 700lbs etc etc) be extra clear about what is correct and what is not. Younger people and those who do not speak native English can have a slightly tougher time with it.

It has been said multiple times before but actually having a reference to link in, if someone asks these questions in the future, is a good thing.

I actually thought of that but then I forgot to change it.

Thanks for the comments.