Weight lifting and martial arts

I'm not sure why, but there's been for years this prevailing wisdom that lifting weights is bad for martial arts ability because it ultimately leads to large, cumbersome muscle.  I suppose in one way this thought can be correct, but by no means is it an absolute.  There are multiple reasons for lifting weights, and there are multiple methods to achieve each person's individual goals.  Some of the usual reasons are: weight loss/general health/toning, muscle gain, increased strength, increased speed, narcissism.  I will address each, and explain why weight lifting is essential for improving martial arts performance, and how it can be completely beneficial.

Weight Loss/General Health/Muscle Tone

There are many fitness professionals that believe in the concept of toning the muscles.  Toning refers primarily to making the muscles more defined and visible.  While this is a worthy goal for any person, there's one thing to remember...there's no such thing as muscle toning.  You can increase the tone of muscles, but that's by losing weight (fat weight), and increasing muscle mass.  This will ultimately increase one's general health by lowering body fat percentage which has multiple health benefits.

Unfortunately, those people that don't want to get "bulky" by lifting weights have this misconception that they aren't building muscle, and are just toning.  It's a minor point, but one that annoys me whenever somebody mentions this.  The typical method for achieving great muscle tone is generally using lighter weights and high repetitions, with short rest periods to create cardiovascular and metabolic stress.  Lifting in this manner is great, and all people should use it to one degree or another.

Muscle Gain

Many people lift weights for the pure goal of increasing muscle mass; no more, no less.  Again, there's nothing wrong with this goal.  The problem is that by lifting for this purpose alone, people tend to gain a good amount of fat as well, and begin to look more like the types of people you will see in World's Strongest Man competitions, but without the power to match the competitors.  To increase muscle gain, the generally recommended method is to use heavy weights and lower weight.

Narcissism

This is my cynical view point of the men and women entering into bodybuilding competitions (ie. Mr/Ms. Olympia, etc.).  Lifting for the purpose of creating the "perfect" specimen of man/woman is pointless, and creates lifeless and useless muscle.  The method for lifting like this is similar to lifting for muscle gain, but incorporates one major difference.  These "athletes" incorporate a significant amount of cardiovascular exercise (ie. elliptical, treadmill, bike, etc.) to keep their body fat percentages low, and will also bring into play low weight/high rep pairings to increase the metabolic stress.  Lifting for this reason is one thing I despise and is my pet peeve.  I respect these people for their dedication and work ethic, but they put in all this work for what in the end is useless muscle.

Lifting for power/speed

This reason is my personal favorite, and is the only reason for which I lift weights.  I separated them above for illustrative purposes, but they do in fact belong together; increased power will ultimately lead to increased speed.  This method of lifting is the kind which will most benefit any kind of athlete, for this post, martial artists in particular.

The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines strength as, "the quality or state of being strong: capacity for exertion or endurance."  Simply put, strength is the ability to exert a force.  We all want to be able to exert a lot of force, that's building strength, but the real go is building power.  Power is defined as, "the time rate at which work is done."  Power is the ability to exert force for a specific period of time.  Power lifters are capable of exerting huge amounts of force for extended periods of time as evidenced by the World's Strongest Man competitions.

As martial artists we need to be able to exert maximum force in short bursts to create impact.  To do this, we need to utilize compound exercises, completely excluding isolation exercises; learn to use the body as a unit.  The best method I've found to do this is by alternating low weight/high rep with high weight/low rep ranges, while also interspersing mixed groups of middle weight/moderate reps.  This variation keeps the muscles confused, and encourages increases in muscle mass, strength and fat loss.  All this leads to learning to use the body as a single unit.  By encouraging the body to work in this manner, we create efficiency of movement.  Once this kind of strength is achieved, then we can begin to use plyometric type exercises to create power.

By learning to generate maximum power, we learn to create maximum impact, which ultimately leads to you surviving an altercation.  Self defense is the goal, and being able to hit hard is the key.