I was having a discussion with a coworker over lunch about a year ago, and while he is not a martial artist, we came to talk about our different philosophies for exercising.
One thought that came up in our discussion was the importance of muscle confusion – That is to say, the importance of varying the different workouts that we are doing in order to continue with our gains. If we do not have this variance we will plateau in our progress and our goals will be delayed.
When it comes to our martial arts training, we must have this confusion as well. We must not forget that the brain is a muscle too, and we must have variance in our martial arts training. This does not mean cross training in this context, but disguising the repetition in our basic techniques or training our reactions to different scenarios.
We need to take the opportunity to explore our basics and transitions between different techniques forward and back as well as side to side, but we need to play games with our brain to keep it fresh when trying to create the new connections in our head. This game playing will help us to stay interested.
Atomic Habits brings up an example in discipline in weight training. The author James Clear mentions that good weight lifters stick around because they are content and do not get bored with the same motions. Just as there are different weight machines to train the same muscle, so too must we formulate different ways to train the same technique. It could be a solo drill, or with a partner. A target or pad could even be involved too.
What matters at the end of the day, is that we get the repetitions in. Do you have what it takes to push past those plateaus without getting bored? Let’s share a drill with each other in the comment section. We’re surely able to help each other out.
