I got my buddy into strength training and he’s a practitioner of Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu and Kick Boxing. He’s currently doing a novice LP for strength and he’s looked ahead at some of the Olympic lifts like Power Clean and Power Snatch. He asked me if Olympic lifts lend an advantage over strength lifts for martial arts and this made me really curious.
I know training strength serves as a great, general adaptation for bettering force production to virtually any sport including any martial art (especially BJJ, I bet). That being said, is it possible the power production (bursts of speed and distance traveled) involved in the Olympic lifts lend an advantage over strength lifts like Squat, Bench, Deadlift, Press? Will training Olympic Lifts allow my friend to punch and kick harder than if he trained strength alone?
Training high velocity force production can be done many different ways including Olympic lift variations, barbell exercises at light weights (so they can move at high velocities), plyometrics, and more.
I don’t think the p snatch or p clean are uniquely beneficial to BJJ or kickboxing, but they do train high velocity force production.
I’ve had similar wonderings, I did BJJ for a few years up until the pandemic, haven’t been back yet but I hope to some day. I’m very interested in how lifting will translate to jiu jitsu. I would add to the discussion that while there’s definitely explosive movement in jiu jitsu it’s extremely isometric in nature. And I would add isometric through long ranges of motion. I’ve found I enjoy the barbells lifts enough that I don’t really care what the carryover is but I have wondered if there would be more sport specific benefit from a different approach? If that’s what one was after.
I suppose what I’m getting at is that the OP lumps kickboxing and jiu jitsu together. It does seem like “high velocity force production” would apply to both I think its more appropriate for the explosiveness of kickboxing. To me, jiu jitsu incorporates more isometric/endurance in addition to explosiveness, mostly for takedowns. I guess what I mean is in kickboxing you’ll not really going to be trying to hold positions for minutes at a time, in bjj thats a definite possibility.
So would two different modes of sport specific training be more appropriate? If so whats a good way to train for that? Looong tempo lifts? Bands? Holds?
Fair enough, I don’t know allot about strength and conditioning, just seems like for jiu jitsu it would be different. For example if you check out this match from 5:30 on you can see him trying to protect his left arm for well over a minute before the match ends.
It seems to me like that would benefit from higher reps or isometrics, but maybe its just not that specific. Probably also depends allot on gi versus no-gi.
I didn’t say higher rep work should be avoided and each lift already has an isometric component. The point would be, does training it in the gym provide a significant advantage over just seeing it in practice. I don’t think I would be programming lots of long isometrics in training for this application.
