An excerpt from Master Instructor Kenneth Jays book, Viking Warrior Conditioning:
"So you think a fight is one blow? One kick? Until you can put combinations together without thinking, until you learn how to keep moving, and to endure, hire a body-guard or lead a less aggressive life."
-- Bruce Lee
-- Bruce Lee
Bruce Lee said these words back in 1971, and as he did in so many other aspects of life, he hit the nail on the head. Being able to move with high intensity for prolonged periods of time is, in many ways, crucial for success if you are a fighter, in the military, working in law enforecement, or doing any other activity that requires multiple bursts of movement. With no endurance, you will not be successful in these kinds of activities no matter how big you bench.
Bruce used to say that technique and strength are useless if you lack the requisite endourance to carry them out. He ran every day to maintain his fighting edge. The man was cleraly ahead of his time.
Cardiovascular training is definitely necessary if you want to be able to maintain a high level of performance over several minutes. Do not mistake this type of cardio training for doing sissified, low-intensity, pink dumbbell Jane Fonda-robics, as a certain Russian might put it. Instead, think of it as intermittent, hogh-powered work at maximal or supramaximal intensity in the correct ratio of work and rest. Even popular intervals protocols like the Tabata do not quite cut it, because of the work/rest/volume ratios are not optimized for developing a heart of elastic steel. But utilizing what we now know about exercise physiology, we can extract maximum benefit from interval training.
Bruce dug running, and it is still a great form of exercise. I like the kettlebell. No, scratch that: I LOVE the kettlebell, and I find it to be an exceptional tool for this kind of training.
If the example of Bruce Lee does not convince you of the need for cardiovascular training (true cardio, that is), then allow me to alaborate on the subject. Basically, what it comes down to is that the less time you have for recovery, the more important your maximal ozygen uptake becomes.
For example, consider two professional boxers. They have to endure 12 three-minute rounds of hight-powered explosive movements, each new round coming after only one minute of rest. If these two fighters have equal skill, equal strength, equal speed, and so on but differ in oxygen uptake, the one with the higher uptake will be victorious. He will be able to recover more during the rest periods and the actual rounds when the fighters are at a distance from one another and can relax their muscles. The figher with the higher oxygen uptake will be able to put out more power as the fight progresses, bcause he will be better a buffering the build-up of metabolites in the muscles. In the context of combat, better conditioning translates into greater power!
It is definitely true that you need to train anaerobically, but if you are really serious, you should also train your ability to recover from intense bouts. As Bruce Lee's son, Brondon, explains, "If you try and do a three-minute round with me, I don't care how big and strong your muscles are, if you don't have a real good cardiovascular system, you're going to be dead in a bout forty-five seconds and you better watch out - because I'm still gonna be punching!"
This is exactly what drove me to investigate training with the kettlebell for its ability to produce maximal oxygen uptake values. It has been shown without a shred of doubt that if you want to increase your msximal oxygen uptake, you should train at or slightly above an intensity level that elicits your maximal oxygen uptake value. Forget about slow, low-intensity, long-distance stuff and turn it up!
The next requirement is to choose an exercise that has the potential to do this. My exercise of choice is the kettlebell snatch. No other kettlebell exercise or combination of kettlebel exercises has the potential to produce the desired level of oxygen uptake like the snatch.
Lastly, choose the right exercise protocol. Believe me, it does matter how you set up your work-to-rest (work:rest) ratio and the snatch cadence. The work:rest ratio, together with the chosen cadence , will determine the training response you get. There are several good structured protcols and about a million bad ones. Guessing leads to inferior results. I, for one, am not content with that, and neither should you. Even if you are not an elite ahtlete, you should still use the best protcols for your physical develpment. Proper planning and structuring of training sessions will ensure maximum results and prevent poor performance. Don't settle for anything less than optimal. Learn proven protocols and why they work.
My mission is to dispel the myths of cardio training so you can benefit from those science-based and trench-tested protocols that will turn your body into a lean, power-packed Viking Warrior - worthy of Thor, the God of Thunder, himself.
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