You develop power through lifting. Hitting a heavy bag does not make your striking better. What makes your striking better is strictly form and mit work.
A heavy bag is great for conditioning
Not so much striking power
But hey you said boxing is the easiest to learn and mostly useless so…
Mit work isn’t going to make your punches stronger typically. Mit work usually is the best way to pull all things together. It works footwork, handspeed, timing, conditioning, defense etc.
A heavy bag actually is a good way to build power if you’re using it properly since it gives you an avenue to hit something at full force with little to no reprocussion. I would agree that its also great for conditioning.
Also, I would argue that weight lifting isn’t a good way to develop power at all. I mean if you’re doing a lot of leg work and squats calves etc then it would be good for power since most of it is generated in your lower regions. But doing power lifting for your upper body isn’t. The best way to develop power is through technique like you said.
Doing things like sledge hammer drills, axe handle presses, sandbag drills, and all those old school kettle bell, dumbell work.
You do it to develop back, wrist, core, and legs
You need to remember i train explosiveness and longevity.
You thinking about bodybuilding, which does help in some ways.
Power lifting also gives you more power to play with
But i imagine most of the people posting “how do?” Are fat out of shape lumps throwing the weakest shit
nah, I’m actually well fit, almost perfect height/weight ratio. I just don’t have much experience with methods of training. There are a lot of concepts here:
what is mit work ?
what do you mean by conditioning ? I know you have to condition your hand in order to break boards (to harden your hand), but what does a heavy bag do ?
what do you mean developing power through technique ? simply practicing a tecnique ? (like punching in the air ->kihon in karate ?)
I also heard that if you do too much weight lifting, it will reduce your flexibility, which is very bad for karate - is it true ? I’m also interested in training for explosiveness, not traditional bodybuilding.
Back when I trained the only weight lifting I did was supplemental, any movement I’d do in a fight I’d strap on a weight to add resistance. I trained more like an American football player than anything. I prefer working with resistance bands now as my carelessness in my youth is catching up with me 
I should jump onto the Wim Hoff program.
Any sort of strength training will reduce your flexibility BUT that’s why you are meant to do flexibility training as well. There are plenty of examples of muscle-bound folks who look like bodybuilders but have the flexibility of a gymnist, classic example, Van Damme. Look at Jujimufu who is quite popular on social media at the moment.
juji is a special case because he started in martial arts tricking which requires flexibility. he was doing that longgg before he started lifting.
Young Juji was scrawny as fuck.
Do explosive sprinting to improve kicking power. Also do squats and detailed mitt work for punching power, heavy bag work for endurance.
thank you. by mitt work you mean training with fightpads ? and canyou use fightpads for kick training, or they are only for punches ?
The small mitts are for punches. The ones that cover your forearms are for kicks, knees, punches, elbows
In general, power comes from the hips. Most guys only punch from the waist above and rely on throwing themselves into the punch. Always be over your center of gravity, fully torque your hips. Do some yoga to open those hips and yoga also has exercises to strengthen the hips if you can find a school that teaches them.
Power cleans, clean and press, turkish get ups, squats, sled pulls, sled pushes…
Explosive/dynamic training will make everything better. Power comes with that.
The science in sports these days is all about muscle explosion
A lot of what I do these days is focused on low resistance stuff like swimming and cycling. Need to keep high cardio without the wear and tear on the joints.
Still havent gotten around to posting. Between family stuff, moving, and training for nationals I havent even built my computer desk at home. Ill post soon. I had to do 8 mini sparring sessions in a row yesterday in front of my whole class for ‘nationals’ training. My coaches are awesome but at the same time I was dying after. It was intense, I’m a zombie today. All short bursts, it was rough. Its great practice, and I’m pretty happy, I was selected to represent my club at Nationals. I don’t think I’ll be a starter but you never know. They only select 7 members and my club is both huge and competitive. So since we can only submit one team for Nationals I’m very happy. I get to compete to represent our province in nationals too this Sunday. Fighting tryouts from 10 until 3… Gonna be rough. I definitely wont make the provincial team team but great experience.
Unleash your bankai senpai
Gay
You know, sometimes you train hard for weeks or even months and you don’t see any improvements and you started to get discouraged. And then one day you see an improvement, and boy, does it feel good. It motivates you to keep going with training.
I trained a lot for my kicks, but still didn’t see much improvement. And then one day I tried to throw a mawashi geri (round kick) and I was astonished how high I did. I was like I can’t believe it, whoaaa, it was an awesome feeling, you feel soo good when your training start to pay off. I mean, I’m still not able to do the full split, but I can throw a pretty high round kick.
I still have to work for my side kick though, throwing a high side kick is more difficult. I also started to train my hook kick and it’s going pretty well. I remember a few months ago we did hook kicks at the dojo, and I was like man, I will never be able to do this. So the simple fact that now I can perform the hook kick motion is a major improvement.
Btw, what do you guys do to help with your flexibility ? I usually do some static stretching from this video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xJwwioOcE4E&list=LLdX7Dvsoc6OAGEelAcn4Juw&index=34
and some dynamic ones from here:
It might probably be a silly question to some of you but do you think it’s too late to learn martial arts? I am 38, recently separated, teenage kids…life can start all over again…right? Honest opinions please…i mean if it’s too late then i might as well just know. Fingers crossed that it is not 