Martial Arts and Training: Getting a breakthrough after a plateau in training.

week of 6/28/2021

Hello everybody, this is a day late, because I focused my time on the family this weekend. Yay! We had a holiday here in the U.S.A. It was 4th of July or our independence day. Anyway back to the regularly scheduled program.

Getting a breakthrough after a plateau in training. You can get these breakthroughs in anything you are doing. Weight lifting, you notice after a while you are not progressing, you try to add more weights and just not strong enough to pull those. However, one day you will find that the normal weights you did are not taxing you as much so you can push through that weight barrier.

You get breakthroughs in running. You have you pace, you have your pushing yourself in a sprint pace and will literally die if you try to keep running that fast. Then one day you are running and you just out paced yourself and shaved 30 seconds off your time not even trying.

In martial arts it looks a little different. Well it looks a little different for me. Clearly, I have only experienced my plateaus. I have heard about training from others but let me just speak from my experience with my own training.

So in Muay Thai training we put hours on the mat. Sometimes just drilling and drilling specific skills. And oftentimes you will hear what you have to do to fix things, to make your strikes better. You are cognizant of the fact you have to fix them. But try as you might, drilling, and training, it may not click entirely. It may be that the biomechanics just don’t make that much sense to you. But you keep working it, and try to fix it.

Sometimes you don’t feel like you are getting anywhere. Sometimes it just feels like grinding. Most of the time it is just grinding. However, you are working and working muscle memory. What I have found and what has happened in the past 3 weeks is for me is I made strides and positive improvements.

I noticed my clench game has been on point these last few weeks. It is just easier for me. There is no other way to describe it. Before in clench I would try to muscle it. I would fight and try to do the moves as intended but I would muscle it making it much harder.

The things I have learned and the information I have been given just clicked. I could see where I was making mistakes and fix it. It happened again this week. Our focus on Muay Thai is knees.

1. Pushing knees to create space
2. Upward knees to strike your opponent
3. Side in Knees to get over guards and to cause damage

I had an epiphany. I realized what I was doing wrong and how I was bleeding off my power when hitting knees. I realized my foot work needed to change in a certain way (namely my shuffle in). I changed it, and low and behold it freaking worked. All those tips and training days just clicked. I figured out the body mechanics and it felt good. It felt more effortless than before. I was getting power into my knees, and I was getting my flying knees in too.

Am I saying I am perfect? Nope, but it just clicked for me today, and for the past couple of weeks.

Will it return to my grinding through the next phase? Yea I am sure it will. But I will keep putting time in on the mat. Because that is how we improve our skills.

The main goal is to keep putting time in. Even if you feel like you are not making any more progress you are, and you will.

There are many ways and suggestions to get over a plateau. Many people have many ideas some of which are:

1. Change up your training –
   • train more
   • train less
   • mix up your training, adding eccentric movements (or what is often referred to as negative movement)
   • supersets
   • add HIIT training
2. Be patient – sometimes it is just putting the time in on the mat, in the gym, under the weights
3. Get more sleep – in the US at least there is a culture of look how busy I am, and look at all the things I am doing, with emphasis on I am tired but so productive. Other countries their emphasis is family, rest, and relaxation.
4. Look at your diet –
   • are you eating enough
   • are you eating to much
   • are you hydrated
5. Focus on a different aspect of what you are training – For instance if you are having a hard time learning how to kick or learning that small tweak to make your kicks better. Switch up to elbows, train elbows. Give your body and your brain a break from kicks. Then come back to kicks and see if any of the tweaks from before have settled in to your understanding.
6. Go to a training seminar, class, week, camp – this has helped me make strides in the right direction.

Keep in mind there are a lot of websites out there to help you through them. Here are some websites to go take a look at that might help if you hit a plateau:

1. NerdFitness.com https://www.nerdfitness.com/blog/what-to-do-when-you-hit-a-plateau/
2. BodyBuilding.com https://www.bodybuilding.com/fun/topicoftheweek23.htm
3. MuscleandStrength.com https://www.muscleandstrength.com/articles/9-steps-to-eliminating-a-plateau.html

In my case with the martial arts… I just needed to be patient put the mat time in. My body needed to discover the body mechanics on its own.

I have also noticed huge strides and advances when I go to seminars, and special training day/weeks. I am mentally more open, like a sponge because it is a different gym, different teacher, or different training style.

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How have you gotten past plateaus?

If you have not, have you tried any of these tweaks to help you?

I wanted to say thank you all for reading my blog. I started this as a way to just keep track of my journey/adventures/ you name it. But I enjoy hearing from you, so please feel free to comment. If you liked this please hit the like button so I know. If you want to follow my adventures day to day I am on instagram @sharpcupcake.

As always, Don’t Photo Edit, Just Go Get IT!