Jaime-right on :)

How hard did you go?

My opinion is if technique is going out the window and if arms are getting that much heavier than training (factor in glove size) then its the stress is probbaly very high and the cause.

My opinion is that if one builds slowly one does not teach the body to be stressed (we learn by doing-meaning what we do is what we teach our body).

I think building slowly we can get to high levels without teaching the body to be as stressed and tired etc

strength sports and certainly combat sports make this seem harder and certainly is to a degree but I think there is balance.. (I'm not saying never stress-though there is some evidence for that-I'm just saying build)

Just some thoughts-either way good to get in there :)

Check this out

36yr old that was never active or into sports

started running

as is typical with many an athlete he was over training and getting sick and getting injured (both signs of over training)

I think at 37yr old he started another not over training and using some breathing techniques.. he trained keeping his heart rate down (not pushing it up) and slowly built what he could do with a low heart rate.

At 38 he ran 17miles at a 6min/mile pace-not bad right? Trying doing a 6min mile with a heart rate average of 117!!!! and a breath rate of 10 breaths a min!!!!!!

Thats messed!!!!

This is a system I am just learning about but I think it suggests some powerful stuff.

Right now I teach MuayThai at a leisure centre-we only have twice a week and we are big on technique. That and other reasons we haven't been 'conditioning' the guys.

The guys that have been with us a while and have slowly built up thier skills and playing harder and harder as they get comfortable etc with basically NO conditioning... well I started holding pads for them and I held 3x3 rnds 1min break which they did with much much greater ease and less puffing and panting than I ever did when I was training..

I didn't think too much of it cause we weren't going really hard (building you see) but at the same time I know when I was training I would have been breathing much heavier doing what they were (at least in the old days)

We had a guy come to us that use to train somewhere else.. they did much more conditioning and sparring etc it was hard to get him to slow down...

After I found out he was good to 'play' in sparing I let him spar with the other guys... I noticed the differance in how tired he got compared to a couple of my guys that are at a similar level (time training-though no conditioning other than slowly building in sparring and just started pads). My guy wasn't tired at all and he looked like he just fought.

I'm not saying we shouldn't do conditioning, though I certainly think the vast majority of us over train (you know you are more catabolic than anabolic when you don't wake up with a hard on or ladies if you're not pretty much ready for some). I'm just suggesting there is more to it than go go go more is better no pain no gain.

Back to the 6min a mile with a 117 heart rate.

Thats 2 laps on a track in 3min-my heart rate doing that was getting up to (still would be) 180+ hmmmmmm

Thats a pretty good pace of fight conditioning (not that I think running is the best way)...

Not saying we should all stop everything but I think its smart to look and think a little. listen to the body a little and maybe work on some skills once in a while when to killing ones self.

Kind of off topic but like I said-the body learns to do from doing-doesn't learn to do something else from doing...learns to do what you are doing... I don't think we always want to train it to be tired and stressed... maybe?