Philosophy

I love reading and a book that's really influenced me has been Nassim Taleb's book "Antifragile".

It's about how things can grow from disorder and chaos. Such as the human body and mind. 

One of the themes I've heard quite frequently in my experience is "No pain no gain" or "Pain is weakness leaving the body". 

I thoroughly endorse this. As long as you can recover from the trauma and you have time to make adaptations. 

Fitness is described as how well an organism or mechanism can thrive in it's surroundings. Able to adjust to the demands put upon it.

In order for the body and the mind to grow, you have to introduce stress and obstacles to overcome. 

However, this needs to be tailored to the individual. Asking someone who has never lifted a weight before to go and deadlift 100kg is not safe nor practical.

Following the stress, you also need to allow time to recover proportionate to the stress induced. After a fight or competition, a longer recovery time is required rather than if you're sparring at 30%. 

Sometimes, the recovery time is not even proportionate and longer periods are required - depending both on the individual and the nature of the stress. Again I'm not just talking about the body but also the mind.

Further to being "Antifragile", I also believe time is one of the best tests of effectiveness. For example; if weights have been used for over a thousand years to build strength, they have been tried and tested. This is therefore more reliable than a new machine that uses the latest technology, but has not been used before.

Some of the old school methods and equipments are seeing a bit of a renaissance at the moment for example kettle bells, indian clubs, skipping, callisthenics, plyometrics etc. I believe it's as a result of people understanding their effectiveness and being less attracted to the novelty of technology.

I use tailored routines which are specific to the required movement sets or functions involved. Even better, if they are endorsed by people who have "skin in the game" and have something to lose if the methodology doesn't work.

Fighting is a great test as a result. If you find a high level MMA fighter or Boxer supporting the use of a training methodology or equipment it's because it works. If it didn't they probably would not risk the potential pain it could cause if they could be using better equipment or methods to get them in peak condition. Poor conditioning = a greater probability of suffering increased trauma. The same applies for other high stress or contact sports.

However, I'm not against change overall, it's from MMA that martial arts have evolved recently and a lot of the mystical elements have started to disappear. 

Mainly because they were tested in a practical setting and lost. This does not mean there aren't lessons to be transferred from those arts though. It depends on the athlete rather than the "art" as to whether the move sets and principles can be applied.

If there is a new method or training equipment - I won't rule it out. I'll look comparatively to what's been established before. To see if there is a place and logic for it. I'll then test it in a field with a lot of variance, where it can be subjected to scrutiny and analysed properly.