The Bolinger Boxing and Kickboxing Academy volunteered a seminar for the local base ball team (Spartans)  to help with there conditioning.  Head instructor  and owner of the Bolinger boxing and KickBoxing Academy Scott Bolinger and students Erick Rippe and Bryce Adamson assist.

     Scott has been instructing martial arts since 1985 and mixed weight training with the MA training. In 2004 Scott introduced plyomentrics into his boxing and kick-boxing program as well as wrote a book that introduces plyometrics as part of a level testing for boxing. The book is called WarriorRage KickBoxing Volume II.  With plyometrics there are many exercises to choose from so you can work each muscle group in increments.  We teach 4 different medicine Ball routines that have anywhere from 30 to 45 different exercises.  On the training we went through a standard stretching routine then worked on core and upper body exercises with exercises that work the full range of motion for shoulders.

     Bases ball and martial arts both consists of jarring motions in there everyday training which can work the joints pretty hard. Creating a routine that’s under load, may help offset the wear and tear on your joints. In martial arts , your punching and kicking as fast as you can in reputations of 500 to 600 times and in similar cases with base ball, you might throw a ball as fast as you can 200 to 300 times a day or more. When working plyometrics (medicine ball exercises) your doing many exercises under load  and in a dynamic, resistance exercise, usually done in a fast motion adds both power and speed. Working the arms should give a faster fast ball and working the core you’ll be able to torque the hips better to swing the bat harder.  But for martial arts, you’ll create and strong faster punch or kick. The exercises also creates good all around tone for a athlete which will add better mobility.  While weight training develops strength, plyometrics develops the explosiveness and speed.

    With the plyometrics training, your able to create exercise routines to be sports specific. You can create entire range of motion for what is done in the sport your in.  Having a medicine ball set would be nice, but not necessary to do the routines. When I taught this particular seminar both myself and my students made up a bunch of sand bags weighing 5, 10 and 15 lbs. That’s a lot cheaper than buying about 40 medicine balls at about $30 a pop. If your wanting to keep your expenses down, sand bags work well or you could use a dumb bell, a weight or even a block.

     With this seminar, it showed the public as well as the athletes, that martial arts just isn’t about learning how to fight. Any sport could learn from the arts to help enhance there sport.