Injury Prevention: The Importance of Cross Training
- Holly (JudoBabe)
- Oct 10, 2019
- 5 min read
In some professional sports, injuries are becoming a real problem. Kids are beginning to hyper specialize in sports, kids as young as elementary school. And it’s causing problems. In basketball for instance, basketball players get done with college with their bodies having similar wear and tear to older generations’ players at the end of their careers (1). This isn’t new information; in 2014, researcher Jayanthi and his team did a study of athletes in Chicago. Their results showed that young athletes that hyper specialize in their sports have 125% higher risk of injury (2). 125%. This percentage is drastically decreased with cross training.
For amateurs and Martial Arts hobbyists, cross training is less important. ESPN’s article focused on hyper specialization in young athletes with the potential to go pro. For professional Martial Artists, cross training is imperative. Even so, those of us only training a few times a week also benefit from cross training.
Martial Arts offers a number of physical benefits for practitioners of all ages, genders, and activity levels. Members at my dojo range from children to older adults, and I’ve seen many Judo senseis training well into their 80s and 90s. Keiko Fukuda, the first woman 10th dan in America, taught Judo from a wheelchair. She would stand up to demonstrate, and then sit back down. I’ve seen practitioners of all kinds of Martial Arts train through a myriad of health issues. There are so many physical benefits of Martial Arts, I could write an entire book on it, and in fact, it has already been done.
But Martial Arts is a combat sport. Especially grappling Martial Arts such as BJJ and Judo. Most studies compare combat sports to other combat sports. However, one study noted that some researchers believe combat sports are more dangerous than non-combat sports (3), and one specific study from 1995 did compare combat and non-combat sports. This study found that Karate and Judo had higher injury rates than ice hockey, soccer, basketball, and volleyball (4). While this is a dated study and ignores more modern safety measures, it is plausible that combat sports are more likely to result in injury than non-combat sports. And when you compare high contact sports as a whole (combat sports, and other sports such as football and rugby), injuries, and bodily wear and tear are vastly higher than low contact sports.
Martial Arts and high impact sports also have one other potential downside, one that is unfortunately under studied; mental strain. While this is mostly conjecture, I have dabbled in a variety of sports over my lifetime, excluding the ones I took in gym class. These include swimming, horseback riding, tennis, ballet, and of course Martial Arts. It’s an entirely different mind game to get on a mat expecting that I will be hit, thrown, kicked, squished, squashed, choked, locked, and have a knee driven into my belly. The latter of all these is the worst, in case you’re wondering. I expect to get hurt, so I focus on making sure I don’t get hurt. And that can be hard mentally, to be in that place of “this could be an injury, how do I keep it from being an injury?” when I try to work out. I have generalized anxiety disorder, so this is more dramatic for me than for other Martial Artists, but the fear of injury used to give me anxiety attacks that I had to work through during classes. It is important to note that other high competition sports have a mental strain all their own, but this strain can be compounded in high level Martial Arts competitors, where an injury can be career ending… and common. Even in amateur, non-competitors, the idea of an injury taking someone off the mat and possibly ending their Martial Arts career is scary. I know I train much differently after almost a whole year out of Judo because of a shoulder injury; I do not want to risk being out again.
So how does cross training help all this?
Cross training reduces risk of injury in all athletes, amateur and professional, artists and competitors, by working out muscle groups that do not get worked out as much in one singular sport. A well-rounded cross training regimen will include strength training workouts and flexibility, and body movements different than what your sport includes (5). It also allows for schedule flexibility; if you can’t make class one night, you can weight lift or go for a swim. Having a wide variety of workouts prevents workout burnout, and makes the frustration of training plateaus a little more bearable as you can set fitness goals outside of the dojo. And it’s a nice break to be able to workout and not be worrying about if I’m going to get injured as much. Doing different workouts also does something for your mind; it changes the way you think about body movements, and gives you “more tools in the toolbox” so to speak in regards to thinking about movement and techniques.
Cross training can be helpful even just once or twice a week (6), either as a replacement workout or in addition to your normal workouts. I cross train about twice a week, with a ballroom dance class and swimming at the YMCA. Other popular non-sport cross training activities are weight lifting, which is perhaps the most beneficial of all workouts, and yoga.
Some do use other Martial Arts as cross training. For instance, in Judo, many Judokas cross train in Jiu Jitsu to improve their ground game. This has benefits, but as anyone who has trained in multiple Martial Arts will tell you, most Martial Arts have the same movement variations. I’ve seen similar movements in Karate as I have in Krav Maga as I have in Judo as I have in Tai Chi… and this is to be expected of most sports. You can only move your body in so many ways. But with the goals being differentiating your body movements as much as possible, giving your body and mind a break from high contact sports, and having fitness goals outside of Martial Arts to prevent training burnout, cross training with other Martial Arts is not always the best option.
There is one last caveat to cross training in Martial Arts. Historically, Judo was intended to be an all-encompassing way of life. The training of Judo included cross training. It involved weapons, ground work, standing competition, and striking. For strength, stability, and flexibility, Jigoro Kano and his top students created katas, including a non-throwing kata called Ju No Kata. Kodokan, the original Judo school founded by Kano, also sent students to train Butokukai, whose remnants are now Zen Judo (7). Zen Judo is a lower impact style of Judo. The point is, Judo was intended to be a way of life, and would not have required cross training. However, Judo, as all Martial Arts, has evolved over time. I believe it is likely many other Eastern Martial Arts also fall into this category, and a more thorough investigation into the differences of Martial Arts as arts vs as sports is an article for another time.
In today’s Martial Arts world, cross training is an important piece to any training regimen. For the best physical and mental fitness, consider adding in some other workout activities to your training schedule.
Comments