Are You Sparring Too Much?

I recently came across an article regarding MMA fighter Jamie Varner and his recent retirement. In it, Varner talks about his concerns that too much sparring can lead to severe head trauma and prematurely end a fighter's career.

The whole article can be read here at Bloody Elbow - good stuff.

This brings up a great point that I've talked about in the past. Namely, brain trauma is a serious concern for those of us involved in full-contact fight sports and we should take steps to prevent it. The effects of brain trauma accumulate over time and can lead to progressively worse issues - slower reaction speeds, impaired memory and speech patterns, changes in personality, impaired motor control, and even dementia.

Not fun stuff.

In previous posts I've talked about ways to prevent brain trauma. One of the suggestions I've put forward is to take it easy on the sparring. Obviously, if you are getting hit too hard by your sparring partner then your risk for brain trauma will go up significantly.

But, even if you're sparring with light contact, could you still be sparring too much?

Shoulder Health for Fighters

A lot of  fighters spend most of their time worrying about improving those attributes that make them a better fighter - like strength, speed, reaction time, etc... But very few spend much time thinking about the correction of muscle imbalances and the injuries that are associated with those imbalances.

This is a shame since muscle imbalances are extremely common among martial artists and these imbalances can lead to injury. Obviously, injuries will take you away from your training and that'll keep you from progressing and competing

Nobody wants that.

Among the most common places for a fighter to experience muscle imbalance and injury is the shoulder girdle. So, in this post, I'm going to share with you some strategies and exercises I use to my shoulders and the shoulders of those I work with healthy and strong.

What Every Martial Artist Should Know About CTE

Most of you know by now that I spend a lot time on forums. Well, I was over at the RossTraining.com's strength and conditioning forums and one member was asking questions about Brain Injury and Combat Sports.

The following is the member's question and my response. I hope you guys find it helpful:

Jon's Question: "Do you think it's possible to go through years of full contact boxing, MMA etc without accruing any sort of cognitive problems? Or are such effects inevitable?"

3 Tips for Preventing Brain Injury.

Martial arts training involves contact - sometimes hard contact.

It's a simple fact. We train to be good at fighting and to be good at fighting we must spend some time in simulated fights (aka: sparring and competition). The problem is too many hard knocks to the head can cause some serious issues to arise.

Dementia Pugilistica, or Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE) is a real problem among full contact athletes and, especially combat athletes (boxers, martial artists, and wrestlers). Symptoms include: slow reaction speeds, impaired memory and speech patterns, changes in personality, depression, aggression, and dementia that gets progressively worse.

While there is still a lot of research to be done on the subject there are a few things we martial artists can do to prevent CTE.