Book Summary: Functional Combat Conditioning Exercises for Fitness and Combat Sports by Matt Furey

Combat Conditioning was the first book to introduce me to bodyweight exercises for functional strength and endurance. I was the kind of guy in high school sports who was the proverbial “talentless clown.” What I mean by this is that I was very strong but the natural talent eluded me. I always promised that there are people who are much more talented, but they would never let me work. Growing up on the exercise craze of the Arnold Schwarzenegger movie “Pumping Iron” led me to weightlifting with all my friends. Now when you’re young and you just lift weights to see how strong you are, bad things end up happening. When I got a physical before the start of college football season, the doctor looked at me and said politely, “Hey, idiot, have you ever heard of stretching?” Needless to say, the search for a better way to exercise and gain functional strength began. Lawyer Note: I hate these but they are important. With any exercise routine, check with your doctor to make sure you can perform these routines.

Why is this important to me?

This book will help you gain knowledge about bodyweight exercises that help in three areas: Strength, Endurance, and Flexibility. If these three things are not important to you, save yourself 5 minutes and turn the video off. Otherwise, continue with me.

Have you ever seen any of the following: great MMA fighters, the Cirque du Soleil, or a gymnastics competition? All of these phenomenal athletes have functional strength. This means that they can do things with their bodies that 90 percent of the population cannot. The good news is that 90 percent can do these things if you change your exercise routines. Another book you should check out is Convict Conditioning. This focused more on muscle, joint, and tendon strength. What’s beneficial about that is that you can maintain that strength well into your seventies.

Don’t get me wrong, any type of exercise is better than none. If you’re not doing anything and start lifting weights, keep doing it. But if you want an inexpensive way to exercise with compounding results, this book is for you. A big problem with weight lifting itself is that it uses muscle isolation. This means that if you curl then you isolate the movement to the biceps muscle. This does nothing to create functional force for your tendons or joints. The human body was designed to work together, so why not cut your workout short and do compound exercises to maximize your results? If you did a simple pull-up, you’re still working your biceps, but you’re also engaging your back, forearms, shoulders, and core along with building functional strength.

Matt describes his Holy Grail of working out, which he coins in the Royal Court. I will explain each exercise.

The Hindu squat is an excellent exercise. When you start out, you can do a half squat with your arms in front of you parallel to the floor, but as you progress and build strength in your knees, you’ll want to do a full squat with the back of your thighs touching the floor. back of your calves.

Strong legs do the body good. When you work on your legs, you engage your entire body and burn calories all day, even after exercise. Legs consist of the largest muscles in your body and you can tell the next day when they are sore.

When doing hind squats, work your way up to doing 3 sets of 100. Doing the actual chop in 3-set cycles is a great exercise that doesn’t take a lot of time. If you’re traveling, this is a perfect routine because it doesn’t take a lot of time.

The Hindu pushup is different from a normal pushup. Start with your feet slightly wider than shoulder-width apart and your butt in the air. Push off with an arching motion (similar to downward facing dog in Yoga). Try to work up to 3 sets of 50 repetitions. If you’ve never done this before and can only do a couple, don’t be discouraged. Like anything new, it takes practice to build.

This exercise will help you with strength, back flexibility, and stamina. Enjoy!

The rear axle gets a lot of bad press. People think it’s bad for the back and neck. Like anything else, do what is comfortable for you.

You can match three shapes. Think of this as an exercise and NOT a stretch. You will feel your body warm up doing this exercise.

You can start with an exercise ball if you can’t do the neck bridge. Then, as you progress, you can move on to neck bridge (overhead) and then gymnastics bridge (arms off).

Keep in mind that if you have never done them before, they will seem difficult at first. Do not get frustrated. Before she started doing bridgework, she had excruciating pain in her neck and back. Imagine why he was only doing heavy lifting with squats and bench presses. Anyway, when I started doing the bridge, all the pain was gone.

The back and neck stretch feels great and the results will speak for themselves. Note: DO NOT force this exercise. Take your time and build for it.

Combat Conditioning is a great book to introduce you to bodyweight exercises for functional strength, endurance, and flexibility. He was watching a discovery show where they were making a martial arts video game. They showed a man doing a unique exercise.

There were telephone surveys on the ground at different heights in two rows. He would jump from one to the other and land on one leg. He would jump onto the other and do a one legged full squat with the other leg fully extended into a kick position. This is a true test of functional strength and flexibility. Oh, by the way, this man was 75 years old. Results that last a lifetime are something I always strive for.

I hope you found this short summary useful. The key to any new idea is to work it into your daily routine until it becomes a habit. Habits are formed in as little as 21 days. One thing you can take away from this book is the royal court. Try it as part of your exercise routine for a month and record your progress. I think you will be pleasantly surprised by the results.