In my experience, sparring at a single range (though good for practicing a specific set of techniques) has one main purpose - to feed the egos of the fighters. You get good at one range and you excel. You may get good at two or even three ranges (e.g. kicking, infighting, grappling), and staying put in any one of them is fun, because it is comfortable. I once knew a guy who would actually watch himself in the mirror when throwing a kicking attack. He was that confident, that vain, that arrogant - that inexperienced with the realitites of full range sparring.

It is the transitions between different ranges that are a challenge. Entering and exiting - those moments that you have to build up to and when you are most vulnerable. This is what takes the machismo out of the battle and separates the men from the boys. The idea of martial arts training, as I see it, is to protect your body from harm. Therefore, it is during the transitions that the most skill and care are needed, to avoid broken fingers, noses, ribs etc.

Learning that more is not necessarily better happens again and again in the course of a lifetime, though the lesson does not always stay learned.

When it comes to training periodisation, however, your results will benefit from incorporating a less is more approach: less reps - and more effort.

Building muscle mass should not be the primary goal for a martial artist. Therefore, high repetitions of pushups, crunches, pullups etc. can become counterproductive after a certain point. And, the breakdown of muscle tissue that results can slow your progress, especially in a fighting-oriented regimen.

To build muscle strength requires acclimatising the muscles to a certain level of load, and then systematically increasing the amount of load - and therefore strength performance. This cannot be accomplished by adding more repetitions with a constanrt level of load, as is the case with most bodyweight exercises.

This is not to say, of course, that bodyweight exercises have no place in a training programme. In fact, novice athletes or those in recovery should definetly begin with bodyweight, rather than external resistance.

But, there will come a point at which 8 - 12 reps per set is easily mastered. This is when the time is right to load the exercise. There are many fun and challenging ways to do this, in addition to conventional machines and free weights.

A martial arts classroom offers, e.g. bodily resistence provided by the members of the group, which is an ideal tool and method for conditioning the kind of competitive applications native to the sport. Rather than everyone in the room simultaneously doing 50 pushups - a team of two or three could work together to complete 5-8 sets with progressive degrees of resistance and decreasing reps.

Maximising strength through maximum effort is a type of training that often receieves short shrift in martial arts training. This is unfortunate, because when it comes to a martial arts bout, or heaven forbid, a real life crisis: more strength is, indeed, better!