Whether you are an MMA (mixed martial arts) fighter, a traditional martial arts enthusiast, or just someone with an interest in self defense or fitness training, physical conditioning and improving your speed, balance and agility should be a very important part of the training that you do.

In a fight the techniques that you have learned are only one amongst many factors which will decide who will come out on top. Everyone knows the importance of strength and cardiovascular fitness, but speed, balance and other characteristics which come under the catch all banner of 'agility' are just as important as strength and fitness, but often get left out of training programmes.

One of the reasons for this is that it is not so obvious what you should do to train these things. Everyone knows what kind of things to do if they want to get stronger and fitter, but knowing what to do to improve your agility in such a way that is useful for martial arts is not so obvious. So that is why I decided to put together this hub. It's not comprehensive by any means, and if you know any other good exercises to use then please do let people know about them in the comments section, but I hope that it will at least give you a couple of good ideas and set you off in the right direction.

 My number one tip for anyone who is into martial arts and has an hour or two per week that they can use for some extra training to improve their physical conditioning is to take up par kour, or 'free running'.

Free running, in case you haven't heard of it, involves going for a run and just playing around with your environment and doing some basic gymnastic type moves using the 'street furniture' that you come across. Take a look at the video below to get a better idea of what it is all about.

The great thing about free running is that it combines fitness and agility training. Fast footwork, learning to react quickly for both spontaneous moves and to correct mistakes, and athletic jumps and leaps are all ideal agility training for someone who has got martial arts applications in mind.

If you want something a bit more advanced, as well as something that is more specifically tailored towards martial arts, then as far as I know the best balance and agility training programme around is the Shaolin kung fu method called the Poles of Plum Blossom, which was developed by the famous monks of the Shaolin Temple in China.

It is said by practitioners of kung fu that "strength cannot overcome style, and style canot overcome mastery". Style refers to the techniques of a particular style of martial arts, and mastery refers to the physical mastery which comes from training such as the Poles of Plum Blossom.

Download Poles of Plum Blossom eBook Here

 Speed training, and reaction speed training, are perhaps more common than general agility training techniques. The speed bag to practice fast punches is one example. For more here is the speed training tag from a mixed martial arts blog.