Paweł Kurzak is literally one of the best HMB fighters in the world. As everyone in the HMB community knows, Paweł is a member of the White Company HMB club from the UK. This strong and muscular athlete shows great results in the list fighting alone and in the 5vs5 team led by him. He is responsible for the buhurt training of the White Company fighters. Also he is a personal fitness trainer and HMBIA News decided to ask Paweł about the importance of the physical training for HMB sports. 

“It doesn’t matter how good you are technically, if you’re lacking physical preparation. It can be carried over to other sports, if you decide to switch. It doesn’t matter what it will be. It can be a team sport, fencing, etc. Your physical preparation is the foundation and it will remain with you for longer”, – said Kurzak.

According to Paweł, in principle general physical preparation is very similar in all sports. The general physical preparation is the same regardless of whether you do HMB, football, or rugby. 

When people think about training in the gym they most of the time see big bodybuilders. Bodybuilding is not good preparation for the sport. Bodybuilding is the sport itself but Paweł thinks that Bodybuilding is completely useless when you start doing other sports.

“When you’re training in the gym there are certain movement patterns that you do but also in the gym you don’t want to recreate something that you later do as technical training. Let me give you an example. I see people take a very heavy bar or barbell or a dumbbell and they start doing swings like strikes with the sword. Thinking that because this is heavy when they go to lighter they are going to be better. It’s complete rubbish, it doesn’t work like that.  It doesn’t transfer itself. You should not train with heavier weapons. Technical training and physical training is different”, – he said.

 Being a professional fitness trainer, Mr. Kurzak said that there are certain movement patterns in the gym that athletes need to include in training and they’re simple. They are: squat, deadlift (hip hinge), horizontal push, vertical push, horizontal pull, vertical pull.
“These are movement patterns that we use. Now you can think but I’m never doing this or that with both hands, when I’m doing HMB it’s one arm. It’s true. But if you get stronger in one movement pattern you can move to kettlebell training for example, where you train single handed and you’re bracing your core”, – said Pawel.

It can be transferred into power of the hits and endurance of your arms when holding the shield for example.

According to Pawel, the gym is to prepare the HMB athlete physically for the technique and he or she should not mix it. You’re doing one or the other at the same time. For example: I’m going to the gym I’m taking heavy dumbbell and I’m practicing the hits. Pawel noticed that it doesn’t work. With kettlebell you’ve got clean, snatch, press but no strikes.

“You can sometimes see boxers with heavy dumbbells in their hands and they are practicing the hits. Now think about this, if you have something heavy in your hand the force is going downward. Where do you want to strike? Down or straight? You don’t want to get better in holding it in your hands! You want to get better in striking. You want to get quicker. If you are holding something heavy you’re not getting faster, you’re getting slower at the end of the strike. I always say that strength training is the foundation. When you have strength you develop power speed. But if you don’t have strength, nothing else is going to work. You can’t be a sprinter if you don’t have strong legs. The more strength you’ve got the less strength you use for one movement”,- said Pawel. 

Also he mentioned that it is useless to split a workout into “weights” and “cardio”. It is not correct. When you’re thinking about endurance for this sport you need to think how long is your fight, how many rounds, how many fights. People think: “I need better cardio, I’m going to run a marathon. But a marathon takes hours. Here you fight for a minute or maybe 90sec, 3 rounds, and that’s the endurance you’re looking for.

Here you could read in brief about the principles that Pawel adheres to in his training and preparation of the White Company team for tournaments. We hope that by listening to the opinion of a professional, you can avoid many mistakes. Take care of yourself and exercise correctly!