5 things

Wai Jia: The Kung Fu Forum Kung Fu Forum
1

i was reading men’s health magazine in my dr.'s waiting room the other day and they said the 5 things that make an athlete a strong competitor are strength, flexibility, endurance, balance, and power. Its interesting to think about when you are thinking of a training regime. doing activities that develop all 5 of these is smart. but what about a martial artist? i mean i know these also apply to a good martial artist but i am curious to see what you all think are the 5 most important characteristics.

(plus honestly a good athlete might have those 5 things but a GREAT athlete only needs to be able to dodge, dip, duck, dive and dodge. Ahhh dodgeball, the sport of kings)

2
  1. Structure
  2. Efficient mechanics/leverage
  3. Technique (knowledge on how to use efficient mechanics and leverage)
  4. Power
  5. Conditioning

I list conditioning last because as you age you will loose reaction time, speed and endurance. Yes, you can train hard … but the 5’8, 150lbs 45-year-old man can never condition himself to physically match the 6’6, 235lbs 19-year-old athlete.

Being that time is limitied, I feel it’s better to invest hevaily in 1 to 4 and do what you can afford for No. 5.

3

Your kung fu style should provide all of the above.

However, I would make this list based on my personal experiences and current level of skill:

1.) Technique. Spend more time on this than on anything else…this can include structure, position, all movements specific to the MA.

2.) Heart or spirit. You have to be willing, and very able to put yourself on the line and be humble through daily training and exploration. You have to be able to push through the pain, the humbling experiences, and keep striving to become a better martial artist. This can also refer to having a calm, collected, and clear mind that is aware…basically any attribute not physical that one can cultivate can be labeled as heart or spirit.

3.) Conditioning. In this I would include your cardio-vascular system and your ability to take and give a hit. If you can’t last a minute of sparring at an intense pace, or get winded from one hit and are unable to proceed, this can be bad.

4.) Power. Through technique and supplemental exercise, you develop the power to strike hard and to utilize the technique when encountering applied force. I would include strength in here as martial arts is more about explosive power than raw strength.

5.) Balance. This means both physical balance, coordination, agility, and speed, but also mental and daily life balance. The yin yang mentality and image of a well trained, not over trained or under trained, and yet relaxed and calm person.

Those are the current things I consider when training and where the value is. However, I train some areas much more or than others because of their underdevelopment so that this does not refer to a developmental path from 1 through 5 but rather the value as I see it in these five areas.

4

I’d have to put conditioning first.

I had the chance to do some good sparring this past weekend. It had been planned for a while and is just past the 6 month mark for my shoulder surgery.

All I’ve done in the last 6 months has been very light cardio…obviously for a while I couldn’t do anything as any sort of bouncing was bad for the shoulder. I’ve put on weight and haven’t really been able to drill at all at any speed or power.

So, sparred these two guys; two, two minute rounds each. FWIW, they are training for full contact so we were going hard enough to train for that level w/o quite being full contact. We were wearing mouth guards and mma style gloves.

Knowledge and perception(technique) were ok. I could see their movements and anticipate well enough and my responses were reasonable in their ability to mitigate the attacks coming at me. I landed a couple of good kicks, a decent knee and other less telling strikes. I got a few throws and only got thrown once myself. I got side mount twice and ended up in 1/2 guard or full guard the rest of the time. I went for some submissions but never got them and got submitted twice w/ ankle locks.

Overall, my weakness was just that: weakness from lack of conditioning. It caused me to not see things ‘quite’ as fast as I should or react as well as I could because I was thinking to **** much about how I was getting ready to puke.

Lack of conditioning means your muscles are not working ifficiently so they are consuming more oxygen which means less oxygen to your brain so you can’t think as clearly.

5

Anyone coming off an injury is going to have a hard time getting back into it. Especially as you get older. Your MA should provide enough conditioning…but there are so many styles of kung fu. The style I practice has very intense forms that go for quite awhile with lots of jumps, deep stances, etc. This is very tiring if you do one form over and over and over again. Conditioning is definately absolutely important, but for me heart and technique are much more important. You’ll encounter someone with better cardio who can dictate the pace however they want and you’ll need to rely on technique and heart to pull through. Fear, anxiety, etc, can also make one’s skill diminish considerably especially after an extended lapse in training time.

But that is sparring and not fighting.

6

True about coming off the injury and the age.

You’ll encounter someone with better cardio who can dictate the pace however they want and you’ll need to rely on technique and heart to pull through.

If someone can dicate the pace of the round/match/fight and is in better shape then the other person will probably not be able to pull off good technique no matter how much heart they have.

Didn’t 7* just quote Morgan Freeman in Million Dollar Baby about that?

Fear, anxiety, etc, can also make one’s skill diminish considerably especially after an extended lapse in training time.

true, but not the case here. one of the guys was my first teacher…so, I knew he could whip my ass still…and he did. When you know someone is better than you but you also trust them not to damage you then there is no reason for fear.

The other guy was a shodan but quite a bit smaller than me…he still got a dang ankle lock on me though…so I wasn’t too worried either…

it was lack of conditioning no matter the reason.

7

whats the dif’ between strength and power?

8

strength is not the only factor that plays in power.

speed, posture/alignment, and timing all have factors in your power output.

i would personally put willpower on my top 5 list.

without a strong will, you will never be able to endure the painfully rigorous exersized that are part of any accomplished martial artists training.

9

Pang Quan, I would say that willpower is similar to the heart and spirit category, the will to continue in the face of adversary. How many of us have thought about packing it in when things get tough? when you hit a plateau? when you get beaten or really humbled? But we keep on going… that is what it’s all about in terms of willpower and spirit.

Oso, I agree that you definately need the physical abilities regardless of heart or whatever. It does suck to be too tired to keep going! I still think that technique can be used but if you can’t react properly and your body can’t keep going, then year, it is definately conditioning.
You said conditioning would be number 1 but how would a well conditioned athlete do if he had NO MA training? I think maybe for your situation and experience, conditioning is a focus right now but in terms of overall value, what would you list as the important five?

10

  1. Intent

  2. Focus

  3. Technique

  4. Conditioning

  5. Execution

I would say that all other aspects can be described in terms of these things.

Power for example…

at any moment the power one generates will be dependent on the integration of these 5 things.

Intent is the mental drive to accomplish some goal.

Focus is eliminating everything extraneous to that goal (like a laser)

Technique is the proper method of obtaining this goal (all physical mechanics etc.)

Conditioning is preparing the necessary resources to obtain this goal

Execution is putting it all together and reaching the goal. Even if you have all the other requirements, without proper execution you will fall short of your goal.

of these things the only one that cannot be helped or changed in the moment is previous preparation.

11

1 - Conditioning

2 - Fundamental Skill Training

3 - Timing

4 - Speed

5 - Power

but, really this is all just semantic discussion that no one will agree completely on anyone else’s 5…just like the last time someone wanted to list the top 5 important things… :wink: