Wow, now I kinda miss training with Nico and that crew…I remember they were always very gung ho and really pushed you (but werent nuts.) Conditioning for short burts like 15, 30 60 and 120 second rounds is great. It allows one a lot more breathing room in the street so to speak. What few realize is the debilitating effect an adrenaline dump can have on you during an altercation-its BAD for me anyways, tires me out incredibly fast.
Bingo,
Hence the need for big Anaerobic style workouts. Try Milling and you’ll confirm how tiring it is… Good call on the adrenal dump also emotive fear worth a mention…
I operate a rotate system on my Anaerobic drills all designed to break sap the will destroy feel pain and hit me from different angles
Important point worth mentioning is as Ernie said earlier people should be working out anyway for a better quality life.
Of course people should work out in general, I do that now…but not to the level I guess that would sustain my newfound martial arts training levels.
I go to the gym, lift what weight I can given my wrist, swim, run, hit the bag (lightly of course)
I THOUGHT I was in decent shape…but come to find out…I wasn’t. I just didn’t know it till that night.
I used to be able to fight for a long time before burning out…it’s like a measuring cup for me…I can see how good I’m doing as far as conditioning by how well I perform.
The “asking hand” isn’t questioning are you in shape its asking what do you know.
It’s more accurately asking what do you know THAT YOU CAN APPLY. If I know I can knock the guy out with a right cross, but I’m too tired to lift my arms, that knowledge is useless.
I can remember many times in BJJ with a bigger stronger partner when I’ve known how to escape but after ten minutes plus of wrestling have been too exhausted to do it.
Exactly, it doesn’t matter how many techniques you know or how well you can apply them when you’re fresh…if you’re tired.
Obviously the point to this thread is to come to the realization that at some point you’re going to be exhausted…and the better shape you are in the later that time will be, and the longer you will be able to apply your “knowledge” with some effectiveness.
If you think otherwise…keep dreamin. The day will come for all.
It’s more accurately asking what do you know THAT YOU CAN APPLY.
At no time should the ability of an opponent be under estimated.
Obviously the point to this thread is to come to the realization that at some point you’re going to be exhausted…and the better shape you are in the later that time will be, and the longer you will be able to apply your “knowledge” with some effectiveness.
Vankuen,
If you KNOW this before hand in the final analysis this too can be attributed to what you know.
Actually come to think of it I think the Singers and Matt Thornton and perhaps even Tony Blauer have addressed this-doing sets of short bursts of about 20-30 seconds each. When I did WT eons ago we had this one guy, big and fat looking. He didnt have long term cardio but in a streetfight, say a 30 second shot, he was a terror-he hit really fast and REALLY hard!
This is sooo perishable too-you stop training for a short period and you lose it fairly quickly.
Hey Van, I know a lot of Nicos students are kinda big and built-how is the overall fitness of the folks your training with/against??
To say that ‘conditioning is the real deciding factor in a fight’ is a generalisation. I agree on the importance of conditioning, but as has often been said on this forum, conditioning is activity-specific. You need to have enough conditioning to do the job. ‘The job’ in a street confrontation is not to slug it out for hours with gloves on.
Vankuen said that he thought he was fairly fit until he sparred intensely with gloves on. Lots of sparring with gloves on would increase your stamina for sparring with gloves on. Of course, lots of this stamina would transfer to fighting without gloves, but if you use all the heart and skill that you have in a street confrontation (without gloves), along with a modicum of conditioning, you shouldn’t need anywhere near as much stamina as if you were sparring two-minute rounds for an hour and a half!
Wearing gloves muffles power and inhibits the effectiveness of grabs, chops, bare-knuckle punches, pulls, throws and two or three successive and powerful punches on the same point (no, I don’t mean chain punching).
Someone also said that they knew someone who was fearsome over a 30-second period and then ran out of steam. A lot of damage could be done in 30 seconds by someone directing their energy effectively.
A well-conditioned person with little skill might direct their energy ineffectively and therefore be beaten by an unconditioned person with skill. I include the ability to hit hard and accurately as a skill. I agree that heart is important, but the same goes for conditioning - someone with heart and little skill could misdirect their energy (i.e. flail about) and therefore be ineffective in a fight against a person with skill and less heart. But with two skilled people, the one with less skill can win if he has more heart than the other. Spatial and strategic intelligence are also skills which can beat heart or conditioning. In a fight between two people of equal skill, the person with the greatest heart or conditioning should win.
Anyway, I agree with what Victor said about the importance of heart (or will, courage), conditioning and skill, but I’m not sure that skill is always the least important of the three.
Of course the usual caveat applies: all the above is only my personal opinion at this point in time.
The “asking hand” isn’t questioning are you in shape its asking what do you know. Knowledge is king.
**This, in a nutshell, is the theoretician’s credo – “knowledge is king”. For theoreticians it always boils down to that. And we can understand how that is related to “history” – the “knowledge” is passed down in the “magic book” (which contains the “secrets”) via a special lineage (the magic book holder). This is why it is so important to how close one gets to the holder of the magic book. It contains things like the “key to unlocking the power of SLT” or “the WCK formula” or whatever. It’s always about knowledge.
**Developing greater fighting (WCK) skills – as the evidence demonstrates (folks that have proven to have good skills shows) – depends less on what style or method one uses and more on the type and level of training one does. This, of course, does involve “knowledge” too, but of the “self-knowledge” variety – stuff no one can give you or transmit to you, which comes from actually trying to put our tools to work (realistically) and make them work for us.
Conditioning is a part of skill – and a large part. People like to separate these things but one really can’t. Conditioning is more than just being in good physical shape (though that is part of it); it is the level one’s body can function at in a fighting environment. If one can’t function well in a fighting environment, they won’t be able to apply anything they know.
It doesn’t take skill (conditioning) to sucker punch someone or to pull off a surprise eye poke. But the problem is that if those things fail, if the fight is on – then what? Skilled fighters prepare for the worst and hope for the best.
These threads often seem to get lost in semantics.
What you know is what you can apply in the moment.
You can see something and forget how to do it; remember how to do something in training and not think to use it when the time comes; use something when the time comes and fail in that usage; or you can use it when you need to successfully.
And just because you used it once, doesn’t mean it will work next time. So, repeated usability is then the requirement.
And to add a story, one of my sisuk was a product of the early PRC Sport Institutes. He later went to HK, and when he had to fight, found that while he typicallly jumped rope for rounds, his opponents were chain smokers. After a minute, they would gas, and he could just crash them with punches. Won a lot fo fights that way.
But, hopefully people aren’t fighting every day, so conditioning is a way to be more healthy, and be able to train in what you enjoy longer and with less risk of injury.
You’ve got the right idea RR, but this thread is not about what you “know” as far as techniques, so there should be no semantics involved. This is cut and dry. You’re either in shape (to fight) or you’re not…
You can bet on the fight only lasting a few seconds…
or you can train for worst and hope for the best.
The only thing one “knows” of wing chun or any style of fighting right now is what you can apply while in it’s element…and the only way you’re going to see that is by being in it’s element.
You will be suprized at how little you know about yourself. Can you guess exactly how long it will take for you to gas out while performing your techniques full out? Where you can’t perform the techniques with any effectiveness? 30 seconds? 1 minute? 2?
Probably not even that long for most of the martial artists out there.
This is more of a question meant for you to answer on your own in all honesty…because it is you who will be fighting alone.
Originally posted by iblis73
[B]Actually come to think of it I think the Singers and Matt Thornton and perhaps even Tony Blauer have addressed this-doing sets of short bursts of about 20-30 seconds each. When I did WT eons ago we had this one guy, big and fat looking. He didnt have long term cardio but in a streetfight, say a 30 second shot, he was a terror-he hit really fast and REALLY hard!
This is sooo perishable too-you stop training for a short period and you lose it fairly quickly.
Hey Van, I know a lot of Nicos students are kinda big and built-how is the overall fitness of the folks your training with/against?? [/B]
I’m 5’7", about 160 lbs, in relatively good “shape” as far as musclature goes…there are about 4 guys there that I have met that are in the 200+ weight range, all of them around the 5 10" mark or taller. None of them what you would call muscular big…more like football player big. Just your average big athletic guys. Nico and another si hing frank are about my size and muscularture give or take a little in height and weight, but are in the best shape and are the most skilled there obviously. All of us at some point are dropping to the floor and breathing because we went until we could go no more. It just takes longer then others. I think I got tired the quickest…because of my lack of hard training the last few years. These guys have been doing the circuit at the end of every class which put them a little higher in cardio levels then me…if I remember right…and was going to put an average time as to when a majority of them were tired to the point where you could hit them at will…I would say right around 4 or 5 minutes or so.
Interesting posts, sounds like most people here understand the need to be “in shape”.
Another thing to consider is the difference between spar and fight and how it relates to conditioning. The rule of thumb I used to use in training was that 1 hour of sparing was equal to 1 minute of a real fight. My experience has been that conditioning is critical, and that real fights (or even ring bouts) drain your energy at an amazing rate.
So if you want to win that 20 second fight be able to spar full out for 20 minutes.
Actually come to think of it I think the Singers and Matt Thornton and perhaps even Tony Blauer have addressed this-doing sets of short bursts of about 20-30 seconds each.
The Singer Bros demonstrate this on their “Hardcore Training” DVD. It’s called the Tabata protocol, simplistically doing a 20 sec burst of an exercise (sprawl, burpee, squats, etc etc including more activity specific stuff like bagwork) as fast as possible, rest 10 secs, repeat, trying to do more reps each set than the previous. H-A-R-D. Lots of info on Google if anyone wants more.
I read somewhere, that according to the Center for Disease Control, that you are about 100,000 times more likely to die from lifestyle-related heart disease than from a criminal assault.
So if you spend all your time on “Reality Based Self Defense” or whatever it is you do theoretically and technically, and none on staying in condition, your priorities need some serious readdressing.
If you KNOW this before hand in the final analysis this too can be attributed to what you know.
If you word twist enough, yes, but “what you know” still ain’t going to help you beat someone if you have no gas in the tank when that asking hand becomes the insisting hand and says “DEAL WITH THIS, SUCKER!” And knowing you’re going to gas out at some stage is common sense, not knowledge to most of us, though YMMV.
The point about conditioning being activity specific is well taken.
Pugilism, standing grappling and groundfighting all have different conditioning requirements, and to a significant degree these are not transferable one to another, though general cardio fitness still helps.
Originally posted by anerlich
Pugilism, standing grappling and groundfighting all have different conditioning requirements, and to a significant degree these are not transferable one to another, though general cardio fitness still helps.
I agree. I think that with boxing and grappling arts, conditioning is more important because an extended fight is the norm, not the exception. Although I don’t know much about WC, I know firsthand about fighting; in my experience, adrenaline replaces endurance and skill and intelligence are of primary importance. Conditioning will not be an issue unless you let it become one since you’ll both be breathing heavy after a few moments in an unexpected encounter.
Outside of a tournament or ring, you will rarely see a fight between two people of high skill. Most times you may have one person that knows a little of something, and the opponent maybe a little more, but either way, once the clash begins, it still looks like a scuffle on a playground unless it is finished by the person of a higher skill quickly.
I wish I trained with you, Van. We don’t do any cardio in class, so I have to do it on my own.
Originally posted by Paniero We don’t do any cardio in class, so I have to do it on my own.
Why waste time doing cardio in class?? You can do cardio on your own. In class you have others to train with, to work on skill development. you need two people to chi sao or spar with, you can run or skip rope or whatever on your own. Get up an hour earlier and hit the road.
Nico and another si hing frank are about my size and muscularture give or take a little in height and weight, but are in the best shape and are the most skilled there obviously.
Hey, is that little Frank? LOL, if so hes probably past me up-me and a couple of the guys (shane valero,rob f,dr wayne) were the ones who trained Frank and a lot of the other of Parkers students.
Van is right on imo on the conditioning angle. I also would say that one who maintains that sort of readiness also has a better life-my dad is 71 and often walks 5 miles a day and does 4-500 push ups a day. His health is superb, esp compared to others younger than him.
Maybe I’ll drop by one of these weeks-when do the guys train there? I’m assuming they are still over on broadway.
Originally posted by Paniero
We don’t do any cardio in class, so I have to do it on my own.
Why waste time doing cardio in class?? You can do cardio on your own. In class you have others to train with, to work on skill development. you need two people to chi sao or spar with, you can run or skip rope or whatever on your own. Get up an hour earlier and hit the road.
Ahhhh Matrix, the best prep exercise is the exercise itself. By that statement if one wants to attain a higher level of conditioning fighting with wing chun against a resisting opponent, then one needs to spar against resisting opponents consistantly to get the best results.
Jumping rope and running are great for an overall conditioning, but will not yield the same results as above. You body adapts based on familiarity and muscle memory/repition of a said movement. If you jump rope all the time, you’ll get better at jumping rope, but not necessarily hitting someone full out for 10 minutes.
**Paniero - perhaps there are other people there who are of the same mindset as some of us on here and would be willing to go some rounds with you? All you have to do is ask around. Look for the guy there that’s in good shape (if there is one) and see if he will go some rounds with you, with light gloves on of course and some pulling of the power punches. The guy on here you might want to talk to is Ultimate, he is relatively close to you and would be more then willing to help you out…just tell him I sent ya!
