[QUOTE=KPM;816055]Recent comments about conditioning on another thread got me to thinking. Where should our emphasis be in our training? As a typical westerner your well-being is far more threatened by lifestyle issues that can lead to heart disease, stroke and diabetes than you are at threat from physical attack on the streets. Therefore training for health improvement should take priority over training to fight. That is, of course, unless you plan on entering competitions. But even then, conditioning is very important.
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I agree with you that our health should be our first priority – for me, that is a given.
It is really ironic that many people so concerned with “self-defense”, so that they practice a martial art, even a fantasy-based one, for years and perhaps decades, making that sort of investment of time and energy, for the remote possibility that they will ever need to defend themselves, yet many don’t do those things (diet, exercise, life style, etc.) that will actually prolong their life and increase the quality of their life.
Most of us do WCK as a hobby. Its something we do in our spare time because we enjoy it. But if we aren’t training with health-improvement in mind, we are doing ourselves a disservice.
I disagree. I do think that all sensible, rational people take their health seriously and do those things they need to do to keep themselves healthy. And an athletic activity will provide some overall fitness which will contribute to your health. But I think that we should see that as a side benefit, not as its main purpose. If you want to exercise for health, MA is not the best choice. In my view, people do athletic activities because they enjoy them. And some of them, have negative health consequences. We need to just be aware of those going in and weigh the cost/benefit for ourselvses.
I can remember seeing a photo of the sign outside of Jim Fung’s WCK school in Australia. It said…“fitness with a purpose.” It think that is a good way of looking at it. You can use your WCK in two ways to improve your health. You can use it as motivation to do conditioning exercises because you know they will improve your performance. Or you can make your WCK itself your conditioning routine. But this will take some work. If WCK is going to be your primary conditioning, then you may have to really “ramp” up what you are doing. You need to make sure you are including all aspects of “fitness” in your training…strength, flexibility, and aerobic conditioning. If you find you don’t have time for this in your training, then maybe you need to eliminate some of the more “traditional” things you are doing.
Another aspect of putting “health first” is to avoid things that are going to cause chronic injury and produce problems for you down the road. This includes improper hand conditioning that can lead to arthritic changes, as well as movements and exercises that put stress on already painful joints. Of prime importance here is using good biomechanics. If you include sparring (and you should), you should do it with the proper protective gear and with an partner that isn’t going to do permanent damage to you.
I don’t think any contact sport or athletic activity is a very good choice if your goal is “health first.” If you practice a contact sport or athletic activity for any length of time, you will be injured, you may develop chronic injuries. That is, unfortunately, the price we pay to develop good skills at contact sports and athletic activities. Not that I’m saying we shouldn’t try to minimize those and take precautions, just that those are not the sort of activities people should choose if health is their top concern.
Since few of us are ever going to have to be in “real” fights, but all of us are threatened by the typical “western lifestyle”, our martial arts training should be a by-product of our fitness training…not the other way around.
I agree with you that there is a hypocricy to put all kinds of effort and time into preparing to “defend yourself” (which for most people will likely never happen) and not do the same thing - put in the time and effort - into just taking care of our general health. But, you can’t make a martial art primarily focused on health because the movements, training, etc. that is necessary to develop good fighting skills is notinherently healthy. And if you remove those things to make it healthy, you will lose the functionality of the martial art. In that case, you will have an exerciseprogram that was based-on a martial art. To make that even simpler to understand, consider if you were to design two different programs, one to develop good fighting skills and another to best promote health. There wouldn’t be much overlap between the two.
I’m as guilty as anybody as neglecting conditioning and a “health first” approach. But I’m working on changing that. I encourage others to do the same. 
From my perspective, people should go into any contact sport or atheltic activity, including martial arts, with the desire to actually do that activity and a realistic understanding of the costs/benefits of doing that training and activity. If you take up rugby, it should be to actually play rugby. And you should know what that will entail in terms of the demands on your body/health. The same with MAs. A person should take it up because they want to fight (box, wrestle, grapple), becasue they enjoy fighitng (boxing, wrestling, grappling) and should know the price they will pay to do that. Many peope won’t want to pay that price. Just as many people don’t want to climb mountains, play rugby, ride bulls, race cars, etc. People don’t do those things because they put their health first. They do them because they enjoy them, enjoy the challenges, the competition, etc. The know going in they are not the most healthy of activities.