The distaste for strength in martial arts

[SgtBarnes]

There are challenge fights like that too.

One day I just started my class. A guy walked in. He bowed to me, and said, "May I have a sparring with you?" I had my 50 students all watched at me. My SC teacher also was with me too. There was no way that I could turn down that challenge. The match lasted for only 5 seconds. I jumped in, took him down, I then started my class. Back in, a take down, or knock down is the end of a fight (no ground game during those years).

As far as I remember, I have not turned down any challenge fights in my life. When I was young, I wanted to accumulate as much fighting experience as I could.

I had also challenged other people too. The challenge fight is always a 2 ways street.

Ah...but have ever had a real fight outside the comfort of your Dojo grasshopper?

 

[SgtBarnes]

Taken from a a university, Sports Physiology textbook:

‘The number of myosin motors is proportional to muscle fiber length. The number of myosin filaments is proportional to the cross-sectional area of the muscle. Thus, muscle force is proportional to muscle volume, and therefore to muscle mass.’

The bigger the muscle, the more force it can produce. A large-armed person will be able to expert more force than a ‘wiry-armed‘ person. Since Force = mass x acceleration, acceleration = Force/mass. Thus a bigger muscled person will be able to accelerate a fist or foot more quickly than a smaller-muscled person.

Whether being able to exert more force will make you a more affective fighter depends on multiple other factors, but all things being equal….well, I’ll allow you to make your own conclusions. Does being able to exert more force make you a better martial artist? That is a debate that probably has no clear conclusion, but I’d suggest it can’t hurt if it’s not too extreme and compromises flexibility.

Definitely jobo. Show us this amazing hard core physique bro. Theory and copy and paste from books is all well and good but the real proof we haven't seen yet.

 

[Mider]

The praying mantis master Brendan Lai once accepted a challenge. The fighting rule was simple. Brendan was going to throw only 1 punch. If his opponent could block it, his opponent won, otherwise Brendan won.

My senior brother David C. K. Lin once accepted a challenge. The fighting rule was also simple. David would attack 3 times. If in any one of David's 3 attack, his opponent could remain standing, his opponent won, otherwise, David won.

Most of the challenge fights won't cause serious injury, death, or law sue. It's just a chance to test your MA skill against a stranger.

So what?

 

[Gerry Seymour]

The thing is even strength sports are technique driven. You can't be a power lifter on strength alone.

So the dichotomy is that to harness strength the most effectively you have to not use it. Instead relying on good form.

Which is exactly the same in MA - you get the most out of your strength if you learn to not use it.

 

[Gerry Seymour]

????????????????

How about both?

You learn to not use the strength, then learn to add it in. If you depend on the strength from the start, you cover up areas where better technique helps. So, you put the strength aside, so to speak, until you have reasonable technique, then you get strength + technique.

 

[SgtBarnes]

Which is exactly the same in MA - you get the most out of your strength if you learn to not use it.

i think Oyama would disagree with you !

 

[Gerry Seymour]

Is that how everyone in Poland spells "strength"?

It's certainly how my fingers always want to type it. Every. Danged. Time.

 

[SgtBarnes]

Master Oyama was powerful & weight trained. He killed a Bull with only technique ? no .. watch a video of it he wrestled with it. now if that is not power then what is.

 

[Gerry Seymour]

It's physics. More mass means slower to accelerate, slower to decelerate, slower to shift weight, and slower to get off the ground.

Heavyweights are much slower than lightweights.

Why is it a false assumption? I didn't say big means slow. Just slower.

More mass means slower to accellerate under the same amount of force. I guarantee you an elite heavyweight boxer who outweighs me by 60+ lbs. is going to be faster on his feet and have much faster hands than me. Because he's using that heavy muscle to move that heavy muscle.

 

[SgtBarnes]

 

[Gerry Seymour]

Well, I think we established muscle mass doesn't mean it's fast muscle mass.

Right?

I think in the interest of brevity, your statement just didn't carry your full meaning.

 

[Gerry Seymour]

I'm not sure we've established this in a clear cut way. For a given individual the stronger they are the faster they will be, at the same skill level. Now, the relationship between muscle mass and strength is a bit complicated, but in general, the more muscle a person has the stronger they are. One exception to this is when the individual is over training or injured and those muscles aren't healthy or something of that sort. There may be other exceptions but I can't think of any right now.

There are individuals who are extreme genetic outliers that may get slower once they achieve extremely large muscles, but that isn't me and it probably isn't you or anyone else reading this either. There are also extremely specialized sports, like running marathons, where weight of any kind is detrimental and strength is of little to no benefit (for the sport, it's still of great benefit for daily life).

Notice I'm only comparing individuals to themselves. There may very well be people who, due to variations in muscle fiber type distribution and other genetic factors, are stronger at a smaller size than other, more muscular people. These people would be stronger still if they carried more muscle.

I don't know that it's true that the stronger a person is, the faster they are. If they are developing strenght in slow muscle, I think that muscle won't make them faster. How muscle is trained likely has more impact on speed than how generically strong the person is. For instance, I'd be curious to see if powerlifting squat champions as a group are very fast, at all, in their footwork.

 

[Gerry Seymour]

I'm terrible at math, but if mass gets bigger in that equation, doesn't that make the number on the right smaller, and acceleration on the left goes down, not up? You're dividing by mass..

So if more muscle = more force, but more mass = lower acceleration....doesn't that there's some point where mass would be too big? Is there a fine line with respect to fast mobility? That's all I'm asking.

It's possible, but certainly not inevitable. If the force scales at the same rate the mass scales, you'd have a net change of 0. If the mass scales faster, change is negative. If force scales faster, change is positive.

 

[Gerry Seymour]

Ah, it’s the mass being moved…the fist or the foot so it remains constant.

Well, if you're doing it right, you're never striking with just an arm or leg (and certainly never just a hand or foot). The mass of much of the body is shifted, and is part of the equation. Of course, the equation would be horribly complicated, since we have different parts moving in different directions at different speeds for different periods. But the concept is understandable.

 

[Gerry Seymour]

i think Oyama would disagree with you !

I doubt it. He was - from what I've seen - an advocate for knowing how to add strength to technique, not for learning to substitute strength in place of technique.

 

[SgtBarnes]

I doubt it. He was - from what I've seen - an advocate for knowing how to add strength to technique, not for learning to substitute strength in place of technique.

i have to disagree Gerry. His art is very fitness/Strength orientated. Oyama was known to weight train. do you think wrestling with a bull (although not a big one) is just technique?

 

[Xue Sheng]

i have to disagree Gerry. His art is very fitness/Strength orientated. Oyama was known to weight train. do you think wrestling with a bull (although not a big one) is just technique?

He was also big on cold weather training wearing only Gi pants, and sitting under waterfalls meditating too....

 

[Steve]

That poor bull just wanted to pull a plow and make baby cows.

 

[SgtBarnes]

That poor bull just wanted to pull a plow and make baby cows.

i hope they at least ate it

 

[SgtBarnes]

He was also big on cold weather training wearing only Gi pants, and sitting under waterfalls meditating too....

yeah he was a real mans man.