Fitness vs. Training

[FitOrDie]

I pose a question: would you prefer to be 80% fit and 20% skilled, or 20% fit and 80% skilled. Or whatever, the numbers don't really matter.

Naturally, we should aim for 100% of both, but the question is which is more important by itself. After all, if you are a fat couch potato with all the knowledge in the world on how to defend yourself, you may not be able to. But, no matter how fit you are, if someone gets the drop on you, you'd better know how to handle yourself.

This ought to provoke an interesting discussion, I think.

[bushido_man96]

Fitness is very important, no matter who you are and what you do. Like you say, being at 100% of both would be preferable, but if I had to choose one if I had neither, I would probably want to start with the fitness.

[joesteph]

Barring having the ideal, I'd say 70% fitness, 30% skills.

Not only would I enjoy MA, I'd enjoy quality of life, in that fitness is related to health, and your health can mean everything.

[bushido_man96]

Good point, Joe. There is a lot to be said about improving quality of life, and overall health and well-being are the two keys.

[DWx]

For me it depends what type of senario we are talking about. Altercation-wise I would prefer the fitness as it would enable you to hit and keep on hitting before having your break to run away. In general though I'm gonna go the opposite way; I would prefer skill over fitness (in an ideal world I'd have both ). Fitness is something I could work on fairly easily on my own, skill not so much. I think great skill is a by-product of great teaching and learning which isn't so easy to come by and I just value that more.

[tallgeese]

That's a real interesting qustion you pose. And yes, the best case is adaquate amounts of both.

My first thought was skill, however, on examination, I'm going with fitness. Simply because all the skill in the world won't give you the ability to actually perform a movement under stress without the capability to physically perform the action.

So, a reluctant fitness vote.

I think it will matter most at the extreme end of the fitness spectrum. An average in shape guy will function fine with skill alone in all likelyhood agaist alot of threats. It's the heavily obease and unfit individuals that will suffer the most on the fitness front. As with all things, the extremes are easiest to identify and define.

That being said, I do get tired of people equating fitness with the ability to fight. This is a pet peeve of mine. Being in shpae dosn't mean that you're automatically going to destroy someone in a conflict.

[ShoriKid]

To become compitent you need time to train. Over that time you take take either case and balance the equation. Bringing up the fittness, or the skill so that you have the best of both worlds. If your supremely skilled and don't have any physical capasity, you can't realy use the skills you have, not in a full range of cases. If your supremely fit and don't have the skill, you've got plenty of ability, but not to apply it to, and you'll have a limited range of capability.

Our instructor's sensei said this as he left an all day work out with us. That anyone can be great for 30 seconds. But, if you don't have any gas in the tank, all your skills go away very shortly after that.

[KarateEd]

Given the 80/20 split I would have to go with 80% fit & 20% skilled. However, I would think that the training required to be highly skilled (like 80%) would result in more than 20% fitness. Outside of the 80/20 constraint, I would prefer to be highly skilled because I think, that in the pursuit of that skill level, I will increase my fitness level also.

[FitOrDie]

You know, thinking about my own question in another way, I have come to agree with the people answering. It came when I realized (by someone else telling me and me agreeing) that the foundation of everything is nutrition. If you eat like crap, you will be crap. On top of that, I realize, is fitness. You need the nutrition to be fit first. And THEN, and ONLY THEN, can you excel at your sport. In this case, your "sport" is martial arts, however sporting it may or may not be.

So, my conclustion is that fitness must come before martial arts skill, because without fitness, it doesn't matter at all.

Unless, I guess, you have a gun.

[bushido_man96]

I'm not so sure nutrition has to come first, though; you can start working towards fitness, nutrition, and self-defense skill at the same time.