Was our body meant for combat?

[Trailer_Ape]

Years ago, I had a Muay Thai teacher correct a knee I was delivering. The way he had me do it felt unnatural. He said it should. He said if something feels natural (to a noob), you're probably doing it wrong. He said that what we do is not natural.

This got my wheels turning. Like I'm sure many of you are, I'm into body conditioning. Knuckles, fingertips, etc. We go out of our way to transform our bodies into tools for a task that I have to think we were never meant for.

I look at other species and several of them have built in tools that are intended to inflict damage. We seem to take tools that were NOT and fit them to that role.

This actually causes a weird perspective on sport fighting. We compete to see who is better at doing something they were not designed for?!?!

Thoughts?

[OneKickWonder]

We are very much built for combat. The human body has the potential to be very tough, and of course we're blessed with a good brain to manage it all too.

I've yet to come across any technique or principle of martial arts that isn't simply a refinement of a natural instinctive action. As an example, something as basic as a punch. We train our punches for years and years. But we don't radically change them from what we'd do instinctively without training. The untrained punch is still basically a fist that we throw at our enemy.

But here's the twist. You're right. We finely tune our bodies to become more than we were before. But that's only lying necessary because modern luxuries and sedentary jobs and a society that tells us to grow up and behave have all worked against us to make us embarrassingly weak and feeble. The most serious martial artist might train for 15 hours a week to rectify that. Our ancestors would work extremely hard for 15 hours a day. So I think it's not that we're not built for it, but more that we're not really adapted to it now, certainly in the west.

[sensei8]

I don't imagine for one second that God designed us for combat because we're quite fragile, even though our body can take some abuse, depending on the degree that the abuse is.

We have to wear PPE of all types to minimize any type of injury/trauma because our body isn't like petrified wood or some other invincible material.

Vital points are all over our body, and if one of these vita points are struck, that's the end of the game. Some vital points, like the groin, take very little to wish one didn't have a groin.

What injures the body can take, from looking at any outward injuries to the body, can be misleading, whereas someone might not think twice about it, "Oh, it's just a scratch/small bruise, I'll be fine", yet, what one sees on the outside just don't paint that exacting picture as far as what's happening to the body internally.

Look at some of the ending results of many of the MMA fights, and what a fighter's body looks like at the end of the fight. They look like they were ran over by a truck again and again...and again; they don't look so good. If they look that on the outside, imagine what is happening internally.

NFL players suffer concussions regularly, and that's not combat, that's just sport. Then there's the various injuries that are sustained at sports in general; broken bones, torn ligaments, contusions, and so on and so forth, and that's not combat either: Sports...fun things!!

Combat, is severe, and can be quite fatal!! Combat is meant for the Man of Steel; Superman, not us, with our fragile mortal coil.

Imho!!

[Trailer_Ape]

We are very much built for combat. The human body has the potential to be very tough, and of course we're blessed with a good brain to manage it all too.

I've yet to come across any technique or principle of martial arts that isn't simply a refinement of a natural instinctive action. As an example, something as basic as a punch. We train our punches for years and years. But we don't radically change them from what we'd do instinctively without training. The untrained punch is still basically a fist that we throw at our enemy.

But here's the twist. You're right. We finely tune our bodies to become more than we were before. But that's only lying necessary because modern luxuries and sedentary jobs and a society that tells us to grow up and behave have all worked against us to make us embarrassingly weak and feeble. The most serious martial artist might train for 15 hours a week to rectify that. Our ancestors would work extremely hard for 15 hours a day. So I think it's not that we're not built for it, but more that we're not really adapted to it now, certainly in the west.

I get what you're saying, still see it a little different though. I realize making a fist has been the common way of striking and still is BUT when you make a fist, you're curling a bunch of little tiny bones (capable of intricate action such as writing) into a mass. The hand isn't naturally suited for smashing into stuff. At least not the way the big Curry horns on a ram's head are.

This is my path, has been for as long as I can remember, will be forever BUT - I honestly think this is a path that leads us into an area we were not meant to venture.

The upside - it further proves human ability to adapt. We have no gills, we make scuba. We have no wings, we make planes. We have a pacifist body, we slowly beat it into a hardened version of its former self.

[OneKickWonder]

We are very much built for combat. The human body has the potential to be very tough, and of course we're blessed with a good brain to manage it all too.

I've yet to come across any technique or principle of martial arts that isn't simply a refinement of a natural instinctive action. As an example, something as basic as a punch. We train our punches for years and years. But we don't radically change them from what we'd do instinctively without training. The untrained punch is still basically a fist that we throw at our enemy.

But here's the twist. You're right. We finely tune our bodies to become more than we were before. But that's only lying necessary because modern luxuries and sedentary jobs and a society that tells us to grow up and behave have all worked against us to make us embarrassingly weak and feeble. The most serious martial artist might train for 15 hours a week to rectify that. Our ancestors would work extremely hard for 15 hours a day. So I think it's not that we're not built for it, but more that we're not really adapted to it now, certainly in the west.

I get what you're saying, still see it a little different though. I realize making a fist has been the common way of striking and still is BUT when you make a fist, you're curling a bunch of little tiny bones (capable of intricate action such as writing) into a mass. The hand isn't naturally suited for smashing into stuff. At least not the way the big Curry horns on a ram's head are.

This is my path, has been for as long as I can remember, will be forever BUT - I honestly think this is a path that leads us into an area we were not meant to venture.

The upside - it further proves human ability to adapt. We have no gills, we make scuba. We have no wings, we make planes. We have a pacifist body, we slowly beat it into a hardened version of its former self.

In any animal, combat is extremely dangerous, even for the apparent victor. Humans are no different. That's why we instinctively fear violent encounters. As most animals do.

We're as built for it as any other animal. If we hadn't been, we'd never have become the dominant species. What we're not built for is fighting regularly, as happens in martial arts, especially full contact martial arts. It's not that the fighting is unnatural, it's more that we're not meant to do it several times per week.

[JazzKicker]

The human body is very capable of adapting through conditioning. We're inherently capable of running short distances (like to escape a saber toothed tiger) and walking long distances (to migrate for better climate, etc.) But to run long distances, that you have to train for.

Combat is a bit different because we've made it a learned skill, and the primary means of learning has been mimicking and repetition. Conditioning occurs in the repetition. Too much repetition causes injury, though. They've even seen seen disfigured shoulders in the skeletons of medieval English longbowmen, from pulling 100+# war bows.

It's only in recent decades, with the advent of sports science, that training methods have advanced to maximize performance and minimize injury. Now it's a lot more possible to train in martial arts without injury, but there's no getting around the primary purpose is to do injury onto someone else!

[MatsuShinshii]

The human body is such that it can be conditioned to deal with any situation short of being shot or stabbed.

The idea that we are fragile is true in terms of most anything else in nature. You shoot a deer in the lungs and heart and it runs a 1/4 mile before succumbing to it's injuries. You shoot a human in the lungs and heart and they drop where they stand. Having said that we don't fight animals in combat, we fight other humans. Those same frailties are shared with our enemy. Are we designed for combat? Only God can answer that question but as long as there has been human beings there has been combat and violence.

The real question is why would you not train the body for combat? Whether designed or not the cold hard truth is there are those that would seek to do us harm.

Whether the human fist is designed to punch or write is semantics. If attacked you're not going to write to defend yourself. The fact that we can form a fist and condition it to the extent that we can do damage with it is all the proof I need that it's a natural weapon and not just for writing.

If we were not designed for combat why then do we have the weapons for combat? Yes we have to train to make them effective but this is true of any task. Practice makes perfect. We are not born with the ability to do whatever job we chose as a profession. We have to train to learn it. Why then would this be any different?

[sensei8]

Take a solid hit at your solar plexus, and see what happens.

With all of the conditioning that I've done over 5 decades for combat, and it's a lot, after all, I train in an Okinawan style, hit me solidly in my solar plexus, I'm not going to be standing much, if at all.

Just because I believe that I must prepare my body and mind for combat, and I do, that doesn't mean that my fragile body will survive any given attack.

Stuff happens and the most inconvenient times.

[RW]

I don't think our bodies were meant for fighting. We don't have any true weapons.

Some animals have fangs or teeth made for tearing, some have claws, or venom, or horns. We don't have anything.

Our feet were made for walking, our hands were made for grabbing, and our elbows and knees are fortunate "accidents" or how our bodies are designed (it's where 2 bones meet)

We're very weak and frail even compared to animals that weren't designed for fighting either. Look at a cow or or horse, for example, I don't think they'd truly get hurt from a body blow delivered by a champion heavyweight boxer, somebody who has tuned his punches for his entire life and makes a living out of it.

Our healing isn't particularly good either, I saw a National Geographic episode where a bunch of hyenas cornered an angry female lion. She managed to deliver a full force bite to one of the hyenas. The poor thing's face was mangled so bad, it hurt me just from even seeing it. The hyena spent days howling in pain and there were flies in its wound (sorry for the graphic image). Somehow the hyena recovered months later! We can't even recover from certain human strikes without medical attention.

Having said that, we can fight (other humans, that is) because we have smart brains and we've discovered that the knees and elbows are rather sturdy hard surfaces, that out feet can be thrown at other people and that if we close our hands they will show the knuckles...

[OneKickWonder]

Folks are comparing weak, domesticated western humans with easy lives to wild animals that live in a perpetual struggle to survive.

If that's what we're basing it on, then sure we're not built for combat. Just like a pet dog is nothing compared to a wolf, even though anatomically and genetically they are pretty much the same thing.