Fitness and Skill

 There is only so much time for training. We all have obligations and responsibilities that come first. 

As a martial artist, I’ve had to find way to fit my training into my life. 

As a Sensei, I try to give my students the same flexible mindset.

But even when we have time to train, there's another decision to make: what should I train in the time that I have?

In answer to that, I see two extremes:

Fitness Improvement

You can learn to punch and kick pretty quickly. From there, an entire world of fitness routines opens up. Drilling basic techniques will get you fit, especially when you add in work with striking pads, kicking shields, and heavy bags. Traditional karate also has many conditioning drills to toughen your body in order to absorb blows and deal out damage without hurting yourself.

Skill Development

You’ve seen the movies and read the stories. An ancient martial arts master whoops some young’uns by using his superior martial skill. A student must study diligently for years to unlock the deepest secrets of their style. The secret principles of Goju-ryu exist within the kata… so why are you wasting time hitting the heavy bag? Get cracking on your distance, your timing, your techniques, your balance...

Any karate dojo is going to have a mix of fitness improvement and skill development.

For example, in college I had the chance to train at an Isshin-ryu dojo (that’s a sister style to Goju-ryu) for a summer. The Sensei was a former competitive kick-boxer and his classes were like a boot camp. 30 minutes of calisthenics – pushups, sit-ups, squats, jumps, rolls, jumping rope – followed by 30 minutes of drilling basic techniques, solo or with partners. It was the fittest dojo I have ever trained in. The ratio there must’ve been 80% fitness focused… maybe even 90%. That is certainly a valid strategy, both for a business and for self-defense. That conditioning would’ve let any student run circles around any attacker, or outrun them altogether. Plus all that sweating together is good for camaraderie.

The dojo I studied at tended in the other direction. Fitness on your own time, we were there to work kata and technique.

 At Lantern I’m roughly aiming for 2/3^rd of the time working on skill development. You can do pushups on your own (and you should!) and we can preserve class time with Sensei and with training partners for working on those skills.

Now obviously this division isn’t as clear as I’ve made it out to be. Kata training will improve your technique, but it can also be physically demanding. The more physical drills, such as striking focus mitts, is still a time to refine your technique and skill. It’s rare that any activity is 100% at one extreme.

It is also worth mentioning that this split isn’t the same at every stage of training. In the beginning of training, a student really needs repetition. Repeatedly practicing the techniques or performing the kata so that the movement becomes natural takes times and effort. So I suspect most beginner students may feel like fitness is the focus after the tenth time punching up and down the dojo. But the skill work is still there!

I’m writing this to give you an idea of the strategy behind the training. We need to be fit enough to do the technique effectively and we need to be skilled enough to do the techniques effectively. Which means that quality training will develop both aspects – the fitness and the skill.