Originally Posted by
Erik Y
I watched a top karate-ka teach a master class at a local dojo yesterday, and it really hammered in just how important strength is for fighting. Forget about your thoughts about karate for a second, I think this makes sense independent of that.
Because of the nature of the karate gi, you could plainly see the relative sizes of people’s builds. The master was trying to show not katas but how to get inside quickly, how to build power for an effective and controlled kick, how to rotate effectively to preserve momentum and deliver a fast and powerful strike, etc. this involved a lot of squatting down, transferring force through the back, etc. - things we all do regularly as part of barbell training.
You could tell by watching that there was a pretty strong correlation between people’s muscle mass and their ability to use the techniques, independent of their understanding. For people who were undernourished, it didn’t matter what their belt rank was - they couldn’t position their bodies in space well enough to build power, maintain balance, or execute the strikes and kicks effectively. They couldn’t jump forward and get inside and they couldn’t bounce into a strike fast enough to use the energy from the previous movement. There was one guy who could do all of this fairly effectively, and when I asked about him it came out that he was a graduate of the Chinese athletic program - in other words, a natural athlete identified in elementary school.
I imagine this translates to grappling just as well. It won’t matter what techniques you know and how many times you can string them together before you get winded if you lack the necessary strength to execute them properly.