Discussing a Myth: On Fighting

[Gerry Seymour]

Actual motor skills take a while to fade. Conditioning goes first, then reflexes. If you've trained long enough so that you can throw a good clean technical punch or kick, then that skill will last quite a long time even if you don't keep up your practice. Your timing will lose its precision, your reflexes will get slow, and you'll be sucking wind the first time you come back to a hard training session, but the fundamental movement skills don't disappear that quickly.

As far as a professional athlete taking time off and coming back "at the top of his game", you have to remember that elite professional athletes are typically pushing the limits of human capacity and their success or failure is determined by tiny percentages in their performance. An athlete operating at 50% of potential is a hobbyist. An athlete operating at 80% of potential is a high-level amateur. An athlete operating at 95% of potential may be a professional. An athlete operating at 99% of potential is an elite professional. An athlete operating at 99.9% of potential is likely a champion. Maintaining that last few percentage points or fractions of a percentage point does require constant practice and losing a couple of percentage points can mean the difference between a loss and a win even if the athlete retains 95+% of his skill.

Add to that the fact that most elite athletes take time off because of an issue, be it health-related (injury) or mental (something else in life going wrong). That time off may only be part of the problem with their come-back - the cause of the time off may be at least as large a part of the problem.

 

[Sami Ibrahim]

In looking back at my post I may have come off like I am bashing Kenpo practitioners or the art in general. That was not my intention, I am a Kenpo practitioner and I have met many who don't hold silly illusions about the nature of violence because they have had great instruction and real world experience to reference. These excellent Kenpo practitioners are an inspiration. As for losing ability, I absolutely agree, it can happen from injuries in life, one minute your a flexible, agile, lightening quick, well-oiled machine, a few injuries later you can barely walk with a cane, if that should happen to you, don't lose heart, consider it a challenge, a new body to reforge and master within the confines of its limitations. (I am loving the the exploration of the Cane)

 

[Grandmaster Yue men quan]

Would the time it takes to train someone to fight an unskilled and untrained opponent be relatively quick time frame, in comparison to teaching them to fight a highly skilled opponent?

Nope it would take the same amount of time probably more to fight a,unskilled person without hurting them.