I love you..finally, a person who agrees whith me. I love talking about this stuff too. I agree with you completley because you are saying that a person does not directley train their Ki but indirectley, this is what I think also. Everybody else keeps denying that theres no way a person can develop his Ki through high intensity training(pushups, running), but that makes no sence to me. You are right when you say that I get some of my info from dbz, but not all.
I am 17, but I have been training for months now, physically and mentally and I know from experience that physical training does develop Ki and it is not a slow process, it is only a slow process if you limit your training. The trick is to not slack off, you have to train continuously until you hit your limit everytime. If you take a couple of days of to kick back and watch tv or w/e you do, your energy(Life force, Ki) is slowly fading and this is why people quit physical training because they see no results from training a few hours every now and then. You have to activate your mind and make it agree with you, train with ambition, dont limit yourself to 1 type of excercise, and if you realize that you are forcing yourself to train, then that means your mind does not agree with you(this is bad). Keep reminding yourself why you are training, and train because you want to not because you are programmed to.
I beleive meditation is very important for a Martial artist to improve concentration and awareness but it is not a requirement. A Martial artis can meditate all day and another Martial artist can physically train all day day, but in the end, the difference between their strength will depend on who put more heart into their training. Just like you see in the anime Dragonballz, Piccollo trains his mind most of the time while Goku, Vegeta and their freinds train physically to their limits. At the beggining of the show Piccollo and Goku are almost evenly strong because their ambitions were evenley matched, even though Piccollo was training to beat Goku one day and take over the world, while Goku was training to Protect earth. Goku trains his mind too, but not nearly as much as Piccollo.
I know you guys will look down on me now that you know im 17, and watch anime, but thats fine, because I speak from my heart. Peace.
Haha, Im 22 and I still watch anime. Whos the bigger dork? Dont worry, we wont look down on you. Youre a cool guy in my book.
Its good to see that you put all of your heart into your training, which is the most important thing, IMHO. One should be open to new ways of thinking to truly grow in ones training. The problem with getting your knowledge from cartoons is there is a lot of misinformation that comes from the imagination of the writers. They put things in there that sound cool, but have little basis in reality.
Now, about using physical training to develop ki- what I meant was, if all you did was physical workouts, running, pushups, etc; you would be developing endurance, muscular strength, and a healthy body. All of these things would certainly help (to an extent) ki development. By having a stronger heart, you would have more bloodflow to carry oxygen to the body, and you may be aware that air or oxygen is crucial for Chi flow and/or power, so in that sense, yes doing these types of workouts would help in a way.
What I did NOT mean is that one could make his/her ki stronger and stronger simply by doing physcial workouts. Im sorry but I just do not believe this is the case. In fact, I have been taught that if you do too many external workouts like pushups, weightlifting and the like, without proper stretching and relaxation you can cause tenseness and stiffness in the muscles, which would cut off the flow of chi. My sifu explains it like this: in order for Chi to flow powerfully, every fiber of every muscle must be relaxed completely. Say you have a water hose- If you take it and squeeze it as hard as you can, the water will become stuck and pressurized in the hose. Only by relaxing your grip will it flow as it should. Your muscles are the exact same way - when you tense them, you are essentially trapping chi between the muscle fibers, causing the sensation of strength. But for true ki power, your entire body must be completely relaxed until the moment of impact, where you trap all of that chi in an explosive force.
Especially in a self defense encounter, if you are training external (using muscle strength) you will most definetly react external, and even if you train internal (relaxed and focused) it is very difficult to respond correctly unless you are at a certain level...which like i said takes years of focused and diligent training.
I wish I had more time to go in depth, but I have to go to class. Keep training hard saiyan prince, your path will become illuminated for you. Dont limit yourself to boundaries, but keep an open mind to what others have to say.
God bless
Keith