Physical Strength & Technical Skill: Would Acquiring Both Equally Be More Beneficial?

We all know that good techniques is needed. Having physical strength can only help depending on what you are trying to execute. It doesn't take physical strength to parry or to block, or redirect a strike. It doesn't take strength to move out of they way. However, strength will play a part in many other things when striking or kicking or breaking. Some of this strength will come with technique. You don't have to be the strongest guy if you use superior technique.

But if you have superior technique with strength that give you a greater advantage in my opinion.

Yes I agree with pugspaw the old master were smaller and still managed to successfully defend themselves against larger and stronger people. They did this with wisdom. But the old master trained the mind as well as the body. Now that is pure wisdom.

Today many just want to train the body, but have little or no mind.

Ideally your system of training should give you both. Of course you can't look like a body builder with martial arts training alone but that was never the goal. Too many people equate the body of an adonis with skill or physical ability which is not true. However it sure can't hurt to be strong as long as you don't have bulky or beach muscles. Your training should give you both but to what extent obviously varies with how much one practices and the "goal" of ones efforts. I think most people today do not have enough time to invest in traditional training methods that make you a well rounded fighter and a physically fit/strong individual. If I had to pick one it would be technical skill but only because strength tends to fade with age. I don't know if it would be possible to acquire both equally but that sounds very good to me...

I have to agree with clowns here...

Training - correct training - means that you develop proper technique, as well as building up the relevant muscle groups in a correct way. IMO, "proper textbook technique and form" would then become the perfect vehicle to deliver this muscle-driven strength. And plus points in the strength department would make a strike more powerful.

On the other hand, pure strength training, done simply to add more muscle mass and raw strength without consideration as to how they will be used, can become a hindrance.

So, acquiring both physical strength and technical skill is, again IMO, something that actually go hand in hand.

On the issue of "the emphasis of martial arts is skill since Asians are small", well, to be honest, this is a major pet peeve for many instructors I've met or heard about here. True, Asians have relatively smaller postures, and martial arts are developed in a way to allow skill to overcome physical advantages. But the possibility of fighting larger opponents isn't exactly the primary concern of any Asian martial art.

Strength is exactly what the martial arts were designed to defeat. The Asians being smaller weaker people designed the martial arts to use the weaknesses of the body, leverage, timing, ...etc., to beat larger stronger possibly armed attackers. The hardest people to teach the martial arts to are those that think that they are about being strong. The hardest thing to teach is usually to get people to relax and use technique instead of strength. That is also why, the old masters can easily defeat a younger stronger person. If you ever see one of the old masters in their 60's -80's easily knock out some stronger younger guy, you will see that strength and the mindset of using strength is contrary to proper martial arts.

This idea of getting or being stronger is one of the biggest problems with peoples perception of the martial arts. if strength was very important, then we should all just get rid of GI's, and any formality. We should just go to the gym and lift weights, roll around on the floor wrestling each other. I am 56 and have both back and neck problems. I have about 90% of the strength I had at 40. but I often take control of bigger stronger students and tie them in knots or knock them out. It is not that I'm especially good. It is because i have spend countless hours to perfect my technique, while getting rid of unnecessary movement. That plus the application of techniques that are perfected to use finesse rather than strength. Anyone that is willing to do what i have done and keep doing it for several decades can duplicate what i do and perhaps better if they don't have the back and neck problems I have.

By the way, Thanks for asking this question. There are numerous people that need to hear and consider this. The mma mentality here often give people the wrong idea, that size and strength are where its at. It is not. Otherwise all the small people would be simply out of luck.

...

I do have one disagreement with Pugpaws answers. Yes the Asa ins were small, but when they were really using their martial arts they weren't going up against non-asians or people like the vikings (Lesnar types). I am not saying martial arts stop working, I am saying that I don't think the idea behind the technique was ever to beat a 300lbs man. People were smaller back then and even smaller in Asia. Things like the beasts you see now-a-days didn't exist there. Leverage can only help so much, and that is a fact of physics. Like I said I do believe technique > than size and muscle.

Now about the original question. What type of strength. There is strength that can and will make you faster and there is strength that will slow you down.

Muscles control our body movements. You take one of the muscles out that helps aid throwing a right hand then that strike becomes less powerful. If you condition that muscle correctly it will gain strength and in turn build up speed and power. Think of it this way, when you practice one certain sword move (correctly) over and over and over to the point of doing it hundreds of times in a single setting, your muscles will become fatigued and those that are newer will get sore because their muscles are getting stronger. Same with practicing a single technique and Kata.

If you condition your muscles CORRECTLY you will gain both speed and power. That is how the human body works.

summary in case I got to redundant up there. Muscles make us move. Practicing the right things makes us faster and more powerful. Applying that correct way to train to the muscle for punches and kicks (etc) faster and more powerful. that is body mechanics.

All that said, if you don't know how to train for the right type of strength you aren't going to be doing any good at all

OBVIOUSLY more strength is going to make you punch harder. If you say it won't then you are living in a dream world of body building and 150 year old martial arts masters. There is no intelligent veiw point that says that strength won't help. Someone who says this knows nothing about building true strength and has a flawed veiw of martial arts. Legs curls and funtional movment patterns are two different things. Strength does not equal muscle mass. Are you going to tell me that stronger hips don't equal a stronger punch? A stonger stomach is not going to protect your organs better?

This is almost a Shaolin vs. Wudang question when I think of it in terms of kung fu styles. I believe equal amounts of both is beneficial, yet more so for general health and lifestyle purposes rather than self defense/martial arts.

It's strange when I think about it since my style is one of few buddhist/taoist hybrids in existance. On one hand I train to increase strength like the Shaolin styles, and on the other hand I train internal (Wudang Taoist) methods that don't rely on strength but focus on sensitivity and technique. The challenge is finding a balace between the two where the external training doesn't interfere wtih the internal mechanics.

I guess my answer is a balance of both. It is still very useful to be able to lift 100lbs several times over my head and place it on or take it off a shelf. My wife finds all kinds of uses for strength that have nothing to do with martial arts.

More strength coupled with perfect technique will result in a more powerful strike. The only way I see muscle being a hindrance is if one is so bulky that it interferes with the application of proper form and technique. This is all based on the idea that we are not sacrificing technical skill for physical power.

In theory if the technique was executed with text book form by two seperate individuals... the stronger person would have the stronger technique.

If both persons had the same technique, and the same speed of technique, the stronger of the two persons would have the advantage.

the formula of strength and speed equal power. Muscle becomes a problem when the student tries to push the target with the strike instead of allowing the speed to generate and form of the technique to benefit from the extra strength the person possess.

People have the misconception that a bigger and more muscular person is a slower person,and a smaller person is weaker and faster, but proper training and conditioning helps this not be the case. The only hinderance I can possibly see where more muscle is a problem is the amount of energy it takes to move the mass and extra weight from the muscle which would use up more energy in the long run.

Although this isn't really what you were looking for, I think a lot of people are forgetting being big and muscular can be a deterrent as well as providing more power. I imagine you're less likely to be attacked if you're huge than if you're small and frail looking. Who picks a fight with someone they don't think they can beat? So, yeah, IMO I think adding muscle as well developing technique would be the better choice.