Do you work your weakness?

Yes, with one exception. I grew up being taught as most other martial artists are, that we should always train some that we can do every technique equally well on left and right side. While that would be ideal, I believe it to be impractical and unnecessary. I do not care if I do some things better on one side only. There are just to many different ways to deal with an attack to worry about being able to do every thing well on both sides. Instead I simply respond to an attack with what ever my body does. I Do not have to think about it or worry about it. so far that has worked for me.

Caution: I am not recommending my way to those that are not highly skilled. Until you are you need everything you can obtain to keep yourself safe. but for me at the point I'm at, it works just fine.

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Most definitely and you can't get better at something by avoiding it and/or not working on it which is what some fighters try and do. A good coach though will not allow or accept this in a fighter that he trains and works with and think about it for a second. If you could take your weaknesses and work on them and develop them so that they were now your strengths then how much better would you be than you are now?

The other thing about your question and what you are asking is of course knowing what those weaknesses are and this is where a good coach can be critical and why most fighters should not just train themselves. A good coach will see or recognize things that his fighter might not and in doing that modify his fighter's training and approach to shore up those weaknesses.

The other thing about your question that I learned about early on as an athlete and later sometimes would use in fighting was that sometimes you don't beat or dominate another by just relying on your strengths. Sometimes those will not be enough and instead you also have to capitalize on your opponent's weaknesses and I rely on that as much as or more now since I am older and not the athlete that I was when I was younger.

Yes, I had to work at everything in regard to my health because I was a very sickly child. In fact, I almost died at age 4 from pneumonia. Over the years, I've also suffered some pretty bad injuries to my knees, broken a bone in my right hand and compression damage to my spine in the cortical vertebrae and lower back. Each time, I got ding'ed I had to start all over because the recovery period were very long and in some cases I could not use my dominant side so I worked on the other.

Because of this I developed this weird ambidextrous ability to write in mirror image with my left hand because I somehow learned to use the left side but in a reverse/mirrored way from doing forms and techniques with the other hand and leg.

Yes, I work on my weaknesses all the time. I am not a natural at the martial arts so, I am constantly working on kata bunkai and new techniques. I can take a whole class just to work on one technique to get it to where it's effective and practical. I have to learn by doing (and having it done on me) so, just watching some one do a technique is not very practical for me. That is part of the reason I love karate is because it is such a challenge and very rewarding when I finally "get it".

That's the entire basis of my day to day training. I'm always trying to assess where my weak areas are and do what I can to either fix it or help it. I'm always expressing the need to work weak areas to students in our school. Some people brush it off, make excuses, or totally ignore me, but eventually these are the students who end up falling behind. Go figure.

Yes. I was born with a disease of the blood. Whenever I exert myself for a long amount of time, I get completely drained of energy. I have almost literally passed out in class. It has become a great obstacle for me, and is part of the reason I am (temporarily) not training at this time.

But no amount of so called sickness, stamina issues, or whatever else, is going to stop me from doing what I need to do in life. I find walking and jogging increases my endurance, which is something I'm working on.

My training is based mostly on making my strategies and tactics work. So if I was horrible at ground fighting (and good at striking) then I wouldn't work at ground fighting at first, but work on defense and counter to throws and takedowns instead. After that I would learn the sweeps and standing back up from the ground, and wouldn't focus on ground submissions at all. This way I can focus on and play the fight out in my strong points.

Btw that was a theorical weakness and strong points since obviously it's not as simple as that, but the point is that I would focus on making my strong points work without me falling into my weakness. Not working on my weakness to become as strong as my strong points.

All the time. It's a common theme both in modern MMA and in classic warrior arts. In his autobiography, Chuck Norris uses the metaphor or a wheel- each skill you have is a spoke on that wheel, and you're trying to get them all really good so it can actually be a round device. The more you train an area, the longer that spoke gets.

Yes, that's the area that needs to most work.

I've mentioned on here before how my first instructor forced us not to use our favorite techniques. For me a a couple of others he only allowed us to use specific techniques. The ones he gave me were ones I wasn't good at and would never use. It forced me to get better at those. I learned that all of the techniques work if you learn to work them.

Edit:

Re what Pugpaw is response"

I met some martial arts masters at a seminar. They said that the Japanese do not really try to make one side equal with the other by training on both sides. They gave some explanation of why that I don't recall. But the gist of what they were teaching was that you only really need to work your strong side. I didn't try to remember that as I believe you should train both side. I didn't question them or say they are wrong. But it is my personal belief that I should be able to do any technique on either side. I've learned to do this in judo, shorin ryu, jujitsu, and aikido. I taught this to my basketball players too. I even had one guy on one of my teams that would shoot his free throws with either hand. I didn't force him to learn that, but you never know it could come in handy if you hurt one of your arms. But for every finishing move near the basket they had to work left and right sides also their ball handling.

Yes, absolutely. It is the only reason I keep training. Getting older certainly does not help and requires constant adjustment. When strength fails you learning how to cheat too has to be trained.