Martial Fitness = Martial Efficiency

The practice of martial arts is both a physical and mental pursuit. To excel you must be diligent, persistent and resilient. It is not an easy journey but many things that are worthwhile are not easily attained.

With that said you must train regularly and train hard but I always encourage students to not only practice their martial arts but to also do other physical training to help them accelerate their progress.

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This is a site that I was made aware of through a martial arts forum and it is a great resource and I have been passing this along to my students who ask, "What else can I do to help me train?"

Being able to use your martial arts effectively requires not only proficiency in your system but also a certain level of physicality. This physicality can be referred to as martial fitness.

In Wing Chun we talk about efficiency and let's look at the definition: the ability to do something or produce something without wasting materials, time, or energy. Key to this idea of efficiency is the fact that you must have "the ability to do something," with that said you develop this ability through your physical practice and training. Along with this, general physical training will improve your ability to perform your martial practices. These are the components of your "martial fitness."

Exploring this idea through the prism of the system of Wing Chun, having martial fitness means that you are proficient in your martial practice as well as relatively physically fit. This doesn't mean you have to be an athlete to train, in fact the basic training in Wing Chun will improve your fitness but to be martially fit you will need to augment just the martial arts training. The general fitness that you can gain just from your martial arts training can get you quite far but to push your martial training to another level you must augment your martial training with other physical training to elevate your overall physical fitness. 

With improved overall physical fitness your Kung Fu will improve, you will have better overall body control, endurance, stamina as well as strength. These improvements will then enable you to be a more efficient martial artist. 

Will all these things said we could look at the symbiotic relationship between efficiency and martial fitness. Through your development of martial fitness you will become a more efficient fighter, you will be able to use or waste less energy in your training and fighting. This is one of the tenets of Wing Chun.