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Why train?

Intro

Everyone should maintain excellent physical conditioning throughout their lives. You never know when you may need to use it.

Examples

When I lived in Nevada, in the days before mobile phones, sometimes a family would decide to spend a Sunday afternoon exploring one of the many ghost towns. Some ghost towns, although in a desert area 20 miles from a paved road, were reachable in a family car. The problem was that sometimes the car would break down and the family would be stranded in the desert with little or no food and water. Then the father would decide to hike back to the paved road for help. Some did not make it.

In December 1999, a radio station had a contest winner that got to run back and forth for a few minutes between a bank vault and a storage container carrying as much loose currency as he could carry each trip. He started great but started slowing down and passed out from exhaustion after only a few trips and had to be transported to a hospital. He ended up with $80,000 but could have had much, much more if he had been in good condition.

During the COVID-19 pandemic that ravaged the older generations, the more fit and healthy a person was, the better chance for recovery. This holds for other diseases and medical issues as well.

Since you never know when it may be needed, you should always stay in excellent physical condition. As the late comedian George Burns once said: "Had known I was going to live this long, I would have taken better care of myself."

Reasons to train

Martial art students train for many reasons. They train to strengthen themselves mentally and physically, to gain flexibility, and to perfect their techniques. They also train to replace their instinctive responses, such as panic, covering, and turning away from attacks with trained responses, such as calmness, evading, redirecting, and dispersing attacks and then using trained counterattacks.

Students train to develop a constant awareness of their surroundings so they may quickly evaluate and react to problems. They train to remain a calm, dispassionate, and impartial when facing an attacker. They train to develop their peripheral vision so they may defend against attacks from their periphery.

In a self-defense situation, the defender must evaluate what defense or attack is required and what amount of force is required. Intensive training is required before these evaluations may be made quickly and legally. Fear or surprise may make it difficult to execute subtle movements involving fine motor skills, so extensive training is needed to make these movements instinctive.

As long as it is not overdone or unsafely done, training will help you reach your goals.

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