Theorycraft your ideal physical training.

[rpgdemon]

If you learned in sequence from the masters, you could finish the first by 40, and then decide if you wanted to keep going, or stop with that.

[Amake]

You really think you can spend every day for ten years learning, for instance, how to consider your surroundings as a weapon in krav maga; teach every muscle of your body to pick up the nearest chair and beat someone with it as fast as physically possible, and then turn around and learn, let's say, how to give your limbs maximum momentum by rotating your body in caopeira as if nothing happened? This isn't the Devil May Cry sequels where you have to get used to a different jump button you know.

(I could never play without the jump button mapped to triangle anyway.)

[Darth SS]

Originally Posted by Amake

You really think you can spend every day for ten years learning, for instance, how to consider your surroundings as a weapon in krav maga; teach every muscle of your body to pick up the nearest chair and beat someone with it as fast as physically possible, and then turn around and learn, let's say, how to give your limbs maximum momentum by rotating your body in caopeira as if nothing happened? This isn't the Devil May Cry sequels where you have to get used to a different jump button you know.

(I could never play without the jump button mapped to triangle anyway.)

He's completely right. You also need to understand that different martial arts can have completely opposing reactions to similar attacks. Look at a high line knife thrust. Krav Maga says "Crash. Jam that strike, enter on the inside and burst into it to stop the path of the knife while delivering a brachial shot to dissuade the attacker." Kali says "Pass it. Jam it only long enough to get your hand in and do a knife tap. Move past and decide what to do from there." Wing Chun will respond with some method of redirecting and controlling that arm. Muay Thai would be step out, come back in. Capoeira would involve some crazy ass quadruple flip axe-kick triple lutz.

Your legs and your arms are all doing completely different things. If you put yourself in the position of knowing too many options you can actually cross yourself up. It isn't some stat sheet that you arbitrarily pick and choose.

[Kerensky287]

Can I pick Equilibrium's Gun Katas?

I know they would never ever work in real life but that's fine.

[Amake]

It's not that gun kata would never work. It should work for a while. You're just playing the numbers however, and it's statistically inevitable that using gun kata will get you shot eventually. Like, maybe when you get into a gunfight against someone with a better gun than you, or two people at the same time.

[Gregness]

Originally Posted by Amake

How is focusing on one field of learning at a time a shortcut? :p

This was the bit I was referring to:

Originally Posted by Amake

*snip*
They'll turn me into a master with 10 000 hours of practice, rather than 60 000.

Anyway, @Darth: I don't see too many options becoming a problem. Even in my minor martial arts experience I've seen that people tend to have preferred responses and favored moves so I don't see how having a pool of 10000 techniques differs greatly from having a pool of 60000 techniques if you're still going to be cherry picking your favorite 1000 or so.

For me it's more about knowing how to respond to uncommon situations. So like, from my capoeira I know that if for some reason I find myself in a crouch and there's a fight going on, I can totally throw a pretty decent kick or dodge from that position.

[Premmy]

Or, you know you can just use some Aus and Roles until you get into a better position, no need to only hit them from where you are.

[Amake]

Originally Posted by Gregness

I don't see how having a pool of 10000 techniques differs greatly from having a pool of 60000 techniques if you're still going to be cherry picking your favorite 1000 or so.

When I read this I felt Bruce Lee's corpse stir in his grave. Clearly he's possessing me to write the following, so don't hold it against me:

You're quite right. Practice ten thousand kicks or sixty thousand, it makes no difference. You'll still get your ass handed to you a hundred times over by the man who practiced one kick ten thousand times.

Man, Bruce Lee got snarky when he died.

[Darth SS]

Originally Posted by Amake

When I read this I felt Bruce Lee's corpse stir in his grave. Clearly he's possessing me to write the following, so don't hold it against me:

You're quite right. Practice ten thousand kicks or sixty thousand, it makes no difference. You'll still get your ass handed to you a hundred times over by the man who practiced one kick ten thousand times.

Man, Bruce Lee got snarky when he died.

This. A million times this.

For me, it harkens back to when guys who have taken more exotic get worked over by boxers. I find it happens a lot with Krav enthusiasts, though there was one time I witnessed a BJJ purple belt get very thoroughly tooled up by a boxer. The resulting conversation usually goes, "But I have kicking, and a ground game, and I know takedowns and disarms and limb breaks and positioning and improvising weaponry. All he has is punching." "Well yes, but boxers are really fucking good at punching."

Seriously, for scenarios that are most realistic and likely, boxing is definitely top 5 for practical martial arts. They can read range, they know timing, they know how to fight under exhaustion or stress, they can guard against being hit, and most importantly have practiced accurate and effective counterattack.

[Premmy]

Originally Posted by Darth SS

Seriously, for scenarios that are most realistic and likely, boxing is definitely top 5 for practical martial arts. They can read range, they know timing, they know how to fight under exhaustion or stress, they can guard against being hit, and most importantly have practiced accurate and effective counterattack.

That is 100 percent training methodology, though. If you trained any style the way boxers train theirs, you'd get the same results plus the advantages of the style in question. Boxing is a fight-sport style and thus directly trains the game by training the game, supplementing that with fitness training. Basketball, football, baseball all train the same way. A good fighter is always going to out-fight a good style expert, no matter the style. This doesn't disregard the validity of any style, it simply means you need to work in sparring or something reasonably similar into your training.