Accept your limitations

Martial arts marketing mainly emphasizes the idea of winning against a much stronger opponent. This idea is enforced by a clever training system that has rules and limitations for the attacker. A competing format tries to break out of those limitations. Unfortunately, the competitive format to become safe requires limitations and rules.
The study and training in a martial art occur in a specially equipped hall. For Japanese martial arts, the training hall is called a dojo.
Dojo training is not comparable to a hostile environment in the real world. Your belief that a competitive format will significantly improve your self-defense abilities is incorrect. A problem with many competitive martial arts is that they continuously assume the conditions of mutual combat. Before starting the fight, the opponents are identified and lined up at a comfortable distance.

It’s important to remember the physical and mental aspects of good health.
In order to survive in the arena, it’s important to be in good shape and have practiced the technical and tactical aspects of competitive fighting.

The reality on the street is totally different. Your attacker is not following the rules that govern the competition format. Your body and mind are conditioned by rules and limitations.
Self-defence courses emphasize the idea of running away from potential conflicts rather than engaging in physical combat. In the event that your condition is not good, what is the outcome? Can you run away? Are you fully prepared for the confrontation? Your limitations are highlighted by those questions.

Performance-oriented

Our society’s foundation is performance. If you cannot fulfill this concept, you will always be considered a member of the lower class.
Religions are also using this concept. Entering Paradise is possible if you adhere to the rules set by the religious leaders.

Martial arts are not excluded from this concept. In certain martial arts, their founders are treated as gods and their successors are treated similarly.
Certainly, some founders have the ability to excel in the field of martial arts. To become such a skilled martial practitioner, they lived a life based on training for both the mind and body.

Is it possible to become a skilled warrior in our society while maintaining a family relationship and performing well in your occupation for a living?
The chance to become a military or police officer is not available to everyone.

Your limitations

• Physical and mental limitations
• Social limitations
• Educational limitations
• Fat-belly syndrome
• Other

Most of the limitations are interwoven and cannot be separated from each other. If you see the founder of your martial art as a godlike person, your way of thinking will be restricted by the dogmas outspoken by the founder and the successors. Dogmas can restrict your search to the truth in martial arts. Of course, if there is a truth in martial arts.

We cannot forget, most of the founders had a life as a professional martial art practitioner and their training was almost a full-time job.
Most of us have a responsibility to our family and social environment. These limitations, we have to accept, we cannot become at the same level as a professional martial art practitioner.

Physical and mental limitations are no excuses for not practising. Laziness are being often the origin of so-called physical limitations.
But each physical training program must be adapted to the real limitations of the practitioner. We cannot expect the same performance from a 80 yr old person compared to a 20 yr old practitioner.
Performing always at the maximum heartbeat is not healthy, especially for older practitioners.
Knowing your heartbeat is a key to excellent performing taking into account the limitations of your age and condition.

Using a smart watch or other device to measure your heartbeat can be helpful to find out something about your condition when performing for example solo-exercises with or without a weapon.

You can estimate your maximum heart rate based on your age. To estimate your maximum age-related heart rate, subtract your age from 220. For example, for a 50-year-old person, the estimated maximum age-related heart rate would be calculated as 220–50 years = 170 beats per minute (bpm). A 20-year-old person would be 220-20 years= 200 BPM.

When you know your max heart rate, you can calculate the BPM for efficient exercising.

Target heart rate zones are five ranges of heart rates that generally determine how much effort a person is putting forth in their exercise.

Heart rate zones vary from person to person—someone who is younger or more physically active will have different target zones than a person who is older or currently less physically active—so they’re described as percentages of maximum heart rate. 

• Zone 1 – moderate to low intensity, at 50 to 60 percent of maximum heart rate 
• Zone 2 – moderate intensity, at 60 to 70 percent of maximum heart rate 
• Zone 3 – moderate to high intensity, at 70 to 80 percent of maximum heart rate 
• Zone 4 – high intensity, at 80 to 90 percent of maximum heart rate 
• Zone 5 – very high intensity, at 90 to 100 percent of maximum heart rate 

Educational limitations

Not every martial art has an extensive educational program, some of them are very limited and physical. Others are very wide organized and require a lot of mental energy.
Maybe, the martial art you practise has a very profound mental educational program. But you are very loyal to the group or teacher, but you like to practise more physical. This is your problem, not the system’s problem, and you have to solve it.
You can look around for a more physical method or you can use your creativity and a good conversation with the teacher to find a solution for your problem.

The fat-belly syndrome limitation

There was a time when I was accumulating too much fat in the belly. A fat-belly is of course a limitation in proper martial art training. Some people with this syndrome will tell you about developing a powerful hara. Of course, this is only an excuse for not participating in a physical training program adapted to the person in question.
After changing a bad habit of eating and drinking, my well developed hara disappeared and my training became more vigorous.

Knowing your limitations

We can detect a lot of more limitations, but deep in our heart we really know our limitations and we must adapt our training. Sometimes, you will find out remarks made by others about your performance. Those remarks can be very positive, but can have also a huge negative impact on your training. Especially social media is a well known source of negative influence.

Knowing your limitations is the path to “well-being”.