Potential?

[Youngmantis]

HI everyone I was thiinking about something ago and i forgot about it but now i remember... anyways ok i have a question

Do any of you guys feel like you are never going to be as good, as the people in asia who train much more than you do and have the opportunity to learn more.

Because like the school i go to i only go 2 days a week. BUt theres schools in Asia where you go 5 times a day, or even from sunrise to sunset. I feel like i'm never going to be as good as these people who train in Asia for a living, or who learn more than I. Theres people here(as in america) that are considered to train in martial arts very seriously, like 2 hours a day and go to class maybe 4 days a week, those dudes who are considered serious martial artists in america. are small time to serious martial artists in China where they have opportunities to be taught and train 8 hours a day for almost a living(like shaolin temple). So i might of not made much sense(cuz i'm relly tired) and i dont think i did but some of you might of figured out what i'm trying to say.

But to sum up my question, Do you feel obsolete and feel like you will never be able to acheive your full potentional compared to martial artistis who have much more opportunity in Asia?

[David Jamieson]

sounds like the question could just be :

"do you lack confidence in your abilities"

to which I would answer "no".

I don't think training is any more available in one place than another.

Just train. Train to the point where you want to be and be realistic about your capabilities.

the lack of self confidence issue is pure illusion and a waste of time imo. you are spending energy fretting about an intangible.

just train!

cheers

[Youngmantis]

no its not confidence, its the fact that i wont be able to learn 1/4 as much as these dudes in china do, i go for kung uf about 3 hours a week, while these dudes go for 20 hours a week its almost there life, and i like kung fu very much but i will never be able to go that much

[SevenStar]

YOU control how much you train. you're not going to get good solely by going to class alone. You need to train outside of class. I'm in class 2 - 3 hours a day, usually 4-5 days per week. But, I also hit the gym every day, and also train at home. Some of your best training will be the training you do on your own.

[Unmatchable]

Thai boxers only train twice a day.

[SevenStar]

I'm glad you're in a position to tell me how much I train...

[Youngmantis]

yes most of the training is done at home but theres places in asia where the school is your home, to the person who said thaiboxer only train twice a a day is wrong, in bangkok theres camps u go to where u train from sunrise to sunset i just feel like they have much more opportunity than we do with all the selections of schools and the ability to learn more than us. Yes most of the training can be done at home but how about he learning part, people in asia are being taught 10+ hours a week and i only have the chance of being taught 3 hours week max

[monkeyboxing]

Who cares if there are people in Asia that are better than you? Are you trying to become the world's best martial artist or something? Then there is not much you can do; just enjoy martial arts as they are and be as good as you can make yourself. And enjoy life too, kung fu isn't everything.

[Vash]

Do I feel that my abilities will never reach the same zenith as my doppleganger (the ONLY person outside of yourself for which comparison is at all logical) who *might* get to train more cuz he lives where the art was born? Nah. I feel my abilities will never reach their fullest potential because I'm worried how good I am, how good that guy is, and how much better life would be if I could just do my art all day.

Am I confident in my abilities, even when compared to someone who trains longer, harder, and whose curriculum includes even more material than mine? Nope. I train smart. I work as hard as I can with the best people I can to find every whole in my application, and to find every facet for interpretation in my art. I train and grow daily. I cannot be sure my doppleganger can say that.

Now, it's off to eat peanutbutter toast and drink Lime flavored Gatorade so's I can forget about not training at all.

[bung bo]

i'm never gonna be able to a form as flowery and pretty some wushu dude, but i concentrate more on power and doing it correctly than looking good. and MA isn't a contest. if you train as hard as you know you can then that's enough. even if you're in class 3 hours a week, you can perfect your MA on your own time. but i have been where you're coming from. stop, you're being self-destructive.

[KC Elbows]

I'm bigger than 99% of the chinese population, and done physical labor a good chunk of my life under a capitalist system that functons on constant work. I've met so called chinese masters who I could trounce, and I suck ass.

Most of those chinese practitioners you're talking about don't weigh proper body weight for their own height, much less for fighters.

There's skilled guys from China, but it's the ones who fought who have skills at fighting, and most haven't fought, because they're from modern china, not feudal china.

For every actual skilled chinese practitioner in the US, there's ten guys who learned crappy kung fu from their uncles and started teaching it in the seventies because it was an easily marketable commodity at the time, but never really were anything special. For every ten of those, there's one american student who figured out the uses to their systems that these teachers never knew.

Find the teachers you want and learn from them, use what you need to stay motivated, but don't forever buy the myth of chinese superority, because it only limits how good you think you can become.

On top of that, never meet another fighter and spend one second thinking how he could beat you, always think how you could beat him. That's what fighters do. Understand how to win.

Yes, there's schools that study all day. I spent six hours a day for several years studying chung moo quan, not counting outside practice. Guess what? My lazy old self could murder that dumb kid in a heartbeat.

The number of forms being practiced in mainland china far outstrips the amount of sparring.

As for learning more, I'm too old to buy this. Sure, there's a wealth of technique, but the skills that count are the basic skills, and the person who wins is the one with the best basics, not the person with the most extravagant "advanced" stuff. The basics position you for the advanced stuff.

I'm not meaning to be mean. I just feel that this way of thinking is a dead end. Why travel to China to worry about your skills? I knew a serbian dude when I was a kid who could dent 1970's steel car hoods with his frikkin thumb, and his brother had a childhood picture of him picking up a cow. That's who the chinese fear in quite a few of their kung fu movies: the strong westerner. I'm not saying that that makes the westerner indestructible or better than the chinese, just that if the chinese fear him, maybe they're not as universally superior as many have been led to believe. We're all flesh and blood, and if you look hard enough, you can spot the human frailty in anyone.

[Unmatchable]

Originally posted by Youngmantis
yes most of the training is done at home but theres places in asia where the school is your home, to the person who said thaiboxer only train twice a a day is wrong, in bangkok theres camps u go to where u train from sunrise to sunset i just feel like they have much more opportunity than we do with all the selections of schools and the ability to learn more than us. Yes most of the training can be done at home but how about he learning part, people in asia are being taught 10+ hours a week and i only have the chance of being taught 3 hours week max

Walter the sleeper Michalewski personally said that they train twice a day there (and he lived there for awhile). They dont train all day, you see people training all day because they switch off its not the same person. Even after one hour real thai conditioning most people cant take anymore.

[SevenStar]

Originally posted by Youngmantis
yes most of the training is done at home but theres places in asia where the school is your home, to the person who said thaiboxer only train twice a a day is wrong, in bangkok theres camps u go to where u train from sunrise to sunset i just feel like they have much more opportunity than we do with all the selections of schools and the ability to learn more than us. Yes most of the training can be done at home but how about he learning part, people in asia are being taught 10+ hours a week and i only have the chance of being taught 3 hours week max

If I teach you techniques for 10 hours a week, how much of it are you going to remember? What's the retention level of that? No teacher in their right mind would do that. The majority of that time is likely spent drilling, which, as I stated, you can do at home.

[SevenStar]

Originally posted by Unmatchable


Walter the sleeper Michalewski personally said that they train twice a day there (and he lived there for awhile). They dont train all day, you see people training all day because they switch off its not the same person. Even after one hour real thai conditioning most people cant take anymore.

oh, you mean the camps - yeah, from what I've heard, that sounds about right. seesions are any where from 3 - 4 hours though...