Training in the past, no one knows

[brianlkennedy]

One thing that is always interesting to hear is when folks claim "oh in the past students trained "x" number of hours per day..seven days a week, year round except for Lunar New Year.

The problem with that, and you see this all the time in Taiwan (and I have been "guilty" of it too) is an "hour" of training consists of:
1. stand around for awhile yacking with your friends
2. kind of half ass walk through a form
3. have some tea
4. talk some more
5. do 5 minutes of stance work
6. sit down
7. yack some more with your friends
8. listen to "sifu" tell a story
9. go through a form with some speed and power
10 rest
....hour over! And although you can claim you trained for an hour, you basically did about 5 minutes worth of work. This is very common in modern training in Taiwan and I suspect it was somewhat the case in the past too.

take care,
Brian

[Jimbo]

lol, that's a very accurate description of the first place I trained at in Taiwan. I might also add to that the cigarettes smoked by the teacher and some of the seniors during class.

That's probably one of the big reasons behind the high popularity of TKD in Taiwan.

[B.Tunks]

We do know how at least some people trained prior to 1960's in China. Apart from there being a great deal of anecdotal evidence from those still alive, dating back to at least the 30's, there are also existing records from the guoshuguan of many cities and the major military academies, some of which detail curriculum and training programs. Earlier than that, there are records going back to the Ming detailing such matters (though less civilian, more military).

Of course there have always been lazy hobbyists who exerted very little effort in training (usually the rich who sometimes trained as an indulgance/distraction or following a trendy fad) but there are also many places, particularly in central, North and North East China where almost the entire male population of villages trained for many hours a day during down times in crop production. This was also the case in border Provinces such as Xinjiang, Yunnan and Guangxi, though not necessarily seasonal. It wasn't very long ago that most of these villages training was actually militia training designed for killing enemies - so pretty far off from martial arts as a hobby.

Perhaps the training was crap in comparison to modern training methods but the intent was serious and it is highly unlikely that the majority of these individuals did not exert some serious effort. It is also a bit difficult to compare the amount of effort exerted today VS earlier times, at least in the case of peasant practitioners, as many were in a permanent state of malnutrition if not borderline starvation.

Of course many tales of the arduous methods of the old times are greatly exagerrated if not completely fabricated. Personally I think it would be wrong to suppose that the average level of conditioning of martial arts practitioners in pre-republic China would be any worse at that time than in any other large, heavily populated and socioeconomically diverse country with a tradition of fighting arts.

BT

[B.Tunks]

point taken on the "actual" vs "should".

[sanjuro_ronin]

One thing that is always interesting to hear is when folks claim "oh in the past students trained "x" number of hours per day..seven days a week, year round except for Lunar New Year.

The problem with that, and you see this all the time in Taiwan (and I have been "guilty" of it too) is an "hour" of training consists of:
1. stand around for awhile yacking with your friends
2. kind of half ass walk through a form
3. have some tea
4. talk some more
5. do 5 minutes of stance work
6. sit down
7. yack some more with your friends
8. listen to "sifu" tell a story
9. go through a form with some speed and power
10 rest
....hour over! And although you can claim you trained for an hour, you basically did about 5 minutes worth of work. This is very common in modern training in Taiwan and I suspect it was somewhat the case in the past too.

take care,
Brian

Ah dude, I have trained in Canada, Japan, Macao, Portugal, Spain, Holland and the ONE consistency I have seen is this:
Hard training = short time, typically less than 90 min if class and less than 60 if a workout.
Long training sessions ( 2 hr, 3 hrs)= SOME training and way too much talking and shooting the ****.

[Drake]

One thing that is always interesting to hear is when folks claim "oh in the past students trained "x" number of hours per day..seven days a week, year round except for Lunar New Year.

The problem with that, and you see this all the time in Taiwan (and I have been "guilty" of it too) is an "hour" of training consists of:
1. stand around for awhile yacking with your friends
2. kind of half ass walk through a form
3. have some tea
4. talk some more
5. do 5 minutes of stance work
6. sit down
7. yack some more with your friends
8. listen to "sifu" tell a story
9. go through a form with some speed and power
10 rest
....hour over! And although you can claim you trained for an hour, you basically did about 5 minutes worth of work. This is very common in modern training in Taiwan and I suspect it was somewhat the case in the past too.

take care,
Brian

You see that during Army training too, particularly during muscle failure days. They want PT to last an hour to an hour and a half, when the ground truth is that I can smoke the dog-sh** out of myself in well under 20 minutes. But, we can't leave, so we drag out the workout.

Same with martial arts. Hit the bag for a while, and see how long you last without taking time to chill out a bit and catch your breath.

[sanjuro_ronin]

Same with martial arts. Hit the bag for a while, and see how long you last without taking time to chill out a bit and catch your breath.

Did this a few years ago, at a few places.
Going balls to the wall, a very well conditioned fighter can last maybe 60-90 sec.
Think about hitting the HB with all you got as fast as you can, non-stop.
Even with a more "paced" intensity, if you go balls to the wall with every shot you'll be lucky to get 5 min if you are in awesome shape, probably 2-3 min more typically.