I ride a bike 10 miles a day 45 sit ups - 45 push ups. Reason i choose bike is that I feel as 64 year old that is less pounding on the joints. When i was on active duty had plenty of that to go around
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I look different folks time to time. I have seen those who go to the range tacticool. Thats all great with me as I dress also specifically for the range. But was telling one of my kids one day, That you can have all the cool gear in the world,But if you are not in condition to carry it,Its all worthless.
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I work out at least 4x a week. I do dumbell weight training with resistant interval training. I also autocross my car which I occasionally race in the scca. When Iām not doing anything physical other then hiking, I take pictures which I see can work on my breathing techniques of holding still. These things are more hobbies.
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Jiu Jitsu. Aside from training with a actively resisting opponent RULE#1 Cardio(zombie land reference). I can not tell you how many times on the training mat a new white belt will come in and throw everything they have only to burn out in 60 seconds. Once that happens the fight is already over.
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I work out with ten pound weights and mimic the movements of drawing from a holster and pressing out to point of aim shoot then I do the same movement 1/2 speed over and over again until my arms burn then I grab an empty safety checked weapon and do the same move this time from the holster and put my laser in for rapid. Biofeedback back at first you suck then not so much. The moves contain as much force as needed to overcome a possible threat restricting your movement the weight only need to be as heavy as your heaviest weapon the bulkier the better
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I weight train three days per week and run three days per week. I do it for the mental conditioning. The physical conditioning is just a positive side effect.
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Iām already in shape.
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round is a shape!
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Dad bods FTW!
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Funny how non martial artist always use that same line, get beat up on the street. Please spend some time with real martial artists. Get out on the floor and learn a bit before you talk about it. Iāve trained for many years, in fact I went 3 rounds with a pro heavy weight last week. I guarantee, if you are a mid level martial artist you can defend yourself on the street against most.
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@ Mike164 I sent you a PM.
Sorry, apparently I said something you disagree with. Which part was it?
Agreed. Iāve trained for about 20 years in several styles. I try to be an ambassador for the arts. I guess I sometimes forget, itās not for everyone.
Mike
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Today was my āevery other dayā 3 miles with a 50lb ruck.
I have much respect for the MA. Iām trying to get the wife and daughter into that Krav Maga. Iām not fluent enough in the subject to know if itās a MA by definition, but hand to hand combat just the same. A good way to train and get off the couch. 
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Iām pretty sure it was this part, but it is accurate because you said āmost.ā Totally true about entry level (color belts) and true with most styles to about 1st black (sadly). In a really good TMA, boxing, wrestling, or combatives system, a student will be able to handle most 1:1 self-defense after about a year of dedicated training. But āreally goodā is also pretty rare. Multiple attackers is always a āfight your way out and run like Hellā scenario, regardless of all the Hollywood nonsense to the contrary. And no matter how good you are, all real fights between adults are a bit of a roll of the dice. Murphy always gets a vote. So you would have to be āgood enoughā to beat your attacker AND him. Now refer back to what I said about multiple attackers.
Bottom line: a self-defense seminar on a Saturday morning at the YMCA or some 3-day self-defense retreat doesnāt make anybody ātrained.ā It just gets the host(s) paid and maybe gets a participant or 2 interested enough to get serious afterwards. For someone who is not going to get in shape, stay in shape, and train hard for many years; a pistol and a baseball bat are a far more effective approach to self/home defense. Thatās just the plain truth.
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Agreed. And Iād be suspect of any coach who tells his students to look for a fight. The best fights are the ones avoided, and a fighterās first priority should be to get out of the kill zone.
When it comes to confidence, I remember hearing that less than 10% of anyone learns martial arts. So the white belt already knows more than 90% of the people at the grocery store. Thatās something to feel good about. But I temper that confidence with an assumption that someone looking for a fight probably knows a trick or two, and they may not be the tricks Iām expecting. What I mean by that is that each discipline has a body of knowledge. So if two fighters who study BJJ, for example, face off against each other, then each is making specific movements and anticipating his opponent to make other moves. In the UFC you will sometimes see odd combinations of two competitors who study completely different arts, and thatās what makes it fun.
But if you encounter an opponent on the street or in a bar, you donāt know who that person is or what he knows. Iāve gotten hurt rolling with beginners because they do stupid things that no one expects. And more importantly, street fights donāt have tournament rules to protect the combatants. Itās like losing a chess match against someone playing checkers. I might land a good punch or pin my opponent, and he might stab me with a knife, throw a beer bottle at my head, or shoot me with a gun.
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What people who train a lot in various combat arts tend to forget in discussions like this is that being trained in ANY combative sport gives us a tremendous advantage in almost all physical activity and builds a solid foundation from which you can more quickly build and adapt other combative skill sets (like practical shooting). You have superior balance, agility, core strength, range of motion, and are familiar with anatomy and kinesiology of active, resisting opponents and how to perform under stress. This puts us ahead of 99% of the gen pop with certain gender/age/skeletal frame considerations factored in. This becomes very obvious when you have to teach troops and/or cops weapons retention skills. Young adult males coming through recruit pipelines today have an average of about 1/2 the grip strength we did in the 1990s. They are like girlsā¦no offense to the ladies, because this means you are now more āequalā than you have ever been. Congrats! 4 years ago, I sparred some young adult males and teenage boys who were 1st degree black belts whom I just let kick and punch me repeatedly and laughed at them as they fell over backwards and hurt themselves. I never blocked or counter-attacked. These folks donāt do hundreds of knuckle push-ups on concrete or wood floors. They donāt run. They canāt do sit-ups to save their lives. And they arenāt being taught how to actually hurt someone. They donāt stand a chance against an actual predator. But they are great at Mortal Kombat and Call of Duty! It isnāt the knowledge nearly so much as it is the well-balanced physical conditioning.
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Iāve done martial arts since 1985, just as a hobby, but also so that Iām never unarmed.
Basic fitness is critical in high stress/adrenaline environments. People can gas and hit the wall way to quick otherwise.
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A prime example, (I have many more but this was today) I asked a Home Depot kid to help me hand load 64 bags of mulch into the back of the dump trailer attached to the back of the truck.
He had to grip each bag and hold it like youād cuddle a pillow and drop it in the trailer.
I grabbed them with great wrist/fist clamping strength, as I call it, and just flung them the 10 or so feet in the air to the trailer. The worker was amazed.
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I donāt know about the military side, but, Midwestern farm boy here. It was frowned upon to lose your grip on that 75 lb bag of cattle feed, and spill it in the truck. And as an adult, I hand load semis. 50-60 thousand pounds a day, give or take a ton.
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