I’m limping around right now because of a torn groin. It’s not serious; it’ll heal up, but it’s my own damn fault.
You see, I had just walked into the dojo when someone asked me how much distance you can cover with a jumping front kick. “Show, don’t tell,” I responded and launched myself across the room into a front kick.
It was a good demo, but as soon as I landed, pain shot through my right inner groin. I had tweaked one of the adductor muscles that pull your leg towards your centerline.
It didn’t take a visit to the Mayo Clinic to figure out what had gone wrong here.
It’s simple: I should have warmed up. Got some blood moving through those muscles, raised my body temperature, and stretched a bit before demonstrating something so dynamic.
But here’s the thing… I’ve actually met martial arts instructors who advocate AGAINST doing warmups. The logic went something like this…
“Here at Dragonball Ninjitsu we train for combat in the real world. And you’re not going to have time to warm up in a real fight. Train the way you fight, so don’t warm up.”
What ridiculous balderdash!
First of all, every single high-level combat athlete understands that training is training, and fighting is fighting. They’re related, but different.
The goal of training is to spend enough time practising the moves to get good at them. And you can’t practice if you’re injured.
Does an Olympic marathon runner train by running a marathon every day? Of course not. That would destroy his body in days.
Did Samurai train for battle by fighting all-out with sharp spears and swords every day? That would certainly qualify as “Training the way you fight,” but all the samurai would have been dead or crippled by the day of battle.
Secondly, I think those mini-mall senseis underestimate the power of adrenaline.
Remember the last time you had a good adrenaline rush? Maybe someone startled you, or you had a really close call on the highway?
Remember how your heart was beating? How your fingers tingled? Maybe you even broke out into sweat? Sounds kind of like a warmup, doesn’t it?
The physiological effects of adrenaline molecules locking into the adrenoreceptors on the surfaces of your cells are to activate a whole host of cellular responses to enable fight or flight.
Or, to put it more bluntly, one second of an adrenaline dump is worth 30 minutes of the most diligent warmup you could possibly imagine.
If only that person had first slapped me across the face, and THEN asked me to demonstrate a flying front kick. I bet I wouldn’t have tweaked that muscle. The adrenaline have allowed me to do whatever I wanted. But that would also have been fighting, and fighting is different from training.
Ignore training advice from mini-mall combat ninjas.
Train like an athlete.
Warm up before training.
Injury is the enemy.
Stephan