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What is impact conditioning and why it is important

In 6 Dragons Kung Fu, we call “Impact Conditioning” that part of our combat preparation that aims to:

Physically strengthen our body
Mentally change our perception of pain

Note – This article has been asked by one of our Core Course practitioners on Patreon (see how to attend our home study classes here Learn Kung Fu online: a beginner-to-expert course).

In a nutshell, Impact Conditioning is about training to bear the pain that every type of physical confrontation includes (sports competitions, self-defense, etc., read The 6 types of martial clash).

As we have seen, there are various types of conditioning (read Physical conditioning: how it works) but the impact-related ones can give us crucial advantages. In fact, the more we are conditioned:

The more techniques we are able to execute
The more techniques we are able to withstand to
The longer and better we can fight
…

Impact conditioning: goals and premises

A few premises

Before continuing, it must be stressed that:

The purpose of this article is only to introduce our students to Impact Conditioning and in particular, to explain what we need for fighting and how to check the effective reaching of our goals
The tests we will are going to see are extremely dangerous if done without graduality and the right preparation
We must learn to listen to our body, to know ourselves and our limits (at the smallest discomfort signal, we must immediately stop); in addition to this (as for any type of physical activity), before starting this kind of practices, it is fundamental to ask a physician
Last but not least (as we continuously repeat), it does not exist a level of conditioning that makes us invulnerable, our goal is to reach a basic level and from that, improve day by day (according to our martial choices)
…

Impact conditioning goals

What we are going to describe is a set of capabilities with specific goals, like:

Active attack
Passive defense
Resistance to stress
…

Even if, in absolute terms, there are no defined limits to the mastery of a given skill (read for example Iron Palm conditioning (for beginners)) but it always exists a minimum level that every practitioner who wants to learn to fight should consider.

A note by Master Kongling – The practitioners who want to train simply for wellness and / or health, can completely skip this topic but always remembering that they will never be seriously prepared to fight (read How to use martial arts in a real fight).

When does impact conditioning make the difference?

If we want to use 100% of the prevailing options that martial arts (and in our specific case, 6 Dragons Kung Fu) offer us, good impact conditioning is something indispensable:

In a real self-defense scenario we will not have gloves, bandages or any other type of protection with us (read What is the difference between real fights and combative sports?), this means that even throwing a simple punch could cause an invalidating fracture
There are human bones that are naturally harder to break but even them, if attacked in the right way, with the right conditioned limb and with the right amount of power, can be damaged
During a real clash, our bones and the ones of our adversaries move fast, they are continuously disposed in different positions and before or after, missing a striking target is almost inevitable; the problem is that if missing means hitting the air, there are no problems but if missing means hitting erroneously the edge of a wall, we really want to be as conditioned as possible
When we fail to hit properly (or we are tactically induced to do so), even a technically perfect strike that does not require any particular conditioning (eg. an open palm blow) may land against an unexpected surface (eg. a wall) and / or through an unexpected trajectory (eg. after a deviation)
The blows inflicted by the adversary on non-conditioned limbs can exalt (even exponentially) the incidence of damage that might have been almost “secondary”
…

A note by Master Kongling – For example, in bare-hands competitions, a classical trick is to use head strikes (with the central upper part of the forehead) to break the knuckles of the opponent.

The level of conditioning to aim in terms of impact resistance

6 Dragons Kung Fu’s impact conditioning checks

In proportion to the strength we want to impress or receive (from the simple leaning of the novices to the blow at the maximum power of the experts), the involved body element must (without the intermediation of any kind of protection):

Be able to withstand a not moveable fulfill surface (eg. a building’s supporting column)
Be able to withstand a moving semi-rigid surface (eg. a compact heavy boxing bag full of sand, tatters, etc.)
Be able to withstand an unstable surface (eg. a stone leaning on another)
Be able to withstand a granular surface (eg. a lot with small rounded stones)
Be able to withstand an irregular surface (eg. a stone wall or our training dummy, read The 6 Dragons Kung Fu’s wooden dummy)
Be adequately supported by the rest of the body (eg. it is useless to have such iron knuckles if our wrist is not able to resist the slightest bump (we must follow a rational development path)

A note by Master Kongling – Naturally it is not necessary to condition our entire body at the same level but let’s not focus only on striking, let’s also think for example at the controlled fallings (read The falling techniques (breakfalls) [MINI-GUIDE]).

Final notes

A few conclusive thoughts:

The last mentioned check, tells us once again that our body needs to be able to express a chain of harmonic performances, if only one link in the chain is weak, the whole structure collapses (read also Use the body power: the muscle chain)
It is no coincidence that we have listed these specific checks, they represent the typical limits of most martial arts practitioners and when they become evident, often they correspond to an injury (fractures, lacerations, etc.)
A real martial preparation is not only made by a mechanical strengthening of our limbs, it must include the mental awareness of our limits and the capability to control our body states to eventually limit the incidence of what we receive and / or increase the damage of what we inflict (read The 6 Dragons Kung Fu’s states of interaction)
…

In the next article of this series, we will talk about conditioning in terms of flexibility (read Conditioning check for flexibility). Later we will gradually see the development path of the various specific skills (read also All the skills of 6 Dragons Kung Fu).

In-depth video courses

Basic 6 Dragons Kung Fu Exercises – How to perform some of the basic conditioning practices of 6 Dragons Kung Fu
Iron palm: complete development path – How to develop this advanced Kung Fu skill
Iron body: the development path – A visual step-by-step explanation of a complete conditioning
Diamond Finger conditioning – How to condition our fingers for combat purposes

In-depth articles

The MAKIWARA and the Poles Exercise – An example of impact conditioning (Karate vs Kung Fu)
How to punch (simple explanation) – A basic explanation of the most important striking technique

Questions

Reply in the comments and share your experience:

What is your level of impact conditioning?

Author: Master Kongling

Founder of 6 Dragons Kung Fu.

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