Rafael wrote:
Yes but we're not talking about great disparity of skill versus althetecism.
I think that, at least in fencing, athleticism helps at the margins after a certain basic threshold. I know a lot of really fat guys who are very, very difficult to beat. they practice their asses off, and even extremely fast fencers of equal skill have a very difficult time with them. Armed combat competition is very different from unarmed combat in that way.
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Obviously, strength disparity can be overcome by being armed; for example, you with your rapier would hardly be a match for an old woman who was armed with a 9mm semi-automatic given that you weren't engaging her in extradonarily favorable conditions for you.
Well, of course. But we are talking about a competition between people equally armed (and/or armored).
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Even more so, because a great deal of the people you fence with undoubtly rely solely on their ability and not their body in tandem with their ability. If armed combat lends itself a natural disregard for strength, it's reasonable to expect that the participants would neglect their bodies more in favor of time spent honing their technique.
It kind of depends on what we are armed with. For example, strength plays a greater role in Longsword combat (which is understood by most gamers as bastard sword). However, with a rapier, if you try to out muscle an opponent, you will only get stabbed. Finesse is so much more important.
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So do we wish to see greater competitors pushed to the envelope of what humans can achieve? Or do sports exist to see the greatest battles under the most "fair" circumstances? There are those who compete at the pinnacle on their natural gifts alone, those who do so because they sought perfection of form and art, but rarely do you see the binding of the two. Even then, they can fall, as we saw Federer lose recently at the US Open.
There's always a bigger fish. We like to see people struggle and compete under fair circumstances, yes.
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As for anecdote; my BJJ coach insits that weight lifting isn't that important, nor that conditioning the body by focusing on specific aspects of athleticism (the primary three I do are strength/power, flexibility/agility and endurance with dexterity/hand speed being developed naturally during all 3) is necessary outside of sparring. Sparring heavier opponents is not a method for building strength, sparring multiple partners in a row doesn't do the same thing as running up hills and biking with lots of resistance. Nearly everyone I train with outweighs me, including my instructor, but I am able to roll with them by virtue that I put in the work not only on the mat, but also in the gym, the bike, the road, hiking trails etc.
And you definitely should do that. Any person seriously training for martial combat or competition should train as hard as they can if they want to truly be great. It certainly can't hurt. It's been my experience, however, that if a person does that to the exclusion or even to the reduction of their training in technique, they will hit a wall. It's really about how much time you have to dedicate to your craft, and then making the most of it on all fronts.
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