What Matters

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In modern karate, in modern martial arts and in modern self-defense programs, mostly, its about strength and often size. The canned rhetoric is, “You have to be stronger to win and you have to use your size to your advantage so bigger is better and bigger usually wins as well.” Such rhetoric is used throughout various physical disciplines and in general tends to be true, i.e., a larger opponent has the advantage and the stronger opponent has the advantage and a combination of the two assures success, victory or the win. So, what is this article about, it is about what matters. What matters more than size or strength - what matters is heart and heart comes from a variety of strengths often superior to both physical (muscle oriented) strengths and physical size. In short:

“Size doesn’t matter: Thick upper bodies and large arms might give greater strength, but they also make for an easier target and harder to conceal along with being top-heavy and less nimble. Bigger is not necessarily better; stronger is not necessarily better; strength is limited and often exhausted in the chaos of battle quickly leaving a more prepared adversary in a position of superiority.”

Size and Strength matter until the moment they no longer matter. That is the truth of it and that is the reality of it, reality often sucks that way. What matters is heart, heart is about attitude, ability, understanding and a mental state that perceives and distinguishes obstacles, etc., as merely challenges to overcome with ferocity, determination and perseverance. 

Your mind controls everything and that means seeing things out of the box and applying multiple methodologies both physical and mental to get the job done. Self-limiting to size and strength leave no room for more so creating a mind-state and mind-set unfettered by such restrictive thinking and obstacles, all self-imposed, creates an atmosphere where loss and defeat are allowed. 

What matters is heart and the ability to think while under great stress and often conditions seldom encountered outside of conflict filled with violence. Strength of character matters; the size of your thinking and analysis and creativity matters; the strength of personality matters; the size of your ability to understand and apply creative answers to unknown situations matter. Strength comes in many forms and size is not necessarily about the size of the mass of anything. Sometimes strength and size is more esoteric in nature and comes from a place hidden deep inside all humans, humans who know how to access the depth and breadth of human nature, ability and integrity of guts. 

Yet, most modern karate and martial disciplines assume and believe strong muscles and larger body mass are how one succeeds in practice, training and application toward self-fense. 

Bibliography (Click the link)

“In order for any life to matter, we all have to matter.” - Marcus Luttrell, Navy Seal (ret)