Cross-Training in Karate and Martial Arts

Blog Article/Post Caveat (Read First Please: Click the Link)

The Budo Bum wrote a nice article on the subject of cross-training in Budo that inspired me to contemplate and let my mind meander a bit on the subject of cross-training. 

What is cross-training? It is to train in two or more disciplines in order to improve fitness and performance, especially in a main discipline. It is to learn another skill, especially one related to one’s current discipline. In karate and martial arts it is thought of as training in another style, system or discipline - choose your poison. Cross-training is a term/phrase that is most often expressed in the sport arena but since karate and martial arts are more often than not about sports it fits. 

Cross-training in karate and martial arts was frowned upon a few years back with the more traditional practitioners using the heritage, culture and honoring of the system/styles founders as a reason to remain steadfast and dogmatic to how it was taught and practice, historically speaking.  Cross-training in karate and martial arts in truth, to my meandering mind, does not exist except as a means to foster, promote and solidify the status and perceptions of a style or system to the participants, tribal members if you will, of that system or style, etc.

Truthfully, ALL styles, systems and disciplines of both sport and karate and martial arts, it is not about those differing styles or systems but about the underlying, common and cornerstone, principles and methodologies that are exactly the same regardless of the cover of the books called karate, martial arts or various other styles or systems. 

There is no real cross-training if that is true, merely a mind-matrix-manipulation of one’s beliefs and perceptions to provide a feeling of something more, something greater and that something that is used to validate egoistic status of higher ranks, etc. In short, you can’t put that in a wheelbarrow. It is an ego-stroking self-soothing influence of those high ranked leaders to foster continued membership in the style, system or discipline club. 

Don’t get me wrong, styles or systems, etc., are critically important to the human species especially since they trigger survival tapes and instincts. They are critical to bring folks together toward like-minded needs and such also of the species survival needs - all critical to survive successfully in the world. 

It breaks down when cross-training is used to explain, think cognizant dissonance here, why one needs to do it. It does have its purposes such as exposure to perceptions that are not currently, in that form, encoded in our deep minds and it does expose us to changes and perceived differences so we may cope and condition our minds and bodies so when some feature unknown to us appears we are better able to overcome the freeze, the OO loop if you will, and act before we suffer grave harm or death in self-fense/loss of competitions in sports and so on. 

In truth, if one realizes after all the study of the complexities within human expressions through styles and systems that it is the simplicities that create a creative and effective actions and deeds for both life and self-fense that cross-training breaks down. Cross-training is a part of the initial novice level toward learning and encoding but the need to “Let Go” of such things so the simplicity of multiple methodologies expressed with fundamental principles, such as physiokinetics, along with force levels of control we have a common denominator to ALL STYLES and SYSTEMS, etc., that transcend the “Technique Based” models mostly used to teach and practice. 

Once you achieve knowledge, understanding and applied principles and methodologies those atomistic technique system or style distinctions lose their importance in applications such as self-fense and sport to become something at the expert and mastery levels of training and practice. It is more critical to my mind to address the chemical dump self-fense principle and sub-principles then to focus on how one style or the other manifests a punch or kick or other technique. In both sport and self-fense, cross-training does not address directly the adrenal stress-conditions and effects of the adrenal chemical dump, that is usually done in hands-on experience that gives the practitioner the perception and impression the cross-training is doing that work rather than something else not directly perceived. Like the side-benefits you get through certain types of training, practice and applications found in martial arts, karate and other physical disciplines. 

Note: Cross-training does expose the practitioner to various methods of expressing multiple methodologies in a more chaotic creative fashion with proper models of training and the experience gained by efforts, etc. 

Bibliography (Click the link)

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

Hat tip (Ritsu-rei) to <The Budo Bum> as the inspiration for this post.