Professional Noob
Roads were made for journeys...
Thomas Kurz?
So, what I'm getting at, is 1) Do you think that it is the responsibility of the school to provide the physical conditioning that would be needed to practice the art to the highest levels? 2) How do you keep an art accessable to the general public and still offer training for those who wish more? 3) It seems to me that for a school like mine, the ideal balance would be that the student does the conditioning required on their own, at home, and then comes to the class for the technical instruction and drills. However, home conditioning isn't even mentioned until the student is ready to prepare for black-belt testing level. How is the average student to prepare adequately?
1) I think that the school should provide a small amount of conditioning, and provide information on what kind of conditioning would be good for the student, based on the student's rank
2) My school does conditioning/warm-up (then stretching) for the first 15-20 minutes of a 1-hour class - for the "All Ranks" classes, it's usually not *too* hard, and they always let people know to not push themselves to far, that they're fully welcome to take a bit of a break during the exercises if they need to. They usually make the warm-up a bit more intense for the "Advanced Ranks" (Blue & up) classes, but with the same caveat. Advanced rank testing is certainly harder - last advanced test I took was about 4 hours long, with it being moderate to high intensity the entire time - beginning rank test only last about 2 hours typically. My school also offers separate 1-hour "Black Belt Conditioning" classes that are mandatory for Browns to get invited to test for Black, which (from what I hear) are extremely intense to get the student prepared for the 8+ hour Black Belt test. So, a variety of conditioning options and routines, depending on a students current rank and physical capability.
3) I would think that a school should talk about home conditioning well before Black Belt testing, as the more fit someone is, the less likely they'll accidentally hurt themselves by asking their body to do something it's unprepared to do while practicing.
My 2 cents, at least.
2014 goals:
1. Run a minimum of 1.5 miles every single day of the year
2. Run 1500 miles in 2014
3. Get my weekly mileage above 40
4. Brown belt in Shaolin Kempo
5. First Half (Oregon Wine Country HM?)
6. PRs: Sub-21 5k, Sub-45 10k, Sub-45 Spartan Sprint, Sub 1:55 HM (Oregon Wine Country HM)
To add a little more (because you said pretty much my thoughts, ausmusj1), for all our classes, we have students at all fitness levels. We start with 10-15 minutes of conditioning and stretching, giving basic exercises and then adding on to make them more challenging or more accessible, so everybody can participate. I think it's motivating for the less conditioned students to fully participate.
For push-ups, we might give an option for plyometric or offset push-ups, but also if people can't do all the regular push-ups, we'll have them transition to planks.
I feel that conditioning has to be a significant part. In sparring, we train a lot of slide kicks, and double kicks. It's hard to do a low/high kick combo without a strong core.
veggies on the runMartial Artist Runners