They may well be the physical example of what the motor industry would call ‘built-in obsolescence’. It has to be said that a limited number of techniques whose training objectives are just based upon ‘harder’, ‘faster’, ‘stronger’ may suffer from the boredom factor, but, by definition, as ‘fast burn’ systems they may well top-out before boredom kicks in and just quit training altogether. Add to that the possibility that displaying your specialism may also reveal your weaknesses to a canny opponent.
However, over-specialisation can severely limit your ability to get yourself out of a tight spot, particularly where you have to be flexible in your options. This specialist skill-set might be in a particular zone, like ground fighting and grappling, or systems that specialise in kicking skills. In ‘fast burn’ training, specialism can become a strength. If you accept the idea that human physicality, (athleticism) in its rawest form rises steadily towards an apex, and then, just as steadily starts to decline, then, if the ‘fast burn’ training curriculum meshes with that rise and enhances the potential of the trainee, that has to be a good thing. So, he trimmed his teaching down to just a handful of techniques and worked them really hard to become exceptionally good at those few things that may help them to survive a hand-to-hand encounter.Īnother positive aspect of ‘fast burn’ relates to an individual’s physical peak. Very early on he realised that it was impossible to train the troops like he’d been trained and was used to teaching, mainly because he had so little time with them before they were deployed to the battlefield or be dropped behind enemy lines. A slimmed down curriculum gives a more condensed focus on a few key techniques.Īs an example of this I once read an account of a Japanese Wado teacher who had been brought into a wartime military academy to teach karate to elite troops. There are many advantages to the ‘fast burn’ approach. I believe that almost all martial arts training systems exist on a spectrum from ‘fast burn’ to ‘slow burn’.īear in mind that when boiled down to their absolute basic reasons for existence, all martial arts are about solving the same problem – protection/reaction against human physical aggression.Īt its extreme end on the spectrum ‘fast burn’ comes out of the need for rapid effectiveness over a very short period of training time.Ī good example might be the unarmed combat training at a military academy. This is something I have been thinking over for some considerable time.
Martial Arts, fast burn or slow burn? – A theory.
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