Adaptation is in our genes and that is why human outlast stronger and faster animals. We seen big businesses go under because of the failure to adapt. The same applies to fights. Adaptation is a survival necessity.
Adaptation is such a simple concept but it is more difficult than it sounds. Following are some of the things that are stopping/slowing us down from adapting:
- “I can’t” or “I don’t need to” – if you don’t even think you can or want to, none of the other methods will work. You will be unconsciously prove to yourself that you really cannot do it.
- Obsession with a specific “how to” verus the end-goal. To adapt properly, you have to want a desired outcome badly enough to change your otherwise comfortable/set ways.
- Total unexpected, surprised and just ill-prepared. Nowadays, most people know how important it is to have endurance when you spar 5 minute rounds. If you cannot last 5 minutes in a controlled environment, you do not have any hope of lasting a round in a chaotic scramble. During the early days of mma, the ground game was not understood and people cannot adjust to a new ‘mode’ of fighting.
- Pride and stubborness – it is great to have pride for what you are doing. However, it is detrimental to the learning process to allow pride to mask your ability to see new possibilities.
- Constantly stay within the “comfort” zone and failure to stimulate our brain/nervouse system to the unexpected. As people age, they tend to stay within their ‘set’ ways. Everything is routinized. It is important not only to the young ones to get new stimulations but even more important for seniors to get suitable neural stimulation as part of their total fitness.
- Association of adaptation as a weakness – some folks don’t like changes and they see change as a weakness. They like the bulldoze approach to everything in life and they associate that as being strong and invincible.
- Change is stressful and human prefers comfort to stress – resentment or failure to recognize the need to adapt simply slows down the adaptation process. To maximize your ability to adapt, you really embrace change and uncertainties as a way of life.
How does martial arts training contribute to enhancing your ability to adapt?
- the reality of martial arts provide the necessary neural stimulation (e.g. for example, a punch to the face) to force change/adaptation. In martial arts, it is not about what should happen but what is happening in the moment. Suitable neural stimulation keeps you on your toes.
- Pushhand is an active act of interaction and adaptation. While you are flowing with the force, you cannot act like “spaghetti” and allow yourself to be squeashed. Neither can you stay “stiff” or you will tip over. Our health, physical condition, mood, environment, urgency, relative size, strength, speed are different for each encounter. You have to “feel and adjust”.
- Exercises get routinized and you do gain efficiencies. However, if you don’t change up your exercises every so often, you will slowly lose the ‘newness’ and therefore the benefit of ‘forced adaptation’. .
Below is just a video of different ways to do push ups:
Adaption is about being fluid and having more than one option. Here is an old article that you may/may not have read.
Exercise
Within the embeddeed video, you are shown the top 10 push ups, without going outside the listed techniques, what are some of the things you can do to change it up? Obviously not everyone can do everything on the list, pick one exercise (does not need to be pushups), change it up AND think of progressions to help achieve it. (You will be leading the skill and progression you picked during the conditioning round this coming Tuesday.)