Practicing a Combat Skill in A Fatigue Environment

God bless you on this Monday. Here are a few thoughts on effective skill development and a wild routine for fun.

There’s a lot of scientific study or opinion on where to put your skill training in the context of your physical training. This applies to the development of martial skills as well as to any athletic skill. The general thought as applied by science is that you must do your skill training while you’re still fresh. If you’re working on the “how-to,” of a particular exercise grappling or striking technique you should do it when your energy is high. When you haven’t depleted your immediate muscular reserves. I think for the learning of the skill this is true, but in the further development of that skill you need to practice it in an environment that is as close to possible as when you will actually use it.

The first time you learn to punch you should do it at the beginning of your workout when you can solely concentrate on getting it perfect. After you have the skill you should practice it sometimes at the first of your workout to continue to hone that skill and sometimes at the end or at the hard part of your workout to force yourself to continue to perfect and use that skill under the hardest circumstances. This applies if you’re learning a squat, learning an olympic lift or a club swinging move, or a martial arts strike, kick or throw. After you actually understand the skill you need to take it out for a spin so to speak. What good is it to solely practice a skill under completely perfect conditions? If you’ve ever been to a competition of any kind – powerlifting, strongman, Highland games, fighting, etc., or in a real fight for self-defense or if you’re one of those brave souls who has a job that depends on real life defense – military or law enforcement, you should know this.

The real world is a different place than a practice room. The real world is always harder and never are the conditions as perfect. It’s one thing to be able to throw a fast, perfect looking punch (or any other skill), when you just began the workout in a nice clean environment. It’s an entirely different thing to throw a fast perfect punch at the end of a fight when you’re already bloody and breathing like a steam engine. Those other sports may not make you bloody, but combine the factors of competing in different places, at different times on different equipment throws the game off your normal style. But I think our training should make us ready for the real world and in essence ready for anything. It should so physically prepare you that you can adapt very quickly to any physical surprise.

One of the ways to do this is to put some of your skill practice into a fatigue environment. Do something that normally takes speed and coordination when you’ve already exerted strength and are breathing hard from significant endurance training. When you can force yourself to execute those techniques as quickly, cleanly and perfectly as possible when you’re already tired and pushing into the limits of your strength and endurance, you know you’ve gone a long way toward mastering them. Toward mastering yourself and being prepared in any martial or life situation.

There’s no reason that the physical training you do shouldn’t have carry over benefits to your mental, spiritual and real world life. This kind of training is an opportunity for you to toughen yourself and force yourself to work in a disciplined manner when it’s the most uncomfortable. Train hard to make life easy.


Here’s an example of a circuit. It’s just for fun. Don’t think of me as a gun toting nut. Think of me as somebody concerned with real-world, practical, over the top training. You will of course need a significant outside training area if you wish to carry this circuit out exactly as planned. The specific exercises are not as important as the theory. Improvise and pick your own exercise or whatever you have available to you as equipment. The point is to combine several maximum strength, max endurance and combat skill (or athletic skill if that’s what you’re after), movements to make a training circuit that simultaneously increases your strength, athletic ability, balance, speed, timing, endurance and skill at the same time.

Here’s a starter for you:

Five rounds –
Heavy lift of your choice (squat x 1)
Strongman lift of your choice (barrel clean and press x 10)
Kettlebell or bodyweight exercise (swings or squat thrusts x 1 minute)
Martial skill that requires speed, timing and endurance (heavy bag x 1 minute)
High skill movement (for fun for today, target shooting – 10 to 20 rounds)

Move through this circuit five times, no rest between exercises, one minute between rounds.

Add weight to the squat on every round, fifth round should be close to your max or at least something appreciably heavy. Try to get to the target shooting portion as fast as possible from the heavy bag so that you have to shoot while you’re breathing hard. This might be easy for many of you if you use rocks or sandbags instead of barbells and a striking shield instead of a heavy bag. That way you just take a heavy rock, a moderate sandbag, a striking shield, a kettlebell and your weapon to the range. If you do not have access to a gun or are opposed to them, use a paintball gun or bb gun… or a slingshot for that matter… or play darts. Anything that requires high skill and is fun. I can pull this one off because I have enough property around me to have my own shooting range. For Heaven’s sakes… don’t do anything stupid with a weapon! Be safe in everything. Both in your physical training and absolutely in any weapon training you may do.

This is one that might really pick up the interest of you law enforcement operators out there.

For the rest of us, just good clean fun. A chance to improve your mind, body, spirit and play with loud explosive toys along the way.

If you’re interested in more for developing skill in martial arts and combining the most incredible strength and endurance training known to man, you should be reading Super Strength & Endurance for Martial Arts and backing it up with some of the rest of our incredible products.