Batman's Training- A Snapshot

At the request of a reader, I'm going to be posting some of Batman's training. The training schedule below is a week's worth of Batman's workouts. It contains a general outline of the exercises completed by Bruce Wayne and doesn't necessarily mean that this is all that he does. I'll do my best to start from the basics and build up to the level presented in this schedule, which is at a level that (in my opinion) absolutely above world class. Batman pushes all aspects of fitness to their absolute maximum. His strength, speed, balance, flexibility, accuracy, power, endurance, and skills have been honed through hours of constant, deliberate training and a defined goal of having a body capable of defending the streets of Gotham. 

Here's the snapshot. Over the next few weeks, I'll be posting the stages leading up to this starting from a base level of fitness and athleticism. You've heard of going from "fat to fit," now see how you go from "fit to Bat." (Corny? Yes. Awesome? Absolutely.)

Ponder this one for a while, why don't you? Until next time, good luck and train hard!

10,000 Hours to Mastery

Malcolm Gladwell wrote a book (that I have yet to read... -_-) called "Outliers: The Story of Success" that shares a very interesting idea: with 10,000 hours of practice, it is possible to become an expert at something. He goes on to expound examples of prominent figures in different areas who achieved greatness and explained just how much time they put into their work. Obviously, some of this depends of genetic predisposition and social upbringing, but those merely serve as potential head starts for people's abilities. It's quite an interesting idea. Just so you have an idea of how much time that is, that is 40 hours a week, 50 weeks a year, for 5 years. That's a lot of time.

When applied to the concept of martial arts, we find some truth to ideas of the weak beating the strong or, as Rock Lee puts it, that "with hard work, even a dropout can defeat a genius." That doesn't necessarily mean that 10,000 hours of mindless practice will get you anywhere. You need mindful practice. You need to make adjustments to form and correct yourself when you make mistakes (e.g.- getting hit while sparring). But, just because you put the time in, doesn't mean you'll be unbeatable. You can be limited by your strength or speed or even your style. If you haven't trained to deal with a particular scenario, it might well be impossible for you to handle it, should you be confronted with it. However, training all aspects of your art and focusing on quick-thinking will definitely be helpful to your adaptation to new situations.

Anyway-- The point is this! If you're upset because you aren't good at something, go practice!  Work individual techniques, shadowbox, spar, grapple, hit various bags and mitts, and improve your conditioning. If you put the time in and allow yourself the necessary time to recover, you will get better and that's all there is to it!

But it wouldn't be Real Anime Training if we didn't try to take it a step further. We can see various anime characters each logging the necessary time for mastery. Even fictional characters (well, most of them) know that you can't just automatically become an expert at something. If they are going to accomplish something quickly, they tend to "cheat" the system a little. For example:

• The Room of Spirit and Time (The Hyperbolic Time Chamber) in Dragonball Z shrinks a year into a day, allowing the people inside to walk in normal one day and walk out badass the next, as long as they put in the time. 
• Naruto used kagebunshin to divide the amount of time it took him to master certain skills and develop new techniques. (Side note: This was brilliant, but so cheap and broken.)
• Ichigo stayed in the little world between Soul Society and the Real World before fighting Aizen so his dad could teach him the final Getsuga Tenshou.

It's not really fair. At some point, your body is not going to be able to train. You can only put in so many hours in a day without overtraining or injuring yourself. There has to be a way to cheat the system. Especially if you're going to school or working or anything else. How can you put more time into it?  I think a good answer for this question actually comes from Grappler Baki. 

Hanma Baki utilizes immense, immense powers of imagination to practice fighting against all manner of martial artists and creatures. In a sense, this is just really detail shadowboxing, but what we're after is the concept, not necessarily the exact method (although I urge you to really use good imagery while shadowboxing).  Actually, studies have shown that imagining an activity with as much detail as possible (that means, as much sensory data as you can manage: the feel of your muscles, skin and what not; the smell of the air; the color of the sky; etc) actually trains the brain to do those activities. Your brain doesn't realize that what you're imagining isn't real and the same parts of the brain that light up when you actually do those motions light up when you imagine doing them.  So, when our body is too damn tired to train anymore, or when we are recovering for a day or so, you can still log the time in your mind. 4 hours of week of this, 50 weeks out of the year, shaves 25 weeks off the 5 years it would take to get to 10,000 hours at 40 hours a week. This is a way, you can do a little bit more. You can practice to your heart's content or until you pass out into a coma of sleep and probably continue to dream about training!

10,000 hours to become an expert. How many hours have you put in? 

That's all for today, guys! Until next time, good luck and train hard!

Baki's Shadowboxing Extravaganza!!

This workout is based on Baki's training to defeat Retsu Kaioh. I realize that we're skipping the workouts of some of the other Maximum Tournament characters, but we'll get back to them.  This workout is simple, but can be very tough if you give 100% the whole time. You can cater this workout to your needs: if you want to go hard the whole time, by all means do so. However, if you need an easy day and want to slow it down a little bit and focus on perfecting the techniques in your shadowboxing, you can do that, too.

The goal here is to build your imagination, which is important, so you can imagine what an opponent is going to do. You need to see your opponent. Baki went so far as to feel his opponent's strikes and his image of the fighter was so crisp, the audience could even see it. Now, I realize this is a bit crazy, but if you can form an image that is so believeable people think you are fighting an invisible man, you've got one heck of an imagination and you understand the mechanics of combat. Have fun with this workout. Play a role, if that suits you. You can bob, weave, punch, kick, sprawl, jump, roll, spin, pretend to grapple, use elbows, knees, shoulder strikes, fight on the ground, against a wall, in the water-- this workout goes wherever you want it to and becomes whatever you put into it.

You can find the companion video to this workout here!

Baki's Shadowboxing Extravangza

Shadowbox for 30 Minutes Non-stop.

That's it. It's simple. It's easy. It's fun. Now, go do it! Gonna try to toss another workout up tomorrow night, either a History's Strongest Disciple workout or another character from Grappler Baki.

Until next time, good luck and train hard!