FATIGUE IN THE MARTIAL ARTS

I remember reading an article in the mid 1990’s from a martial arts magazine that said in the old days of martial arts training, the instructor would train his class of students until the most physically fit student would collapse due to exhaustion.  The American Heritage dictionary defines “exhaustion” as “the state of extreme fatigue,” and then goes on to define “fatigue” as “the physical and/or mental weariness resulting from exertion.”  Recognizing the signs of fatigue in martial arts training is crucial to better martial arts performance, and is one of the major keys to avoiding injuries.

 What Causes Fatigue?

 There are three main contributing areas to fatigue.  They are listed below:

 1.  Medical Conditions: Anemia (lack of iron in the blood), infections (like the flu), low metabolism, depression, and diabetes are causes of fatigue due to medical conditions.  Since we are discussing fatigue in the martial arts, we’ll concentrate on #2 and #3.

2.  Physical:  The major factor in physical fatigue is the lack of energy required to move your body.  The online Columbia Encyclopedia, 6^th edition, describes physical fatigue occurring “when the metabolic reserves of the body are exhausted and the waste products increased, as for example, after prolonged exertion, the body finds it difficult to continue its function and activity.  The accumulation of lactic acid in muscle tissue and the depletion of glycogen (stored glucose) results in muscle fatigue.  The contractile properties of muscle are reduced, and continued exertion is impossible unless the muscle is allowed to rest.  In the normal body a period of rest permits the redistribution of nutritive elements to the muscles and tissues and elimination of accumulated waste products; the body is then ready to resume activity.”

3.  Mental:  The major factor in mental fatigue is the energy used in mental concentration.  The following is quoted from an article on mental fatigue from http://www.betterhealthusa.com/public/235.cfm, “Mental fatigue can affect people for both short and long periods of time. The result of brain over-activity, this is a condition where the brain cells become exhausted – much like our bodies do when we’ve been physically over-active.  Mental fatigue can be caused by continual mental effort and attention on a particular task, as well as high levels of stress or emotion. Basically, any mental process that goes into overload can result in this disorder.”  It is understandable for your brain to interpret an intense sparring match as stressful, and therefore exhaust your brain cells.

Why are Recognizing and Studying Fatigue Important?

 Recognizing fatigue is important because fatigue will degrade and reduce your quality of performance, both physical and mental, as well as increases your chances of preventable injuries.  Our body’s energy, just like gasoline in a car, will eventually be lessened when used.  And just as you can’t go certain places in a car with a low tank of gas, you can’t do certain things physically without a certain level of energy.

As you are probably well aware, martial arts training can be very physically tasking on the body.  Since the martial arts are a physical activity, physical performance is very important.  Just warming up may include stretching, pushups, sit-ups, and jumping jacks, to name a few warm up exercises.  Then we have the self-defense training.  LOTUS for example, uses punches, kicks, knee strikes, throws, sweeps, and elbows as a means of self-defense.  In addition, the LOTUS student rolls, performs breakfalls, weaves and bobs, and pivots.  Students in a typical martial arts class perform these techniques repeatedly in order to get better.  All of these techniques and maneuvers require a certain amount of energy, some more than others.

In addition to being a physical activity, the martial arts also require a great deal of mental activity, especially focus.  Meditation and mental imagery are one tool that plays an important role in helping the martial artist bring the physical side together with the mental side.  LOTUS recognizes that importance as evidenced in the LOTUS creed, “BODY, MIND, and SPIRIT.”  Chuck Norris wrote in his book, The Secret of Inner Strength: My Story, that when he was competing in tournaments he would frequently use mental imagery to rehearse an upcoming competition fight.  He would watch an opponent and study his way of fighting.  Then Norris would mentally rehearse the fight and visualize himself winning it by countering his opponent’s attacks.  He was bringing the mental aspect of martial arts together with the physical aspect.  Just as Chuck Norris was visualizing his martial arts training in action, we should be doing the same thing as we train.

Having said that, I have found that most beginning martial artists have difficulty merging the physical aspect of martial arts with the mental aspect.  When the beginner spars, his brain perceives the attack and thinks something like, “A punch is coming.”  Then the beginning student is punched before having the physical part of the body respond fast enough to block the punch.  With correct practice over time, the mind and body will become one, and the student’s block will be in motion as the brain perceives the attacker’s punch coming.  The mind and body become more synchronized due to a process called neuroplasticity.  According to http://faculty.washington.edu/chudler/plast.html, “neuroplasticity is the lifelong ability of the brain to reorganize neural pathways based on new experiences. As we learn, we acquire new knowledge and skills through instruction or experience. In order to learn or memorize a fact or skill, there must be persistent functional changes in the brain that represent the new knowledge.

The environment plays a key role in influencing plasticity.  Gopnick et al. (1999) describe neurons as growing telephone wires that communicate with one another. Following birth, the brain of a newborn is flooded with information from the baby’s sense organs. This sensory information must somehow make it back to the brain where it can be processed. To do so, nerve cells must make connections with one another, transmitting the impulses to the brain. Continuing with the telephone wire analogy, like the basic telephone trunk lines strung between cities, the newborn’s genes instruct the "pathway" to the correct area of the brain from a particular nerve cell.  For example, nerve cells in the retina of the eye send impulses to the primary visual area in the occipital lobe of the brain and not to the area of language production (Wernicke’s area) in the left posterior temporal lobe.  The basic trunk lines have been established, but the specific connections from one house to another require additional signals.  As each neuron matures, it sends out multiple branches (axons, which send information out, and dendrites, which take in information), increasing the number of synaptic contacts and laying the specific connections from house to house, or in the case of the brain, from neuron to neuron. At birth, each neuron in the cerebral cortex has approximately 2,500 synapses. By the time an infant is two or three years old, the number of synapses is approximately 15,000 synapses per neuron (Gopnick, et al., 1999).  This amount is about twice that of the average adult brain.  As we age, old connections are deleted through a process called synaptic pruning.  Synaptic pruning eliminates weaker synaptic contacts while stronger connections are kept and strengthened. Experience determines which connections will be strengthened and which will be pruned; connections that have been activated most frequently are preserved.”  As this article just explained, training increases synaptic contacts, which allow the brain to respond quicker, thus telling your body quicker to respond.

Fatigue increases the likelihood of you making wrong decisions due to a reduced mental capacity.  Since the martial arts are a contact sport, a wrong decision you make can potentially get you hurt.  Your tired mind might misjudge the distance of you attacker’s punch, thereby placing you in dangerous range.  In addition, a fatigued mind may not be able to respond quickly enough to specific threats, which can also get you hurt.

 How to Combat Physical Fatigue:

The most important way to build a resistance to fatigue is to train often.  You should also train as you hope to perform in a real-life self-defense encounter.  The most beneficial fitness plan is one that incorporates flexibility, cardio, and weight training.  The flexibility will give you a greater range in your movements and also help prevent injuries.  The cardio will allow you to practice, perform, and fight for a longer period of time by strengthening your most important muscle, the heart.  The weight training will build your strength so that your blocks, strikes, and movements carry seriousness with them.  One of the old ideas on weight training was that it makes you slow and bulky.  Recent thinking is that it exercises the fast-twitch muscle fibers essential for quick and powerful movements.  An example of this was in the movie Conan the Barbarian, where the World Champion bodybuilder Arnold Schwarzenegger demonstrated his swordsmanship with agility, speed, and power.

It is also important to emphasize that water and food are the body’s important sources of energy.  The Fighter’s Body: An Owner’s Manual written by Loren Christensen and Wim Demeere is an excellent source of information about nutrition in the martial arts.  For more detailed information, I recommend reading their book.  Here are some excerpts: “Since roughly 70 percent of your body weight is water, it makes sense that you carefully manage your intake to stay hydrated throughout the day.  You can stagger around a blazing desert for days without food, but go more than two or three days without water and you end up as cactus fertilizer.  Dehydration occurs when the body’s water level drops below that required for adequate circulation and normal body function, and it can zap you in as little as 30 minutes after you begin training.  If you don’t do some slurping to replace the loss, your blood becomes concentrated, meaning that it thickens and puts a tremendous strain on your heart.  Thick blood can clot, which isn’t a good thing if you plan on having another birthday.  The least of your problems is that you have less blood plasma, which brings on fatigue quickly as your body struggles to carry oxygenated blood throughout your system.  The good news is that it’s easy to avoid by simply drinking water on a regular basis.”  In addition to water, it is important to mention that eating and eating well plays a significant part in our performance and our ability to delay fatigue.  I have seen a person almost faint from not eating, and then on the other side, I have seen a student not complete a LOTUS test because he got sick during the rolls since he ate a meal right before his belt promotion test.

To help you cope with fatigue and delay its onset, I also recommend the following suggestions, which have helped me. 

Focus on short-term accomplishments rather than the whole event.  If you have a three-minute sparring match, don’t think about the 3 minutes as a whole.  Just think about how you are going to counter each strike that comes your way.  If you are about to perform the 10 katas of LOTUS, focus all your attention on the specific kata you are performing.  Tell your mind that you are only going to do that one kata.  Then do the same thing for the next kata.  Therefore, you are thinking of each kata in itself, and you’ll be done before you know it.  Shorter goals seem more attainable than longer ones, and sometimes we have to trick our mind into that mindset since our brain sends us signals to stop training and rest as a bodily safety precaution. The following is quoted from an article on mental fatigue from http://www.pponline.co.uk/encyc/0336.htm, “Tryptophan is an amino acid which normally rides through your bloodstream attached to a very important blood plasma protein, albumin. However, when blood fat levels rise, as they do during prolonged exercise, the fats 'kick' tryptophan loose from its albumin moorings. This 'free' tryptophan then enters the brain in large quantities, where - converted to another chemical called serotonin - it may induce fatigue and produce a drop-off in performance (serotonin is noted for its calming and even sleep-producing effects on brain cells).  This biochemical scenario has a protective effect: before you exercise so long that you tear your muscles to shreds, your brain fills up with tryptophan and you lose the willpower to force your muscles to keep going.  However, if you're an athlete, you would like to keep exercising at a high level until you reach the finish line or the end of the match.”  The author of that article goes on to say how diet and supplements help delay the production of serotonin.  Another theory is to override your brain’s internal safety mechanism by telling it to shut up and keep training.

Counting down rather than counting up helps me mentally with a difficult exercise.  For example, if I know I have to do 50 pushups, I’ll count down from 50 to 1 instead of 1 to 50.

How to Combat Mental Fatigue:

The most important way to build a resistance to mental fatigue is to learn how to properly breathe.  We learned earlier in the article that mental fatigue is caused by over exertion of brain cells.  Brain cells need oxygen.  Some of your bodily functions are automatic and others are voluntary.  Breathing is both.  Since you can control your breathing, you should learn how to breathe more effectively.  Learning to breathe correctly takes time and practice, but the important thing to remember is to force yourself to breathe (the famous kia in martial arts) on your strikes and blocks.

Eyestrain is a documented contributor to fatigue.  It is commonly seen in lifeguards who are constantly scanning the open waters in search of anyone drowning.  But, it is easy for the beginning martial artist to get tunnel vision when sparring, and thus fatigue his mental and physical capacity by overstraining his eyes.  The trick to avoid tunnel vision is not to focus acutely on one specific thing.  When I spar, I tend to look at the knot of my opponent’s belt and allow my peripheral vision to let me know when he is using his hands or feet for an attack.

Conclusion:

Fatigue is a normal bodily response to training.  If you train hard enough and long enough, you’ll experience it.  The purpose of this article is to illustrate what causes fatigue and how to help delay its onset by applying the above-mentioned strategies.  Take what works for you and leave what doesn’t.  I wish you good luck in your training, and may you always remember why you chose to study the martial arts.

Written by: Tucker Axum