Martial Conditioning: Core Work

For the martial artist, the core is used in nearly every movement from kicking to punching to grappling and will therefore be continuously activated throughout training, no sit ups required.  Therefore the "core" assumes a paradoxical status.  It is an incredibly important part of the body and therefore needs very little direct training.  On the other hand, it needs to be strong enough to execute martial movements effectively.

It is also hard to classify the core by movement, as nearly any compound exercise could be used as a "core" exercise from the pushup to the deadlift.  Therefore, there is a high likelihood anyone who trains any exercise at all will already have a certain degree of core strength.  The question is how to augment that strength most effectively to target the core, build it to a specific degree of strength, then move on to more comprehensive exercises without wasting time on hundreds of situps.

A few exercises fit this bill, some more efficiently than others.

This blog unequivocally rejects the situp, the crunch, and all other high repetition, low tension core exercises.  In the time it would take to complete 200 repetitions of those exercises, one could complete 200 kettlebell snatches, thereby receiving many more benefits for the core and every other part of the body.

Rather, a martial artist needs minimalist, high tension exercises that work every muscle of the core in a short period of time.  The two most accessible, easy to learn, and effective core exercises fitting this bill are the L-sit and the Dragon Flag.  The ab wheel rollout also deserves honorary mention, but requires a specialized piece of equipment that may not be readily available.

L-sit:  Intro: The L-sit consists of balancing all one's weight on the hands and straightening the legs 90 degrees perpendicular to the body.

Muscles Worked: The anterior chain.  Primary: Abs, obliques, deep core muscles, serratus anterior, hip flexors.  Secondary: Triceps, chest, shoulders, upper back, quadriceps, forearms.

Why Train the L-sit? The L-sit, despite being one of the most basic gymnastics positions, is more effective than almost any other core exercise at building strength in the anterior chain while increasing overall relative strength and posterior chain flexibility.  This position can generate great results with very little training time.  Holding this position on the floor for just 1 minute is a world class feat that will guarantee 6 pack abs.  Even sets of L-sit for 15 seconds at a time are superior to situps and crunches for midsection strength.  Additionally, this movement develops relative strength in the shoulders, arms, back, and legs.

Rehabilitation: The L-sit can be used for rehabilitation of the lower back by decompressing the spinal discs, activating the core to stabilize the spine, and simultaneously stretching and inhibiting the hamstrings and glutes to take pressure off the lower back.

Strength: The L-sit can supplement a primary strength program by pre-fatiguing the core musculature before compound movements, thus increasing core fatigue during the course of typical exercise and building more core strength as a result.

Likely Results of the L-sit: Proficient users of the L-sit are shown below with photos from Google.



All three photos show individuals of exceptional midsection, back, shoulder, and tricep development.  Merely incorporating 1 day of L-sit practice per week is sufficient to gain similar results with great strength carryover to other core movements.  Strive for sets of 15 seconds to 1 minute.  This position alone is sufficient for martial core strength.

Dragon Flag: Intro: The dragon flag is a high tension, dynamic midsection exercise which consists of anchoring the upper body by use of the hands, suspending and straightening the body in the air, and slowly raising and lowering the entire body without bending the hips or knees.

Muscles Worked: The anterior chain. Dynamic: rectus abdominus, obliques, deep abdominal muscles, deep spinal stabilizers, diaphragm. Stationary: Upper body, legs, hip flexors, grip.

Why Train Dragon Flags? The L-sit is sufficient to build core strength for any martial application, however it is an isometric position which builds muscle inefficiently.  The dragon flag is a dynamic movement which isolates the core while integrating the rest of the body to move the midsection through a complete range of motion.  This results in faster muscle growth and greater spinal stabilization.  This movement is only necessary for muscle growth and advanced spinal stabilization however, as the L-sit alone will enable a trainee to perform dragon flags but the reverse may not be true.  Therefore, this blog recommends training the dragon flag for vanity purposes or as an accessory movement to the L-sit.

The dragon flag also shares identical core benefits to advanced anterior chain gymnastics positions such as the front lever without requiring extensive unnecessary training in a skill unrelated to martial combat.

The form of this exercise is crucial to maximize results and minimize risk of spinal injury.  The entire body must remain entirely straight.  Sets must end before form degrades.  To build beginning strength in this movement, start with negative lowering while striving to maintain perfect form then progress to full repetitions.

Likely Results of Dragon Flags: Below are examples taken from Google.


The above examples demonstrate acceptable form.  Note the overall muscle tone and leanness evident in both trainees.

Conflicts of Reproductive Strategy

The two types of reproductive strategy mentioned in the previous post are not pure types, and many variations persist in day to day social life.  For example, though the modern American leftist follows an r-selecting strategy, they actually reproduce less often than traditional families.  What gives?

This owes to a dissonance between one's preferred ideology and one's way of life.  The modern leftist, when they are losers of the mating game (read: fatties, uggs, etc.) will often adopt r-selecting philosophies as a way of attacking the indifferent mating game which has scorned them.  Rather than seeking r-selection as a reproductive strategy, they seek it as vengeance against those who produce excess and win the mating game (read: married people, K-selecting communities).  Therefore, these individuals share common political ground with r-selecting collectives, and though they will not be welcome at any r-selecting orgies, they long for the day when they can deplete K-selecting excesses and destroy the happy families they were denied by the zero sum mating game.  These individuals are therefore among the most wretched in society, as they do not steal resources to reproduce themselves but to prevent the K-selecting reproduction of others as a malicious act.  This explains the abundance of r-selecting leftists who are unlikely to have children, or actively hate children to the extent of reflexively aborting them.  They aren't supporting an ideology to pursue happiness in their own lives, but to spread hate for other people's lives.  The best way to deal with such individuals is to seal them out of one's life, avoid them, or destroy them.

K-selected and r-selected Reproduction Strategies: Sex and Civilization

This blog, despite its martial focus, maintains a scientific philosophy.  In other words, only observable, quantifiable events are relevant to discussion of the martial way.  If it can't be seen and counted, it doesn't matter to our analysis.

As mentioned previously, sex is a topic which has generated particular disharmony due to its zero sum nature.  Only one man's genes can be transmitted by one woman in each birth.  This relation inevitably results in winners and losers of the mating game.  In other words, the act of reproduction itself is inherently both sexist and unequal, because the acts of penetration, birth, and ejaculation all imply exclusive and immutable gender roles.  This dissatisfaction is further complicated by different strategies of reproduction.

All political conflicts surrounding sex relate to the fluidity of reproduction strategies unique to the human species.  Just as human beings can change their fighting style from Tiger to Crane Kenpo depending on strategy, mating strategies are flexible.  Such fluidity is acquired through verbal behavior, which enables human beings to alter their responses to direct contingencies by responding to verbal rules acquired indirectly through interactions with other humans.  In ecological terms, two reproductive strategies are relevant to understanding human sexual politics: K-selected strategies or carrying capacity selection, and r-selected strategies or quantity selection.

r-selected reproduction consists of producing an excess of offspring above and beyond the carrying capacity for the species, or the maximum number of a species which can be sustained indefinitely in a given environment.  Each individual offspring has a correspondingly low probability of surviving to reproduce.  Examples of species which instinctively follow this strategy include rodents, insects, and other organisms which survive through quantity of life rather than quality of life.  Characteristics of these species include physical smallness, great fecundity or sexual excess, promiscuity, mobility, short lives, and above all, minimal investment in offspring.  In these species, it is acceptable for the majority of offspring to die, so long as the lineage continues.

K-selected reproduction consists of producing a relative few offspring well below carrying capacity, each of which has a relatively high probability of surviving to reproduce.  Examples of instinctively K-selected species include whales, elephants, and other organisms which invest greatly in the quality of offspring.  Characteristics include physical size and development, limited sexuality and sometimes monogamy, tendency to occupy a home area or birthing area, long lives, and maximal investment in offspring.  These species create offspring with a high probability of reproduction per individual.

These typographies are messy when applied across species, as some species such as sea turtles blend the two categories by reproducing in excess, investing minimally, followed by long living offspring with a high chance of reproduction.  The picture becomes even more complicated when applied to humans, who can change reproduction strategies depending on verbal rules. 

Human communities are the ultimate result of human reproductive strategies, and the type of strategy adopted will result in characteristic outcomes which can be seen across human history. 

r-selecting communities tend to select quantity of children over quality of childhood.  Communities of these sorts tend to replace nuclear families with loose associations of peers who control sex, the raising of children, and the mobility of the group.  These peer groups are ever expanding and individuals within the groups see themselves as cosmopolitans, inviting diverse individuals who all feast at the same sexual smorgasbord.  As well, these collectivities are not geographically confined, but consist of nomads who roam across borders and have no respect for national or family affiliations. These collectivities tend toward matriarchy as a rule, placing children in the care of promiscuous mothers, who invite a revolving door of male suitors, any of whom could be a father, depending on her ovulation cycle.  Instead of men competing for mates and investing in offspring, they play a game of chance with their genes and raise all children in common with the rest of the group.  Therefore, father involvement is replaced with community child rearing.  Violence is an inevitable outcome of this strategy, particularly when limited resources result in vicious competition.  Because r-selecting communities do not need to value private property, frugality, and individual rights, they deplete the resources of their communities until all members are left fighting over leftovers.  This depletion takes the form of government welfare, money from K-selecting parents, donations, robbery, and other means of extracting money without contributing to one's society.  Examples of the r-selecting strategy are evident in the American underclass of perpetual welfare recipients, Burning Man "burners," gang members, free wheeling hippies, unemployed drifters, drug users, Gypsies, radical anarchic communes, and other groups where easy sex, zero responsibility, low parent investment, and parasitic income are the norms.

The advantages of r-selection become evident during times of social uncertainty, violence, and poverty where investing in offspring is impossible or highly punished by a changing, hostile environment which kills a large proportion of individual organisms.  In these times, producing a surplus of children can increase the odds of species continuation, even if every individual child lives a short, brutal, competitive life.  r-selected individuals tend to criticize K-selected individuals as arrogant, exclusive, snobby, elitist, suckers, and other terms relating to over-investment in family and children and underinvestment in communal sex and hedonism.  In the defense of r-selecting culture, the sex is better and more various, even if a relative few individuals are able to enjoy it.

K-selecting communities, in contrast to r-selecting communities, select quality of childhood over number of children.  The nuclear family becomes the default social structure for raising children and sex is controlled by family marriage arrangements.  These groups are inherently exclusive, seeking to maximize the resources available to guarantee a high standard of living for all offspring in a limited area.  As such, creation of a surplus of resources is valued more highly than the act of sex, which occurs at a later age after resource accumulation in the form of education and earned income has already begun.  Sex is enjoyed in the context of a monogamous relationship for the ultimate purpose of creating and investing in offspring.  Patriarchy is the norm, which results in a culture of male achievement and pursuance of respect to attract a single, high quality woman and compete vigorously with other males for exclusive sexual access.  Monogamous marriage is seen as the traditional ending to this competition which is traditionally followed by offspring who are given a surplus of resources to help secure their healthy and happy childhoods.  Each child is likely to reproduce, but may come to feel entitled to their parents' surplus wealth, resulting in a shift to an r-selecting reproductive strategy during puberty if the family does not teach the value of the K-selecting reproductive strategy which produced the surplus in the first place.  Therefore, gratitude and ingratitude relate directly to reproductive strategies and socialization.  Examples of K-selecting societies include Western families, Oriental families, Jewish families, and other traditional structures of lineage and inheritance.

The advantages of K-selection are seen in times of excess, when every individual is guaranteed a high chance of reproductive success and a correspondingly high quality of life.  The downside to this strategy is the inevitable boredom and ennui which accompany stable patterns of reinforcement, however this boredom may be preferred by those who have experienced the chaos and dehumanization common to r-selecting groups.  K-selecting individuals tend to criticize r-selecting types as uncivilized, crude, vicious, undiscriminating, irresponsible, ungrateful, and libertine.

The two types of sexual selection strategies result in characteristic body types with martial relevance.  r-selecting martial artists tend to be physically underdeveloped and dependent on tricks to achieve victory.  As such, they will be advantaged in wind, water, and other soft arts. K-selecting martial artists, due to physical development of muscular strength and endurance, tend to be advantaged in fire, earth, and other hard martial arts for direct confrontations.

With respect to the martial way, K-selecting cultures are preferred, as the martial way involves dedicating resources to one's personal development, irrespective of sex.  For young men, martial arts take the form of competition with other men to attain the attention of high value females.  For older men and married men, martial arts take the form of protecting what one has invested from r-selecting individuals who might seek to deplete resources.  For r-selecting individuals, the martial arts take the single form of being more efficient at stealing the resources of others and avoiding justice.  Whatever one's preferred role, the martial arts are a powerful tool to achieve one's goals.

Ultimately, the tension between r and K-selection is as old as human verbal behavior and will dictate the best ways for a warrior to proceed in choosing the manner of their own death.

Desire: Destroyer or a Creator?

Human desire is a loaded topic as everyone's individual desire is ultimately their guide for action.  These desires in a martial sense are to be controlled, as only a tamed desire can allow one to choose  the manner of their own death.  Those who cause the most damage to themselves and others while dying most violently have little or no impulse control, nor have they found ways to sublimate their desire in healthy ways.

The martial artist treats desire as something to be neither restrained nor unleashed.  Rather, desire is to be guided toward satisfactions that maximize individual and collective benefit.  Why care about the desires of the collective?  Because the rest of society can become a powerful enemy.  Therefore, the martial way is to satisfy all one's desires in ways that maximize control over one's manner of death.

The most loaded sort of desire is sexual due to the purely self serving nature of the act.  Either one's genes are spread or they go to waste.  Sex is not fair, nor kind, nor good, nor bad.  Like killing, it is a neutral act until it yields good or bad consequences.  Sex can accomplish one of two directives: destruction or creation.

Scumbags and schneevies delight in the destructive sexual desires.  The divine Marquis de Sade details these desires in his works, such as 120 Days of Sodom, which is a textbook description of the motivations which plague the lives of scumbags and schneevies, driving them to depths of depravity unimaginable to civilized persons.  People such as these revel in nonreproductive and destructive sexual acts, such as sodomy, cuckoldry, torture, coprophagia, pedophilia, zoophilia, and other aberrant fixations rightly condemned by almost every civilization.  These fixations greatly influence the life goals of these individuals making them sadistic, masochistic, and generally unpleasant to others.  Often schneevies and scumbags will get in relationships with one another predicated on mutual victimization.  As long as they are arguing, fighting, hurting, and betraying one another, they remain "happy."  People who harbor these fixations tend to represent cowardice, androgyny, disloyalty, and dishonesty in their dealings with others.  Their life paths usually foster destruction and dissatisfaction.

What distinguishes good people from schneevies are not the nature of their sexual desires, but their means of channeling these desires in civilized ways.  A grown man who finds young girls attractive might role play with his wife.  An anal sex fixation might be enjoyed in the context of a committed relationship.  A sadist might play with whips and implement a safe word for their partner.  In all cases, sexual exclusivity, loyalty, and reliability are hallmarks of civilized people who CREATE with their sexual desires rather than destroy.  They create relationships, families, and communities, even if they might harbor kinky desires behind closed doors.  By channeling their desires, rather than being consumed by them, they create a greater community around them.  Further, these individuals do not treat their desires as the primary foci of their lives.  They define themselves by what they create and accomplish, rather than what gets them off.

Further posts will discuss ways of channeling and controlling desire for constructive ends.

On Sheep, Wolves, and Sheepdogs

In the view of David Grossman, most people are Sheep, or "kind, gentle creatures who can only hurt one another by accident," a small percentage of people are Wolves who "feed on the sheep," a tiny fraction of humanity are Sheepdogs who protect the Sheep.  The Sheepdog is erroneously labeled a warrior by Grossman, but I question the title.

This interpretation of human violence and our preparations for violence does little to explain the distinction between warrior (self actualized person who chooses the manner of their own death) and soldier (trained killer who dies at the whim of others).  Ideally, our society would not need an extensive caste of police and military who patrol our borders and fly overseas to kill foreign nationals.  This is the security of the domesticated animal who has no capacity for self defense and must rely on the stewardship of a master for security.  We need a culture of wild animals who make their own living and defend their own families with their own weapons.

What our society needs is safe, happy families, strong fathers, and gentle mothers, not false paternalistic state functionaries who dictate how their livestock will live, reproduce, and contribute.  The destruction of American fatherhood and the redistribution of the family has destroyed the training ground of the next generation's warriors.  The last American war with actual warriors was World War II.  Since the destruction of the family, our military has consisted of indigent youth who are trained to fight for food, pay, and cheap sex.  These lesser fighters are being sold to our culture as warriors.  With the degradation of our cultural concept of warrior, we have inadvertently accepted cowards, bullies, despots, and other weaklings to manage our safety.  The answer to this degradation is to encourage the development of actual warriors, not paper tigers with little concern for human life.

Those who deal in violence must have a full understanding of its relevance in choosing the manner and circumstances of one's own death.  For what do our modern soldiers die to protect?  Trillions in national debt?  NSA programs to spy on citizens?  Entitled women and other privileged groups getting special assistance because of their identity?  Divorce cash and prizes for unfaithful ex-"wives" giving birth to other men's bastards?  Foreign citizens illegally raising their intact families on American tax dollars?  A failing, violent school system full of depressed, victimized teens?  The modern soldier has run out of reasons to die on the battlefield, save for suicide.  The real battle for America is being waged in the streets, schools, workplaces, courts, and homes, not in a Lybian ghetto full of burning corpses.

A warrior would simply not accept a war that limits his choice of death to the whims of others.  Our culture needs men strong enough to thrive under conflict and families worth protecting.  The modern warrior needs to stop fighting for his masters and start fighting for his own prosperity, lineage, and liberty.

Using Grossman's typography, the Sheep are now entirely composed of vicious, weak, entitled, ungrateful animals who attack in groups.  The Wolves are running the farm behind the scenes.  The Sheepdogs have all been slaughtered for feed, or driven out into the fields. The American warrior is a dying archetype.