On Kung Fu and Running

I got a tweet the other day asking me this question. “Does running help Kung Fu or vice versa?”

This got me thinking. I have been studying Wing Chun Kung Fu for approaching eight years now and I got back in to running after many years away from it at about the same time. I was 32 years old and had spent pretty much all of my 20’s partying, smoking and drinking and doing virtually no exercise.

Other than a short spell of Judo as a young child I had never trained in any martial arts, although I was a fan of Bruce Lee and Kung Fu films in general. I always wanted to take up a martial art but just never got round to it. I kept promising myself it would happen and putting it off and putting it off. It was during an evening drink in a pub that I got chatting to an old friend, who was raving about this new Wing Chun class he had started that the opportunity presented itself. Serendipity at work I believe.

My first class was hell, just the warm up nearly killed me. Push ups and burpees in sets of 50 – I hadn’t done a single push up for years – but I loved it and I was hooked. Almost 8 years later and I feel privileged to include my Sihing and classmates among my good friends and running partners.

Back to the question “Does running help Kung Fu or vice versa?”. The short answer is yes and yes.

So what are the common threads? The key link between both arts is simplicity. Running requires nothing more than getting your shoes on getting out the door and doing it. Similarly with Kung Fu, specifically Wing Chun, with a little training and practice one applies a basic set of principles and you just do it. Whilst many of the drills in Wing Chun require a partner, it is combat training after all, the forms (think kata) are practised alone  (like running) and these become  a form of moving meditation (also like running). In this sense both arts offer the practitioner opportunities for self transcendence or mastery over oneself.

Both of course require practice. In running we focus on breathing, rhythm, cadence , footfall and form. With Kung Fu there are endless repetitions of techniques and principles, always seeking some incremental improvement.

A side benefit of both is fitness. This was the primary reason for taking up running again. I initially started by run walking with my dog over short distances of less than a mile. It was hell, painful and I could never see myself being able to run a full mile non stop. It is incredible how quickly fitness improves and that first non stop mile, then 2 and 3 then 5 feel like such an achievement.

One of the key principles of Wing Chun is relaxation, defined in this sense as the absence of tension in the muscles. The concept of ‘dynamic tension’ works on the basis of holding no tension at all in the muscles throughout the range of a strike until the point of impact when you apply tension to the muscles (squeeze) and immediately relax again post strike. It’s hard to explain but imagine trying to throw a cricket ball or pitch a baseball with tension in your biceps. It doesn’t work. The name of the game here is efficiency and economy of motion. The more tension you hold the more quickly you get tired and incredibly to weaker the strike. We can apply this principle to running – relaxed running seems counter intuitive but next time you are out there running you might be surprised to see how much tension you are carrying in your arms and shoulders.  Relax, let it flow and ensure your energy is not being wasted.

Is it any coincidence that many of the runners and martial artists I know are also some of the most highly motivated and driven people I know? Why is that? In both cases there is a link between hard painful training and the achievement of personal goals. I ran my first ½ marathon in St Albans in the UK in June 2006. The weather was unseasonably hot, almost 30 ◦C, people were dropping like flies and at mile 11 I stopped sweating and got cold,( I realise this is the onset of heatstroke and highly dangerous!)  but I carried on. I was going to finish that race or die trying. I am certain that without the tough training (Kung Fu spirit) I would have given up. This approach, this strength of character is common to both runners and martial artists. The ability to keep going at mile 20 in a marathon when your body is screaming “NO!”, or to continue fighting when pumped full of adrenalin and exhausted,  these skills I believe spill over in to normal life and enable the practitioner to better handle unpleasant situations and conflict in work, personal relationships and all sorts of other areas. Two quotes spring to mind  “Pain is inevitable, suffering is optional”  (from ‘What I talk about when I talk about running’ by Haruki Murakami) and you will often hear martial artists quoting “Pain is just weakness leaving the body” (Source unknown) I think they sum up the essence of what I am driving at here.

Are there any conflicts? I think not, some professional MMA trainers advocate short sharp runs at high intensity rather than long slow distance for conditioning reasons but most of us are not training to fight competitively anyway and regardless it’s still running.

In summary for me running and martial arts go hand in hand. Each complements the other, they are interrelated not interdependent but my life would not be the same in the absence of either or both.