Youth and strength beat age and skill, or vice versa

[SLG]

Not sure the best place to post this.

Title should actually have been something like "Skill May Nullify Youth and Strength." Or, "Youth and Strength Equals Greater Skill." Or...


Having recently been getting back into rolling, I came across a good explanation of age/skill/strength/weight from some of the Gracie's. The basic idea is that every 10 years that an opponent is younger than you, is like them being a belt higher in skill than they actually are. Same with every 20 pounds that they are heavier than you. So, a guy who doesn't know what you know, but is 60 pounds heavier and 20 years younger, is at least the equivalent of a black belt. Higher, if he has some skill too.

I mention this because of something I read in another thread. All of us are getting older. None of our eyes, reflexes, strength, recovery time are getting better. As we age, there will be a change in performance. Sometimes you can stave it off with technology. Sometimes with more training. Sometimes with specific rules (for competitions). However, compared to what you could have done, had you been much younger/fitter/tons of training, you will fall short.

The people who actually get better at shooting as they age, compared to where they were when they were younger, weren't as good as they might have been when they were younger.

I mention this, not to be a downer, but to encourage you to look inside and figure out why you shoot. Is it to beat the guys at your local club? For self defense? For fun? To be a national champion?

If the answer is anything but fun and self defense, don't be surprised if you eventually stop training. When people train hard, and don't see great results, people quit. Human nature. Sure, they may redouble their efforts, but at some point, they have disappointed themselves too many times, so they distance themselves from that which disappoints.

Accept that aging is rarely performance enhancing. Find fun in shooting. Defending yourself doesn't take much shooting ability. Don't quit. Enjoy the trip. Help the newer people.

After some of the more serious discussions we've had lately (which are great), I thought this might be in order.


I read JAD's post below. Shooting is not fighting, and the age drop off is not the same. It will be different for everyone, so don't take what i said above to mean everyone over 30, or whatever. It may be more like 60, for all I know. I want to shoot till I'm 95 though, so that is my point of reference.

[JAD]

I appreciate the line of thought. I am still waiting to get better as I get older.

I am on a spectrum of fun and self defense, or you could say I orient my fun in a general direction that might keep me from getting curb stopped.

I've been shooting for 22 years and I cannot imagine anything other than a Christmas morning feeling every time I step on a range.

[voodoo_man]

I've never been old, though I am sure I'll get there one day, so I cannot speak with any experience in that realm.

What I can speak of is from a background of training and execution of skill sets after training landmarks.

I can only see myself getting better at a particular skill set and only losing competency if I neglect it. As long as I keep a "standard" in any particular skill set I will maintain competence to the level of that self-imposed standard. This will differ with everyone and it will evolve as you age.

The example I use is that in high school it would be nothing for me to run a low four minute mile, I would do it nearly every weekend in meets, especially in my junior/senior years. As I got older and my goals changed as did my training. I began to accept a five minute mile standard and changed my training accordingly because there were other things that were more important for my time. Then I moved up to a six minute mile, and eventually up to a ten minute mile after I messed up my foot chasing a homicide suspect. Now I run for cardio and as long as I am around the ten minute mile pace I am content as I am no longer actively trying to break myself for a low mile time.

Training tactics, combatives/martial arts, blade work and firearms competency is no different. We all accept a level of competency of skill sets and we do what we must to get to where we want to be. There are two caveats here though, first is that you have a finite amount of time you can spend on any particular skill set until others begin to lose competency from neglect - ie; when's the last time you sprinted 100m and do you think you could do that now? The other is that the older you get the more you have to worry about your physical ability, strength, eye sight, speed, mental function, etc. I have no doubt I'll be a better shooter in ten years than I am now, just as I am a better shooter now than I was ten years ago. If you ask me how good of a shooter I'll be at 60, my response will be "as good as my body allows me to be."

We have to figure out where our point of non-progression is, each of us will differ in this respect. Some guys run marathons at 60, some guys can't walk up a flight of steps. A lot of variables that need to be figured out and shooting is not excluded in this.

Short answer - use the time you have wisely and try to maximize your priorities in skill sets so that you do not waste time training something you do not need. This is also one of the reasons I do not compete, I do not have the time to burn bad reps and my life depends on me burning good reps. When I retire I may compete, but right now it would just be a misuse of my time.

[BehindBlueI's]

I'm no expert. I'm not an old guy, but I'm at the stage where I can do about anything I used to do once...but I pay for it a lot more. I had to replace my stove today, and since my help flaked I unloaded the new one and loaded and unloaded the old (200 lb one) to take it to the appliance recycle. I used to dead lift 200 lbs as a warm up. Now I wrestle the damn thing in the truck and 20 minutes later I'm having muscle spasms down the left side of my back and my left arm. The same thing will happen in a serious fight. I can exert myself, but I've got to win quick and then be in a position to recover.

That said, I think the advantage old guys have in real life is decision making and experience. If you've been paying attention and survived this long, you see trouble coming earlier, you have more experience for intuitive decision making, and you've learned what does and doesn't work from your mistakes and those around you. I don't know how well that applies to MMA or the like, but I think it applies pretty well to real encounters. Think about driving. 40-50 year olds don't have the pure raw reflexes of a 20 year old. But, they see trouble on the road earlier and that more than outweighs the gap in pure reaction time. If you both know ahead of time what's going to happen and have time to formulate a plan and the like, that negates some of that. In a bar fight where The Youth is still posturing and The Aged either preemptively smokes him or just leaves because he's learned to brain think instead of testosterone think...well, you see where I'm going.

[Wondering Beard]

Interestingly enough, the following John Farnam Quip arrived this morning (the beginning and middle parts really applies to this discussion)


“‘Courage’ isn't having the strength to go on. It is going on when all
strength has deserted you”

Napoléon Bonaparte

I talked with several prestigious golf instructors today, and we discussed
similarities between the Arts we teach and advance.

Many young golfers are able to produce acceptable drives via muscle alone.
In the same way, husky martial arts students are able to make techniques “
work” by muscling their way through. They can thus get the false
impression that they have mastered the technique, particularly when working with a
small, weak, or compliant sparring partner.

Tiger Woods experienced the highpoint of his professional golfing career
when he was a lanky, skinny, unassuming kid. As he “bulked-up” and became “
important,” his game declined, and never came back. Today’s top golf
professionals are anything but “muscle men.” They’ve learned to precisely
derive power and accuracy from technique, not brawn.

In the same way, many “accomplished” martial artists, who are accustomed
to demonstrating their acumen on weak, compliant students, are rudely
surprised when they try the same thing on strong, tough, experienced opponents
who have no compunction about calling their bluff!

That day, they are painfully confronted with the fact that they never
learned the technique correctly to begin with. Their knowledge and skill are
superficial. Their strength actually got in their way, because they relied
on it too routinely, and defaulted to it too soon. Strength invariably
masked the precision necessary for them to actually “see” and realize what
makes the move (that they never really learned) so effective.

In fighting with guns, unlike most other martial arts, we don’t “empower”
the bullet in any way. It goes the same speed, no matter how hard we
squeeze the grip of the weapon, nor how we hold our tongue! As in all other
martial arts, we have to carefully learn correct technique- for holding the
weapon, stance, using sights, and running triggers. None of it is
particularly strength-dependant, nor even strength related!

Like playing the piano, a moment to “learn,” a lifetime to perfect!

Morihei Ueshiba (1883-1969), founder of Akido, seldom described his Art as
something used to overpower or hurt an opponent. He described it as "...
The Way of harmonious spirit," or words to that effect.

As spiritual descendants of Ueshiba, and other martial arts icons through
the centuries, we modern Operators refine and advance our Art with the
intention of training ourselves and our students to be humble servants and
protectors of all that is good in the world. In so doing, we discover that raw
strength is seldom helpful. In physically correcting our unenlightened
opponents, as in playing golf, billiards, poker, et al, we learn to seek-out
and rely on the True Way, not so much on our own strength.

As Napoléon so correctly observed, when your strength is gone, the real “
you” that remains, the “you” that really is you, had better be sufficient
in every way necessary to produce victory!

“People often say that this or that person has not yet ‘found himself.’
But, ‘self ‘is not something one ‘finds.’ It is something one creates.”

Thomas Szasz

[MDS]

[...] look inside and figure out why you shoot. Is it to beat the guys at your local club? For self defense? For fun? To be a national champion?

If the answer is anything but fun and self defense, don't be surprised if you eventually stop training. When people train hard, and don't see great results, people quit. Human nature. Sure, they may redouble their efforts, but at some point, they have disappointed themselves too many times, so they distance themselves from that which disappoints.

It's worth thinking about. When I decided to become more serious about carrying a gun, I knew one of the things I needed to get better at was actually shooting it. I had a goal in my mind of a skill level that was reasonable for self-defense. But once I started practicing, I came to appreciate the subtleties of the craft and started exploring those subtleties at the range... and, long story short, even at my mediocre level I have become a much, much better shooter than I ever planned. If I did shooting "just" for self-defense, I'd hit the range once a year and be good. So why do I shoot? It's worth thinking about.

Shooting is such a great meditation for me. During a practice session, there's a lot to pay attention to, including awareness of all the details of what I'm doing so I can self-diagnose; but at the same time I have to focus on the one or two very simple things: sights and trigger. I need to relax and let it all happen, without reacting to explosions happing right in front of my face and next to me on the line; but then again I need to be vigilant for my technique, and for safe handling by myself and others.

I've got nothing "real" to gain from getting better at shooting. But the earnest attempt puts my head in a really good place. I stopped shooting for a while to spend more time outdoors and practice a few mountain skills. And while time in the woods is good for the soul in its own powerful way, I'm finding that simply exercising or improving a baseline of outdoor skills isn't as good at keeping me centered. Once I got a basic baseline of skill, being comfortable in the woods is easy and natural - I come away rested and content. In contrast, shooting is real work - there's a depth to the technical and mental subtleties that I have yet to plumb, and I come away no less content, but tired and already planning for the next bout. Reading this paragraph, it sounds wrong: trekking around the mountains is physically more demanding, yet I find it more restful? But it makes perfect sense in my mind because being in the woods is just that: being, while shooting is more about doing for me, about really working on my mental ability to focus-yet-relax, to be-serious-yet-have-fun...

Anyway, bottom line. Shooting, for me, is zazen. And in zazen, age and skill trumps youth and vigor any day.

[Hambo]

I've never been old, though I am sure I'll get there one day

If you're lucky you will. Don't count on it so much that you put off anything important.

Back to SLG, I can see now how I muscled my way through a lot of things when I was younger. It's a wake up call though as to how I well I can defend myself now. As far as shooting goes I'm in the fun/defend category. My shooting interests are so varied that if I get bored by one thing I just do another for a while, but I can't imagine ever not shooting.

[LittleLebowski]

I don't feel the years except when recovering from injuries. I'm more than a little frustrated with certain injuries right now, I am reassessing certain avenues of attack with fixing things wrong with my body.

[LittleLebowski]

I've never been old, though I am sure I'll get there one day, so I cannot speak with any experience in that realm.

There's absolutely plenty of young bucks in LE and mil that would think of you as old and make you feel old during PT. Guaranteed.

[KeeFus]

There's absolutely plenty of young bucks in LE and mil that would think of you as old and make you feel old during PT. Guaranteed.

Until we do our POPAT and the old guys like me (I'm 45) smoke them. I'm not in great shape either...but my mindset is different. Seriously, we took our POPAT January and you would be surprised at how many young bucks (under the age of 35) failed or barely passed. I broke my ankle on it...I was out 2 months and then passed it with a lot of time to spare. I had literally been back on the road for a couple weeks and hadn't really done any PT. Hell, one has been out of the academy less than a year and failed! This younger gen seems to get mind-fucked way too easy and it effects their performance.