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What is the most useful fighting skill?

Not without a bit ‘of irony, we want to ask a question rather absurd:

What would be the ability that “potentially” (brought to the highest level conceivable) could be sufficient (eg. for an old man or a child) to win against every kind of opponent?

Note – This article has been asked by one of our Core Course practitioners on Patreon (see how to attend our home study classes here Learn Kung Fu online: a beginner-to-expert course).

We all know that each skill has its own percentual importance but we are at the game and we ignore these details to reflect on what could be the most crucial combat capability.

What is the best skill for a fighter?

Let’s try to answer by eliminating one by one the possible options:

Strength – What can serve to have the ability to break the stone, bend steel or tear the most elastic fiber if we fail to employ this power on an opponent faster than us?
Speed – What can serve (alone) the maximum muscular speed if we are not able to cause serious damage to our opponent, if we are not in conditions to avoid his / her attacks?
Reflexes – What can serve the reflexes of a panther if we are not technically able to have consistent, reasoned and technical reactions? Reflexes are not speed (read Speed and quickness) and furthermore, they can always be fooled by a good technique
Technique – What can serve a good technique if we do not have reflexes, enough speed of execution and power to release on the target? A powerful and faster opponent would put us on our knees in a few seconds
…

What skills are we missing?

Many but one stands out over the others: spatial intelligence. Even with the strength of a child or an old man, it always guarantees us good attack and defense possibilities.

Prior to speed and reflexes, spatial intelligence allows us to understand:

Where we are, where our body is in relation to the other combat scenario’s elements (trees, ditches, obstacles, the stakes of a ring, etc.)
Where are our opponents and especially where do they want or can go
…

In our hypothetical and strange game, without wasting energy, who owns a “perfect” spatial intelligence (and spatial memory) could:

Never be caught out, even without speed or reflexes outside the norm because a “perfect” spatial intelligence would allow him / her to know in advance all the physical possibilities that a human body (or even a generic element of the fighting scenario) has to move in its specific circumstances
Wait for the opponent’s disadvantage to hit him / her with the minimum sufficient strength to prevail (the one that every healthy man / woman owns, directed to the more sensitive areas of the human body)
Even use the passive elements of the scenario (the ground, the edges, etc.) as attacking tools
…

A note by Master Kongling – Let’s take the example of penalty kicks in football: the goalkeeper with an (impossibly) “perfect” spatial intelligence could (considering all the other capabilities at a normal level), in the same instant in which the footballer performs (or alters) his / her kicking movement, understand where the ball will go.

Is it possible to possess perfect spatial intelligence?

Of course, there is much to contest against this simplistic and theoretical reasoning but it is not this that interests us, we are not inviting our students to stop the development of all other skills to focus only on spatial intelligence.

The point we want to stress is that the absence of spatial intelligence development is the weak point of the vast majority of today’s martial arts workouts, this is “that something” that leads us to say that a style (even after many years of study):

Is not working
Is not effective

To obtain the fruit, the tree must first be grown

What is the point?

The crucial fact is that alone, spatial intelligence cannot be coached, it borns in tiny droplets from the experience of years and years of profound (and daily) painful practice.

Spatial intelligence must be our point of departure and arrival but by itself: it does not exist.

True combat effectiveness is given by the harmonic and consistent connection between each skill (read All the skills of 6 Dragons Kung Fu): spatial intelligence is their ultimate nectar (read also Introduction to the idea of Precision Control).

In the next article of this series, we will deepen what spatial intelligence truly is and how to build it.

In-depth video courses

Basic 6 Dragons Kung Fu Exercises – The exercises that develop, at the same time, spatial intelligence and many other skills
Advanced speed and reflexes training – A speed development course designed to reach high-level combat reactivity

In-depth articles

Combat skills: what we will learn – The combat capabilities that we have to acquire
Mind skills: what we will learn – The mental aspects of 6 Dragons Kung Fu teachings

Questions

Reply in the comments and share your experience:

How would you rate your spatial intelligence?

Author: Master Kongling

Founder of 6 Dragons Kung Fu.

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