The Fragility of Physical Toughness
The paradoxical relationship of physical and toughness and fragility
What image first comes to mind when you think of martial arts?
Perhaps it’s two guys fighting in a cage?
Or maybe someone performing self-defense against an aggressor?
Possibly a kickboxer hitting a heavy bag?
These are some of the frequent visualizations people express when posed with such an impromptu question.
Each of these domains, cage fighting, self-defense, and heavy bag training, convey an element of toughness.
However, physical toughness is like glass; it is rigid, fragile, and destined to shatter.
Labeling physical toughness as fragile may seem paradoxical.
Let’s explore this paradox and why physical toughness is an unstable attribute.
What is the Nature of Toughness?
Toughness is the maximum amount of impact something can take before it cracks.
In engineering terms, it is the threshold of resisting strain and stress.
Materials such as metal alloys, plastics, and fiberglass have specific tolerances, and the degree to which they can withstand breakage determines their durability.
With inanimate objects, it’s cut and dry of what it means to be tough.
However, people are not inanimate.
What does it mean to be tough for a person?
There is a physical quality of toughness, but there are also mental qualities.
What about social, emotional, or moral toughness?
Considering these additional points, what it means to be tough for humans versus an object becomes a little more complicated.
First, let’s examine physical toughness and why it seems to be so desirable.
Physical Toughness
Physical toughness is the primary realm that people associate with martial arts.
Having a robust body can help fortify against the 3W’s.
The 3W’s are a mnemonic device identifying the three reasons people lose fights.
The 3W’s are wreck, wind, and will.
One must lead an adversary into one of the 3W’s to win.
How does physical toughness fortify people against losing fights?
An example is when people train their bodies to be resilient.
People go to the gym, hit the heavy bag, do pull-ups, lift weights, run the treadmill, you name it.
This process is to build muscle mass and stamina.
The more stamina, the longer one can fight without getting gassed.
Physical training prevents losing against the W of wind.
Another example is training in the ring, the giving and taking of blows.
Taking blows increases bone density, bolsters tendon strength, and conditions the body to take higher degrees of punishment without breakage.
A higher level of conditioning prevents the losing against the W of wreck.
All of these aspects are important when engaged in combat.
It is without a doubt, physical toughness is an attribute that can give a person an advantage.
A critical strategy in fighting is to maximize your advantage while weakening your opponents.
However, is physical toughness the best advantage to have?
It seems beneficial, but is this the decisive characteristic over all others to become victorious?
Sport versus Self-Defense
The degree to which physical toughness is a factor can vary depending on the engagement domain.
An example of different engagement domains is sport versus self-defense.
Sport is mutually engaged.
It is a match, a fight, a duel.
Self-defense is non-mutually engaged. It is an assault, a blitz, an incursion.
Sport is scheduled. Self-defense is non-scheduled.
Sport has well defined rules. Self-Defense does not.
Sport is finite. Self-Defense is infinite.
Both are forms of combat but are opposites — a yin and yang.
Let us compare the two domains and how they can influence physical toughness.
Sport — The Finite
Tim and Harry are two featherweights sparring in the octagon.
Harry throws repeated thigh kicks and jabs at Tim, landing them successfully.
Tim has logged many hours in the gym and the cage, developing his physical toughness.
As a result, Tim is conditioned, pain-resistant, and has the stamina to weather Harry’s blows, thus giving him an advantage.
What is the outcome of such a benefit?
Harry may start to get tired.
Tiredness is the gateway to one way of loss: wind.
Harry may also begin to get frustrated.
Frustration is a gateway to another way of loss: will.
So, in this situation, toughness seems to be a viable mechanism to hand down a loss to an opponent.
In the Harry and Tim example, they are engaged in sport.
There is a fixed time and distance. It is a sterile setting.
They are in a cage, one-on-one, in uniforms, face to face, within the same weight division, both willing and able participants.
The 3Where’s and the Sport Gap
There is a term in violence prevention called the 3Where’s: where are his hands, where is the exit, and where are his friends?
The 3Where term was spawned to help people prioritize what is essential in a fight.
Hands, because there may be weapons.
Exit, because one of the best things to do when faced with violence is to get the heck out of there as quickly as possible.
Friends, because people do not travel alone in most social situations, and violence does not erupt in a peoplelessness vacuum.
The MMA duels people see on the screen have been scrubbed of the 3Where’s paradigm and, therefore, the most dangerous fighting elements.
In addition to the 3Where’s elimination, sport will match participants by weight division.
Thereby, the fighters share very similar physical attributes.
Within this hyper-distorted and sterile hospital-like environment of the sporting arena, a situational deformity occurs, and certain attributes become inflated in value and seem more important than they really are.
One such attribute that gets distorted is physical toughness.
Self-Defense — The Infinite
Imagine a different paradigm.
Let’s use the two sports fighters from our prior example, Tim and Harry, as an illustration.
After the sparring match, Harry and Tim are in the back alley of the fight club with their friends, arguing over the contest’s real winner.
A conflict breaks out.
Recall that Tim is tough — he has been hitting the gym, training in the cage, and has demonstrated the ability to resist Harry’s thigh kicks and jabs without breakage.
How vital is this body-strengthening regiment if Harry suddenly grabs a beer bottle and hits Tim full force across the eyebrow?
Or, supposing two of Harry’s friends jump in, Tim is now faced with six fists versus just two.
How far will physical toughness take Tim?
It may help initially, but with enough asymmetrical force, the toughness will quickly be overwhelmed and nullified.
Carl von Clausewitz talks about the drive to extremes in warfare.
When mob mentality takes over, the force level will keep increasing until it reaches a crescendo of extremity that becomes unsurmountable at an individual level.
No level personal physical toughness is match for group mob mentality and violence output.
Self-defense is not a fight, match, or duel but assault and counter-assault. One can be both victim and anti-victim.
Self-defense is the realm of the infinite.
There is no fixed time and distance.
It is the dominion of endless possibilities for how the engagement can take shape between moral, social, topographical, and political factors.
In self-defense, the injury level is unbounded and, when taken to the extreme, can lead to death.
On the other hand, sport is a finite realm, meaning limited social, moral, topographical, and political considerations.
In sport there are procedures. There are no victims. The event is scheduled and contained.
Sport is a contest. Entertainment. A game.
Excessive injury is frowned upon because it is bad for business.
The first sign of anything beyond minor injury is when the fight is broken up, and a winner is declared.
Physical toughness is a supreme quality in the finite arena.
When the political, moral, topographical, and social are equalized, only the physical remains and toughness is the attribute that will tilt the tides of victory.
However, once taken outside the finite arena, the eminence of physical toughness quickly diminishes.
That is not to say physical toughness is a bad quality, but it simply becomes lesser — in many cases, a nice to have.
Further Problems with Physical Toughness
In addition to being a domain-sensitive attribute, there are further problems with physical toughness.
First, the level of physical toughness for a human being can fluctuate day by day, month by month, or year by year.
Some people are naturally more robust than others, and some have been shaped by their environment.
Toughness is sometimes nature and sometimes nurture, but since we are all organic tissue and blood, not steel, we eventually get sick, injured, and break down.
This notion makes physical toughness temporary, making it an unreliable quality for success in combat.
The transient nature of physical toughness is one of the biggest reasons it is a fragile attribute.
Furthermore, think of the effort level to develop one as physically robust.
Toughness can take months of training, lifestyle, and commitment.
The moment one stops training to be tough, the skill fades away. The person will start to get soft.
Toughness is a perishable skill.
Like cold fusion, more energy is required to achieve high production levels than output yielded, which is unsustainable over a long period.
Lastly, physical toughness is more desirable for youth, as their bodies have not taken on the cumulative damage toll of older people.
As time progresses, we all get uglier and weaker as each year ticks by on the slow march toward death.
Regardless of what state of health we are in, sometimes, the altercation picks us, whether we are ready or not.
Be it you have the flu, you are depressed, or you have an injured knee, the demand to engage can sometimes be required regardless.
We need something else to rely on than physical toughness in these situations of vulnerability.
Toughness — Mental versus Physical
As was alluded to earlier in this article, there is a difference between mental and physical toughness.
One can be physically robust but lack the consistency to persevere.
What makes the difference between a player in the NFL versus college football? Mental toughness.
Recall the three ways of loss: wreck, wind, and will.
There is a direct correlation between mental toughness and will. Willpower. Constitution.
The determination to keep in the fight. The commitment to action. These are all qualities of mental toughness.
Mental toughness is the gateway to will and is more robust than physical toughness.
Our bodies can waste away, but as long as we can think, we can be mentally, emotionally, and morally durable.
No matter what the condition is, we can always choose our attitude.
An Alternative to Physical Toughness
While physical toughness is a prized attribute, it possesses severe character flaws. It is unreliable, perishable, and unsustainable over the long haul.
These flaws beg the question: what is a more reliable, nonperishable, and sustainable method? What can overwhelm physical toughness in combat and usher in a more robust path to triumph?
The answer is cunning.
Cunning is the most powerful attribute a human can wield in combat.
Unlike physical toughness, it can be brandished in sports and self-defense, making it domain-independent and more reliable.
Cunning is infinite in its application, spanning the physical, social, topographical, moral, and political domains.
It has a more sustainable lifespan and requires less physical effort to implement; thus, it can create an asymmetrical advantage in situations of physical attribute mismatch.
Cunning can kill the tough.
For more on the power of cunning, please see the article: The 3C’s of Combat, Martial Arts, and the Hierarchy of Decisiveness.
About this Article, an Author’s Note
In 2005, in the prime of my life, I was ravaged by a life-threatening bout of Lyme disease to the point of almost complete disability.
Before this unexpected set of events, I would have shared the conviction that physical toughness is the most prized attribute in martial arts.
At the time, I was 35, still in prime male adulthood, in fantastic physical shape, and tough as nails.
However, when I was hit with Lyme disease, my physical attributes of toughness were quickly neutralized.
During this near-death illness, I never stopped doing martial arts and persevered in my training to the best of my ability.
To have any hope of success, I had to adopt a training method that gave me an asymmetrical advantage rather than relying on physical strength.
After some trial and error, I was able to reshape my approach to surmount the deficiencies my illness created, overcoming a weakened bodily state in myself and physical toughness against adversaries.
The winning formula was the incorporation of the trifecta of will, instinct, and cunning.
It is a life lesson I have never forgotten, nor would I ever change.
As a survivor and overcomer of Lyme disease, with my health and robustness fully restored, I am both a better person, trainer, and fighter for it.
This article was born from an interesting debate I had with a gentleman with the handle @siddified on my YouTube channel @TheyGetTheirKicks. See the comments section of the thread, Kenpo, a Timeless Call to Adventure | 40 Techniques in 4 Min | Self-defense | TheyGetTheirKicks — YouTube for the debate.
I wrote this article because I love debate, this person’s energy, and the topic hit close to home for me.
About Scott Gehring
Scott Gehring is a Senior Combat Instructor in the Art Contemporary of Jeet Kune Do, a 5th Degree Blackbelt in Kenpo Karate, and an expert in multiple mixed martial arts, including Jujitsu, Kali, and Wing Chun.
Check out the following resources to learn more about Scott:
About — Scott Gehring — Medium
They Get Their Kicks — YouTube
TheyGetTheirKicks (@GetTheirKicks) / X (twitter.com)
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Strategic Engagement of Force (@force_strategic) / X (twitter.com)
