Applying Your Strength

It is fantastic to be strong in any way, in any area of your life. However, brute power alone will not grant you true strength. In order to be the best and strongest you possibly can be, you need to know how to apply that power in the best and most efficient way possible.

Technique

Having raw power is a great natural advantage. But as anyone who has practiced martial arts for an appreciable length of time will tell you, it is far from being everything, or even a primary factor.

If all you do is throw your brute, unskilled power against obstacles, especially other people, you will very quickly realize that it does not get you very far. You may easily bowl over significantly weaker and less skilled opposition, but anyone or anything with a degree of adaptability will easily evade and counteract your lumbering efforts.

This is where technique and skill come into play, and they are every bit as crucial to applying your strength as the raw power is. The master of a particular discipline is not the one with most raw power, it is the one who is best at applying the power they have.

Discipline

Hand in hand with technique is the discipline to practice it and hone your craft. To maximize your strengths and minimize your weaknesses.

Having raw power quickly reaches its limits without proper technique to apply it. In the same way, knowing that technique in your mind without honing the skill to apply it all is equally useless.

Discipline is the daily practice of the strong, no matter what your pursuit, skill, craft, or goal is. Discipline is what drives the lifter to get up early and get under the bar. It was drives the artist to stay sitting in front of the block or the paper. It was pushes the martial artist to constantly seek stronger and more skilled opponents.

With the discipline to apply yourself to daily practice and growth, you will never need to worry that you are not applying your strengths fully, because you will always be honing that application to a finer edge.

Where Do You Apply Yourself?

As always, I want to hear from all of you. Tell us about what your strengths are, and where and how you apply them with skill, technique, and discipline. Tell us a story about how wise application won out over brute force.