How many hours per day do you think these martial artists practiced?

[Ken Cheng]

Let's consider some of the greatest martial artists who appeared or were alluded to in Jin Yong's wuxia novels:

The Janitor Monk
Mo Ngai Tze
Teen San Tung Long
Lee Chou Sui
Mo Yung Bok
Siu Yeun San
Kau Mor Tze
Kiu Fung
Hui Juk
Deun Yu
Dook Goo Kau Bai
Wong Seung
Wong Chung Yeung
Lam Chiu Ying
Wong Yerk See
Au Yeung Fung
Deun Chi Hing/1 Deng
Hung 7 Gung
Chow Bak Tung
Kau Cheen Yan
Gwok Jing
Yeung Gor
The Golden Wheel Monk
Cheung 3 Fung
Cheung Mo Gei
Ling Wu Chung
Dung Fong But Bai

How many hours per day do you imagine each of these characters practiced martial arts per day during the period of their greatest martial arts growth?

The Janitor Monk did not practice martial arts per se, but aside from his daily janitorial chores at Shaolin, he had no real distractions from whatever it was that made him so powerful. Mo Ngai Tze, Teen San Tung Lo, and Lee Chou Sui were each to some extent distracted by the affairs of the Siu Yiu Sect and their complex relationship with each other, and Lee Chou Sui had her status as a member of the Hsi Hsia Royal Family on top of that. Mo Yung Bok and Siu Yeun San were dedicated to killing each other, although some of their time was consumed by setting off conspiracies in the martial world and looking after their respective sons. Kiu Fung had a whole bag of problems to deal with after becoming Chief of the Beggar's Union. Hui Juk had to deal with being the new Siu Yiu Sect leader and prince consort of Hsi Hsia. Deun Yu was heir to the Dali throne and was hopelessly distracted by his infatuation with Wong Yu Yin.

Dook Goo Kau Bai and Wong Seung are mysterious figures, but as far as we know, each of them spent decades isolated from worldly concerns to concentrate on martial arts only.

Wong Chung Yeung was distracted by his personal war against the Jin Empire, and when that broke down, he had relationship problems with his paramour Lam Chiu Ying, and subsequently was consumed by the task of establishing the Cheun Jen Sect and pursuing Taoist enlightenment. Lam Chiu Ying, of course, was deeply affected by her relationship with Wong Chung Yeung. Wong Yerk See experienced problems concerning his wife, his daughter, and his disciples, and was a master of too many disciplines to exclusively devote all of his talent, time, and energy to martial arts alone. Au Yeung Fung was extremely dedicated to martial arts, but he had distractions in the form of his affair with is brother's wife, producing his illegitimate son Au Yeung Hak (and later, the pursuit of the 9 Yum Jen Ging became a great distraction, eventually leading to outright insanity). Deun Chi Hing/1Deng was the King of Dali (and busy with those affairs), and the Ying Goo incident had a profound effect upon him, causing him to pursue Buddhist enlightenment rather than martial arts supremacy. Hung 7 Gung had his hands full as Chief of the Beggar's Union and in his spare time, he preferred looking for delicious food to eat or taking a nap to developing or practicing martial arts. Chow Bak Tung was the manchild; martial arts was just on of many fun games for him, and if anybody were easily distracted, it would be him. Kau Cheen Yan was the Chief of the Iron Palm Union and he had a willful younger sister and a useless younger brother to deal with.

Gwok Jing, the ultimate patriot, was consumed by the defense of his country to completely dedicate himself to martial arts. Yeung Gor was obssessed with his lover and teacher, Little Dragon Girl, and avenging his slain father.

Cheung 3 Fung was busy establishing the Mo Dong Sect, and spent as much time on Taoist enlightenment as he did with martial arts. Cheung Mo Gei enjoyed five years wherein martial arts were the only thing in his life, but after that, he had to deal with being Leader of the Ming Cult and a complex love life that involved four beautiful women.

Ling Wu Chung...many injuries, a hypocritical teacher who betrayed him, and the love of his life taken away by another man. 'Nuff said. Dung Fong But Bai was also distracted by a relationship (ahem!), and in any case, one of the side effects of practicing Qwai Fa Bo Deen is that he/she lost much of his/her original enthusiasm for martial arts.

So all said, it seems that Dook Goo Kau Bai and Wong Seung were the only two true martial art obssessives. They probably literally practiced martial arts every waking hour (except for eating and passing wastes) of their lives for decades. How many hours per day did each of the other listed martial arts practice their martial arts?

[kyss of the sword]

during their novice training days , they would have spent at least 10 to 12 hours a day trainging(with breaks in between). when they mastered their skills and advanced in their inner strenght, a few hours every other day and at least an hour a day. [{keeping muscle tone and excising qi}otherwise it could entrophy and lessen considerably] meditation counts as exercise, usually before they sleep and before breakfast. unless trying to master new skills or new level of existing skills, then same as novice days.

[kamii]

wouldnt' they just train all day......cause what else do they have to do in their free time? They had not distractions such as T.V, computer, radio etc. So most of the time they would just be training, meditating or thinking about it. Like how can i improve this and that.....

[CC]

Besides number of hours trained per day, I think the value of 'The School of Hard Knocks' should not be overlooked. Fighters like WS, DGKB and Xiao Feng probably fought a lot of hard battles in their youth. Probably a 10 minute life and death combat is worth more then 10 hours training by yourself. Of course one needs both to advance properly.

I always wondered about Z3F. He had a reputation of be undefeated. Did he have a lot of encounters in his youth? Did he have a loads of people coming to challenge him after he set up Wudang? Zhang Jun Bao doesn't strike me as the type that would go round challenging people. I guess he got his reputation after he set up Wudang and people came round knocking.

[Laviathan]

Wong Chung Yeung was distracted by his personal war against the Jin Empire

He built the Ancient Tomb and trained his butt off.

Yeung Gor was obssessed with his lover and teacher, Little Dragon Girl, and avenging his slain father.

He spent years at the sea, training against the waves of the ocean.

Kau Cheen Yan was the Chief of the Iron Palm Union and he had a willful younger sister and a useless younger brother to deal with.

Spent years in solitude to perfect his Iron Palm for the next Huashan Tournament.

Cheung 3 Fung was busy establishing the Mo Dong Sect, and spent as much time on Taoist enlightenment as he did with martial arts.

Zhang Sanfeng was the Leonardo Da Vinci of martial arts. Without any formal training, he could develop high-level systems of fighting techniques. Most of the things within Wudang were handled by Song Yuanqiao and the other disciples.

So all said, it seems that Dook Goo Kau Bai and Wong Seung were the only two true martial art obssessives. They probably literally practiced martial arts every waking hour (except for eating and passing wastes) of their lives for decades. How many hours per day did each of the other listed martial arts practice their martial arts?

I think there's a certain misunderstanding about martial arts training in Jin Yong's world. Martial arts masters of the level of Zhang Sanfeng, Dugu Qiubai, Huang Shang etc. do train, but they are not training in the way most of us would imagine... That is, they weren't practicing techniques, meditating, doing push-ups etc... They have surpassed the level of physical training. Most of the time, they were pondering. Like Zhang Sanfeng, he wandered the valley of the Yangtze river, and suddenly he got idea of creating a style based on the crane and the tortoise. He then pondered for 49 days to formulate the techniques.

Certain people who followed the doctrines of specific styles, like Golden Wheel Monk, Yang Dingtian etc. had to train their bodies and energy flows to reach the levels as described in the manuels, but for Zhang Sanfeng, Dugu Qiubai, Wang Chongyang, Huang Shang etc. they are limitless and can develop and grow as much as their own imagination can allow them to.

So, I don't think the number of training hours holds any meaning to them. Just my 2 cents.

[Zhuge Liang]

Murong Fu was reasonably bright and he practicsed 8 hours a day in his youth to get to his level so from there we can probably judge roughly how much others had to practice.

[CC]

Murong Fu was reasonably bright and he practicsed 8 hours a day in his youth to get to his level so from there we can probably judge roughly how much others had to practice.

Murong Fu has to allocate his time between 600 different sorts of martial arts from fists to sabres. Poor dude....

[Yang Guo]

if he concentrated on one or just a few, he'd be pretty good

instead he chose to be a jack of all trades for the reputation...

[CC]

if he concentrated on one or just a few, he'd be pretty good

instead he chose to be a jack of all trades for the reputation...

He wasn't Yang Guo or Z3F or he could merge them into his own style. I think his pre-occupation with restoring the family dynasty had a big part to play too. Poor guy had his mum harping on him all his youth, quite a burden.

I think MRF did not have much actual fighting experience too. Unlike XF, he got famous due to his family name, not because of his fights won.

[qiaofeng]

murong fu may have been overshadowed by the top fighters in dgsd but he was very talented. learning so many kinds of kung fu is no easy task. u gotta have talent to do it. if he had just concentrated on a few, he'll probably be as powerful as qiaofeng. + that guy has ambition(unlike pansy boy duan yu) and is very dedicated to his cause, thou he would resort to unscrupulous means to acheive them if he has to.

[Laviathan]

Murong Fu was reasonably bright and he practicsed 8 hours a day in his youth to get to his level so from there we can probably judge roughly how much others had to practice.

That was made up by TVB...

[Zhuge Liang]

That was made up by TVB...

Oops!

But actually it would not be that good an indicator since he was going for breadth rather than concentrating on a core set of skills.

[qiaofeng]

murong fu was sortta like yang guo in his younger days. yang guo learnt tons of kung fu but never really mastered any of them. thats y he sucked. + he didnt have enuff inner energy. he only become a top fighter when he focused on xuantie jian fa n an ran xiao hun zhang. murong fu should have done the same. since hes almost as smart as yang guo and has the martial arts talent

[CC]

murong fu was sortta like yang guo in his younger days. yang guo learnt tons of kung fu but never really mastered any of them. thats y he sucked. + he didnt have enuff inner energy. he only become a top fighter when he focused on xuantie jian fa n an ran xiao hun zhang. murong fu should have done the same. since hes almost as smart as yang guo and has the martial arts talent

I am not a great Yang Guo fan but MRF does NOT strike me as being as smart as Yang Guo.

[Temujin]

I think when they are young and just starting to learn martial arts techniques and neigong, they probably take a whole day to repeat the same stances over and over again, and take several hours (if not the whole night, like GJ when learnt QZ neigong) to practice their inner strength cultivation.

Once the stances are perfected enough, and they would move into the different variation of the stances and learn more complex stances and to some extent, sparring or real life fighting experience should be incorporated into the training.

Then once they have gained enough knowledge of the actual martial techniques, along with fighting (or sparring) experience and sufficient enough power, they would wander Jiang Hu all by themselves or with a partner (or partners) and to gain real-life fighting experiences.

Off course, they would still practice and perfect their skills as well as inner strength cultivation in their spare time, while wondering Jiang Hu.

This is when the above-average fighters will be separated from the so-so, average fighters. The above-average fighters will take it to another level, and use their duels and real-life fighting experiences to perfect their skills and add more variatians to their stances and moves, making it more useable in a real dead-or-alive fighting situation.

Then the excellent, highly talented fighters will even take it to the next level, inventing their own martial arts combining all the martial arts they learnt with real life fighting experiences (like Yang Guo, Zhang SanFeng) or simply just incorporating two-three different arts together (like Guo Jing) and some would just concentrate on the very skills he's been using to survive and perfect it to its maximum level because he's too talented and undefeatable (like Xiao Feng).

[Black Night Sea]

MRF spent years practicing “Diverting Star Technique” and still wasn’t able to master it properly up to his first encounter with DCQ. All that was remained of the precious MR family martial arts were excess crap left for MRF. IMO if he did narrow down his practice to a small set of skills his reputation would be non-existent. I think he’s a bit like ZWJ, too much theory rather than focus on empirical gains, there‘s got be a balance. Skills like “Diverting Star Technique” can only go so far, its fragility is apparent when he ganged up on XF and further stressed in his loss to KMZ. The technique may have been great when MR family ruled the martial arts world but in DGSD it’s become a relic. That’s why I’ve always believed that DGSD is the demarcation line for martial arts in JY.

With ZBT, martial arts has the fun factor and deployed in his training. ZBT would be the unsung theorist in the JY world. Creating an adept skill like L/R technique merely through amusement with his 2 arms. The way he got there with his training may not have been principally correct as with ZSF, WS and DGQB. But the theory of “Single Mind With 2 Functions” played a huge part in placing both XLN and GJ on the driving seat. I believe ZBT trained diligently in closed doors in preparation for battling OYF in his younger days. But the improvement wasn’t as great as in Peach Blossom cave.

Then there were others who found a ‘backdoor’ and got their grubby hands on the golden treasures of martial arts. DY doesn’t even know how to practice Qi Gong (and doesn’t need to) which is another advantage of being a user of 6MSJ.
Then a person who’s born with martial arts blood of XF’s rarity, the time spent on training would be greatly compressed. During his ordeal times searching for his great personal enemy, he rarely had moments to train or fight in the capacity of Jue Xian Manor. However, his inner energy and fighting talent was amplified again to the point when even he’s curious of its cause.