How long can an average person fight for at full power and why?

Answer 1

This is actually a pretty complicated question, and depends on your definitions of

"average" and "full power." There are several things to consider:

Cardio: building up your cardiovascular system gives you endurance and will help keep you in the fight longer. Your heart is a muscle. In order for it to maintain a high heart rate and keep delivering oxygen to your muscles, you've got to use it.

breathing: controlling your breathing is crucial in a fight. Even experienced fighters will tell you that most fights end because one of the fighters wasn't sufficiently controlling their breathing, causing oxygen deprivation. This switches the muscles from

aerobic metabolism into anaerobic metabolism, which is much less efficient.

emotional response: An adrenaline dump, which is a fairly typical response during tense and stressful situations, heightens your senses and prepares you for action. Great right? Yes and no. It also has negative effects for both average people and professionals. These can cause distracting thoughts like "am I prepared," "am I going to get hurt," etc. which cause loss of concentration. They can also physically manifest as shaking and debilitation. Post-dump, there is often exhaustion. Most people recommend breathing techniques to help control these negative effects.

metabolics: Other than oxygen, your muscles need something to burn for energy. Carbs are metabolized and burn fast, which is why you often see football teams carb-loading the night before games.

muscle exertion: every time you strike, you're using energy and fatiguing your muscles. If you were to exert as much force as your muscles could possibly exert during your first strike (i.e. "full power" with no fatigue), you wouldn't be able to generate that much force a second time. Think of it like maxing out when lifting weights. You max out when you can only do one repetition.

Personal variability: even if there was a concrete time out there for the "average" person, I would hesitate to bet money on it. If the average was 45 seconds (and its probably less for the average person), you probably have a group of people that get cold-clocked and hit the ground before a second ticks by, a large group that lasts 30 seconds or less, and then a small group that lasts a minute or more, but it ends up misrepresenting your average. My point is that people are all different and there is such a high amount of variability that it doesn't do justice to give you an average.

other factors:

weight difference between fighters

skill difference between fighters

muscle fitness

vision/reaction time (you've got to be able to see a strike coming and respond)

I'm sure there's plenty more

Needless to say, I wouldn't advise the "average" person to get into a fight. They wouldn't last long.