When you are young, you are at your peak strength (unless you engage in a strength building crusade later in life, or you do not work to condition yourself at all in your youth). And because you are at your strongest and most resilient against injuries, you may practice a hard style of martial arts. The hard styles are distinct in that they generally focus on the development of physical strength and toughness. When people work to harden their knuckles and joints in the practice of kung fu, they are working on developing a hard style. Rarely do hard stylists concern themselves much with grace or parrying, because their desire is to out muscle the other guy. Generally, a contest between hard stylists is a force on force match up.

Think about what would happen if they had bulldozer fights. This is the sort of mindset you need to take, when considering the mindset of the hard stylist. While they do employ technique, their focus is generally on out hammering their opponent, as opposed to simply outwitting and evading him. The good part about hard styles is that they are very good at conditioning your muscles, so your ability to perform manual labor will improve as a consequence of your efforts to practice them. And of course, there is a certain intimidation factor which goes along with working to brutalize your opponents.

Of course, there are some down sides to the practice of a hard style, as well. The punishing blows which a hard stylist rains upon his opponent will do ample damage to the unfortunate person who receives them, but the damage will also occur within the attacker’s own body. In order to withstand this kind of abuse, hard stylists are generally younger men, who can shrug off the damage to bones, muscles and joints that comes out of (and is intrinsic to) this kind of training. Simply put, older people aren’t hard stylists.