My Kung Fu Is Stronger Than Yours

""You can tell a shounen series by the amount of times that someone says 'I'm training to become stronger.'""

- Anime Nano Podcast

In shows where mano-a-mano combat is a main plot element, characters spend much of their lives training and improving their strength so they can one-up each other at a critical point in a fight. This invariably develops into an arms race that can, and has, taken out entire planets and solar systems. If two nations do this, it's a Lensman Arms Race.

This has a grain of truth in it, as between two equally skilled fighters, the deciding factor will often be one's strength.

Anime and Manga

 * Dragon Ball Z. In fact, this is the entire point of all three Dragonball shows (though less so in the beginning of Dragon Ball and Dragon Ball GT).
 * Saint Seiya, Naruto, Yu Yu Hakusho and pretty much every other shonen series.
 * It can be seen to a considerably lesser degree in other anime where martial arts are a central element, such as: Ranma 1/2, Flame of Recca and Sumomomo Momomo.
 * Also seen to a lesser extent in sports anime such as The Prince of Tennis and Eyeshield 21 (with training the sport instead of fight training).
 * Bleach, between arcs, in the middle of arcs, even in the middle of battles.
 * This isn't just a factor in martial-arts series. It can show up in Mons series like Yu-Gi-Oh!, Pokémon, Beyblade, and Bistro Chef (better known as Fighting Foodons in the States), and Cooking Duel series like Yakitate!! Japan. Essentially, anything that has individual competition, typically in a Tournament Arc, will tend to end up with this kind of arms race.
 * Displaying formidable multitasking skills, the eponymous Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha is revealed in the series' ancillary manga to be able to train in the magical equivalent of VR constantly while leading her normal civilian life, apparently to explain her jump from neophyte magical girl to hardened battlemage in the short interval between the show's first two seasons. After the second season, she trains so hard she becomes known as "Ace of Aces" and is promoted to Combat Drill Instructor in her early teens. In the third season, another character trains herself nearly to the point of exhaustion in an effort to prove herself (but, of course, doesn't quite succeed).
 * It didn't work because the show decided to point out that mindlessly attempting to improve yourself with brute force tactics doesn't work, it just breaks you down. Nanoha had a Heroic RROD in during the second Time Skip, specifically because of all the training she did.
 * And when Teana actually started listening in class, she got a lot better herself.
 * The StrikerS manga devotes two chapters to explicitly deconstruct this trope: the younger cast try to figure out the "strongest fighter" in their organization, but eventually learn An Aesop that no matter how strong your opponent is, he always has a weak spot which you can exploit to defeat him. The winner is thus determined not by a single variable but by a combination of quick thinking, experience, magical power, and sheer luck.
 * The "VR training while doing other things" is actually showin in the first movie, showing how Nanoha went from completely unskilled in magical combat to being good enough to take on a trained battle mage during the Jewel Seed incident.
 * A decidedly more magical example, Negi trains constantly for fear of harm coming to his students. He's particularly fond of using Evangeline's time-warping villa to add extra hours (or rather days) to his day to train more.
 * Although the battles are of actual skills (usually) in MAR, the good guys are often sent to train themselves in this manner for the next set of battles whenever the story allows, often using a time-warp ARM in the process.
 * In Love Hina, Motoko is stunned when Seta defeats her in martial arts, and becomes fixated on challenging him.
 * The titular character in History's Strongest Disciple Kenichi already goes through a daily regimen of Training From Hell to build up his stamina and improve his skills, but the few times he actually loses to an opponent, such as, he forces himself to train even harder for the inevitable rematch.
 * Multiple Dei in Kidou Tenshi Angelic Layer spend all their free time training for the titular game—even Misaki, the lead character that converts and attracts her opponents by teaching them that it's just a game rather than Serious Business.
 * The very reason Kyo of Fruits Basket goes into the mountains to train for six months is to one day beat his cousin Yuki in a fight (the manga reveals ). Every time Yuki wipes the floor with him, he only vows to become stronger... over... and over... again.
 * The five protagonist of Mobile Fighter G Gundam spend a good period of the middle of the series training in the Guyana Highlands in order to overcome individual failures.
 * Mugen from Samurai Champloo always trains to the point of absurdity when there is an opponent stronger or more skilled than he is.
 * Subverted in Berserk, when Revenge took on Guts's major priority after the Eclipse rather than training and getting stronger like he initially planned.
 * Swan is a shoujo version of this trope, but with ballet as the plot point.
 * Grappler Baki. The greatest styles are "Total fighting" (Baki) and "Every martial art you damn please" (Yujiro).
 * Parodied in Ranma ½, when Ryoga learns a technique to channel his Wangst into a mini Angst Nuke. Ranma uses Awesome By Analysis (and deception) to rip off the same attack. Cue contest to have a worse life and channel more Wangst. Ultimately

Comics

 * This phrase is actually said in the new run of Marvel comic Immortal Iron Fist. Of course, the protagonist would necessarily have to have the strongest kung-fu if he could kill a dragon barehanded, so it wasn't empty boasting.
 * Eventually he does get his ass handed to him by a guy who's even better.

Film
""Your Kung Fu is NOT strong.""
 * Unsurprisingly, since it is a kung fu movie and owes a certain amount to anime tropes, Kung Fu Panda has this as the basic set-up for the fight with the Big Bad: that in order to defeat Tai Lung, the Dragon Warrior must attain the Dragon Scroll, for only with its cosmic powers can he hope to be strong enough to prevail. To hammer this point home (as if it needed it), after learning that his former student has paralyzed the Furious Five, Shifu declares that "Tai Lung has gotten stronger." Cue the delivery of the scroll to the understandably freaked Po.
 * In The Core, the hacker kid invokes this trope as he hacks a security system to save the mission (and crew and thus the world) aboard the ship.

"Yoda: Powerful you have become, Dooku. The Dark Side I sense in you.
 * Earlier in the film, he describes the automated program he's written which will scour the entire Internet and remove any mention of the Earth's collapsing magnetic field. He proudly says, "It is my Kung Fu, and it is strong."
 * Parodied in American Pie during an overblown speech by Kevin.
 * Star Wars
 * From Attack of the Clones:

Dooku: I have become more powerful than any Jedi. Even you."


 * Revenge of the Sith: Obi-Wan says is unwilling to kill Anakin, but Yoda sends him to fight him anyway, because "strong enough to face this Lord Sidious, you are not."
 * The basic premise of the Stephen Chow flick Kung Fu Hustle where everyone's kung fu is stronger than someone else.

Literature

 * In the Animorphs book The Ellimist Chronicles, this sort of arms race between Ellimist and Crayak ends up
 * Averted up the wazoo in The California Voodoo Game, where hypercompetent Bishop's martial arts techniques vastly out-class the limited training of Alex Griffin,.

Live Action TV

 * Power Rangers. All of them.
 * And their source material, the Super Sentai series, in a lot of cases, but especially in Juken Sentai Gekiranger, where the entire point of the series was two rival schools of fighting squaring off against each other.
 * In the finale of "Dexter" - season 3, there is a delicious example of this, in a scene with the season's "Big Bad" and Dexter. Remember Doakes's comment about why would a nerd like Dexter need to learn advanced ju-jitsu? Well basically it's so that when Very strong kung fu indeed.

Video Games

 * Most incarnations of the Street Fighter series portray Ryu as a loner who does nothing but train in his spare time (moreso after Akuma killed his master).
 * Also a quote for Duke Nukem.

Tabletop RPG

 * It's an actual character flaw, explicitly called this, in Deadlands. It's intended for Enlightened, but could thematically be used to create any character who takes great pride in their key fighting skill and is frequently fighting others to prove their superiority.

Western Animation

 * Used in Avatar: The Last Airbender by Katara to Hama.
 * My bending is more powerful than yours.
 * Rocko's Modern Life: "We are the Samurai Warriors From Somewhere East of Pittsburg. Our kung fu... better than your kung fu!"

Web Comics

 * In Order of the Stick, Vaarsuvius says to Xykon, "My power ... EXCEEDS yours!"
 * Buuut that didn't help Vaarsuvius much.
 * Actually, it makes it even worse. Had V just been out to end his reign of terror, he would have gone easy on hir. In the case of a duel of strength, he had no reason to hold back.

Other

 * The rift that developed between Aoi Matsubara and Sakashita-senpai in To Heart was the result of the latter's unacceptance of "Extreme Fighting" as a martial art.
 * This rift disappeared when Aoi won the Extreme Fighting Championship in To Heart: Remember My Memories when Aoi defeated her senior Ayaka Kurusugawa who had defeated Sakashita earlier on in the tourney with one roundhouse kick to the head, a la Chuck Norris.

Real Life
"Jim: "Their Tiger Style kung fu is strong, but our Dragon Style kung fu will defeat it!""
 * Real Life Example: The way some professional sportsman and some hardcore gamers act.
 * In Chinese slang, the phrase "Kung Fu" is akin to "Mojo." In any activity, rivals will compare the their respective Kung Fu with each other.
 * This is because 'kung fu' means, literally, 'human achievement', or, skill.