Does intellectualization interfere with your understanding o

[Bodywork]

Using a boxers guard without boxers gloves is pretty stupid.
MMA gloves do not offer that kind of cover in the first place. And they also make chokes harder to apply as they get in the way and prevent 'slipping", or "corkscrewing" in."
The upside is that there is far less padding in strikes, and sometimes in a figure-four-lock they can be sticky or catchy to prevent the other guy sliding out, but don't help prevent stretching through though.
Counter punching to a punch and slipping in is a good way to go, but "always" going in to counter is about as stupid as not doing it at all. And I am usre he knows that well. Sometimes good counter punching is from outside. It depends on how fast the other guy is and what type of puncher he is. You may want to counter from angles more than straight in depending on the guy. Fedor didn't cover everything or tell all he knows in one video. No big deal there.

[GrahamB]

Off topic: the "secret" to not using a boxer's guard is in this clip.

Well, one of the 'secrets', anyway

I don't think a boxer's guard is always appropriate to MMA - and I think Fedor proves that quite well!

[johnwang]

At 4.03 I find 2 things are missing: When you dodge a right hook, you need to:

- use your left hand to push on your opponent right elbow otherwise his right elbow may come back to your head.
- keep the back of your head to be parallel to the ground. Your eyes should look at the ground instead of look at your opponent.

[Brady]

John,
Why is looking at the ground a good idea? Curious, not sayin' I disagree.
-brady

[johnwang]

You don't have to drop so low and your head can still move under the hook punch. If you use your hand to feel your opponent's elbow, your Tinjin will replace your eye sight and you no longer need to look but to feel.

Try both ways and you will feel the difference. You can keep your head:

- vertical by sinking your body down, or
- horizontal by bending your head forward at your neck joint,

to dodge a hook. Which way do you think is easier?

This is like if your opponent sweeps your leg below your knee, Is it easier to

- raise, or
- bend

your leg to dodge it?

[DeusTrismegistus]

tsurugi,

Nice reference, but it's old news. And I noticed that the article didn't mention that the researchers even latched onto the key factor in that phenomenon, which is well-known to be simultaneous activation of the competing centers. It would seem, at least from the article, that the researchers erroneously concluded that all such discussion were able to affect performance, when it's already quite well-established that it is the concurrent activation of competing centers that is the problem. Now, I did notice that the article listed the researchers as psychologists as opposed to hard scientists of any type, and it's possible that the perennial problem of soft scientists using questionably-constructed experimental method might have been at play.

Still, for clarification, the problem comes when one is attempting to engage in complex neuromotor activity and also activating language centers at the same time, whether verbalized or not. This means that even if you are only talking to yourself in your head, you will still suffer the same potential degradation of performance as if you were having a conversation with your buddy.

Chris I haven't heard of this before. Could you go into more detail about how this interference works?

[lazyboxer]

You don't have to drop so low and your head can still move under the hook punch. If you use your hand to feel your opponent's elbow, your Tinjin will replace your eye sight and you no longer need to look but to feel.

Very interesting point, and seems eminently true - efficiency and economy of movement is one of the important keys to success, whether in fighting or life. Ding Tou Xuan 顶头悬 may be good for qi cultivation, but if you try to be Mr. Taiji when someone is trying to knock your block off, you'll need the anticipatory skills of an Ueshiba to avoid catastrophe.

Another advantage to dropping your head to dodge is that it prepares the body to charge in for an immediate counterattack - you will automatically find yourself leaning forward slightly, the back curved and the shoulderblades springing forward like the proverbial angry tiger

And on the subject of Ding Tou Xuan, do any of the taiji practitioners following this thread adapt their form work to make it better suited to fighting function and less stylized - or perhaps do forms in a number of different ways, for different purposes? I fall into the latter camp, although it took me a long time to get away from the idea that there is only one way to heaven

[Bao]

And on the subject of Ding Tou Xuan, do any of the taiji practitioners following this thread adapt their form work to make it better suited to fighting function and less stylized - or perhaps do forms in a number of different ways, for different purposes? I fall into the latter camp, although it took me a long time to get away from the idea that there is only one way to heaven

Form practice is very limited. Just when you go from form to the simplest tui shou exercise, you will have to adapt to other rules. Then when you move to more advanced, free tui shou, you will yet have another set of rules. You will need to be very flexible in the vertical plane, know how to lean, dodge and follow the opponent in a much more 3-dimensional way.

Trouble come when you regard "rules" as all too fixed. Then it will take time to understand how to broaden your view, or adapt to situations where the old rules do not apply. Rules should not be strict or absolute, just something pointing you to a direction.

What we today call "rules" was something that the mosters of old understood by trial and error. When we try to force rules upon someone, he will not have the correct mind-set - a mind-set of trial and error. You take away his freedom so he might loose his will to discover things for himself. And by this, he will never learn what is essential.

[WujiRob]

Skilled athletes often maintain that overthinking disrupts performance of their motor skills. Here, we examined whether these experiences have a basis in verbal overshadowing, a phenomenon in which describing memories for ineffable perceptual experiences disrupts later retention. After learning a unique golf-putting task, golfers of low and intermediate skill either described their actions in detail or performed an irrelevant verbal task. They then performed the putting task again. Strikingly, describing their putting experience significantly impaired higher skill golfers' ability to reachieve the putting criterion, compared with higher skill golfers who performed the irrelevant verbal activity. Verbalization had no such effect, however, for lower skill golfers. These findings establish that the effects of overthinking extend beyond dual-task interference and may sometimes reflect impacts on long-term memory. We propose that these effects are mediated by competition between procedural and declarative memory, as suggested by recent work in cognitive neuroscience.

(Source: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18926983)

Nice reference, but it's old news. And I noticed that the article didn't mention that the researchers even latched onto the key factor in that phenomenon, which is well-known to be simultaneous activation of the competing centers. It would seem, at least from the article, that the researchers erroneously concluded that all such discussion were able to affect performance, when it's already quite well-established that it is the concurrent activation of competing centers that is the problem.

Unforntunately, our subscription does not (yet) include the issue in which this paper appeared, as I intend to read it (yes, great example over over-intellectualizing ). From the abstract, however, it appears that "concurrent activation of competing centers" is not the cause here, since "golfers [...] either described their actions in detail or performed an irrelevant verbal task" (i.e., participants always activated a "competing center").

Now, I did notice that the article listed the researchers as psychologists as opposed to hard scientists of any type, and it's possible that the perennial problem of soft scientists using questionably-constructed experimental method might have been at play.

Still, for clarification, the problem comes when one is attempting to engage in complex neuromotor activity and also activating language centers at the same time, whether verbalized or not. This means that even if you are only talking to yourself in your head, you will still suffer the same potential degradation of performance as if you were having a conversation with your buddy.

Although your conclusion may be correct, it is not what follows from this paper. Basically it says that thinking too much about some skill you just acquired may result in "unlearning" it.

Btw, I'm sure you also considered that some additional confusion might have arrived from the fact that this is a non-scientific news publication (as oppposed to the alleged "perennial problem of soft scientists using questionably-constructed experimental method")?

Kind regards,
Rob, soft scientist extraordinair

[edit]Found it: http://www.memorycontrol.net/FlegalAnderson08.pdf[/edit]

[Chris McKinley]

WujiRob,

RE: "Although your conclusion may be correct, it is not what follows from this paper.". Yeah. If you hadn't noticed, I was being a bit critical of the experiment, mostly because it didn't make reference to what is already a well-known phenomenon with regard to activation of competing regions of the brain. BTW, it's also a common gremlin in academic learning as well.

RE: "Basically it says that thinking too much about some skill you just acquired may result in "unlearning" it.". Yes, but what the researchers in that article appear not to be grasping is that activation of competing centers is not something that turns on and off in the blink of an eye. Activation of the neuromotor regions via new physiomotor learning will leave that region active for several minutes. Concurrently activating language/structural thinking regions can undo the learning, so to speak, by preventing it from doing what is called resolving, whereby the new learning is processed and integrated via new associations with already-existing patterns in one's learning. Ideally, one would complete at least four sleep cycles between acquiring the new physiomotor learning and any significant logical analysis of it. Less ideally, but more practically, one may employ what are referred to as Zeigarnik breaks in the learning sessions, in which one stops the activity being learned and begins performing an activity which does not compete with it for imprinting, or by resting and engaging in verbal discussion of a topic (ideally) completely unrelated to the learning activity.

RE: "Btw, I'm sure you also considered that some additional confusion might have arrived from the fact that this is a non-scientific news publication". Perhaps. I know that the soft sciences, too, have their own version of "OMNI" and other such lay publications.

[WujiRob]

RE: "Basically it says that thinking too much about some skill you just acquired may result in "unlearning" it.". Yes, but what the researchers in that article appear not to be grasping is that activation of competing centers is not something that turns on and off in the blink of an eye. Activation of the neuromotor regions via new physiomotor learning will leave that region active for several minutes. Concurrently activating language/structural thinking regions can undo the learning, so to speak, by preventing it from doing what is called resolving, whereby the new learning is processed and integrated via new associations with already-existing patterns in one's learning. Ideally, one would complete at least four sleep cycles between acquiring the new physiomotor learning and any significant logical analysis of it. Less ideally, but more practically, one may employ what are referred to as Zeigarnik breaks in the learning sessions, in which one stops the activity being learned and begins performing an activity which does not compete with it for imprinting, or by resting and engaging in verbal discussion of a topic (ideally) completely unrelated to the learning activity.

As far as I can judge (not an expert on this topic), the paper itself does refer to the activation of competing regions (hence my remark regarding the "non-scientific news publication").

As for the rest of your post: Interesting!
Keeps me wondering though what discipline you are in, as you appear to refer a lot to findings from the "soft sciences" (assuming you use this term to refer to "social sciences" in general).

[Chris McKinley]

WujiRob,

I'm a recovering neurophysiologist. I refer to the soft/social sciences as such because the laiety often is unaware that the hypotheses, theories, schools of thought, orthodoxies, etc. found in them are not strictly based in objective science, per se. The field is also characterized by wildly varying stringency with regard to experimental method. Some research is as rigorous as that found in the hard sciences, some is nothing more than codified speculation barnacled over with subjective assumption.

To be clear, unlike some scientists, I do not use the term 'soft' science as derogatory, per se. There are many extremely valuable ideas and theories which have come from those fields, including most of what constitutes learning theory, of which I am a longtime student, researcher, and/or advocate. There are many more freedoms that the field enjoys compared to the hard sciences, and that can be a good thing in the long run.

[bailewen]

This has got to be the dumbest topic ever.

Kind of ironic really. AFAIK, this kind of topic is like "meta-overthinking". Are you folks actually proposing that thinking critically about your practice is bad? WTF?

Chris pointed out the flaw in the study and that relieved me actually because otherwise the premise is so ridiculous it would have given me a real headache if it was true. All the study apparently says is that it's not so good to walk and chew gum at the same time. Speaking of overthinking a topic, maybe people need to just step back and take a look at the landscape. Where have you ever met a true master at anything who did not think about his subject of mastery just constantly. Most of them eat, live and breath it. So when they are not doing they are thinking about doing. They run scenarios in their mind.

No wonder people always want to dumb down this stuff. It's just old fasioned cognitive dissonance. Since they can't visualize what is going on, they adjust what they do to match what they think or, if they can't do what they can visualize, they just adjust what they think to what they do.

I guess Jack Dempsey would have been a better boxer if he stop being so brainy and scientific about it.
I guess Julliard graduates must all suck because of all that music theory they fill their heads with.
I guess Sun Lutan must have not been as good as he could have been if had just avoided all that distracting internal theory right?

All that's happening here is that some people notice that there are a lot of people who think and talk about MA but aren't any good at it. Where you get the causal relationship is beyond me. Just stop and notice how much all the very very very very good MA'ists talk and think about MA all day and realize that the talking is not the problem. It's the lack of the doing.

[WujiRob]

Chris: Thanks for your reply! Could have guessed you were in the neurosciences
And thanks for pointing out what you mean by 'soft', as I personally indeed would assume someone using this term would mean it in a derogatory way.

Overall, yes, unfortunately there is a lot of work in related scientific fields that (mainly soft?) scientists are unaware of, I am glad I learnt something today from a colleague in a related field

[DeusTrismegistus]

This has got to be the dumbest topic ever.

Kind of ironic really. AFAIK, this kind of topic is like "meta-overthinking". Are you folks actually proposing that thinking critically about your practice is bad? WTF?

Chris pointed out the flaw in the study and that relieved me actually because otherwise the premise is so ridiculous it would have given me a real headache if it was true. All the study apparently says is that it's not so good to walk and chew gum at the same time. Speaking of overthinking a topic, maybe people need to just step back and take a look at the landscape. Where have you ever met a true master at anything who did not think about his subject of mastery just constantly. Most of them eat, live and breath it. So when they are not doing they are thinking about doing. They run scenarios in their mind.

No wonder people always want to dumb down this stuff. It's just old fasioned cognitive dissonance. Since they can't visualize what is going on, they adjust what they do to match what they think or, if they can't do what they can visualize, they just adjust what they think to what they do.

I guess Jack Dempsey would have been a better boxer if he stop being so brainy and scientific about it.
I guess Julliard graduates must all suck because of all that music theory they fill their heads with.
I guess Sun Lutan must have not been as good as he could have been if had just avoided all that distracting internal theory right?

All that's happening here is that some people notice that there are a lot of people who think and talk about MA but aren't any good at it. Where you get the causal relationship is beyond me. Just stop and notice how much all the very very very very good MA'ists talk and think about MA all day and realize that the talking is not the problem. It's the lack of the doing.

I have seen many people in class over the years hinder their own progress because they think too much. There is a time and place for thinking and critically analyzing what you are doing. I haven't read the article in question but from what the others have said it sounds like the problem arises when you are thinking about how to do something instead of just doing it. Imagine learning how to ride a bike by thinking about how to stay balanced and thinking about what muscles to use when? You would never make it more then 10 feet.

I have had some great insights from thinking about my practice. I visualize myself fighting, or even doing forms while I drive my truck. However the vast majority of the insight I gain is from applying critical thinking based on the feeling of my recent practice. As an example in class monday I sparred pretty well. I have lost some weight and I had more energy than I usually do and was much more lively. However I was also not relaxed enough. I know this because of the feeling during sparring. So tonight I will focus on relaxing more. Thats not the same as analyzing a technique as I am learning it, and thinking, "ok now I move here, then I do this; oh wait I had my hand slightly off".

Now this doesn't mean that you should never think about what you are doing either. But you have to learn the large outward motions first, and then work on smaller and smaller details. When I notice I am doing something wrong or should I say not optimally in my technique it will require conscious thought and effort to correct. The difference is you focus on correcting one part of the whole. Like keeping your elbow down when you throw a right cross.

I think the difference lies at least partially in learning something new and refining something you already know. When you teach someone brush knee do you need a 10 minute dissertation on yin and yang? Or do you just show them how to step and how to move and make them practice it? Would they really gain more from telling them to make their right leg substantial and the left insubstantial or by telling them to shift their weight forward?

Ah I talk to much, and this isn't a criticism but just me explaining how IME thinking can hamper progress.