He presented a case where focusing on a single exclusive technique for 2 years led to a tournament win. So that training approach worked for that person.
Contradictions In The Martial Arts
- Thread starter PhotonGuy
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On a related note, I remember reading a write-up a couple of years ago of research that showed subjects learned more efficiently with a moderate number of repetitions per session (then moving to other learning), as opposed to long sessions of repetitions.
It worked for me too. I spent 6 months to develop my "single leg" technique. In one Chicago SC tournament, I used it to win 7 rounds total. If I play 100% defense, I have pretty good confidence that I can get my opponent's leading leg when he punches me, kicks me, or just steps forward. In my last super heavy weight SC championship match, my opponent used foot sweep on me twice. I took him down by my single leg twice.
The Ohio state University SC team defeated the UT Austin SC team in 1981. For the next 2 years (1982, 1983), the UT Austin SC team defeated the Ohio State University SC team by "single leg" 2 years in a roll. All my students are good in "single leg".
Today, I always tell my students, "If you have learned single leg and head lock from me, you can leave and find yourself another teacher." I have confidence that I can teach these 2 techniques better than others. As far as general MA skill and foundation building, any MA teacher can do as good job as I can.
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Wing Woo Gar
Senior Master
Thanks for the clarification.
Wing Woo Gar
Senior Master
I agree with this, I have a base set of exercises, then some that I rotate in on intervals. Never more than a few minutes on any given set. Too much of anything has diminished returns.
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I'm not so sure about that. Mant top athletes and musicians do many years of repetition. Take a look at tennis. All they have is serve, volley, backhand and forehand, golf swings, playing the piano, throwing darts. Pitching baseball, quarterback in football. Many years of repetition.
This doesn't sound like "you can only work on this one thing". This sounds like "I focused on developing a specialty". Those are different. If I tell a student they can only learn one thing for their first 6 months, I'm crippling their learning. If I tell a student they need to focus on a specific specialty for the next 6 months of their training, I may be helping them develop a powerful weapon.
These are two very different approaches.
I'll bet actual money that team practiced other things during that 2 years.
It's not that you can't repeat over a long period of time. I'm not suggesting you can't use repetitions nor that they can't be used over your entire career.
It's that there's a diminishing return for longer periods of repetition in a single session. So you're not going to learn as much from 100 repetitions of a single exercise in one day as from 5 different sessions of 20 repetitions each (and you can spend the rest of each of those sessions on other things).
Wing Woo Gar
Senior Master
Years yes, but I believe he means reps in one session. As in don’t do 50 reps of bench press in one go, rather do 12-14 reps in three sets 1 minute apart. But yes, I agree with you it takes many years of many sessions with cumulative reps being necessary to achieve high skill.
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Thanks for the clarification. I agree. There is such a thing as too many reps in one session. There is slso an increased risk of injury as well.
wouldn't.
Quality decreases after a certain point. When that happens it's important to stop.
I have never said that during those 6 months, I only trained 1 technique. I trained many techniques. I just forced to use only one technique when I wrestled on the mat.
I used this method to train my students too. In the match, student can only win by picking up his opponent's leading leg. the match end right there. If a student uses any other technique to take down his opponent, the match will continue.
The posts that led down this path were about students not getting to progress beyond single-movement exercises for extended calendar periods. Nobody was saying you can't or shouldn't focus on something at times.
I agree with this as long as too many topics are not covered.
Steve
Mostly Harmless
Have you ever read this report from the department of education? It’s a little dated now (2004) but still very relevant, IMO. One thing to note is that when we talk about transfer of learning or of training, there is a presumed, observable performance element. What I mean is, if there’s never a point where the trainee performs the skills and tasks they are learning, there is, by definition, no transfer taking place. Examples of transfer of learning would be competition in a combat sport, surviving a street fight, applying deescalation techniques to successfully deescalate a confrontation.
I’ve been in this training and instructional design business for a long time. This was very influential to me at a high level. And intuitively, it resonates with a lot of people. For example, you’ll see a lot of the things I’ve tried to explain over the years in here. And you’ll also see a lot of things that drop bear and tony have said even though I don’t think either has any formal training in instructional design. Simply put, this just makes sense to a lot of people, and the principles are applied intuitively in many successful training programs.
Wing Woo Gar
Senior Master
Teach a man to fish by taking him fishing?
Steve
Mostly Harmless
Not a bad way to do it. And it would be hard to learn to fish if you couldn’t go fishing.
You're correct, but missing the main point in it. It's not that you shouldn't have repetition. It's that you should have more sets of shorter repetition, rather than fewer sets of long repetition. So like training 1 hour a day 3-4 days a week is better than training 1 day a week for 3-4 hours.
Looks like I got beat to the clarification
Wing Woo Gar
Senior Master
Well supposedly you can learn anything from the world class experts on YouTube. Which I equate to a load of unadulterated horseshit
Wing Woo Gar
Senior Master
I guess you could learn some components like knot tying and nomenclature. Reading water and casting might be more difficult, nothing beats the experience itself. Dressing up in waders won’t help much.
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