Practicing different applications

[dvcochran]

Yes, but is it training the muscles for the kick? Probably not. It's still a useful exercise, but probably not a great one for developing kicking speed, power, or accuracy. I'll bet it contributes something to power, but not as much as other exercises can.

Agreed. It is a compliment exercise. A part of the whole of building and teaching the body part to perform a specific task.

 

[dvcochran]

I've not taught any serious dancers or gymnasts that I know of, but I do recall an instructor telling me he preferred for students to have dance experience.

I has to have something to do with muscle memory/training. Typically, when the dancers would perform a front kick, the hip, and so leg, would be completely rotated to the side. Some of them could literally be standing straight and raise their straight leg to the left or right and bring it straight up beside their body. But instead of the bottom of the foot and calf being pointed forward it would be pointed to the side. A strange image the first time you see it in class. Would love to have that flexibility but I think the muscles had been trained very different from how they are trained in MA

 

[dvcochran]

Nothing is really truly automatic with the human body. Some things are preinstalled, but can be edited later.

***dvcochran - Some things are voluntary and some are involuntary. This link does an excellent job of explaining the differences:
Medical Encyclopedia - Function: Voluntary and Involuntary Responses - Aviva

In short, the body is a system and without many of the involuntary functions it would simply die. Hard coded and cannot be changed without adverse results. So in the realm of "automatic"

these unattended functions​

are automatic.

Breathing and heartbeat - every breath and every beat rely on being told to happen, but you can override these 'automatic' functions. You can hold your breath and some people have a variable capacity to intentionally alter their cardiac rhythm.

***dvcochran - Heartbeat is an involuntary function. The brain is not telling the heart to beat in resident memory. It is hard coded and takes no thought. It is impossible to tell my heart to stop beating. Breath is involuntary resident memory. The function can be altered by internal and external influences. I start running, my breathing quickens. I didn't have to tell my lungs to speed up. I fall asleep, my breathing slows and becomes deeper. I go under water and I have to consciously tell my body to hold the last breath. In the extreme, someone (not me) could hold their breath until they pass out at which point the programming of the brain based on the various inputs from the body screaming for oxygen will take over and you will start breathing. Automatic.

Flinch response to pain - someone touches you with something hot and you flinch to pull away. I can override that (to a certain extent) because if when welding I get a bit of spatter fall on my arm I can essentially ignore it.

***dvcochran - The flinch is involuntary and part of the natural resident programming however, you are correct that we can choose to ignore the signal or logic that is signaling the resident response. But the conditions are different. There are more variables involved when choosing to ignore something hot. But the brains first response is always the same.

Everything else is a calculated response.

***dvcochran - Everything voluntary is a calculated response. Everything involuntary is a conditioned response.


A fist is heading toward your face so your brain looks at the variables it knows, chooses a course of action and executes the programme.

The preinstalled variables are move or cover/block.

A lot of people will freeze initially while their brain is running simulations and get punched.


With training, the amount of simulation variables is reduced (because you know what's happening) so the response time is decreased. It's not that any response has become automatic, it's that your brain has been reprogrammed to be more efficient.

That's what training achieves - not automation but reduction of listed possibilities. It's quicker to choose between 2 options than between 20. It becomes so fast that it appears automatic (your conscious thought process is overridden by your restricted variable difference engine so you don't notice).

***dvcochran - I cannot agree with the premise of simulations. Training creates conditioned responses to various external signals or events. It places these responses into permanent memory to be used when to same external signal or event occurs. The mind will still be a running million calculations and process as usual when the event occurs but now it has a "pre-programmed" output to call and respond to the event. That is automation. I want to have the 20 options but I want my brain to learn where/when/how to best respond automatically to said input.

The time it appears most like being automatic is when you drill a specific scenario over and over - say a straight punch. You've set your programme to have a choice of 1 response. It's instant.

Then someone throws a hook - you get punched... Your brain either recognises a punch and initiates the response it knows (which may not work) or it doesn't recognise a hook as being a punch so it resets to default and starts running scenarios and you freeze.

The saying something like "fear not the man who has practiced 1000 attacks once, but the man who has practiced one attack 1000 times" falls down with this.

***dvcochran - If you have trained enough to have conditioned responses for both a straight punch and a hook then you have an engrained reaction for either condition. Automatic. The tons of additional variables in the scenario greatly determine how effective the action and result.

Your brain is quite clever, it won't take long to adjust to the new variable.

If someone relies on one thing to the exclusion of all else, they become easy to overcome as soon as their pattern is recognized.


Back to the OP topic, that's why I don't think they are 3 separate kicks.

If you learn the basic movement first, then you can develop that with speed for sparring/fighting.

***dvcochran - True statement. Everything you said after it has to go before in the pretext of learning a technique correctly. Mechanics should always come first. I hate seeing an instructor telling a new student to kick, kick, kick, and never giving instruction on how to kick. Back to the OP; we should learn a front kick in it's entirety. How we choose to use the kick is different. As others have said, based on external circumstances. I may adjust the kick to fit the need. Still the same kick but I have, usually over time & training, learned how/when/where/why to use it in a different manner.
The brain is the most incredible logic engine, seemingly capable of accepting infinite inputs. How well we choose to understand and define each input is paramount to how efficient and effective the brain can use them. The more inputs we can give the brain to create a conditioned response with, the better and more defined and effective it will be. Think of jumping to subroutines in a program. Through conditioning and learned responses the jump can be made quicker by changing the priority of the jump.

Kata/pattern and/or demonstration are the secondary applications, and they give time to concentrate on the mechanics of the movement.

Using all of the applications in tandem helps all the areas - better understanding of how it really works so more realistic demonstration, and making it pretty for demo improves the form in 'fight mode'.

 

[pdg]

@dvcochran - you aren't getting my interpretation of the word 'automatic'...

Involuntary does not mean automatic, in the context of my parts of the conversation it means subconscious.

If a heartbeat or a breath were truly automatic, they wouldn't need the intervention of the brain - what happens to respiration and circulation if you remove the brain?

And to repeat, they can be reprogrammed and overridden - your responses with regard to breathing and heart rate change if your fitness or wellbeing vary, and I can actively control my breathing and, to some extent with concentration, my heart rate - if truly automatic that wouldn't be possible.

 

[Gerry Seymour]

You just like to argue.

Nope. You’re the one arguing, friend. I didn’t make a generalization - I stated my personal expectation (or lack thereof) for an average dancer of a specific type. I avoided generalizing across all dancers, or even all ballerinas. And I think the way I stated it allows that there are probably exceptions.

I didn’t see that in your statement you are dragging into this thread.

 

[Gerry Seymour]

I has to have something to do with muscle memory/training. Typically, when the dancers would perform a front kick, the hip, and so leg, would be completely rotated to the side. Some of them could literally be standing straight and raise their straight leg to the left or right and bring it straight up beside their body. But instead of the bottom of the foot and calf being pointed forward it would be pointed to the side. A strange image the first time you see it in class. Would love to have that flexibility but I think the muscles had been trained very different from how they are trained in MA

The instructor in question didn’t teach kicks that I know of, so he probably didn’t have the issue to anything like the extent you’d run into in a system that has more kicking emphasis. I think he just liked their ability to stay relaxed and to link movements together fluidly.

 

[skribs]

I met a ballet dancer that could kick well. Your generalizations are not accurate.

Ballet dancers can easily learn to kick, because they've learned control over their body. However, it's not always going to be easy for them to transition from dance to combat. For example, we had a ballet dancer with beautiful movements, but her roundhouse kick was more like a side kick (but with the instep...it was a strange-looking kick), and it took a lot of training for her to understand the difference between them.

 

[drop bear]

Nope. You’re the one arguing, friend. I didn’t make a generalization - I stated my personal expectation (or lack thereof) for an average dancer of a specific type. I avoided generalizing across all dancers, or even all ballerinas. And I think the way I stated it allows that there are probably exceptions.

I didn’t see that in your statement you are dragging into this thread.

Re read it. Basically we have reversed roles completely.

Except for some reason I am wrong in both instances.

 

[pdg]

Re read it. Basically we have reversed roles completely.

Except for some reason I am wrong in both instances.

Are you sure you aren't mistakenly arguing with my wife?

Because that goes the same way, I'm apparently wrong about something so I decide to agree with her, then I'm wrong again...

 

[Gerry Seymour]

Re read it. Basically we have reversed roles completely.

Except for some reason I am wrong in both instances.

Yours sounded to me like you were saying that was all Karateka. If I misread that, correcting my misreading would have ended the misunderstanding pretty quickly.

 

[Gerry Seymour]

Are you sure you aren't mistakenly arguing with my wife?

Because that goes the same way, I'm apparently wrong about something so I decide to agree with her, then I'm wrong again...

No, you're wrong about that.

 

[pdg]

No, you're wrong about that.

I had to agree, just so I could be wrong about that too.

 

[Gerry Seymour]

I had to agree, just so I could be wrong about that too.

Well played.

 

[dvcochran]

Ballet dancers can easily learn to kick, because they've learned control over their body. However, it's not always going to be easy for them to transition from dance to combat. For example, we had a ballet dancer with beautiful movements, but her roundhouse kick was more like a side kick (but with the instep...it was a strange-looking kick), and it took a lot of training for her to understand the difference between them.

As said, it is difficult for them to learn to kick correctly.

 

[skribs]

As said, it is difficult for them to learn to kick correctly.

I'd say it "can be difficult" not "it is difficult." Other dancers I've had have picked up the correct mechanics real fast. And, aside from the roundhouse kick specifically, the one I'm talking about learned all the other kicks real quick, too.

 

[dvcochran]

I met a ballet dancer that could kick well. Your generalizations are not accurate.

It wasn't intended as a generalization. I was speaking relevant to the people I have had experience with.

 

[dvcochran]

I'd say it "can be difficult" not "it is difficult." Other dancers I've had have picked up the correct mechanics real fast. And, aside from the roundhouse kick specifically, the one I'm talking about learned all the other kicks real quick, too.

Speculation, but I imagine it has a lot to do with the amount of time they spent in their given genre.

 

[dvcochran]

@dvcochran - you aren't getting my interpretation of the word 'automatic'...

Involuntary does not mean automatic, in the context of my parts of the conversation it means subconscious.

If a heartbeat or a breath were truly automatic, they wouldn't need the intervention of the brain - what happens to respiration and circulation if you remove the brain?

And to repeat, they can be reprogrammed and overridden - your responses with regard to breathing and heart rate change if your fitness or wellbeing vary, and I can actively control my breathing and, to some extent with concentration, my heart rate - if truly automatic that wouldn't be possible.

What purpose does a heartbeat or breath by themselves serve? The body is a system that all works together, ala, some things are automatic for it to function.

 

[drop bear]

Are you sure you aren't mistakenly arguing with my wife?

Because that goes the same way, I'm apparently wrong about something so I decide to agree with her, then I'm wrong again...

Pretty much how i feel.

 

[Earl Weiss]

Mr. Weiss,
The main reason I disagree with your premise is that you are describing the ideal position from which the technique is executed (I think). ....
No, it doesn't really make sense but sounds really cool. Please explain if I misunderstand.

I will try to explain. I cannot say if you understood my point or not, Techniques can be done in many ways. You may do it one way for sparring to maximize your chance of success under whatever rule set facing an opponent. You may do it another way when breaking under whatever rules apply for that with no concern for defense, opponent etc. Combat may use a different method. Some methods my need to be done even being off balance. If you view the spectrum of technique variations as each being a point radiating outward somewhere from the center of a sphere, the method at the center of the sphere is the point from which it would be easiest to morph each variation. That center point method may very well be the pattern method. (I hope this makes sense. )