Choosing the training variables which are to be emphasized in training, as well as how to go about training them, requires using the scientific knowledge gathered while subjecting it to your own personal concepts.
Therefore, and since combat skill development is quite relevant in combat sports and martial arts, I’d like to share what I consider an alternative concept of technique and its training.
First it is important to clarify the difference between effectiveness and efficiency and, consequently, their roles in technical training.
Effectiveness is one’s ability (or not) to achieve the established goals. For example, in striking, if your goal is to K.O. your opponent, when you achieve this with a couple of offensive techniques, both can be regarded as effective.
On the other hand, efficiency relates to one’s energy expenditure in attaining the desired goal. Thus, using the previous example, if one of the techniques allows for a K.O. with a single execution, it can be considered more efficient than another technique which produces a K.O of the opponent after being performed forty times.
It is sometimes said that an activity’s techniques should designed to be effective and efficient. Although that might be the ideal situation, I currently feel that it is rarely attainable.
Apart from unnatural health endangering endurance activities currently in fad, such as marathons (did you know what happened to the first person who covered this race’s distance between Athens and Marathon? He dropped dead on the spot), all human actions and their success are conditioned by time and force application. If one desires to jump high to grab a rebound in basketball, there is a time limit to exert force on the ground and the jump will have to be highest possible. Even if one ends up fighting for a rebound 50 times during the course of a game, one cannot manage his efforts to produce 50 medium height jumps. All jumps will have to be performed intending maximum height, otherwise the player will finish the game without a single rebound attained. Additionally, to jump high, one not only needs to apply maximum effort, but he or she also needs to perform a jumping technique that is in itself physically more demanding (for example, squatting lower).
Hence, I currently consider that an activity’s technique is designed first and foremost to promote the highest effectiveness possible (maximum force output or the maintenance of force output with reduction of the time required to produce it).
Going back to combat activities, I think that it is safe to say that both strikers and grapples benefit from having stances lower than normal daily standing, since these allow for more powerful punches and better balance. At the same time, it is also widely accepted that these lower stances are more fatiguing than daily living stances.
This way, training should be focused on first developing effective physical ability that will later enable the development of techniques that produce the highest power output and, finally, developing a good conditioning to allow the maintenance of these executions during multiple, brief and explosive periods of time.
Last but not least, and considering the previous examples of effectiveness (opponent’s K.O.), this situation isn’t solely dependent on force production, since the strike must make contact with the target in order for the force to be applied.
Therefore, I look at techniques as actions developed to attain specific goals, thus involving both the development of solid generic actions capable of rapidly producing adequate force (inner coordination components), as well as the skill of being able to successfully adjust these generic actions according to the target’s characteristics (outer coordination components), by skillfully managing space, speed and opportunity, in order to be capable of intercepting the target to start with.
Hope you enjoyed the article and that it can contribute to making your training more effective and enjoyable.
