Jacob competing at USKA Nationals

[dvcochran]

Had a great weekend with my son competing at the USKA National Championships in Houston. He won 1st in fighting and weapons and placed 2nd in kata.

Here is the video...and its music free just for you @Buka

Just watched the video. Congratulations. Very smooth right leg roundhouse kick. He gets his leg, and especially the knee up very well. He looks limber enough and twitchy enough to double kick. Should be an easy point for him and help when there is a height disadvantage. I thought he let his stance get really wide later in some of the matches and it was slowing him down. IMHO.

 

[CB Jones]

Just watched the video. Congratulations. Very smooth right leg roundhouse kick. He gets his leg, and especially the knee up very well. He looks limber enough and twitchy enough to double kick. Should be an easy point for him and help when there is a height disadvantage. I thought he let his stance get really wide later in some of the matches and it was slowing him down. IMHO.

Thanks.

He throws a low/high double kick sometimes but not alot. We will watch for the stance getting too wide. He actually surprised me a little I thought he would struggle more. Due to high school baseball, he had missed the last couple of tournaments and hadn't trained much in the couple months before. I expected him to be a little more rusty.

 

[Gerry Seymour]

Thanks.

He throws a low/high double kick sometimes but not alot. We will watch for the stance getting too wide. He actually surprised me a little I thought he would struggle more. Due to high school baseball, he had missed the last couple of tournaments and hadn't trained much in the couple months before. I expected him to be a little more rusty.

If that's what he looks like rusty...

 

[Headhunter]

Thanks.

He throws a low/high double kick sometimes but not alot. We will watch for the stance getting too wide. He actually surprised me a little I thought he would struggle more. Due to high school baseball, he had missed the last couple of tournaments and hadn't trained much in the couple months before. I expected him to be a little more rusty.

In my experience ring rust doesn't exist in fact being away can sometimes make you perform better since your bodies had a rest. I've found that plenty of times in fights. The times I went full rocky mode in training I performed worse than when I took time out. I still find it in bjj I've had like a month off due to sickness and other stuff going on and when I came back I was rolling better than ever. Catching people in submissions and getting good positions and defending well. In my opinion ring rust is just an excuse that people use when they lose

 

[Headhunter]

Thanks.

He throws a low/high double kick sometimes but not alot. We will watch for the stance getting too wide. He actually surprised me a little I thought he would struggle more. Due to high school baseball, he had missed the last couple of tournaments and hadn't trained much in the couple months before. I expected him to be a little more rusty.

To add to my last post. There's a number of times ring has been proven to not be a factor. Michael bisping took a title fight on 2 weeks notice after he'd been filming a movie so not training much and he won by 1st round ko against a guy he'd previously lost to. Nate Diaz had been drinking and partying and not training before he tapped out McGregor in 2 rounds. Randy couture was retired for a year before he came back and dominated Tim Sylvia for 5 rounds for the heavyweight title.

 

[CB Jones]

In my experience ring rust doesn't exist in fact being away can sometimes make you perform better since your bodies had a rest. I've found that plenty of times in fights. The times I went full rocky mode in training I performed worse than when I took time out. I still find it in bjj I've had like a month off due to sickness and other stuff going on and when I came back I was rolling better than ever. Catching people in submissions and getting good positions and defending well. In my opinion ring rust is just an excuse that people use when they lose

Agree. To clarify at times his spacing gets a little off and his punches will be a just short of contact. Being shorter than alot of his opponents puts him in their range though. His first 2 opponents were 6-7 inches taller than him.

I thought it might be a little tough early as he found his timing and spacing....but he got it figured out pretty quick.

 

[dvcochran]

I thought he looked very good. I know points tourney's limit their value some but he is quick enough to use spinning kicks effectively. The problem often times is they end up with too much contact.

 

[dvcochran]

In my experience ring rust doesn't exist in fact being away can sometimes make you perform better since your bodies had a rest. I've found that plenty of times in fights. The times I went full rocky mode in training I performed worse than when I took time out. I still find it in bjj I've had like a month off due to sickness and other stuff going on and when I came back I was rolling better than ever. Catching people in submissions and getting good positions and defending well. In my opinion ring rust is just an excuse that people use when they lose

I have always felt that has more to do with conditioning and clearing the head. A good break can make that quite a lot.

 

[CB Jones]

I thought he looked very good. I know points tourney's limit their value some but he is quick enough to use spinning kicks effectively. The problem often times is they end up with too much contact.

He has a spinning back/side kick that is brutal. Even with the belly pad on it hurts...he throws it some but not alot but he is pretty good at pulling the power.

 

[JR 137]

There’s definitely something to the ring rust, for me anyway. I took about 4 months off when I had Lyme disease two years or so ago. I took another 4 months off during my disc episode. A week or 3 here and there for various reasons like illness or too much work/family stuff.

The biggest thing I noticed every time - my timing was off. The longer I was away, the worse it was. Drills, kata, etc. all felt completely fine. Actually, sometimes I felt sharper. But once sparring time came... yeah.

I was out from October until February of this year. The first few times I sparred, my timing was awful. I saw stuff happening a split second too late. The footwork and block were on the way, but I got tagged consistently. I saw openings, but by the time I reacted, they weren’t there anymore half way through throwing what I was throwing. Anticipation of stuff coming wasn’t there, and my combos were shorter; like 2-3 things throw instead of 4-5 or more. Same thing happened every time before this time, but to a lesser extent. And it never lasted as long as this time. Or maybe I was and still am more conscientious of it?

That’s “ring rust.” I wish I could blame it on recovering from the injury, falling out of shape, etc. but I can’t. Baseball hitters need to consistently see live pitching to get into and stay in a groove. Pitchers need to pitch. And same for any skills in any sports. MAists need to have someone feeding them resistance in sparring. It doesn’t have to be all out, but just that regular punches and kicks coming at you. Same thing when I wrestled.

When you constantly see stuff coming at you at a faster pace, it slows down in a way. It becomes normal. When you don’t see it for a while and then go back, everything looks like it’s going 100 mph. At least it does for me.

The pro fighters who took fights on very short notice aren’t exactly the norm. And truth be told, even if they weren’t in training camp before they took a fight with a few weeks’ or even days’ notice, I’m pretty sure they weren’t sitting on the couch and hanging out all day every day. They were most likely training, albeit at a light enough pace to stay sharp and maintain a decent level of conditioning.

 

[Gerry Seymour]

There’s definitely something to the ring rust, for me anyway. I took about 4 months off when I had Lyme disease two years or so ago. I took another 4 months off during my disc episode. A week or 3 here and there for various reasons like illness or too much work/family stuff.

The biggest thing I noticed every time - my timing was off. The longer I was away, the worse it was. Drills, kata, etc. all felt completely fine. Actually, sometimes I felt sharper. But once sparring time came... yeah.

I was out from October until February of this year. The first few times I sparred, my timing was awful. I saw stuff happening a split second too late. The footwork and block were on the way, but I got tagged consistently. I saw openings, but by the time I reacted, they weren’t there anymore half way through throwing what I was throwing. Anticipation of stuff coming wasn’t there, and my combos were shorter; like 2-3 things throw instead of 4-5 or more. Same thing happened every time before this time, but to a lesser extent. And it never lasted as long as this time. Or maybe I was and still am more conscientious of it?

That’s “ring rust.” I wish I could blame it on recovering from the injury, falling out of shape, etc. but I can’t. Baseball hitters need to consistently see live pitching to get into and stay in a groove. Pitchers need to pitch. And same for any skills in any sports. MAists need to have someone feeding them resistance in sparring. It doesn’t have to be all out, but just that regular punches and kicks coming at you. Same thing when I wrestled.

When you constantly see stuff coming at you at a faster pace, it slows down in a way. It becomes normal. When you don’t see it for a while and then go back, everything looks like it’s going 100 mph. At least it does for me.

The pro fighters who took fights on very short notice aren’t exactly the norm. And truth be told, even if they weren’t in training camp before they took a fight with a few weeks’ or even days’ notice, I’m pretty sure they weren’t sitting on the couch and hanging out all day every day. They were most likely training, albeit at a light enough pace to stay sharp and maintain a decent level of conditioning.

I wonder what the neurology is behind that loss of timing - that seeing things a bit late. Durable learning degrades at a somewhat unpredictable rate during that time period (2-6 months), as I recall.

 

[JR 137]

I wonder what the neurology is behind that loss of timing - that seeing things a bit late. Durable learning degrades at a somewhat unpredictable rate during that time period (2-6 months), as I recall.

It would be an interesting thing to see from a neuroscience and/or sports psychology study. The two would have to be intertwined at some level.

Ask a baseball hitter about consistently seeing live pitching vs even a pitching machine every day. They’ll tell you they if they don’t see live pitching for a while, they won’t be able to “pick up the pitch” or in other words see it right for a while. They get into a zone; into a rhythm.

A great example of this was when Bernie Sanders was getting older. Brian Cashman (GM) had a great reason for not signing him for another season, thereby forcing him to retire. A radio announcer was asking why he couldn’t be kept for another year as a DH. Cashman said (paraphrased due to lack of exact memory) “Like every hitter, Bernie needs to hit every day to keep a rhythm. He’s not as good a fielder as (whoever replaced him), and almost as good a hitter. (The DH at the time) is a better hitter. So when do we use him other than giving someone a day off here and there? If he’s not hitting regularly, he struggles. He’s great if he’s hitting regularly, but how can we do that?”

Sure the core mechanics are there for a hitter if he takes more time off than usual. His swing is perfectly fine and not noticeably effected (if he’s healthy). But it takes him a while to see the pitches and put the ball in play.

I’ve seen it in a lot of players. And I’ve seen it in other sports too. It’s most apparent when you know the player and the sport. You can tell they’re just a bit off. And I’ve heard a ton of hitters say they’re off after not seeing live pitching for a while.

Same thing for fielders. Infielders get used to the ball coming at them at a fast pace. Then there’s the off season where they’re not fielding as much, and when preseason comes along they need some time to adjust. Outfielders struggle to pick up the ball when they’re limited to indoor practice during the winter, then getting outside and seeing actual fly balls at a normal height takes some adjustment. It’s not coincidental that there’s far more fielding errors during preseason and just mistiming/judging the ball than there is after a few weeks.

When I’m in a groove and have been consistently sparring at a higher intensity for a while, my vision gets better. Things slow down in a sense. When I’m gone for a while and come back, everything’s seemingly coming at me much faster than it actually is. Sparring with someone with better than average skill and speed, that split second delay is the difference between getting out of the way and/or deflecting the punch and getting tagged by it. You may even get a hand on it and lessen the blow, but it’s still going to hit you.

Go stand in the batter’s box with a pitching machine. Just watch 75 mph pitches go by you for an hour a day for a few weeks. They’ll gradually start to look slower. Stop for a few months and go back. They’ll look faster than you remember. Why? No idea.

Edit: maybe increasing neural pathways in the eye to the brain and in the brain, thereby fine tuning the vision. Then not doing that for a while and those pathways atrophying closer to a baseline level. Kinda like muscular hypertrophy and subsequent atrophy after a layoff that was too long. Just a shot in the dark there.

 

[dvcochran]

It would be an interesting thing to see from a neuroscience and/or sports psychology study. The two would have to be intertwined at some level.

Ask a baseball hitter about consistently seeing live pitching vs even a pitching machine every day. They’ll tell you they if they don’t see live pitching for a while, they won’t be able to “pick up the pitch” or in other words see it right for a while. They get into a zone; into a rhythm.

A great example of this was when Bernie Sanders was getting older. Brian Cashman (GM) had a great reason for not signing him for another season, thereby forcing him to retire. A radio announcer was asking why he couldn’t be kept for another year as a DH. Cashman said (paraphrased due to lack of exact memory) “Like every hitter, Bernie needs to hit every day to keep a rhythm. He’s not as good a fielder as (whoever replaced him), and almost as good a hitter. (The DH at the time) is a better hitter. So when do we use him other than giving someone a day off here and there? If he’s not hitting regularly, he struggles. He’s great if he’s hitting regularly, but how can we do that?”

Sure the core mechanics are there for a hitter if he takes more time off than usual. His swing is perfectly fine and not noticeably effected (if he’s healthy). But it takes him a while to see the pitches and put the ball in play.

I’ve seen it in a lot of players. And I’ve seen it in other sports too. It’s most apparent when you know the player and the sport. You can tell they’re just a bit off. And I’ve heard a ton of hitters say they’re off after not seeing live pitching for a while.

Same thing for fielders. Infielders get used to the ball coming at them at a fast pace. Then there’s the off season where they’re not fielding as much, and when preseason comes along they need some time to adjust. Outfielders struggle to pick up the ball when they’re limited to indoor practice during the winter, then getting outside and seeing actual fly balls at a normal height takes some adjustment. It’s not coincidental that there’s far more fielding errors during preseason and just mistiming/judging the ball than there is after a few weeks.

When I’m in a groove and have been consistently sparring at a higher intensity for a while, my vision gets better. Things slow down in a sense. When I’m gone for a while and come back, everything’s seemingly coming at me much faster than it actually is. Sparring with someone with better than average skill and speed, that split second delay is the difference between getting out of the way and/or deflecting the punch and getting tagged by it. You may even get a hand on it and lessen the blow, but it’s still going to hit you.

Go stand in the batter’s box with a pitching machine. Just watch 75 mph pitches go by you for an hour a day for a few weeks. They’ll gradually start to look slower. Stop for a few months and go back. They’ll look faster than you remember. Why? No idea.

Edit: maybe increasing neural pathways in the eye to the brain and in the brain, thereby fine tuning the vision. Then not doing that for a while and those pathways atrophying closer to a baseline level. Kinda like muscular hypertrophy and subsequent atrophy after a layoff that was too long. Just a shot in the dark there.

I have wondered about your edit in other physical responses. In machine programming, I can write an algorithm that changed the priority of a response based on the frequency or condition of inputs. Is this similar to what the brain does? Or is it much more complex than that? I never lost too much of my recognition for when/what/why to throw a spinning side kick but it certainly seems like there is a disconnect between my brain saying Go! and my body responding sometimes, for example.

 

[Gerry Seymour]

It would be an interesting thing to see from a neuroscience and/or sports psychology study. The two would have to be intertwined at some level.

Ask a baseball hitter about consistently seeing live pitching vs even a pitching machine every day. They’ll tell you they if they don’t see live pitching for a while, they won’t be able to “pick up the pitch” or in other words see it right for a while. They get into a zone; into a rhythm.

A great example of this was when Bernie Sanders was getting older. Brian Cashman (GM) had a great reason for not signing him for another season, thereby forcing him to retire. A radio announcer was asking why he couldn’t be kept for another year as a DH. Cashman said (paraphrased due to lack of exact memory) “Like every hitter, Bernie needs to hit every day to keep a rhythm. He’s not as good a fielder as (whoever replaced him), and almost as good a hitter. (The DH at the time) is a better hitter. So when do we use him other than giving someone a day off here and there? If he’s not hitting regularly, he struggles. He’s great if he’s hitting regularly, but how can we do that?”

Sure the core mechanics are there for a hitter if he takes more time off than usual. His swing is perfectly fine and not noticeably effected (if he’s healthy). But it takes him a while to see the pitches and put the ball in play.

I’ve seen it in a lot of players. And I’ve seen it in other sports too. It’s most apparent when you know the player and the sport. You can tell they’re just a bit off. And I’ve heard a ton of hitters say they’re off after not seeing live pitching for a while.

Same thing for fielders. Infielders get used to the ball coming at them at a fast pace. Then there’s the off season where they’re not fielding as much, and when preseason comes along they need some time to adjust. Outfielders struggle to pick up the ball when they’re limited to indoor practice during the winter, then getting outside and seeing actual fly balls at a normal height takes some adjustment. It’s not coincidental that there’s far more fielding errors during preseason and just mistiming/judging the ball than there is after a few weeks.

When I’m in a groove and have been consistently sparring at a higher intensity for a while, my vision gets better. Things slow down in a sense. When I’m gone for a while and come back, everything’s seemingly coming at me much faster than it actually is. Sparring with someone with better than average skill and speed, that split second delay is the difference between getting out of the way and/or deflecting the punch and getting tagged by it. You may even get a hand on it and lessen the blow, but it’s still going to hit you.

Go stand in the batter’s box with a pitching machine. Just watch 75 mph pitches go by you for an hour a day for a few weeks. They’ll gradually start to look slower. Stop for a few months and go back. They’ll look faster than you remember. Why? No idea.

Edit: maybe increasing neural pathways in the eye to the brain and in the brain, thereby fine tuning the vision. Then not doing that for a while and those pathways atrophying closer to a baseline level. Kinda like muscular hypertrophy and subsequent atrophy after a layoff that was too long. Just a shot in the dark there.

I suspect it's not actually vision, but pattern matching, for all of those scenarios. This would suggest that our visual pattern matching has little durability at the finest level (which would translate to elite performance), but is much more durable beyond that point (take any truly good athlete, give them a year off, and they're still better than someone who was a couple of levels less "good").

I'll have some down time this week after my foot surgery. I'll poke around and see if I can find anything related in the literature.

 

[Gerry Seymour]

I have wondered about your edit in other physical responses. In machine programming, I can write an algorithm that changed the priority of a response based on the frequency or condition of inputs. Is this similar to what the brain does? Or is it much more complex than that? I never lost too much of my recognition for when/what/why to throw a spinning side kick but it certainly seems like there is a disconnect between my brain saying Go! and my body responding sometimes, for example.

The brain's function has is analogous to programming in some ways, but very different in others. When we include just the glial cells, it would be like a cluster of servers with a changing wiring path (that's oversimplified) that shifts to reinforce what's used the most with wiring that's shielded better and has more bandwidth potential. Network nodes not used for a while can actually become disconnected.

 

[JR 137]

I have wondered about your edit in other physical responses. In machine programming, I can write an algorithm that changed the priority of a response based on the frequency or condition of inputs. Is this similar to what the brain does? Or is it much more complex than that? I never lost too much of my recognition for when/what/why to throw a spinning side kick but it certainly seems like there is a disconnect between my brain saying Go! and my body responding sometimes, for example.

I suspect it's not actually vision, but pattern matching, for all of those scenarios. This would suggest that our visual pattern matching has little durability at the finest level (which would translate to elite performance), but is much more durable beyond that point (take any truly good athlete, give them a year off, and they're still better than someone who was a couple of levels less "good").

I'll have some down time this week after my foot surgery. I'll poke around and see if I can find anything related in the literature.

I saw an article on somewhere like the Mayo Clinic that was talking about aging and the brain, and they were saying how the brain grows and atrophies according to usage like muscles do. Only not as large, obviously.

Parts of the brain that control different things can grow and atrophy. The article cited a study showing cab drivers in London had a significantly larger hippocampus (I think that’s the part) than the rest of the population.

I don’t know what part of the brain that takes the visual cue and elicits a response in stuff like sports and MA. The visual cortex in the occipital lobe (back of the brain) obviously plays a role, but where the response to that stimulus comes from I don’t know. And I don’t know how much those regions actually grow in size.

There are ways to decrease reaction time in activities. People with traumatic brain injuries have done training that decreases it. Stuff like stuff like seeing patterns on a computer screen and pressing appropriate keys as quickly as possible. Quite often when you’re refining a physical skill what you’re doing physiologically is increasing the synapses; kids learning to write and practicing writing their letters are gaining fine motor control in their hands. They’re forcing their body to increase synapses in their hands - more nerve endings = better control; and possibly in their brain.

Constantly seeing a specific type of stimulus that’s faster and more varied than the norm and reacting to it is a skill. Using baseball as an example, you can develop the perfect swing, but that doesn’t mean you can hit a pitch. You can only learn and refine that through swinging at pitches. Skills like this are refined basically the same way as a kid learning to write - it’s very sloppy at first, then they’re gaining feedback and refining it. They’re visually learning to recognize the error and are practicing and fixing it. This is why they trace letters over and over again at first, then do some freehand, then repeat that for all the letters. While they’re doing this, synapses along the neural pathways are increasing. Where there’s an increase, I’d have to say there’s growth. More increase = more growth. How much actual growth is my question. Synapses are microscopic. Or it could be a figurative re-wiring of the brain.

Too much brain science thinking. I need a mental break

 

[dvcochran]

I saw an article on somewhere like the Mayo Clinic that was talking about aging and the brain, and they were saying how the brain grows and atrophies according to usage like muscles do. Only not as large, obviously.

Parts of the brain that control different things can grow and atrophy. The article cited a study showing cab drivers in London had a significantly larger hippocampus (I think that’s the part) than the rest of the population.

I don’t know what part of the brain that takes the visual cue and elicits a response in stuff like sports and MA. The visual cortex in the occipital lobe (back of the brain) obviously plays a role, but where the response to that stimulus comes from I don’t know. And I don’t know how much those regions actually grow in size.

There are ways to decrease reaction time in activities. People with traumatic brain injuries have done training that decreases it. Stuff like stuff like seeing patterns on a computer screen and pressing appropriate keys as quickly as possible. Quite often when you’re refining a physical skill what you’re doing physiologically is increasing the synapses; kids learning to write and practicing writing their letters are gaining fine motor control in their hands. They’re forcing their body to increase synapses in their hands - more nerve endings = better control; and possibly in their brain.

Constantly seeing a specific type of stimulus that’s faster and more varied than the norm and reacting to it is a skill. Using baseball as an example, you can develop the perfect swing, but that doesn’t mean you can hit a pitch. You can only learn and refine that through swinging at pitches. Skills like this are refined basically the same way as a kid learning to write - it’s very sloppy at first, then they’re gaining feedback and refining it. They’re visually learning to recognize the error and are practicing and fixing it. This is why they trace letters over and over again at first, then do some freehand, then repeat that for all the letters. While they’re doing this, synapses along the neural pathways are increasing. Where there’s an increase, I’d have to say there’s growth. More increase = more growth. How much actual growth is my question. Synapses are microscopic. Or it could be a figurative re-wiring of the brain.

Too much brain science thinking. I need a mental break

Very interesting. I always thought it was more like you last sentence where the brain, based on inputs(frequency, priority, etc...)uses some existing "infrastructure" for a new purpose. Like multi-plexing. I never knew the brain could grow. But I am an engineer so what do I know about the brain.

 

[dvcochran]

The brain's function has is analogous to programming in some ways, but very different in others. When we include just the glial cells, it would be like a cluster of servers with a changing wiring path (that's oversimplified) that shifts to reinforce what's used the most with wiring that's shielded better and has more bandwidth potential. Network nodes not used for a while can actually become disconnected.

That is very, very similar to a program node algorithm.

 

[dvcochran]

I suspect it's not actually vision, but pattern matching, for all of those scenarios. This would suggest that our visual pattern matching has little durability at the finest level (which would translate to elite performance), but is much more durable beyond that point (take any truly good athlete, give them a year off, and they're still better than someone who was a couple of levels less "good").

I'll have some down time this week after my foot surgery. I'll poke around and see if I can find anything related in the literature.

Is muscle memory in that equation somewhere?

 

[JR 137]

Very interesting. I always thought it was more like you last sentence where the brain, based on inputs(frequency, priority, etc...)uses some existing "infrastructure" for a new purpose. Like multi-plexing. I never knew the brain could grow. But I am an engineer so what do I know about the brain.

Parts of it can grow. I don’t think it’s a large amount though. The brain doesn’t have much room to grow inside the skull after all. And I’m not sure if every part is capable of growing (after adulthood) or only select parts are. The study that article referenced only talked about the hippocampus growing (if that was the part that grew).

For this stuff it’s most likely a combination of “re-wiring,” being more efficient, and a seemingly negligible amount of actual growth. That’s my guess anyway.