Training for maximum difficulty/adaptability or for ideal execution? What's the best mix?

[exile]

I can see two views of the kind of training conditions that yield the best results:

• Train under the toughest conditions possible. If you're training pivoting, for example, wear tight jeans and heavy hiking boots, on a broken or sloping surface. If you can pivot on the standing leg with the kicking leg fully chambered, high and paralell to the ground, in good balance and control, you're going to be near-perfect under more reasonable conditions. It's the same idea as the track-event competitor who tries to set personal bests while wearing leg weights—in the actual competition, they're going to be way ahead of any competitor who never extended themselves to the same degree.

• Train under ideal conditions to increase your chance of getting the body-sense of the technique imprinted in your mind in its purest, most perfect form. A kid who learns the sensation of weight shifting and edge changing on a gentle ski slope with good snow will, after the first couple of times doing it right, have a vivid physical impression, a gestalt, of how a carved turn should be made, and can adapt that ideal image—now fully internalized and physically understood—to a variety of changing terrain. On this view, you train pivots wearing MAs clothes and thin, smooth socks on a smooth linoleum or polished wooden floor. That will maximize your chance of `getting it', and once you do, you'll keep the ideal sensation in your sensorium at all times and do what you need to do to achieve it, over and over, no matter what the extra difficulties presented by the environment.

Obviously, these aren't mutually exclusive possibilities—both stories can be given plausible justifications—and for any given solo training session, you can do it either way. But is there an optimal mix—do you think that one of these approaches should, for best results, be the predominant approach and get the lion's share of training emphasis? And if so, which do you think that one is, and why?

 

[foot2face]

Obviously, these aren't mutually exclusive possibilities—both stories can be given plausible justifications—and for any given solo training session, you can do it either way. But is there an optimal mix—do you think that one of these approaches should, for best results, be the predominant approach and get the lion's share of training emphasis? And if so, which do you think that one is, and why?

You are absolutely right, these methods aren’t mutually exclusive. I was taught to really on both. When the goal is to learn a new skill or refine the technique of an existing one, training under optimal conditions provides the best chance or developing ideal execution. You want to create “muscle memory” that will allow for fluid and effortless movement without any distractions or obstacles that may hinder ideal form. Once the technique is refined to the point where one’s movement is natural and the form is ideal you must challenge the skill under adverse conditions, using the execution of said technique under optimal conditions as a metric by which to judge performance. Challenging ones skill and training under the toughest conditions possible is a must. It allows for the full exploitation of ones potential, but relying on it too soon often leads to the development of improper form which will stifle future progress.

 

[Kacey]

You are absolutely right, these methods aren’t mutually exclusive. I was taught to really on both. When the goal is to learn a new skill or refine the technique of an existing one, training under optimal conditions provides the best chance or developing ideal execution. You want to create “muscle memory” that will allow for fluid and effortless movement without any distractions or obstacles that may hinder ideal form. Once the technique is refined to the point where one’s movement is natural and the form is ideal you must challenge the skill under adverse conditions, using the execution of said technique under optimal conditions as a metric by which to judge performance. Challenging ones skill and training under the toughest conditions possible is a must. It allows for the full exploitation of ones potential, but relying on it too soon often leads to the development of improper form which will stifle future progress.

Foot2face beat me to it - I agree completely. To train a skill properly, it must be learned properly first, something best (or at least, most easily) done under ideal conditions. Once a student has mastered at least the basics of the skill, and understands how to apply it, then it is time to start practicing the skill in less ideal settings/situations; as the skill improves, the quality of the setting can continue to degrade.

Even once a student has begun to practice a skill under less-than-ideal conditions, s/he should still return to the ideal conditions under which the skill was learned, so that any necessary modifications - quite possibly not visible under poor conditions - can be made on a regular/periodic basis.

 

[Nomad]

I agree with the above posts; the two methods are complementary training tools, and both should be utilized. I view the "ideal conditions" as necessary for the basics; if you're trying to imitate a move you've just seen in a blinding rainstorm on a slick hillside, it's unlikely that you'll ever get it even a little. Once you "know" the techniques, you can challenge them and yourself by trying them in rough terrain, with limiting clothing, in bad weather, etc. as the OP states.

Just my $0.02