It is not about knowing 10,000 different moves or practicing one move 10,000 times or 10,000 hours; it's about knowing how to do a few moves 10,000 different ways.
“It is not about knowing 10,000 different moves or practicing one move 10,000 times or 10,000 hours; it's about knowing how to do a few moves 10,000 different ways.The best performers don't have a million moves, they have a few moves they can hit from just about any position.“
The example here is that of basketball but the overall principle applies widely to many many other sports, including combat sports and more generally martial arts.
There’s rarely if ever a single perfect way to do a technique, there may be a ‘perfect’ way for someone to do that specific technique in the specific moment they’re in, against the specific opponent they’re up against and the way they are in that exact moment, but even what ‘perfect’ is can change even for those same two people from moment to moment, at least to some degree. The variability doesn’t mean that an ‘imperfect’ technique is bad, rather that overfocusing on the perfection aspect and underfocusing on the goal of the technique is counterproductive. What does this actually mean? While training for finer tuned motions, higher accuracy and consistance at times can be great, also training for intentional variability, adaptability to changing circumstances and creativity when finding new solutions to variants of old problems is often very useful as well.
This relates strongly to the themes of ecological models and constraint lead approaches to training, both of which relate to the Southpaw, Kajetan Sadowski and Rob Gray resources listed below all cover in one way or another.
For anyone who hasn’t yet seen the following links:
Some advice on how to start studying the sources generally can be found in these older posts
Remember to check out A Guide to Starting a Liberation Martial Arts Gym as it may help with your own club/gym/dojo/school culture and approach.
Check out their curriculum too.
Fear is the Mind Killer: How to Build a Training Culture that Fosters Strength and Resilience by Kajetan Sadowski may be relevant as well.
“How We Learn to Move: A Revolution in the Way We Coach & Practice Sports Skills” by Rob Gray
Another useful book to check out is The Theory and Practice of Historical European Martial Arts (while about HEMA, a lot of it is applicable to other historical martial arts clubs dealing with research and recreation of old fighting systems).
Why having a systematic approach to training can be beneficial Remember that we can use sparring and tournament footage for videostudy as well.
Worth checking out are this blogs tags on pedagogy and teaching for other related useful posts.
Consider getting some patches of this sort or these cool rashguards to show support for good causes or a t-shirt like to send a good message while at training.
And stay safe
