THINKING HATS — ON.

Look it up on Youtube., someone there will explain it better than I will here.

If you talk with a sports psychologist they will tell you that all training is task-specific.

They will tell you that all training needs to be task-specific for our brains to be able to store it in the correct place so that we can access the information easily and quickly.

Our brain is not just lust like a computer, it is a computer, and data stored incorrectly rapidly degrades and becomes garbage

G.I.G.O.

Garbage in, garbage out.

Information is a language.

And like any language, we need more than just an alphabet to be able to use it effectively.

Especially if that language is context-specific like a Kung Fu Form, is context-specific.

But the language needs to be clear and correct.

And the instruction needs to be clear and correct, and if possible scientifically verifiable.

How often do we hear Teachers talking about the ‘Mind – Body’ connection?

I get what they are going on about, but there is a giant fly in their ointment.

‘Mind’ does not exist.

You cannot point to a part of the Cerebral Cortex and say this is the ‘Mind’. 

This is where ‘Mind’ lives.

Because what gets referred to as Mind exists everywhere in our Brain, it is the collective of our synapses acting together.

Mind itself is a concept.

And more often than not it is ‘Mind’ that is making the mistakes, doing everything wrong when we attempt a new Form or a new movement.

How often do you hear me say that “Our brain is a self-organising pattern maker’ that is only concerned about the pattern and not so concerned about the pros or cons of that pattern?

In general psychology, there is a process that is called the Schmidt Schema Theory.

Look it up on Youtube., someone there will explain it better than I will here.

The theory attempts to explain how and why we store general motor programs that we, later on, adapt to suit our needs.

It describes the theory as having 4 stages.

1. Initial Conditions; where am I?
2. Response specifications; what is expected from me in this position? {PERFORM SKILL / RUN MOTOR PROGRAMME}.
3. Sensory consequences; A feedback loop that allows us to quantify what we did, how did it look and feel?
4. Response Outcome; The hoped-for objective, did it work.

Here is a WIKI-gab from …. about Schema theory.

R.A. Schmidt developed the “schema theory” of motor learning

Schmidt argued, partly against J.A. Adams'(1971) closed loop theory, that people don’t learn specific movements. Instead, they construct “generalized motor programs.” They do this by exploring programming rules, learning the ways in which certain classes of movement are related. Then they learn how to produce different movements within a class by varying the parameters that determine the way in which movements are constructed.

Parameters are features of a movement, for instance, its duration or overall time, or the level of force that develops in the muscles that contribute to the movement. By scaling these parameters up or down (vertical axis), people produce variations (horizontal axis) among a class of movements.

As people practice a movement, like throwing a ball various distances or in various directions, or climbing stairs of various dimensions, they learn the relationship between the parameters and the outcome. By collecting “data points” like the ones in the figure (adapted from Schmidt, 1988, Fig. 14-7), they improve their understanding of the relationship between a movement outcome and their control of the movement’s parameters (the “best-fitting straight line” in the figure).

An important prediction of the theory is that people will more quickly learn the relationship between manipulating parameters and achieving a desired movement outcome if they practice a task in wide variety of sitations, and experience errors in the process. To use the figure as an illustration, the theory predicts that people will more quickly appreciate the underlying “best-fitting line” (the rules by which a generalized motor program produces a class of movements) when they accumulate a large and broad scatter of data points (a varied experience of movement).

Practice that lacks variety, but is instead precise or repetitious, will not (from Schmidt’s perspective) provide enough information for a learner to fathom the rules that underlie the generalized motor program.

In Schmidt’s theory, this relationship betweeen the parameters and outcomes are collected in two “schemes” or “schema,” hence the name by which his theory is known.

If we add this to col. John Boyds’s O.O.D.A. Loop we can transition from not only knowing and understanding how we move to how and why we will use it.

I am feeling a bit lazy today so here is another link O.O.D.A.LOOP.

This type of low to mid-level research can not only help us understand, but more importantly it can help us understand what it means to understand.

It takes FORMS practice out of the W.T.F. basket and puts it into the “Got It” basket, but only once you understand.

WHEN YOU UNDERSTAND, THINGS ARE JUST THE WAY THEY ARE.

WHEN YOU DO NOT UNDERSTAND, THINGS ARE JUST THE WAY THEY ARE.

ZEN SAYING.