I am in something of a dilemma.

You see earlier today my scales told me this.

I should simply rush out and buy that cheesecake, but a part of me doesn’t want to. That part of me is looking forward to my lunch of a sandwich of home-made wholemeal bread and lean ham with liberal quantities of sugar free beverages. And that part is the one that looks in the mirror and whispers to me…

Just think how good your abs would look if you lost another half a stone…

Is this how it begins?

Am I at the top of a long and slippery slope to emaciation? Or am I simply enjoying the fact that I am thinner than I have been since I was a kid and that if I carry on with the weights and maybe up the protein intake a little without too many more calories I will have a physique to be proud of?

I’m not sure, so the decision goes on hold for now.

The sensible thing to do would be to get down to the local gym which is run by a former Mr Universe and talk to him about what I want to achieve.

Yes I should definitely do that…

Following on from the earlier post about the different types of movement I thought it might be interesting to look at how we pass from type one to type three, some of the pitfalls that may be encountered, and some strategies for helping others overcome those pitfalls.

The first thing we need to know as instructors, or even simply as martial artists, is how type three, or instinctive movements occur. On a superficial level it is extremely simple. If you repeat a movement time and time again then your subconscious mind remembers it and eventually allows you to perform it without the need for conscious thought.

Take stairs for example. I am going to assume that everyone reading this blog has at some stage in their life learnt how to walk both up and down stairs. I am in the fortunate position of having a toddler in the house who is currently learning to do exactly that amongst other things and so I am watching her develop these gross motor pathways in real time. It is fascinating. Anyway I digress. If you run up a set of steps you don’t think about things like foot placement, leg lift height and balance control. It simply happens. But it only happens because you, like my youngest daughter, spent countless long hours staring at where your foot should go and then trying to put it there. Movements like this one become so internalised that suddenly introducing conscious movement can cause all sorts of problems. I suspect that you, like me, have on at least one occasion thought about what your feet are doing in the middle of running up, or down, a flight of stairs. The end result is rarely pretty. As soon as your conscious mind gets involved it rapidly becomes clear that what you are doing is in fact a highly complex and difficult combination of movements that you don’t stand a chance of replicating consciously at that speed.

So how is this relevant?

It is relevant because we are trying to learn how to do exactly that. To suddenly, and rapidly perform a series of movements faster than it is possible to do consciously. Even more tricky, as an instructor we are trying to enable our students to do so.

The first thing we need is to understand exactly what it is we are trying to do. We need to be able to break it down into its component parts and look at them in sequence. These component parts need to be small enough that they are possible to do consciously, yet big enough that they seem to have a purpose to the student, because, and this is the big thing, when trying to make someone’s brain do something, they have to believe you. If they do not believe they can do it, then whatever you try and get them to do it will not work. You will not internalise movements you do not commit to, both physically and mentally.

So, you have your technique, it is broken down into manageable chunks and you have your students. Get them to do the first section. This is where your judgement comes in, because you need to add in the second chunk just as the first one is beginning to sink in. If you leave it too long then the first chunk becomes a discrete movement in its own right and the resulting complete action is jerky and disconnected, too quickly and it doesn’t begin to become internalised at all. Once you have hit this magical target you can add the next stage and progressively build the movement until it is complete. The more you run through the completed movement the more internalised it will become. However your subconsious mind also has both short and long term memory. If you stop now you run the risk of the movement being held in short term memory, and then discarded as it has not be re-used. So run through something else, and then after 10 minutes or so go back and do it again a few times. Do this as often as your students will let you. In the end they’ll thank you for it even if they do think you’re running out of ideas.

If only it were really that simple.

The problem is that students all learn at different rates, and all react differently to instruction. You can’t even always predict which ones will learn an action quickly. Sometimes people assimilate new actions quickly, sometimes they have more trouble than anyone would expect. It is all down to how well your set of movements fit with what they already have internalised.

You will almost certainly find that there is no one point at which everyone is ready to move onto the next chunk of movement. Those who picked it up quickly will be champing at the bit, and those who have had trouble will be showing signs of frustration.

I’ll rambling now, so I’ll come back to this point in another post. For now though I think I’m going to go to bed.

Just in case you’re in anyway interested I am still on the diet. I have been finding it tricky to keep my motivation up, with a number of greasy take-aways finding their way into the house, but overall it is still going well. I am currently sat at fourteen stone and three quarters of a pound. That’s 196.75lb to our American brethren. I said I’d stop at 14St (196lb) but from looking in the mirror I suspect another 4-5 lbs wouldn’t go amiss.

We’ll see.

There have been some interesting theories as to which finger you should lose if you had to choose.

Lets look at the facts of the situation.

Grip strength comes from the medial side of the hand and lessens as you move laterally (did you read the list of definitions?) which basically means your strength is mainly from your little finger, then your ring finger, then your middle and the index finger is the weakest of the lot.

The function of the hand as a unit relies on the fingers not rotating or moving laterally when flexing and extending. Any gaps inbetween fingers cause these unwanted movements to increase and therefore decrease the usefulness of the hand.

The index finger is the most dexterous and used for fine motor work, however it has no more sensitivity than the middle finger. It has been shown that because of this the middle finger is able to rapidly take over the role of the index finger when the index finger is removed.

So if you ever find yourself in a situation where you have to choose which of your fingers you are going to lose then you should pick the index finger on your non-dominant hand. It may make you look like on of the Simpsons but it will affect you the least.

Thanks for playing…

I haven’t forgotten part two of “Movement”, you know, the bit that is actually relevant. I’ve just been a bit busy recently…

Anyway, something that was mentioned at REVOLUTION recently got me thinking.

When I worked in Orthopaedics I attended a fascinating lecture by Prof Frank Burke from the Derby Hand Unit. He was (he’s retired now) a fantastically gifted hand surgeon.

He asked us the following question.

“If you had to lose a finger, and could choose which one, which would you choose and why?”

Of course there is a correct answer which I will reveal in due course, but I’d be interested to hear your thoughts before I do.

And yes it is relevant.

Oh, one more thing before I go.

14St 6lb (202lb)

Over halfway there now and boy am I looking forward to the giant cheesecake I’m going to eat when I finally get there…

All numbers represent KCal unless otherwise stated.

E_i – E_o = F

Mean E_i per day = 1287.5

E_o per day = 2500

Therefore mean F = -1212.5

Diet duration =4 days so far.

F = -4850

Or in real terms a weight loss of 5lbs.

I think a celebratory glass of sugar-free beverage is in order.

Dieting is a piece of cake.

This has to be the vaguest title I could come up with for this post.

Sorry about that.

A conversation on a forum I frequent got me to thinking about the different categories of movement and how we should understand them all.  At least it got me to thinking that if I was going to expand on how to make it easier for people to learn martial arts we should start by understanding the different categories of movement.  The rest will follow on from there.

Basically there are three types of movement.  Movements that we choose to make, movements that happen regardless of our choice, and movements that fall somewhere in between the two.  We’ll look at them one at a time and hopefully I’ll manage to explain why it is that understainding them makes us better at what we do.

Category 1 – Conscious Movement

This is the one we are all familiar with.  We decide what we want to happen and we (to quote Captain Jean-Luc Picard) make it so.  Opening a door, switching on a light, the list is endless.  These movements have a tendency to be relatively simple as keeping conscious track of complex movements is not easy.

If you have ever watched a baby grow up and learn to move you could argue that even these simple actions are combinations of other internalised actions.  Moving our hand to pick up a cup uses more muscles than I can bear to count.

Category 2 – Unconscious Movement

This is where things start to get interesting.  Humans, like many other animals, have a fascinating and complex neural structure.  Our sensory nerves do not pass directly to our brain, but synapse at the Spinal Cord.  This leads to a very clever phenomenon; the Reflex Arc.  Basically what happens is thus.  A sensory nerve picks up a signal, this signal travels the length of the nerve and then hits the spinal cord where it is transmitted to the brain, we then experience the sensation.  However this is not all that happens.  When the nerve impulse hits the spinal cord it also triggers a motor nerve impulse.

We move before we know we need to move.

In evolutionary terms this gives us a massive advantage.  We automatically pull away from potentially harmful events without having to make a conscious decision that yes the event is potentially harmful and yes we should probably pull away.  As martial artists we should understand this phenomenon and how to manipulate it in others.  I intend to explain how in a later post.

Tapping the tendon underneath your kneecap and watching your leg jerkupwards is a fine example of reflex action.

Category 3 – The Internalised Movement

If we repeat a movement enough our body remembers it.  At least that is how it seems.  In actual fact our cerebellum remembers it for us so the bit of our brain we live in doesn’t have to.  This allows us to perform increasingly complex movements.  Our body carries out the simple action automatically and we can then add a new layer of complexity to it.  Hopefully we then internalise that and so on…   We call these internalised actions Motor Pathways (though there are many other fine terms, muscle memory, physical inteligence are just two I have come across) and for convenience we divide them into Fine and Gross.  Fine Motor Pathways involve the small muscles of the hand (there are also graphomotor pathways but as these are all about writing we can safely ignore them) and enable us to play the piano, the violin, to type at a computer keyboard, to roll a cigarette whilst driving (That is a bad thing on so many levels I probably shouldn’t have written it).  Gross Motor Pathways enable us to do bigger tasks using our limbs and body.

Category three movements fall in between the first two categories because we can choose to initiate them, but the fine detail of the movement is automatic.  This is why I spent three months standing in a dojo punching the air whilst my Instructor corrected me.  I didn’t enjoy it, and now I doubt it was worthwhile, but it gave me the ability to perform a near perfect Shotokan punch without any conscious thought and at the time that was my biggest goal in life.  However it should be stressed that these movements are not reflexes.  They are simply internalised actions.  We need to learn them so our cerebellum can remember them.  It is much like writing on stone with your finger.  Do it once and you won’t see anything.  Do it a thousand times in the same way and you may well begin to see writing.  The more you practice the simple actions the less you’ll have to think about them when you want to use them.  This is why every class I run has a brief spell of simply stepping forwards and backwards changing through different wards.  It is why every effective self protection system is based on a foundation of default actions.  It is worth bearing in mind that your brain is capable of internalising anything and everything you want, if you do it enough.  The limit is your body, and your motivation.

And that is exactly what the next post we be on.

Unless I stick a quick diet update in first.

Warming up serves a number of purposes, I’m going to look more closely at two of them.  I split my classes warm up into two parts, each one specifically designed to target one of the purposes for the warm up.

Warm up part 1 – Increased Heart Rate.

Getting your heart rate up increases the amount of blood flowing through your circulatory system. As you undoubtedly know, blood carries nutrients and oxygen to cells and removes waste products and so increasing the rate at which it is flowing increases the rate at which these essentials are delivered to the cells that need them as well as increasing the rate at which potentially damaging waste products such as CO2 and lactic acid are removed. If you force muscles to work harder without first providing them with increased levels of the chemicals they require to do so you dramatically increase the likelihood of injuring those muscles. If you keep stressing a muscle without increasing the speed at which it is able to lose the damaging chemicals it produces when stressed you increase the likelihood of injuring those muscles.

With this in mind every good warm up should start with aerobic exercise (if it gets you out of breath it is aerobic). By the end of it you should be out of breath and your pulse should be raised. Once you have done this you are ready for stage two of your warm up.  Incidentally, we run.  Backwards and forwards across the hall, stopping to do simple exercises such as ab crunches followed by more running.

Warm up part 2 – Joint Movement

If a joint is able to move it is known as a synovial joint. On a basic level this means that within the joint is a substance known as synovial fluid. Much like blood synovial fluid serves as a means of providing nutrients to, and removing waste products from the cartilage inside the joint capsule. It also acts as a hydrolic shock absorber for the joint.

Synovial fluid is not a standard liquid however. It is a Non-Newtonian Thixotropic Liquid.

In a nutshell this basically means that at rest it behaves like a solid, but when subject to stresses it becomes more liquid. A tragic example of a thixotropic liquid in action was the Aberfan disaster when a slag heap collapsed in 1966 destrying a school  (I’ll leave you to look that one up). This means that in order to effectively cushion the joint and deliver the nutrients the cartilage needs the synovial fluid should be as liquid as it is possible to get it. This can be achieved by simply running the appropriate joints through range of motion exercises. You do not need to actively force the joints to their limits, just get them moving.

It is important to realise that both heart rate, and synovial fluid viscosity will return to their resting state if not kept up. This means that if you stop exercising for a few minutes you should put yourself through a mini warm up before starting again.

I cant promise that you won’t get injured if you follow these simple guidelines, but I can promise that you will drastically reduce the chances of it happening.

I have a tendency to use medical terminology without realising I do, and so I thought it might be helpful for me to provide a glossary. I’ll try to cover all the terms I’m likely to use but I’ll almost certainly forget something. Feel free to shout at me if I use obscure words.

Midline – A line running from the centre of your head down to the ground when viewed face on.
Saggital (plane) – A view from front to back through the midline.
Coronal (plane) – A view from side to side when face on
Axial (plane) – A view from top to bottom
Medial – Towards the midline
Lateral – Away from the midline
Superior – Above
Inferior – Below
Anterior – Towards the front (the side with the face)
Posterior – Towards the back
Distal – further away
Proximal – nearer towards
Abduction – Movement away from the midline
Adduction – Movement towards the midline
Pronate – Rotation of the forearm to place the hand in a palm down position
Suppinate – Rotation of the forearm to place the hand in a palm up position
Rotation – Moving around a fixed axis
Circumduction – To move a limb in a circular manner.
Anatomical Position – Standing face forwards with the arms at the sides, arms suppinated (palms facing front). This is potentially the most important as it gives us a fixed starting point for all actions. The suppination places the bones of the forearm in a parallel position.

Merely mentioning the words “diet” and “science” together conjures images of (no longer Dr) Gillian McKeith forcing overwrought, overemotional, overweight people to stare at their own poo as if the answers to the universe were somehow contained within.

I’m not going to make you do that.

I’m going to take a much simpler approach.

I’m going to start by assuming that you, like me, spent a little too much time eating cake and drinking beer over the Christmas holidays and like me, want to shed a few pounds in order to help make you the lean, mean fighting machine you know you are.

I want to lose one stone.  Yep, fourteen pounds.  I normally sit at around 14St 10lb (206 lb), though I am currently draped heavily over 15 St (210 lb).  Perfect for me is somewhere around 14 St so that is my target.

Where is all this dull rambling about my weight going I hear you ask?

Ok I don’t hear you ask it but humour me.

I’m going on a diet.  And it is going to be a simple, scientific diet.  One based on basic mathematical principles.

For now I am going to ignore everything I know about what food groups are good and how your body utilises different types of food and present you with a simple equation.

E_i – E_o = F

Or Energy In minus Energy Out equals Fat Adjustment.

For the purposes of simplicity I am going to assume that I am Mr Average and not special like my mum tells me. That means E_o equals 2500Kcal and so if I want F to equal 0 I must ensure that E_i equals 2500Kcal also. However I do not want F to equal 0, I want it to be negative and so I must ensure that E_i is less than 2500Kcal.

I am going to aim for 2000 as a maximum, 1500 as a target.

I am going to discount any and all variables, such as the fact that I train three times a week. They will only increase the value of E_o and so decrease the value of F.

I will report back as things progress.

Hopefully I will be F_less soon.

As a martial artist of some twenty years training I have more than a passing familiarity with techniques that work.  I know how to apply them, and more importantly I know when to apply them.  On the instance that a techniques fails to work I am usually able to figure out what I did wrong and so why I failed to get the desired result.

I know I am not alone in this.  There are many martial artists out there at least as competent as I am, many much more so.  But whilst I am often impressed by the level of technical skill shown by both students and instructors I am always dismayed by the level of underpinning knowledge they have.

They know how to perform the technique, and they are aware of all the subtle nuances around successful application, however they do not understand what it is they are doing and why it does what it does.  They are artists, not scientists.

As a Specialist Orthopaedic Nurse who used to teach Musculo-Skeletal Anatomy and Physiology for the British Orthopaedic Association I regularly hear descriptions of so called “science” that baffle me.  Pseudo-anatomical descriptions that bear no relation to the basics facts.  One of the purposes of this blog therefore is to explore what is going on at a deep physiological level when we apply techniques.  It is as much for my benefit as yours, as taking the effort to put my thoughts down in writing helps me coalesce them into a more tangible form.  I just hope you’ll stick around for long enough that we can both learn something together.

The other purpose for this blog is to look at how we can become better fighters together.  To look at training methods and critique them in a objective, scientific manner, to consider other aspects of life such as nutrition and post-training issues and consider how we can develop our own natural abilities beyond the level they are permanently at.

It will not be a short journey, and I would welcome your thoughts as we progress.  Please feel free to comment, to debate and to disagree.  It is only through such debate that we grow in our knowledge.  That is how science works.  Everything we think we know we attempt to disprove until we finally accept that it cannot be disproven.  Then, and only then do we accept it as truth.

I will try to keep the writing here as system unspecific as possible but for those times when I will slip up and revert back to what I know, I apologise.