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MARTIAL FEEDBACK PART 2
Now let’s look beyond the feedback provided by our instructors and immediate training partners. What other tools are there for the job? We’ll begin with you.
Body Awareness
Everyone has an innate awareness of body position, movement and the support and transfer of weight. Different individuals have varying levels of this body awareness, making it either easier or harder for them to determine if physical movements are performed correctly. It’s effectively your personal feedback loop, allowing you to adjust movements by ‘feeling’ if they’re right. This awareness increases with continued training.
Mirrors
Observing your reflection in a mirror while shadow sparring can reveal some surprising flaws in your stance and technique even when it feels right. Using mirrors allows you to self-critique your movements far more effectively.
Video Footage
Video footage allows comple
te visual review of your performance without hindering your movements in the process – you don’t have to face the mirror! Digital camcorders / cameras also allow frame-by-frame slow motion review of your technique. As well as this ‘qualitative’ assessment, video footage can be used to go a step further and measure ‘quantitative’ speed. If you know the frame rate (fps) of your camcorder / camera you can determine the time taken to execute a technique by counting the number of frames. Digital cameras in ‘video’ mode tend to have 10 frames per second and camcorders 24 frames per second. So for example, if your camera has a frame-rate of 10 frames per second and your kick takes six frames to land, then your kick took approximately 0.6 seconds to complete. This can be a powerful tool in comparing the speed of two different performances.
Try comparing the speed of your kicks at the start of the round to those thrown at the end; or those thrown in the first round compared to those in the final round!
Heart Rate Monitor
Using a heart rate monitor during a number of padwork rounds is an excellent way to ensure that you’re pushing yourself. Record your heart rate both at the end of each working round and again at the end of the rest period between rounds. This tells you how hard you are pushing yourself, and how well you can recover between rounds. Keeping a training diary of this information serves as a great motivational tool and highlights your progression.
Also, try filming these workouts to examine your physical output as well as how hard it was for you.
Round Timer
All of the above feedback methods need to be applied within a repeatable timing structure. Automated timing intervals are extremely useful to a martial artist. You need to know that your fitness permits you to execute your techniques consistently for the required duration. Round timers are available as hardware devices or a simple audio CDs or MP3 downloads.
Combining the use of a video camera, heart rate monitor and a round timer, while conducting padwork, bagwork or sparring is an extremely effective learning tool providing first class feedback. Remember, without feedback you can’t improve!
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