In combat sports, athletes continuously co-adapt their behavior to that of the opponent. We consider this interactive aspect of combat to be at the heart of skilled performance, yet combat sports research often neglects or limits interaction between combatants. To promote a more interactive approach, the aim of this paper is to understand combat sports from the combined perspective of ecological psychology and dynamic systems. Accordingly, combat athletes are driven by perception of affordances to attack and defend. Two combatants in a fight self-organize into one interpersonal synergy, where the perceptions and actions of both athletes are coupled. To be successful in combat, performers need to manipulate and take advantage of the (in)stability of the system. Skilled performance in combat sports therefore requires brinkmanship: combatants need to be aware of their action boundaries and purposefully act in meta-stable regions on the limits of their capabilities. We review the experimental literature to provide initial support for a synergetic approach to combat sports. Expert combatants seem able to accurately perceive action boundaries for themselves and their opponent. Local-level behavior of individual combatants has been found to lead to spatiotemporal synchronization at the global level of a fight. Yet, a formal understanding of combat as a dynamic system starting with the identification of order and control parameters is still lacking. We conclude that the ecological dynamics perspective offers a promising approach to further our understanding of skilled performance in combat sports, as well as to assist coaches and athletes to promote optimal training and learning.
To bolster these claims, we start with a brief explanation of the ecological dynamics approach, its application to social interaction, and the development of the concept of interpersonal synergies. We argue that adopting a synergetic approach to combat sports is necessary to truly capture the richness of the behaviors emerging when two athletes engage in combative interaction, a perspective that has largely remained out of scope with the typical individual-level analyses. Accordingly, the main aim of this work is to conceptualize combat as a social synergy using an ecological dynamics framework. To evaluate the extent to which our claims are supported by the literature, we review experimental work in combat sports. The final section delineates key issues for further research, for example, our understanding of skill and learning, and discusses implications of a social synergy perspective for future combat sports research and practice.
Sports Vision Training For Shooting Performance: A Guide For The Combat Athlete Download Pdf
As both athletes simultaneously attempt to score points while preventing the other from doing so, we expect (closely matched) combatants to self-organize into largely stable fights where the perceived action capabilities of both athletes are balanced out; neither athlete perceives an opportunity to advance their chances of success that is not immediately anticipated or reacted to by a balancing movement of the opponent (i.e., reciprocal compensation). In such situations, potential order parameters describing the overall balance between athletes would be expected to be relatively stable. To advance, athletes should first put effort in destabilizing the system so that they may then guide it towards a new, more advantageous state. Dynamic systems theory predicts such destabilizations and transitions should be visible as respectively enhanced fluctuations and sudden changes in order parameters [39].
In this section, we review empirical research on skilled behavior within combat sports and discuss these studies in light of the interpersonal synergy framework. Studies were categorized in three groups on the basis of the level of interaction allowed for within the experimental design. Accordingly, the first category of studies involved a single participant without a real opponent. The second group of studies involved an opponent whose behaviors were largely restricted and/or pre-described. A third group of studies allowed full interaction between two combatants as normally observed during free training (sparring) and in competition. Figure 2 exemplifies these study characteristics and implies a theoretical impact on the information available to individuals acting under these various constraints. Specifically, we expect that the least information is available under constraints with no interaction and the most information is available under constraints with full interaction [61, 62].
Initial work on single combat athletes thus started with studies on perceptual expertise disconnected from representative actions (i.e., video-based paradigms) but gradually evolved towards actively perceiving and controlling affordances. These studies support the notion of affordance-based control within combat sports regulating individual-level behavior. Within striking sports, body-scaled distance to the target has been identified as a key perceptual constraint on (perceived) action capabilities. Experts are suggested to be more sensitive to their action boundaries than less experienced combatants and hence better equipped to operate in meta-stable regions at the limits of their capabilities. However, as boxing bags or video-taped opponents do not (inter)act, these studies cannot establish whether and how co-adaptation of two combatants takes place, and whether two interacting combatants can be understood as a single interpersonal synergy.
Only a few studies have favored a more representative task design above experimental control and have taken on the challenge of analyzing combat sports during interactions between two participants who were free to attack and defend. We recently adopted a full interaction approach to study the impact of full loss of vision in Paralympic judo [71]. Paralympic judo is controversial in that partially sighted and fully blind athletes all compete against each other within the same competitive class [72]. To put the current system to the test, we let able-sighted judo athletes compete in two simulation matches against the same opponent. In each match, one of the athletes fought blindfolded while the other fought fully sighted. Matches started with both athletes taking a grip on their opponent, according to para-judo rules. We found that athletes performed significantly worse (i.e., they scored less points) when fighting blindfolded. By comparing two matches between the same athletes, we were able to compare the impact of a constraint at the individual level on the stability of the system at the synergy level.
Maloney et al. [8] looked into the representativeness of taekwondo sparring in training compared with fighting in competition. They found that cognitive and affective demands (i.e., quantitative and qualitative assessments of mental effort, arousal, and anxiety) were lower during training than in (simulated) competition, and this was reflected in more predictable individual movement trajectories and larger interpersonal distances in training than in competition. Building on the frameworks of representative design [73] and affective learning design [74], the authors concluded that design of combat training should sample not only constraints shaping perceptual demands but also the cognitive and affective demands of competition. From a synergy perspective, we suggest that the participants in this study may have shown higher degrees of cooperation (i.e., lower competitiveness) and less willingness to operate in meta-stable regions within training, which resulted in stable and predictable behavioral patterns; within combat, increased variability in local-level behavior can be expected as individuals attempt to either break or restore symmetry, acting at the edges of their action boundaries under high perceptual, cognitive, and affective demands. Because athletes in training synergized more cooperatively, they formed more stable synergies at larger interpersonal distances than in competition, avoiding the meta-stable regions where brinkmanship can be developed.
Research into skilled behavior in combat sports appears to move gradually from individual-level analysis under experimentally controlled conditions toward the study of more representative behaviors that emerge from the dynamic interaction between two combatants. There is now some initial support for the idea that co-adaptation of two rivalling competitors leads to self-organization of the athlete dyad at a global level. In this section, we highlight some of the implications of this approach and identify a research agenda for further study.
Each athlete was tested individually on the tests of visual function. Athletes were either tested at competition between training and races, or outside of competition. Athletes were free to choose their preferred test time. VA was always tested first, and light sensitivity last, but the order of the other tests was not necessarily controlled. Testing of visual function lasted approximately one hour, but could be shorter for athletes with rudimentary vision who were not able to perform most tests. Swimming performance was determined from official race results and from video footage after all athletes had completed their testing of visual function.
Psychological skills training (PST) involves the delivery of one or more mental skills (e.g., imagery) in a systematic manner, with the goal of enhancing the performance and/or enjoyment of athletes (Weinberg & Gould, 2015). When a PST program includes multiple mental skills (i.e., packaged PST; e.g., imagery and self-talk), these skills are thought to complement each other and, in turn, provide an additive effect on performance (Gregg et al., 2004; Thelwell, 2008). However, little is known regarding the order in which mental skills are best delivered (i.e., sequencing) within a packaged PST program (Martens, 1997; Thelwell, 2008). Thus, practitioners are challenged with not only the selection of mental skills but also the sequencing of such skills. As such, the purpose of the present study was twofold: (a) to examine the sequence in which mental skills are delivered within published packaged PST research, and (b) to develop a pathway to guide the selection and sequence of mental skills within a packaged PST program. Over 70 published journal articles, books, and book chapters related to packaged PST programs were reviewed to inform the development of the proposed Mental Skills Pathway. This pathway consists of three distinct phases, each encompassing unique mental skills: (1) Foundation Phase (i.e., goal setting), (2) Development Phase (i.e., imagery and self-talk), and (3) Performance Phase (i.e., arousal regulation, attentional control, and emotional control). Mental skills learned in one phase serve as building blocks for those delivered in subsequent phases, thus encouraging the continued development of mental skills. Although more research is needed to examine the Mental Skills Pathway within a sport context, this pathway offers practitioners a guide for selecting and sequencing mental skills when designing packaged PST programs. 2ff7e9595c
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