Thursday, July 11, 2019

Muscle memory

Muscle memory is crucial in most sports and certainly in judo.

I recall watching a documentary on sports and in a segment on swimming, the coach talked about getting his swimmers to do the same drills over and over again so that muscle memory sets in. I thought to myself, "Wow, even in swimming muscle memory is important". I guess when milliseconds count -- and make the difference between first place and second place -- you want to reduce reaction time as much as possible.

Muscle memory is most certainly important for judo. You can teach a judo player a specific move and they can learn it really well, to the point they can demonstrate it perfectly. But that doesn't mean they can use it well in randori or in competition. Unless there's muscle memory, where the move has already become second nature to the player, it just won't happen. If you have to think about it, it won't work.

There are two things that need to happen for muscle memory to be ingrained for any specific move. Firstly, the players have to drill the heck out of the move. They have to do it over and over again. Initially, when they are first learning the move, they should do it with without resistance. Once learned it, they need to do it with resistance. Secondly, they need to try it in randori. Only if they do these two things will it be executable in competition.

One of the main reasons many judo players find it so difficult to pick up new moves is that they don't actually do these two things. Let's face it, drills are boring. Nobody likes to do drills. If you get a general judo class to do the same drills over and over again, week after week, pretty soon you will have very bored judo players wondering when they are going to learn something new. So repeated drills is not very viable for a recreational class.

You can do it with competitors though because they are on a mission (to win) and they understand to achieve that, they have to do what it takes. If it means doing boring drills over and over again for weeks on end, they will do it. That's why it's crucial to have competition-training classes which are separate from general (recreational classes).

The second part of the equation (getting them to try it in randori) is also really hard to achieve, and it doesn't matter if they are a competitor or a recreational player. People are creatures of habit and they tend to fall back on what they already know. You can have a player drill a move for one hour non-stop but once they go into randori, it's like they never even know the move. They don't even try it once. I've seen that so many times. It's just human nature.

There are a few rare people who make it a point to try new stuff in randori, even without prompting. Those are very few and far in between but usually they are the ones who progress the fastest. They instinctively know that they have to try the moves if they want to master it. For the rest, you have to remind them over and over again to try it in randori and maybe, just maybe, they might give it a try.

If they don't, it's not because they are being defiant. Just that when randori starts, they are in fight mode and tend to instinctively stick to what's tried and true. After the randori, you ask them why they didn't try the new move and they say, "Oh, I forgot". And they aren't lying. During the heat of the fight, they genuinely forgot.

So, what can you do? You just gotta persevere and keep drilling them and reminding them to try it in randori until they start doing it. It's part of of the job of being a coach.

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