re: #246 GeneJockey

Building the leg strength and muscle memory to move and fight economically is just plain dull. Same for drilling on simple things like parry-and-riposte, or worse - “Extend, lunge, recover. Again. Again. Again……”

And as you probably know, a good fencing bout is not as exciting to watch as a swordfight in a movie.

It’s about building that ‘muscle memory’ (a discredited term, but we know what it means), where your conscious brain doesn’t have to think / react / process but simply acts.

I remember something they did on Fight Science, had a striking dummy and measured how fast somebody could react to an area (arm, leg, body, head) lighting up and then throwing a punch. Among people with martial arts / boxing / mma training who had a high degree of proficiency, those individuals would deliver the blow before an average person had even started to react to the signal. In other words, they CAN see it coming and hit you before you hit them… Thousands and thousands of reps again and again to drill to that level. Of course there is a certain degree to which that is also based on ones genetics, but training is a huge factor.

RBS
Who can get hit 3 times on the way down.