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Comment by ksec | Hacker News Reader

>For example, this analysis of world-class judo players found that most rely on a small handful of throws, concluding1

>Judo is a game of specialization. You have to use the skills that work best for you. You have to stick to what works and practice your skills until they become automatic responses.

>If you watch an anime or a TV series "about" fighting, people often improve by increasing the number of techniques they know because that's an easy thing to depict but, in real life, getting better at techniques you already know is often more effective than having a portfolio of hundreds of "moves".

Which is essentially,

I fear not the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks once, but I fear the man who has practiced one kick 10,000 times.

Bruce Lee

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What about, and I say this as a long-term martial arts practitioner, the man who has practiced 3 kicks 3300 times each (with one rep to spare)? And I am not saying it provocatively, the one-10000, 10000-one is a straw-man of course, but how many techniques to add to your competition arsenal is not an easy question to answer. As far as I remember, Ono, one of the most successful judokas of the modern era, has maybe uchi-mata, seoi, osoto, tomoe-nage. Teddy Riner, who had dominated the heavy-weight category for more than 10 years, basically had only uchi-mata, plus refusing to engage, running out of bounds. I remember a clock-choke and a few pins too. On the other hand, in wrestling you had someone like Cael Sanderson, who won the gold medal in 2004 and had one technique, the ankle pick. Saitiev, who won 3 gold medals in different Olympics, had instead a big variety of technique.

Let's take judo. While nobody has, say, 15 competition ready techniques, a critical decision needs to be made between 3 or 5, say. So it is not as easy as saying: specialize! In addition to find the right (for you, considering your opponents) techniques to specialize in.

This thread reminds me of a joke:

What's the difference between a jazz musician and a rock musician?

A jazz musician plays 100,000 chords for 3 people. A rock musician plays 3 chords for 100,000 people.

I was a martial arts practitioner for a couple decades, and our answer was "add one at a time". You'd learn the entire system at a basic level, and then practice it all enough to figure out which one technique you wanted to be the strength in your personal flavor of the style. So you'd level that one technique up from just being able to do it, to knowing when and how to apply it to many different situations. Once it became an intuitive response, you started on another technique but tried to find a technique that would cover the gaps where the first technique was not practical.

So a newly minted black belt might have one or two techniques. 10 years later, they might have 5. 20 years later, maybe even a dozen. But it isn't a question of the right number of techniques - it is a matter of constant improvement. The goal is to keep practicing moreso than having a specific end point.

Competition time is 10 years max at the very high level with the usual few exceptions, and sometimes what was working stops to work, either due to injury, changes in weight or power, or competitors "figuring you out". For example, Riner was so physically dominant that as soon as he had the grip, it was flight time. Maybe he had a sasae too, I don't remember. Most players play "opposite" techniques, for example osoto-sasae is a classic one in judo.

For lower level/amateurs/"lifers" the math change, but at that level it is a bit more (or a lot more) about having fun, not destroy one's body and other concerns not related to high-level competitions, so more techniques can bee added to the arsenal.

I bounce between specialization and breadth because on the one hand, I want to "win" also in practice, on the other hand "win" what exactly?

Agreed, completely - I practiced chinese styles, which are far more about lifetime effectiveness and basic defense. It definitely changes the math of how much you can "master" when looking at it as a lifetime practice. It also changes the definition of what it means to "win", because our definition was that you were still strong with working joints in old age.

An "uchi-mata" or "ankle pick" or whatever ... to that person becomes it's own martial art or "game" as people normally think of it.

There is incredible breadth to discover once you go 1 level deep into something. Every technique worth specializing in will have a multitude of entries/setups, then you need to know how people defend/counter and how to counter that, there could be slight variants that work better against different body types etc ... really staggering amounts of breadth/depth involved in putting someone on their back.

There will also be some breadth provided by general meta concerns of each combat sport like grip/hand fighting, defense, strategy, conditioning etc ...

So even the people who are hyper-specialized still have to know loads of stuff.

See Bill "Superfoot" Wallace for a great example:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Wallace_(martial_artist)

He injured his right knee very early in his career so he spent the rest of it specializing in kicking with his left leg. There are some pretty amazing videos on YouTube showing the incredible control and range he had with that leg.

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