Science of online martial arts training: Why it's beneficial
A colleague of mine, Dr. Thomas Christaller Sensei, is a retired Artificial Intelligence professor. He shed light on why Aikido-ka can make progress, even without a partner. I've highlighted the key point in green below:
"When we learn to move, so-called motor neurons control our muscles (and thus the joints). If a movement sequence is alien to us, then a large number of these neurons participate with the effect that we move slowly, uncertainly, clumsily. The better we understand a movement, the fewer neurons are involved in controlling it. Professional athletes may only have one neuron that controls the penalty shot. The fewer neurons involved, the faster the movement can be called up and executed. Mimicking movements you observe on a screen has a training effect of approximately 30% compared to real physical training, even if you do this only in your mind with only very small visible movements of your body."
So keep watching the videos I'm sending. And keep moving!
Talk soon!
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Lia Suzuki
Aikido Kenkyukai International USA
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To train with me live online, check out my Monthly Membership and Community, where students get LIVE feedback from me, in real time. Stay tuned...!
A bit from the articles that brought Christaller Sensei to the above conclusion:
Psychology Today
You’ve heard it before, and it’s true: we learn by doing. But we also learn by watching. Whether it’s a salsa teacher running through a dance sequence, a tennis coach demonstrating proper serving technique or a science professor conducting a dissection in front of the class, observing an expert at work is an opportunity to hone our own skills. This is especially true in the case of motor movements, and research in neuroscience is beginning to show why: when we watch someone else’s motions, the parts of the brain that direct our own physical movements are activated. Observation accelerates the learning process because our brains are able to map others’ actions onto our own mental representations, making them more detailed and more accurate. Using brain scans, scientists are figuring out how this process works — and how we can make the most of what we see.
Scott Grafton, a professor of psychology at the University of California, Santa Barbara, has employed studies of dancers to investigate the operation of what he calls the “action observation network,” a circuit in the brain that is stimulated whenever we observe a movement, imagine performing it or actually engage in it ourselves. In a study published in the journal Cerebral Cortex in 2009, Grafton and his co-authors asked participants to rehearse a dance sequence set to a music video. For five days they practiced the routine; on each day they also watched a different dance sequence without trying it out for themselves. The subjects’ brains were scanned using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) before and after the five-day period. The second round of scans revealed that the dancers’ action observation networks showed similar patterns of activation as they watched both videos — the one with a dance sequence they had practiced, and the one with a dance sequence they had simply watched. “Human motor skills can be acquired by observation without the benefit of immediate physical practice,” Grafton and his colleagues concluded.
Sounds like good news for the lazy — improve your skills without ever getting off the couch! But other experiments have added a few caveats. First, we derive the most benefit from observation when have in mind the conscious intention to carry out the action ourselves. In a 2006 study published in the Journal of Neuroscience, psychologist Scott Frey of the University of Oregon scanned the brains of participants as they watched videos of someone putting together and taking apart a toy made of several parts. One group of subjects simply watched the demonstration; another group was aware that they would be asked to reproduce the actions they viewed on the video. Although members of both groups were lying completely still inside an fMRI machine, the brains of the second group showed activation in a region involved in motor learning. Simply knowing that we will be expected to carry out the motions we observe seems to prime the brain to learn better.
Second, we gain more from observation if we bring with us some familiarity with the movements being watched. In a 2005 study, Beatriz Calvo-Merino and her colleagues at University College London showed videos of dance sequences to experts in classical ballet and experts in capoeira, the Brazilian dance and martial art form, as the experts’ brains were being scanned. Although members of both groups were experienced dancers, each showed stronger brain activation when they viewed movements that they had been trained to perform compared to movements they had not. The more we already know, this and other studies indicate, the more we’re able to improve through observation.
Lastly..."
Click to read the full article.
Oxford Academic
Action Observation and Acquired Motor Skills: An fMRI Study with Expert Dancers
Abstract
When we observe someone performing an action, do our brains simulate making that action? Acquired motor skills offer a unique way to test this question, since people differ widely in the actions they have learned to perform. We used functional magnetic resonance imaging to study differences in brain activity between watching an action that one has learned to do and an action that one has not, in order to assess whether the brain processes of action observation are modulated by the expertise and motor repertoire of the observer. Experts in classical ballet, experts in capoeira and inexpert control subjects viewed videos of ballet or capoeira actions. Comparing the brain activity when dancers watched their own dance style versus the other style therefore reveals the influence of motor expertise on action observation. We found greater bilateral activations in premotor cortex and intraparietal sulcus, right superior parietal lobe and left posterior superior temporal sulcus when expert dancers viewed movements that they had been trained to perform compared to movements they had not. Our results show that this ‘mirror system’ integrates observed actions of others with an individual's personal motor repertoire, and suggest that the human brain understands actions by motor simulation.
Introduction
When we watch someone performing an action, our brains may simulate performance of the action we observe ( Jeannerod, 1994). This simulation process could underpin sophisticated mental functions such as communication ( Rizzolatti and Arbib, 1998), observational learning ( Berger et al., 1979) and socialization ( Gallese and Goldman, 1998). Thus it has a major evolutionary benefit.
A specific brain mechanism underlying this process has been suggested. Within the premotor and parietal cortices of the macaque monkey, ‘mirror’ neurons have been recorded which discharge both when the monkey performs an action, and also when observing the experimenter or another monkey performing the same action ( di Pellegrino et al., 1992; Gallese et al., 1996; Gallese et al., 2002). A similar mirror system may exist in corresponding areas of the human brain ( Decety and Grèzes, 1999; Grèzes and Decety, 2001; Rizzolatti et al., 2001). Buccino et al. (2001) found a somatotopic organization in premotor and parietal cortex when observing movements of different body parts. This somatotopy corresponded to that found when the same body parts are actually moved. The network underlying human action observation seen in functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) includes premotor cortex, parietal areas and the superior temporal sulcus (STS) ( Grafton et al., 1996; Rizzolatti et al., 1996; Buccino et al., 2001; Iacoboni et al., 2001), predominantly in the left hemisphere ( Decety et al., 1997; Iacoboni et al., 1999; Grèzes et al., 2003). The supplementary motor area and motor cortex are typically not activated, unless an element of movement preparation is also involved, for example in cases of action observation for delayed imitation ( Grèzes and Decety, 2001). This might suggest that action observation activates only high-level motor representations, at one remove from actual motor commands. However, transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) studies suggest that action observation can directly influence the final cortical stage of action control in the motor cortex. When people observe actions involving a particular group of muscles, responses to transcranial magnetic stimulation ( Fadiga et al., 1995; Strafella and Paus, 2000; Baldissera et al., 2001) in those same muscles are specifically facilitated. These results suggest a brain process of motor simulation based on direct correspondence between the neural codes for action observation and for execution.
Some previous studies have suggested that the mirror system activity specifically codes motor actions of a biological agent. First, watching an artificial hand in action evoked much less mirror system activity than watching real hand actions ( Perani et al., 2001; Tai et al., 2004). Second, biomechanically impossible actions did not activate the mirror system ( Stevens et al., 2000). Finally, Buccino et al. (2004) carried out a study comparing the actions of nonconspecifics, and found that actions belonging to the motor repertoire of the observer were mapped on the observer's motor system. These results suggest that the human mirror system might be sensitive to the degree of correspondence between the observed action and the motor capability of the observer.
However, it remains unclear whether...
