What technology aids have you come up with that you think work?
I'm trying something new. I had my wife take pictures of me in attack poses. One picture attacking each of 10 angles/target areas both from a left handed and from a right handed attacker. You can think of the camera as the defender.
Then I used Photoshop to black out the background (and increase the size of my biceps).
Then I put these photos into a slideshow program and have the 'slides' randomly display for about 1/2 second each.
The goal is to have the fencer watch the slideshow and parry/riposte appropriate to the attack displayed. And the goal is to decrease the time required for the brain to recognize the threat and to react.
I haven't tried it on any of my students yet but I think it is speeding up my reactions. I've spent maybe 1/2 hour testing it at home over the past week. I had my first real world test this weekend in a tournament. The attacks seemed to be coming at me in slow-motion. It's too soon to make any claims of success, but so far so good.
There is a downside, it is mind-numbingly boring! I might try adding music or something.
Pearce
"God is a mathematician with an eye for art"
There is a downside, it is mind-numbingly boring! I might try adding music or something.
Interesting idea.
An easy way to make it more interesting is to randomize when the slide comes. In other words, vary the amount of time between slides. That will force you to be more attentive and get rid of the rhythmic, droning boredom.
Of course, if you could add some animation or short video clips, you could get compound attacks. Or the beginnings of a 'real' Wii fencing game.
I assumed foil as your weapon for this experiment - I'll have to see if your profile says one way or the other, but am wondering if that is the case. As I run into times without a partner to practice, this is something I may have to consider trying as well.
My fencing philosophy = quantity over quality. Eliminate the rest periods! Fence all three weapons! 15 touches for Vet DE's!
It IS an interesting idea, but I suspect that it won't work all that well for it's intended purpose (decreasing the time to act on a stimulous). I believe a study by one of Czajkowski students (I don't have the title of the paper handy) mentioned that one of the things fencers did to recognize an impending attack was to pick up clues before the attack started in terms of the opponent's muscle tension in the legs and body, and pre-attack movements. All of this is missing in a static display of the finish of the attack.
This does show a certain amount of creativity though. How will you know if it works?
Hey Craig, I'll happily let you guys know if it works.
--------------- Jason and RkfdFencer, I like your ideas. I'm going to try incorporating a loop clip of a fencer making an advance or two and a retreat or two. Then at random times have the various attack stills flash onto the screen. If the student has to advance and retreat a step or two to keep correct distance with the video clip and then react to the still image of the attack that should lessen the boredom. The Wii game idea is awesome but that is beyond my computer skills.
I am a foil fencer but I don't see why this couldn't help an epee fencer as well. I don't know saber at all...
---------------- Allen, How will I know if it works? Only anecdotally. I suppose some enterprising college student could devise a controlled study to test it, but that is beyond me.
Your more important point about sensing the attack based upon some twitch or movement is correct. My thinking though is more along these lines: Your brain doesn't think about closing your eyelid when it senses a threat to your eye. It just reacts, and it is rarely fooled. Why can't you train your hand to do the same thing? If you can eliminate the 'thinking' part and just have your brain move your hand you can wait until much later in the attack phase to react. If you can wait to react you are much less likely to be fooled by a compound attack. And since your reaction comes so late in your opponent's attack, he would have a difficult time defending the riposte.
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I believe a computer aid such as this is inferior to having a partner to practice with. But it allows the fencer to practice on his own when there is no partner available.
EDIT: Using this, a fencer could practice reacting to attacks literally hundreds of times in just a few minutes. And he could do this multiple times each day, in his living room, say during the commercial breaks in his favorite TV show. This should develop muscle memory much faster than the many fewer minutes a real partner is available. Plus, pretty much anyone can make this slideshow himself at no cost.
Another downside, I'm annoying my wife when I fence in the living room while she is on the couch.
Last edited by milstdfarm; 11-24-2009 at 11:03 AM.
Pearce
"God is a mathematician with an eye for art"
I think this is a decent idea, however, I'd use short video clips instead of pictures. That way, the fencer gets to see the whole motion, rather than the end result. I typically find that once I see my opponent's final action, it's too late. I have to know it's coming.
... that one of the things fencers did to recognize an impending attack was to pick up clues before the attack started in terms of the opponent's muscle tension in the legs and body, and pre-attack movements.
One of the books I have looked at recently (One Touch at a Time or Fencing and the Master - not sure if it was one of these or something else), a study of tennis players was mentioned with the same conclusion - that reading the opponent's body before more obvious cues were available was consistently taking place.
I don't think I have the programming skills to splice video clips at random, but may still put some footage together and look around for a programmer that may be able to do it. Use some advance retreat combinations and various attacks. Would look to run it on a laptop as a way to get drilling when real fencers or a coach are not available.
I'm not sure how much it would help, but it can't be any worse than things like Target Speed or Tyshler's beeper.
My fencing philosophy = quantity over quality. Eliminate the rest periods! Fence all three weapons! 15 touches for Vet DE's!
That is an interesting idea. I'd like to hear more as you continue to test this.
Craig
Hey Craig, per your request here is an update.
I'm writing a browser version of the program. I'm not a programmer and I'm struggling with the javascript part but I'll get it.
Options include practicing all or only some of the parries. Displays differently if the student is left or right handed. Can give the student hints as to which parry he should use in which situation. Gives the student the option of facing a left or right handed foe. Optional random display of the attacks or repeated display of one attack.
The most exciting part for me is using a pressure sensitive pad to track the time it takes to react to the attack and riposte. This way the student can track his decreasing reaction times. I'm making a slightly padded sleeve that I can put a keyboard into. A strike to the pad depresses a key (any key) that then signals the computer to register the time expired and after a slight delay, display the next attack.
Pearce
"God is a mathematician with an eye for art"
I should mention there is a research paper that touches on many of these themes, and used visual stimulus in a manner similar to what you are proposing.
There used to be a website with all of the pre-publication work, but it appears to be down now.
Abstract:
Neural efficiency" hypothesis posits that cortical activity is spatially focused in experts. Here we tested the hypothesis that compared to non-athletes, elite athletes are characterized by a reduced cortical activation during visuo-motor tasks related to the field of expertise, as a function of movement side. EEG data (56 channels; EB-Neuro) were continuously recorded in the following right-handed subjects: 11 non-athletes, 11 elite fencing athletes, and 11 elite karate athletes. During the EEG recordings, they observed pictures with fencing and karate attacks, and had to quickly click a right (left) keyboard button for the attacks at right (left) monitor side. The EEG data were averaged with respect to the movement onset, and were spatially enhanced by surface Laplacian estimation. The potentials related to the preparation (readiness potential) and initiation (motor potential) of the movements were measured. For the right movement, the potentials overlying supplementary motor and contralateral sensorimotor areas were higher in amplitude in the non-athletes than in the elite karate and fencing athletes. Furthermore, the amplitude of the motor potential over ipsilateral sensorimotor area was higher in the elite karate than fencing athletes, and its distribution over bilateral sensorimotor areas was less asymmetrical in the karate than in the other two groups. For the left movement, these potentials showed no difference between the groups. The present results suggest that "neural efficiency" hypothesis does not fully account for the organization of motor systems in elite athletes. "Neural efficiency" would depend on several factors including side of the movement, hemisphere, and kind of athletes.
Last edited by the ancient one; 01-10-2010 at 12:52 PM.
"a braggart, a rogue, a villaine that fights by the book of arithmatick. Why the dev'l came you betweene us?.."
I had a simular idea to this. I wanted to design a program that would show a fencer defending himself to help train open eyes attacks. My program was written in Visual C+ with dark gdk ( a easy to use 3d programming package) . It is first person view.
All it does so far is parry positions 1-9 and circle 4/6, retreat, advance . I haven't added any code to automate these actions.
I include a attachment of the program complied. For it to run on your computer you may need DirectX 9.0c August 2007. Source code included.
Controls are keyboard 1-9 for parries and a for advance, r for retreat. Numpad for manual control of blade. Left Shift 4 and Left Shift 6 for circle 4 and 6.
Cosmo
Last edited by Kramer; 02-10-2010 at 04:13 PM.
- Cosmo
Disclaimer: When I signed up for this site, I seen nothing saying my posts had to be good/knowledgeable/spelt right/useful/make sense.
I've been busy with work the past few weeks so I haven't gotten much done on my efforts. I wanted to write mine so it would run on any computer so I chose javascript. But since I don't know the language, it's taking me a long time. Plus I'm fighting with myself, trying to add more and more options. I think I need to force myself to keep it simple. Then add complexity later.
Thanks again for your input!
Pearce
"God is a mathematician with an eye for art"
I am using Dartfish software. I have it only for one month, I got it in a course on new technologies in coaching I recently took. It is pretty good. It allows the coach to take a videoclip, cut it, analyze it in slow motion, mark important moments, and many more things. I´m using it to label the hits as who is hit by who, in what way, where on the strip, the bout conditions (winnig, loosing, etc.) and making statistics of my fencers and their rivals. It is not difficult to use, and saves a lot of time because once finished labeling, one gets the statistics at once. The only problem is the cost. It is very, very expensive, much more than I can afford. I will be very sad when my license expires (which will be in 16 days, *sigh*).
You can download a demo from their web page.
Check out http://www.kinovea.org/en/. Certainly less features and options than Dartfish, but the core functionality seems to be there. The only major shortcoming I have seen is that you cannot save your completed analysis as a sharable video file, except through another copy of the software.
KRAMER WHAT YOU HAVEDONE HAS SOME POTIENTAL AND WE ARE GOING TO USE IT AND OTHER IDEA SIMULAR TO THIS IN OUR AMARILLO BLADES PROGRAM...
On another thought (kinda away from technology) we do this with our studnets but in a distance drill where they are maintaning distance and I have music playing (one is chossen as attacked and other as defender), then we stop the music and the attack must make an action that second and the other must see the intention and then parry and then we go on. This works great with our begginners because if forcing them to walkmore and they don't even notice it....
I've got a computer in the practice room and we have the DVD's that Alex put together for the coaches college group and we use them to show actions as and before we teach them. We also have students watch videos that we have purchased or shot at a tournament and then show a specific move a fencer did and have them find it on Alex's CD if they don't know it. I believe this helps make our fencers smarter fencers....
Originally Posted by milstdfarm 
