PhD, Associate Professor A.V. Litmanovich¹
Postgraduate student A.A. Martin¹
Dr.Philos., Professor V.I. Razumov^2
1Siberian State University of Physical Education and Sport, Omsk
²Omsk F.M. Dostoevsky State University, Omsk

Keywords: combat sports, situation, opposition, decision making, technical/ tactical actions, bout.

Background. No modern training system in martial arts may be efficient and effective enough unless the training process and progress is supported by due thinking and analysis – as demonstrated, among other things, by the cultural and historical heritage and traditions of the Chinese martial arts with their metaphysical symbols and progress logics. Generally, a combat sport may be interpreted as the complex system of elementary encounters formatted by a certain algorithm or framework for the technical/ tactical skills and progress. This aspect makes the combat sports – that may be referred to as the situational ones – different from the cyclic sports.

Furthermore, the situational sports (including boxing, wrestling, game sports etc.) are specific in the sense that bouts are limited by a certain timeframe. Judo bouts, for instance, may be described for the purposes of the study as the sets of fairly standardized technical/ tactical actions geared to win every elementary encounter. Every decision in the bout to respond to the fight situation triggers one or another standard performance algorithm with its tactical and technical elements variable in an extremely wide range, albeit it should be emphasized that the sport does not offer universal standardized technical/ tactical actions effective in any bout and against any opponent. This means that the same fight control decisions made in similar fight situations may yield totally different results due to the multiple combinations of factors and barriers in practical encounters with their process timing and spacing specifics.

We assume that an encounter may be presented and analyzed as the exchange of energy and resources of the opposing fighters via what may be called a membrane, with such a membrane considered the third element of the encounter which, when duly controlled and managed, may be decisive for success [1]. Both competitors may control the membrane by certain technical/ tactical actions – within the higher-level controls from the competitive process infrastructure including the rules of competitions, refereeing service etc.

Objective of the study was to provide a theoretical basis for competitive strategies in the situational sport disciplines with application of elementary logical patterns.

Methods and structure of the study. Tactical/ technical performance may be defined as the activity geared to attain a wide variety of the fight process goals, with the elementary decisions governed by certain logics and executed in the rapidly changing fight situations with their actions and counteractions.

A key role in the situational sport disciplines is played by the individual perceptive, intellectual, emotional and volitional qualities and processes geared to find the best ways to success in the fast-changing fight situations, with every elementary creative decision and its execution always limited in time [6]. Strong opposition may result in the practical outcome of the (direct) decided action falling short of the expected effect (feedback). Different versions of the disagreements between the direct actions and feedbacks may be viewed as the fight control conflicts with their momentary problems need to be timely solved in the bout. It is obvious that the multiple elementary conflict situations and versatile holds and actions that comprise every bout need to be taken into the fight control and management decisions, operations and individual excellence models. On the whole, the fighter shall be able to precisely assess each elementary situation and respond to it by the most efficient actions from the individual toolkit, with the toolkit geared to secure a high predictability of the technical/ tactical action result within a wide range of the fight situations and conditions [3, 5]. It makes sense to classify a bout for the purposes of the analyses into provisionally separate elementary encounters with their goals and tactics need to be duly addressed in the educational process.

Let us proceed from the following theoretical assumptions. A judo bout may be defined as a sequence of elementary encounters (with their throws, back heels, rolls, strangles, painful holds, maneuvers (footwork), blocks, grabbling holds etc.) in their logical interactions, with the fight situations and responses momentarily changed depending on the opponent’s actions. On the whole, however, every fight plan starts from prior maneuvers, footwork and attempted power actions with attacks and defenses. These actions may be presented in three planes in the three-dimensional space and identified by three coordinates (X, Y, Z). Historically, such presentation was used, for example, by Ba-Gua (eight trigrams), a Chinese metaphysical system [7].

Figure 1. Elementary movement vectors on X plane

Study results and discussion. Generally, an object is free to move on the X plane by some of the eight vectors: see Figure 1. Movements by vectors 2, 3 and 4 may come to barriers (opponent counteractions) and, hence, result in deadlocks: see Figure 2. Movements by vectors 6, 7, 8 may also come to deadlocks due to the time considerations and delays in reaching the barrier. As demonstrated by Figure 2, only vectors 1 and 5 are free for the movement.

Figure 2. Elementary movement vectors on X plane facing barriers/ opponent counteractions

Let us illustrate the above logics. The attacker acts within a limited fight timeframe striving to apply the most efficient tools from the individual technical/ tactical toolkit for success. The attacker may go straight to the win by vector 3 or make an attempt to imbalance and turn the opponent struggling for the hold, with a risk to go beyond the fight area on tatami: see vectors 2 and 4. As a result, the attacker may either run out of the fight area despite success in the struggle for the hold or lose the elementary encounter in this struggle. Any backtrack or backlog in the fight in one or another form means refusal to resolve the fight situation: see vectors 6, 7, 8.

A promising alternative is provided by the strategy that implies moving along the barrier, by vectors 1, 5. This means that the athlete having an edge in the fight avoids risks of active encounters by the end of the bout knowing that the obvious backtracks (vector 6, 7, 8) may be perceived and rated as passivity by the referee and opponent. For the decision-making process being efficient in the elementary fight situations, the technical/ tactical actions within the ‘action plane’ shall take into account the type of the barrier and be geared to overcome the uncertainty and find the best way to counter the opponent’s actions.

A fighter has to receive and process a large flow of the fight process information, albeit very limited selected data arrays are used to make the elementary fight control decisions. A critical role in the decision-making process is played by the individual ability to process the data flow by the relatively standardized images, visualize and effectuate them in practical technical actions to attain the interim tactical goals in every fight situation. Thus when a ‘strong wide’ barrier (see vectors 1, 5) is faced, a solution may not be reasonably found. In case of a ‘strong local’ barrier, a solution may be found on vectors 2 and 4 in a non-immediate albeit reasonably effective manner. In case of a ‘fragile wide’ barrier, most promising for success are the solutions provided by vector 3.

Conclusion. Success of a fight control plan in the technical/ tactical domains with contribution of the individual creative resource largely depends on how well the bout situations are modeled and managed in the athlete’s mind. These mental patterns normally grow in versatility with the growing skills and experience in the relatively late periods of the sport careers. This backlog is explainable by the fact that the modern training systems give a special priority to the technical skills building goals often at sacrifice of the tactical thinking which is normally formed much later based on a sound competitive experience.

References

1. Bogdanov A.A. Tektologiya (Vseobshchaya organizatsionnaya nauka) [Tectology (General Organizational Science)] In 2 volumes. Moscow: Ekonomika, 1989, Vol. 1, 304 p. Vol. 2, 351 p.
2. Kozin V.V., Zykov A.V., Gruznykh G.M. Deyatelnostno-skhematicheskiy sposob issledovaniya proetsirovaniya igrovykh situatsiy i tekhnicheskikh priemov khokkeistov 10-12 let [Activity-schematic method to study design of game situations and techniques of hockey players aged 10-12 years]. Organizatsionno-metodicheskie aspekty uchebnogo i uchebno-trenirovochnogo protsessa v usloviyakh vuza [Organizational-methodical aspects of educational and training process in university] Proc. IV res.-practical conf. teachers. and postgraduates of SibSUPE, Omsk, 2016, pp. 46-50.
3. Lenz A. N. Taktika v sportivnoy borbe [Tactics in wrestling]. Moscow: Fizkultura i sport publ., 1967, pp. 17-19.
4. Litmanovich, A.V., Razumov V.I. Ontologiya i logika v edinoborstvakh [Ontology and logic in martial arts]. Boevye iskusstva i sportivnye edinoborstva: nauka, praktika, vospitanie [Martial arts and combat sports: science, practice, education] Proc. Nat. res.-practical conf. with intern. participation]. Moscow, 2016, pp. 151-156.
5. Novikov A.A. Upravlenie podgotovkoy vysokokvalifitsirovannykh sportsmenov v vidah sportivnykh edinoborstv [Management of training in elite martial arts]. Moscow: SCS USSR publ., 1989, 50 p.
6. Puni A.Ts. Psikhologicheskaya podgotovka k sorevnovaniyu v sporte [Pre-season mental conditioning in sport]. Moscow: Fizkultura i sport publ., 1969, 88 p.
7. Razumov V.I., Ushakov A.N. Vybor tipov organizatsii soderzhatelnykh predstavleniy dlya kontseptualnogo proektirovaniya [Choice of types of organization of meaningful ideas for conceptual design]. Osvoenie i kontseptualnoe proektirovanie intellektualnykh system [Development and conceptual design of intelligent systems]. Proc. Conf.. Moscow: CSRIEMC SCC USSR publ., 1990, pp. 52-55.

Corresponding author: alex.martin2010@yandex.ru

Abstract

The study analyzes the fight control thinking patterns in terms of the object-barrier scheme, and offers different fight control strategies versus the specific tactical goals, with a fighter expected to process the input data flow so as to model the fight situations and respond by the most effective technical/ tactical solutions. In the modern situational sports on the whole and judo in particular, fight control problems often come up when an athlete tends to underestimate the importance of some provisionally specific isolated elements of the bout to respond by the standard elementary actions, and this underestimation may be detrimental for the technical/ tactical performance.

We believe that success of a fight control plan in the technical/ tactical domains with contribution of the individual creative resource largely depends on how well the bout situations are modeled and managed in the athlete’s mind. These mental patterns normally grow in versatility with the growing skills and experience in the relatively late periods of the sport careers. This backlog is explainable by the fact that the modern training systems give a special priority to the technical skills building goals often at sacrifice of the tactical thinking which is normally formed much later based on a sound competitive experience.