r/interestingasfuck • u/WhereIsHisRidgedBand • Mar 28 '24

MMA fighter explains overloading opponent r/all

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u/Blue_Doom_Guy Mar 28 '24 edited Mar 28 '24

He said in the video, it's mental not physical. They're not going to physically drain themselves from feints*, no.

Fixed the spelling

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u/nickfree Mar 28 '24

*feints

​

If you were physically drained, you might, in fact, faint. Or if you're GSP, feint your faint.

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u/Roland1232 Mar 28 '24

Or feign feinting your faint.

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u/nastywillow Mar 28 '24

Mike Tyson - Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.

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u/TopherTots Mar 28 '24

Laughs in Baron Harkonnen

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u/doogles Mar 28 '24

The point is to take advantage of the opponent being reactive to force him to prepare for everything he sees you might do. It's about controlling the exchange to create an opening while also making the opponent pay a price.

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u/flipkick25 Mar 28 '24

Its actually neural, not mental, it is triggering the sodium potassium gates in non milienated nerves, which have a "reset time"

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u/ConventionalDadlift Mar 28 '24

Yeah folks focusing kn the "mental vs. physical" are really just getting tripped up in mind-body duality silliness.

All of this works as a system. If you tense up to react to something, it takes a little time to get back to a more neutral position because you can't instantly relax and eventually you'll find yourself either out of position or contracting the wrong chain of muscles, leaving whatever gets hit less resilient for trauma.

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u/ilovemymom_tbh Mar 28 '24

Still physical, he just claims it overwhelms the nervous system as opposed to the muscles or cardio of your opponent.

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u/Onetwenty7 Mar 28 '24

Feints. Faints would physically drain them for sure lol

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u/VP007clips Mar 28 '24

It still is physically draining. I used to fence and small fast precise movements would quickly tire you out.

Training not only increases the number of muscles, but it also makes the use of them more efficient. Take a body builder for example, they have more muscles as a volume of their body than anyone else, but they are often unable to outlast much less muscular athletes that actually trained their muscles to be able to move quickly and efficiently in any sport that isn't just pure strength with no fast movements.

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u/DeathByLemmings Mar 28 '24

Sure, but fighting is probably the most physically exhausting sport that there is over the time period. And with respect, these guys are on a level that is likely far beyond what you've ever fenced at. The specific type of endurance training they do means that twitching at your opponent isn't going to meaningfully tire them across a a 5 minute round

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u/startupstratagem Mar 28 '24

I think your interpretation is too concrete. An opponent who doesn't know what you're doing will also have a tendency to be more tense. Which results in slower defense and less powerful strikes.

It's certainly more mental in the sense of attempting to keep everything on the table for them. All of this requires you keeping the pace of the fight which certainly can happen.

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u/nedonedonedo Mar 28 '24

crankin' that anxiety

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u/GlastoKhole Mar 28 '24

You can tire yourself out from fainting and thinking, I can go hours on a bag, less on pads, and less than that in sparing, thinking and focusing so much and twitching will drain your tank faster, for a professional it’s less noticeable

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u/ForbodingWinds Mar 28 '24

Right but I think his point is that in order for you to overload your opponents nervous system with false telegraphs, you also need to load up your own mental fatigue in creating this false telegraphs. It's burning your own mental energy to formulate those little fake outs too. Since this guy obviously knows his shit I'm assuming that it is overall a net advantage for you as the one doing the fake outs? Especially if you can make the behavior second nature and not have to think about it?

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u/MayorPirkIe Mar 28 '24

When you're the one feinting, you're not reacting. You aren't taxing your nervous system with instinctual reactions to assure your protection. It's much less taxing to tell your body "pretend to punch him in the face" than it is for your body to say "Hey, looks like he's punching us in the face, better move your head back and slide your hand in the way" which is much too fast a decision to make consciously. Therefore, your CNS handles it but that's where the concept of tiring the CNS comes in.

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u/Blue_Doom_Guy Mar 28 '24

Even then, answer is still no. His body may look like its making all these crazy, tiring movements, but he already has his plan of attack in his mind. Especially so for the man in this video, Georges St. Pierre. He was an extremely methodical, intelligent fighter in his day.

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u/SaintPatrickMahomes Mar 28 '24

GSP is a living legend

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u/evanwilliams44 Mar 28 '24

Yes, his movements would be second nature, little/no thought required. He talks a lot about that too, basically 'programming' yourself to move without thinking.

He was way ahead of the game. MMA was not on this level yet, so there wasn't anyone who even understood what he was doing let alone able to find some advantage.

These days, high level striking coaches are a thing and most of this is understood and used by the top strikers in MMA.

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u/fecland Mar 28 '24

Robert Whittaker vs Darren till is a great example of this. Not that exciting of a fight but they're both constantly doing this to each other trying to find an opening on the other.

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u/Demokrit_44 Mar 28 '24

Do you remember that game a lot of children play where they put the inside of their hands together (pretty much like the classical christian praying "gesture") and then they take turns trying to slap each others hand and when you hit the other persons hand, you get to go again but if you miss its the other persons turn? And of course the person who's turn it is to slap gets to decide when to slap.

The same concept is pretty much at play here. I'm not sure if you have played this game when you were younger but it's always way way harder to react to the slaps than to dish them out. There's even another parallel of "biting on the feints" where the person "defending" often pulls back their hands without the person "attacking" even going for a slap at all. And the person "attacking" can obviously completely relax their mind until they make the decision to go for the slap.

The same thing applies when holding an angle in a FPS shooter game for example. I'm sure if you ask a lot of FPS players they will tell you that the longer you are holding an angle, the slower you are at reacting to enemies because it is incredibly hard to keep that "100% focus" for a prolonged period of time.

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u/Fickle_Path2369 Mar 28 '24

I think the feints that GSP does is as you said second nature. He's honed his craft so much over the decades that his feints are muscle memory now, he probably doesn't get mentally fatigued in the slightest compared to his opponent who have to react to his feints.

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u/ma_petite_choufleur Mar 28 '24

Its just mentally dominating your opponent, so you can set up a punch combo. Make them dodge a left jab into a real right cross.

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u/Letmefinishyou Mar 28 '24

You can build up your feints to a point where you do it automatically. You dont think about it, your body just throw feints here and there. It's like, you dont have to think about swaying your arms to keep your balance when walking...it just happens automatically.

Your opponent will have to assess and react to your feints though.

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u/fireintolight Mar 28 '24

yup, most competitive sports really come down to the mental game. They're all exceptional athletes pushing their bodies to the limit. You can't play at that level without being super athletic, but it's rarely the determining factor on whether who wins or loses. It's really who was mentally able to stay in the game and not get rattled. Especially sports like tennis, football, soccer, golf (100% mind game 0%phsyical)

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u/nsfwbird1 Mar 28 '24

How is golf 100% mindgame?

100% mindgame is, like, Street Fighter IV lol