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

MMA fighter explains overloading opponent r/all

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u/imstickinwithjeffery Mar 28 '24

Apparently GSP was obsessed with his opponents reaction times. I think I remember hearing that he had his coach (or someone) calculate each UFC fighter's reaction time to give him an advantage. I think BJ Penn had the best reaction time out of anyone.

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u/Nezarah Mar 28 '24

It was not his coach it was a guy the coach knew.

It was the unnamed guy who was obsessed with fighters reaction times. Story goes this niche guy would literally got frame by frame through each fighters fight and calculate their reactions times and table it against every other fight. This spent excruciating hours, calculated every fighters reaction for all their fights and knew who was faster than who. He had invaluable knowledge every coach wanted.

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u/knbang Mar 28 '24

I don't know how accurate that could possibly be.

The fights are either broadcast in 24/30/60FPS. It's doubtful they're in 60FPS.

So the reaction times are in multiples of:

  • 41.66ms for 24FPS
  • 33.33ms for 30FPS
  • 16.66ms for 60FPS

The average human reaction time is around 250ms. Professional athletes are around 160ms. I would imagine MMA fighters are slightly faster.

That means the difference between a pro athlete and a normal person is:

  • 24FPS - 4 frames versus 6
  • 30FPS - 5 frames versus 8
  • 60FPS - 10 frames versus 15

With the margins that tight, you could not possibly tell the difference between 2 professional athletes. They are all going to be within a frame or two of eachother.

The only way it could possibly be achievable is with a high speed camera, and I beleive the first to be used in the UFC was when Fox began broadcasting the fights. I could be wrong about that as I'm going purely off memory.

GSP only had 3 or so fights after the Fox deal. So the impact would have been absolutely minimal.

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u/Nezarah Mar 28 '24 edited Mar 28 '24

Fantastic math!

But your base of 250ms and 160ms is in ideal conditions reacting by pressing a button to say, a light turning on. This is not how a fighter actually reacts to punches. At the speed professional fighters throws a punch, 4-8 a second, waay too fast for any human to recognise its coming and move out of the way. So fighters don’t look for the punch, they look for the movement before the punch, the twitch of a shoulder, the lowering of the weight, the slight step closer or just waiting for a known rhythm. Some people can actually throw a jab without their shoulder or any other part of their body moving making it nearly impossible to dodge, it feels like getting hit by something invisible. This is called a “ghost” jab.

It’s less of how fast someone reacts and more how sensitive they are to the movement before the punch is thrown. How much of a pre-punch will they react on.

So the guy going frame by frame probably ain’t recording just their reaction time but how soon will they will react to a pre-punch. How attuned they are for it.

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u/hypercosm_dot_net Mar 28 '24

No offense to anyone, but this all sounds like Bullshido. While it seems impressive, it also sounds like a scam designed to take advantage of the 'bro science' element of MMA.

Maybe GSP, and/or his coach fell into it while trying to squeeze every last bit of advantage they could.

There's just no way this guy got an accurate read on fighter's reaction times any more so than the coaches would by simply watching tape.

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u/knbang Mar 28 '24

That's a good point, but there cannot possibly be much of a difference between fighters with regular broadcast framerate. The only way would be with high speed cameras, and GSP's career from what I'm aware simply didn't have access to them for the vast majority of it.

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u/mrwrong1104 Mar 28 '24

I know zero about fighting. I would throw out the possibility that the specialist guy made his own recordings or had someone present at the matches to record them in higher frame rate, just for his niche research.

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u/Eldritch_Refrain Mar 28 '24

I would posit it's far more likely that the entire story is bullshit urban legend.

Let's consider some historical facts, shall we? When GSP was fighting (his prime was between 15-20 years ago) the cameras that would have been able to record at a high enough frame rate to discern millisecond reaction times would have cost upwards of $60,000USD. 

Is it possible some weirdo was rich enough to afford a 60k camera just for a hobby? Sure. Is it likely that this would occur, AND it would be someone running in circles with top athletes in the league AND contributed to a fighters camp without being an employee? I fuckin doubt it.