title: Exploiting degrees of freedom in a goal-directed action: The self-organisation of punches
Creators: name: Roy, Daniel
Publisher: name: Griffith University
Year: 2022
Subjects: subject: Self-organisatio
subject: combat sports
subject: punching
subject: movement efficiency
subject: ecological dynamics
subject: constraints
subject: biotensegrity
subject: sports performance

description: This thesis involves an in-depth comparison between traditional and emerging approaches to understating the functionality of the human posture and locomotion system. Some primary comparisons include 1. the reductionist paradigm in comparison to the organismic paradigm, 2. classical mechanics in comparison to biotensegrity and 3. the perspective of the body as being composed of discrete components in comparison to the view of the body as being a global network of closed kinematic chains. Comparisons between traditional and more contemporary motor control approaches relating to understanding skill acquisition and expert level performance are also made. Based on these foundational comparisons, a biotensegrity informed ecological dynamics approach framework was adopted for this thesis's combat sports science study. This study contrasted measures of punching performance from martial artists and combat sports athletes from different training backgrounds under changing task constraints. Previous studies involving task constraint manipulations within the combat sports literature have contributed toward a better understanding of different factors contributing to overall punching performance. The current study built upon previous work by further investigating the effect of athlete-target distance scaling on the participant's decision-making and punching effectiveness and efficiency. One new punching effectiveness (GRFA) and one new punching efficiency production measure (BFYB) were developed within this study. GRFA is a direct measure of the participant's GRF values between their initial action response and target contact timepoints. BFYB is a ratio between the participant's peak impact force and GRFA value. The involvement of an athlete-target distance manipulation provided the opportunity to investigate the affordances perceived by the participants concerning their perceptual attunements toward interacting individual, environmental and task constraints. Key findings included 1. the ability of each participant group to maintain their level of punching efficiency regardless of their training experience and 2. the elite group's unique ability to significantly increase their GRFA and RIF scores from each increasing scaled starting distance. A potential metastable region of performance occurred between the 1 to 1.5 scaled wrist-shoulder distance from the target. Half of the participants switched from a pivoting punching action to a stepping punching between these two punching ranges. This study also provided an insight into the trade-off existing between punching effectiveness and punching efficiency. Findings from the current study could prove helpful for martial arts and combat sports coaches looking for ways to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of their athlete’s punches from various striking ranges.