Gil,
I wanted to go over my thoughts about what the challenge move does to “reaction timing” from the last Coaching Hour.
Sports generally have been classified into “Self Paced” and “External Paced” categories with some clear overlap examples too. Golf is the best example of self paced and fishing might be the best example of external paced.
In the Self Paced, the actor is generally in complete control of when the action will occur. In the External Paced, the actor is and action are responding to a stimulus where the timing of occurrence of the stimulus to act is unknown. Tennis is an example of a mixed one. When serving, the actor is in control of the action, but when the opponent is serving there is an element of the unknown — the nature of the type of shot that will be served, but the timing is a nearly known.
Our sport falls into the mixed version. Even though we initiate the stimulus by calling “pull,” there is unknown timing and some as to stimulus location.
We know from research, primarily in badminton in China and Japan, that the reaction to the stimulus by novice and experts is about the same. The differences occur in the timing of the most frugal action to solve the problem presented. The expert’s reaction is much more efficient/faster and more effective than the novice.
The “Challenge Move” presents an interesting opportunity to short the action part of the sequence; that is, to make the action sequence more efficient as well as under control, as if “Self Paced.” It is not dependent on perceiving target movement (purely reactive) and is initiated by the action of calling “pull” (which is under complete control of the actor). This begins to act like a “fast and frugal” heuristic.
Interesting to me is that I have used something like your Challenge Move for years on a specific type of target problem. That presentation is one where the flight of the target is long and not able to be made visible. The window for shooting is either very short or, if not addressed early in its visible phase, becomes a very complex problem. Under these conditions, I have counted seconds until the target would become visible after calling “pull” and started my gun move less than a second before the target becomes visible.
– Bob Shannon
