I’m very, very confident it doesn’t work via moving goalposts.
I think we may be talking past each other a bit here.
I think we’re in agreement that it works through force vector diagrams, not through magic that defies the physics of force vector diagrams. Similarly, I think we’re in agreement that we get to force vector diagrams by patterns of muscular activation and limb positioning. It’s not that the visualization is a required component for doing or explaining, it’s that it allows you to do something that you don’t know how to explain (or do?) otherwise.
My skepticism about The Unbendable Arm is like my skepticism about The Unbendable Tibia. I don’t doubt that there are very good structural reasons the arm/tibia doesn’t bend, but I am skeptical of the implicit idea that in order to do it you need to learn how to visualize from an Aikido practitioner. Not “Will it work even when an MMA guy tries to bend you arm/tibia?”, but “Is the MMA guy actually getting his arm/tibia bent in fights in ways that they wouldn’t if he mixed in some Aikido?”.
If an Aikido practitioner tries to do the demo on me, there’s a few ways it can go.
One is for him to fail to bend my arm, and notice right away “Ah! You already know The Unbendable Arm!”. Points for honesty there, but not for teaching me anything.
A second is for him to implicitly or explicitly tell me to do things that make my arm bendable, and then show me that my arm is stronger when I don’t do them. Points for honesty if he admits “Yeah, all I’m showing is that you’re stronger if you don’t literally help me bend your arm”, but again, no points for teaching anything useful if you have to tell or imply that I should do things wrong in order to demonstrate your technique.
The third is that he gives clear objective rules, I do a bad job on positioning/activation on my own accord, and then he shows me how to not do that. This is the only case where The Unbendable Arm is worth anything, and it’s not because the technique itself is so great but because I was so dumb to start with.
You can say that you’re pointing at something that is physically real in the same that my “Unbendable Tibia” technique (of having an intact tibia) is physically real, and I don’t doubt that. But the relevance is up to the demonstration subject being dumb enough to need it. So when you say “it doesn’t work via moving goalposts” I kinda feel like “Yeah… but it might not seem so relevant once the goal posts are specified properly. And that’s an empirical question about the failures that people walk into rather than a statement about the things you can test on your own with weights and a table”.
I’m not saying this from a perspective of “Woo has no value, you’re crazy woo guy, only things that I personally understand are real”. I’m saying this from a perspective of “The implicit beliefs about what we’re allowed to do shape everything”.
I could tell you about when I performed The Unbendable Wrist in jiu jitsu, for example. I was able to let my friend set up her best submission, and through the power of The Unbendable Wrist I didn’t have to tap to her wristlock. In contrast, a similarly big and strong guy was forced to tap before she could even get her second hand on to assist in the pull. She was annoyed with him for pretending she was able to submit him instead of actually resisting, and he sincerely reassured her that he really was resisting and really wasn’t strong enough to stop it. So she taught him the power of my Unbendable Wrist and he was able to resist as well as I did after that. Can you guess what it took?
It didn’t take visualizations of firehoses, or any technical tips. All it took was “Jimmy was able to resist when I had both arms pulling, so unless he’s a lot stronger than you, then no, you absolutely can resist”. The problem was that he was unknowingly bound by a belief that resistance was futile, didn’t really give it his all as a result, and failed to notice the reason for his failure.
So is “The Unbendable Wrist” real? Or is it just that the illusion of The Bendable Wrist just more compelling and common than one might expect? I find the latter way of thinking much more useful.
Sadly I can’t draw a force diagram because I honestly don’t know how it works. [...] within some sensible limits I’m very happy to demo this technique in person.
I assume you’re still up in the bay area? I’m not likely to be up there anytime soon, but if you’re ever back down in socal and want to play with this stuff let me know. It sounds fun.
I bet we’d come out of it with a force vector diagram and a good way to clearly demonstrate what’s going on.
I obviously wouldn’t try anything that wouldn’t fly at a jiu jitsu gym between friends, but anything on top of that I might make you say explicitly :p
But if you’re concerned about any hidden rules here, feel free to ask me about them
So in jiu jitsu a large part of what we do is try to bend arms and not have our arms bent -- the other way. You mentioned that getting your upper arm pinned defeats the effect, and unsurprisingly this is known as one of the requirements for doing an armbar against anyone who isn’t completely clueless. In general, if you don’t control the joints on either side of the one you’re trying to attack, the person can just move their body to relieve bending pressure.
In these “Unbendable Arm” demonstrations it gets a bit weird because their shoulder is free and the only way to control it is to put them on the ground. “This is supposed to stay standing” seems to be implied, and in any normal demonstration context I’d feel uncomfortable pulling some Aikido sensei off his feet. I’d expect that to get a response like “Dude, chill, this isn’t wrestling. Just try to bend my arm”—while missing the point that “try to bend the arm, without applying enough pressure to force him to bend the arm if he wants to stay standing” isn’t is kinda like saying “Try to bend my tibia—but don’t break it you brute!”. I’d expect that most people can sense this implicit rule and that the effective methods would violate it, without being aware that they’re holding themselves back.
So who is responsible for keeping the defender on his feet, assuming he’s supposed to stay standing? If he falls over with a straight arm, how is that judged?
Similarly, what are the rules on footwork? I think one of the key points is “You don’t have to treat it as an isolated joint, so you can work to lift your elbow up as well as working to push your wrist down” (which contributes to the similarity with “reaching”, btw), but if you’re allowed to step in closer as well then you can get better leverage so there might be even more going on.
“Is the MMA guy actually getting his arm/tibia bent in fights in ways that they wouldn’t if he mixed in some Aikido?”
I don’t have enough MMA experience to know with much confidence. But from what little bit of BJJ rolling I’ve done, my impression is yes, folk who don’t know the unbendable arm trick end up struggling sometimes in ways they don’t have to.
It’s reflected on both sides, really. If BJJ folk really understood this unbendable joint thing, they wouldn’t keep trying to bend my arm to get through the grip I have (e.g. holding their lapel on either side with each hand). They pointlessly exhaust themselves. Usually more experienced folk will switch strategies at that point. But the fact that so many of them even try suggests to me that they’re used to most people they roll with not being able to do this thing.
But I don’t know. Maybe I’m just unfamiliar with those arts and this tool isn’t useful in those situations.
The third is that he gives clear objective rules, I do a bad job on positioning/activation on my own accord, and then he shows me how to not do that. This is the only case where The Unbendable Arm is worth anything, and it’s not because the technique itself is so great but because I was so dumb to start with.
I don’t know about “dumb”. Maybe “ignorant”, the way an infant is ignorant of how to stand, or someone unpracticed will fall over if standing on one leg with their eyes closed. It takes a while of using the body in a way it hasn’t been used before in order for the new skill to click into place.
Otherwise yeah, what you’re saying makes sense to me.
And it’s true, I don’t know whether the unbendable arm is at all novel or useful to you. It’s clearly novel for most people IME. Including very practiced martial artists who haven’t otherwise worked with it. But I don’t know, maybe you already do something equivalent. Or maybe it’s irrelevant to the things you care about.
I assume you’re still up in the bay area? I’m not likely to be up there anytime soon, but if you’re ever back down in socal and want to play with this stuff let me know. It sounds fun.
I bet we’d come out of it with a force vector diagram and a good way to clearly demonstrate what’s going on.
Yep, still in the Bay Area. Sounds good. And yep, I agree RE force diagram etc.
“This is supposed to stay standing” seems to be implied…
Maybe by others, but I don’t need it. I can do it on my back. Or mid leap (though that’s harder to demo :P ). Or upside down. I think I can do it with my arm stretched behind my back, but I’m less confident of that one; I’d have to try it.
But if my upper arm is pinned in a way that keeps me from moving my elbow, then yeah, I think that breaks the technique. Although in practice most people can’t pin my upper arm in the way that matters. Even if they’re trying to pin my arm to the ground. They’d have to try really really hard to fix my upper arm to the ground to get the unbendable thing to falter. At least in the ways I’ve encountered so far.
Similarly, what are the rules on footwork?
I’m not sure what you’re asking. I can do it seated. Or while doing a shoulder stand. Or while lifted off the ground in a bearhug. I don’t think there are implicit rules about footwork.
But from what little bit of BJJ rolling I’ve done, my impression is yes, folk who don’t know the unbendable arm trick end up struggling sometimes in ways they don’t have to.
I should clarify what would actually surprise me.
Most people at a jiu jitsu gym don’t really get jiu jitsu, and struggle in ways that they don’t have to if they were to just learn jiu jitsu. This is unavoidable, as learning to jiu jitsu takes time, but it also means that even if BJJ has an equivalent concept of this Unbending Arm thing you should expect these results. I don’t doubt that there’s something there.
What I’m skeptical of is the idea that it’s a blind spot in jiu jitsu, to the point where cross training in Aikido for concepts like this has demonstrable merit. I’m skeptical that the field of jiu jitsu lacks an equivalent concept and therefore systematically misleads its practitioners in a way that is relevant to BJJ/MMA/street altercations/etc.
These blind spots do exist, but they’re impressive and cognitive dissonance inducing when demonstrated. My favorite example is Derrick Lewis “just standing up”. The announcers recognize that Derrick Lewis isn’t demonstrating skill at “jiu jitsu”, and don’t recognize the unforced errors that his opponents are making which allow him to just stand up, so they’re shocked. “This isn’t supposed to work, and it is!”.
I don’t know about “dumb”. Maybe “ignorant”, the way an infant is ignorant of how to stand, or someone unpracticed will fall over if standing on one leg with their eyes closed.
If someone tries to stand on one foot with their eyes closed and falls over due to the fact that they haven’t practiced it, then that’s kinda unavoidable. It takes practice.
If someone tries to stand on one foot with their eyes closed and falls over due to the fact that they tried to stand on one foot with their eyes closed… instead of just opening their eyes and putting their foot down when there’s no reason to not open their eyes and put their foot down… then that’s entirely avoidable. All you have to do is think through what you’re actually trying to achieve.
By using the word “dumb” I’m saying that if it turns out I’m missing something here it’s not because I haven’t spent ten years practicing Aikido visualizations in the mountains of Japan. It’s because I was doing something drastically wrong that can apparently be fixed in a 30 second demonstration, which I’ve had ample time to notice, and have apparently been blind to for whatever reason.
The distinction is important because if it happens, it calls for some more self reflection on how I ended up not knowing how to use my arms despite using them for decades. In the same way that if you think you’re about to submit someone and they “just stand up”, its in your best interest to humble yourself a bit and go back to the drawing board.
I’m not sure what you’re asking
I trust your honesty about where the goal posts are, but I still have to locate them in order to know what you’re saying, exactly. I’m trying to find out where you’re drawing the line between “the thing” and “not the thing” so that I can understand what you’re saying and make sense of why the Aikido demonstrations look so much like they’re trying to hide what’s actually going on.
I tried it this morning at the jiu jitsu gym, with a fairly skilled training partner that likes to play with challenges like this. Specifically, what I did is say “I want to play an Aikido game with you. See if you can bend my arm”, and then placed the back of my wrist on his shoulder, and let him do as much as I thought I could without letting my arm bend.
He started off gently pushing and pulling to feel me out, and I had to move my feet to stay standing because it doesn’t take much if you’re in a regular upright stance. Eventually he pulled pretty hard and I had to half collapse in order to keep my arm straight. A bit after that I had to collapse fully, and he spent a couple minutes trying to figure out how to pin my arm in a way that allows him good biomechanics for bending my arm. The game ended when I had to tap to an arm bar… which I guess is fair since I didn’t specify that he had to bend it forward and he certainly would have been able to bend it backwards from there.
When we switched roles, I immediately did the thing that he eventually did to bring me down, and bent his arm. I reminded him that he was not obligated to stay standing, and that the lose condition is just the arm being bent. The next time I couldn’t bend his arm with him standing, but I could force him off his feet so long as I took a step back and used good biomechanics to pull his elbow down and into me.
The thing is, none of this looks anything like an Aikido demonstration. It looks like a grappling match.
Why don’t Aikido demonstrations look like grappling matches, if not for implicit rules about what you’re not supposed to do? Why does the guy demonstrating the technique never get to the point of having to say “Okay, but no pinning my upper arm”? Why is he never forced to collapse to the ground in order to keep his arm straight? Why doesn’t the offensive player ever take a step back and pull them down in the way that generates significant bending moment—the way my training partner did to me?
I think we may be talking past each other a bit here.
I think we’re in agreement that it works through force vector diagrams, not through magic that defies the physics of force vector diagrams. Similarly, I think we’re in agreement that we get to force vector diagrams by patterns of muscular activation and limb positioning. It’s not that the visualization is a required component for doing or explaining, it’s that it allows you to do something that you don’t know how to explain (or do?) otherwise.
My skepticism about The Unbendable Arm is like my skepticism about The Unbendable Tibia. I don’t doubt that there are very good structural reasons the arm/tibia doesn’t bend, but I am skeptical of the implicit idea that in order to do it you need to learn how to visualize from an Aikido practitioner. Not “Will it work even when an MMA guy tries to bend you arm/tibia?”, but “Is the MMA guy actually getting his arm/tibia bent in fights in ways that they wouldn’t if he mixed in some Aikido?”.
If an Aikido practitioner tries to do the demo on me, there’s a few ways it can go.
One is for him to fail to bend my arm, and notice right away “Ah! You already know The Unbendable Arm!”. Points for honesty there, but not for teaching me anything.
A second is for him to implicitly or explicitly tell me to do things that make my arm bendable, and then show me that my arm is stronger when I don’t do them. Points for honesty if he admits “Yeah, all I’m showing is that you’re stronger if you don’t literally help me bend your arm”, but again, no points for teaching anything useful if you have to tell or imply that I should do things wrong in order to demonstrate your technique.
The third is that he gives clear objective rules, I do a bad job on positioning/activation on my own accord, and then he shows me how to not do that. This is the only case where The Unbendable Arm is worth anything, and it’s not because the technique itself is so great but because I was so dumb to start with.
You can say that you’re pointing at something that is physically real in the same that my “Unbendable Tibia” technique (of having an intact tibia) is physically real, and I don’t doubt that. But the relevance is up to the demonstration subject being dumb enough to need it. So when you say “it doesn’t work via moving goalposts” I kinda feel like “Yeah… but it might not seem so relevant once the goal posts are specified properly. And that’s an empirical question about the failures that people walk into rather than a statement about the things you can test on your own with weights and a table”.
I’m not saying this from a perspective of “Woo has no value, you’re crazy woo guy, only things that I personally understand are real”. I’m saying this from a perspective of “The implicit beliefs about what we’re allowed to do shape everything”.
I could tell you about when I performed The Unbendable Wrist in jiu jitsu, for example. I was able to let my friend set up her best submission, and through the power of The Unbendable Wrist I didn’t have to tap to her wristlock. In contrast, a similarly big and strong guy was forced to tap before she could even get her second hand on to assist in the pull. She was annoyed with him for pretending she was able to submit him instead of actually resisting, and he sincerely reassured her that he really was resisting and really wasn’t strong enough to stop it. So she taught him the power of my Unbendable Wrist and he was able to resist as well as I did after that. Can you guess what it took?
It didn’t take visualizations of firehoses, or any technical tips. All it took was “Jimmy was able to resist when I had both arms pulling, so unless he’s a lot stronger than you, then no, you absolutely can resist”. The problem was that he was unknowingly bound by a belief that resistance was futile, didn’t really give it his all as a result, and failed to notice the reason for his failure.
So is “The Unbendable Wrist” real? Or is it just that the illusion of The Bendable Wrist just more compelling and common than one might expect? I find the latter way of thinking much more useful.
I assume you’re still up in the bay area? I’m not likely to be up there anytime soon, but if you’re ever back down in socal and want to play with this stuff let me know. It sounds fun.
I bet we’d come out of it with a force vector diagram and a good way to clearly demonstrate what’s going on.
I obviously wouldn’t try anything that wouldn’t fly at a jiu jitsu gym between friends, but anything on top of that I might make you say explicitly :p
So in jiu jitsu a large part of what we do is try to bend arms and not have our arms bent -- the other way. You mentioned that getting your upper arm pinned defeats the effect, and unsurprisingly this is known as one of the requirements for doing an armbar against anyone who isn’t completely clueless. In general, if you don’t control the joints on either side of the one you’re trying to attack, the person can just move their body to relieve bending pressure.
In these “Unbendable Arm” demonstrations it gets a bit weird because their shoulder is free and the only way to control it is to put them on the ground. “This is supposed to stay standing” seems to be implied, and in any normal demonstration context I’d feel uncomfortable pulling some Aikido sensei off his feet. I’d expect that to get a response like “Dude, chill, this isn’t wrestling. Just try to bend my arm”—while missing the point that “try to bend the arm, without applying enough pressure to force him to bend the arm if he wants to stay standing” isn’t is kinda like saying “Try to bend my tibia—but don’t break it you brute!”. I’d expect that most people can sense this implicit rule and that the effective methods would violate it, without being aware that they’re holding themselves back.
So who is responsible for keeping the defender on his feet, assuming he’s supposed to stay standing? If he falls over with a straight arm, how is that judged?
Similarly, what are the rules on footwork? I think one of the key points is “You don’t have to treat it as an isolated joint, so you can work to lift your elbow up as well as working to push your wrist down” (which contributes to the similarity with “reaching”, btw), but if you’re allowed to step in closer as well then you can get better leverage so there might be even more going on.
I don’t have enough MMA experience to know with much confidence. But from what little bit of BJJ rolling I’ve done, my impression is yes, folk who don’t know the unbendable arm trick end up struggling sometimes in ways they don’t have to.
It’s reflected on both sides, really. If BJJ folk really understood this unbendable joint thing, they wouldn’t keep trying to bend my arm to get through the grip I have (e.g. holding their lapel on either side with each hand). They pointlessly exhaust themselves. Usually more experienced folk will switch strategies at that point. But the fact that so many of them even try suggests to me that they’re used to most people they roll with not being able to do this thing.
But I don’t know. Maybe I’m just unfamiliar with those arts and this tool isn’t useful in those situations.
I don’t know about “dumb”. Maybe “ignorant”, the way an infant is ignorant of how to stand, or someone unpracticed will fall over if standing on one leg with their eyes closed. It takes a while of using the body in a way it hasn’t been used before in order for the new skill to click into place.
Otherwise yeah, what you’re saying makes sense to me.
And it’s true, I don’t know whether the unbendable arm is at all novel or useful to you. It’s clearly novel for most people IME. Including very practiced martial artists who haven’t otherwise worked with it. But I don’t know, maybe you already do something equivalent. Or maybe it’s irrelevant to the things you care about.
Yep, still in the Bay Area. Sounds good. And yep, I agree RE force diagram etc.
Maybe by others, but I don’t need it. I can do it on my back. Or mid leap (though that’s harder to demo :P ). Or upside down. I think I can do it with my arm stretched behind my back, but I’m less confident of that one; I’d have to try it.
But if my upper arm is pinned in a way that keeps me from moving my elbow, then yeah, I think that breaks the technique. Although in practice most people can’t pin my upper arm in the way that matters. Even if they’re trying to pin my arm to the ground. They’d have to try really really hard to fix my upper arm to the ground to get the unbendable thing to falter. At least in the ways I’ve encountered so far.
I’m not sure what you’re asking. I can do it seated. Or while doing a shoulder stand. Or while lifted off the ground in a bearhug. I don’t think there are implicit rules about footwork.
I should clarify what would actually surprise me.
Most people at a jiu jitsu gym don’t really get jiu jitsu, and struggle in ways that they don’t have to if they were to just learn jiu jitsu. This is unavoidable, as learning to jiu jitsu takes time, but it also means that even if BJJ has an equivalent concept of this Unbending Arm thing you should expect these results. I don’t doubt that there’s something there.
What I’m skeptical of is the idea that it’s a blind spot in jiu jitsu, to the point where cross training in Aikido for concepts like this has demonstrable merit. I’m skeptical that the field of jiu jitsu lacks an equivalent concept and therefore systematically misleads its practitioners in a way that is relevant to BJJ/MMA/street altercations/etc.
These blind spots do exist, but they’re impressive and cognitive dissonance inducing when demonstrated. My favorite example is Derrick Lewis “just standing up”. The announcers recognize that Derrick Lewis isn’t demonstrating skill at “jiu jitsu”, and don’t recognize the unforced errors that his opponents are making which allow him to just stand up, so they’re shocked. “This isn’t supposed to work, and it is!”.
If someone tries to stand on one foot with their eyes closed and falls over due to the fact that they haven’t practiced it, then that’s kinda unavoidable. It takes practice.
If someone tries to stand on one foot with their eyes closed and falls over due to the fact that they tried to stand on one foot with their eyes closed… instead of just opening their eyes and putting their foot down when there’s no reason to not open their eyes and put their foot down… then that’s entirely avoidable. All you have to do is think through what you’re actually trying to achieve.
By using the word “dumb” I’m saying that if it turns out I’m missing something here it’s not because I haven’t spent ten years practicing Aikido visualizations in the mountains of Japan. It’s because I was doing something drastically wrong that can apparently be fixed in a 30 second demonstration, which I’ve had ample time to notice, and have apparently been blind to for whatever reason.
The distinction is important because if it happens, it calls for some more self reflection on how I ended up not knowing how to use my arms despite using them for decades. In the same way that if you think you’re about to submit someone and they “just stand up”, its in your best interest to humble yourself a bit and go back to the drawing board.
I trust your honesty about where the goal posts are, but I still have to locate them in order to know what you’re saying, exactly. I’m trying to find out where you’re drawing the line between “the thing” and “not the thing” so that I can understand what you’re saying and make sense of why the Aikido demonstrations look so much like they’re trying to hide what’s actually going on.
I tried it this morning at the jiu jitsu gym, with a fairly skilled training partner that likes to play with challenges like this. Specifically, what I did is say “I want to play an Aikido game with you. See if you can bend my arm”, and then placed the back of my wrist on his shoulder, and let him do as much as I thought I could without letting my arm bend.
He started off gently pushing and pulling to feel me out, and I had to move my feet to stay standing because it doesn’t take much if you’re in a regular upright stance. Eventually he pulled pretty hard and I had to half collapse in order to keep my arm straight. A bit after that I had to collapse fully, and he spent a couple minutes trying to figure out how to pin my arm in a way that allows him good biomechanics for bending my arm. The game ended when I had to tap to an arm bar… which I guess is fair since I didn’t specify that he had to bend it forward and he certainly would have been able to bend it backwards from there.
When we switched roles, I immediately did the thing that he eventually did to bring me down, and bent his arm. I reminded him that he was not obligated to stay standing, and that the lose condition is just the arm being bent. The next time I couldn’t bend his arm with him standing, but I could force him off his feet so long as I took a step back and used good biomechanics to pull his elbow down and into me.
The thing is, none of this looks anything like an Aikido demonstration. It looks like a grappling match.
Why don’t Aikido demonstrations look like grappling matches, if not for implicit rules about what you’re not supposed to do? Why does the guy demonstrating the technique never get to the point of having to say “Okay, but no pinning my upper arm”? Why is he never forced to collapse to the ground in order to keep his arm straight? Why doesn’t the offensive player ever take a step back and pull them down in the way that generates significant bending moment—the way my training partner did to me?