Monday Morning Physiology

PZ at Pharyngula has a good explanation of why muscles hurt after heavy exercise.

Notation: Complex Trasitions, Part II

One place where a system of MA notation really has the potential to outstrip English is in the representation of simultaneous or overlapping actions. We've seen this already in my first post on complex transitions; its easy to convey stance changes and movements that occur by way of an attack using the notation system under development. Now I want to work on a more complicated example... consider the following:

[From Right Half-Moon Stance] Pivot counterclockwise 270 degrees on forward foot, moving only left foot, and left hand to right ear. End in left Half-Moon Stance facing 3 o'clock. Execute #8 Block¹.

That's from a beginning form, but its not at all clear to the beginner what's actually going on. It took me a long time to make the connection between the literal English instructions and the technique that they were trying to convey, in large part because the use of English forces atomic and simultaneous actions to be broken up into multiple, sequential steps. The underlying technique which the instructions above are attempting to describe is as follows:

1. The performer begins to turn and draw into left cat stance while simultaneously bringing the left fist up in preparation for the delivery of the #8 block.
2. The performer continues to turn through 270° while completing the transition from half-moon stance to cat stance.
3. Maintaining eir momentum the performer begins the transition from cat stance to left half-moon stance by stepping out with the left foot while simultaneously beginning the delivery of the #8 block.
4. The left foot plants, completing the transition to half-moon stance.
5. Delivery of the #8 block completes a half-second or so after the left foot it planted.

The performer is essentially "coiling up" like a spring, developing some rotational kinetic energy, and then "unwinding" by stepping out and delivering the #8 block. You'd never get that by looking at the English instructions that I quoted, but I think we can get pretty close if we're clever about our notation.

Before I start trying to get this down on paper I'd like to take a minute to discuss timing. Forms and techniques generally have an intrinsic rhythm which, as the above example demonstrates, English utterly fails to capture. This is easily observer when you watch a beginning and an advanced student performing the same kata: the beginning student will execute actions one after the other with a steady tempo while the advanced student, who has a grasp of the underlying bunkai, will generally have a highly-synchopated rhythm that mimics the look of acutal combat.

So how do we capture this timing on paper? Choreographics has the following to say regarding timing and abstract symbol systems²:

• Stepanov doesn't have any way to indicate precise timings.
• In Laban notation the beginning of a symbol indicates the start of a movement and the end of a symbol denotes its conclusion.
• Morris and Benesh use a bow/phrase mark to indicate the beginning/end of a movement.
• Eshkol-Wachman marks the beginning and end of a motion against an arbitrary running count.
• Sutton uses a ligature system similar to Morris/Benesh.

One significant way in which the martial arts depart from dance is that the latter is almost always accompanied by a musical score which drives the tempo of the dance. This is not the case with the martial arts; I remember one instructor telling me that it doesn't matter how fast or slow you do a form as long as the internal timing is consistent. Which leads me to believe that we need must be able to accurately capture relative timings but needn't worry about conveying clock time. Additionally, I think its important to be able to specify relative timings with as fine a granularity as possible. In the example above its very important that the student understand that the block is delivered just after the left foot is planted, not before or simultaneously with.

Ms. Guest notes that "[t]he Laban system is very flexible, being able to pin-point both durations and the moment of departure and arrival"³, which is precisely what we're looking for. We're not going to be able to adopt the Laban notation for timing directly since it's intimately tied up with Laban's use of block-like symbols which are easily stretched and compressed as needed. But the core concept of marking the beginning and end of motion against an arbitrary-but-consistent timeline provides us with exactly the functionality we require. New rule:

Time flows at a constant (but undefined) rate from the bottom of the page to the top.

It follows from there that we just need some convenient way to mark the beginning and end of each action. My idea is to use something akin to error bars, in which case our example could be rendered:

 ┳
#8D  HMS       
   CS
   #8P     ↺270
                  HMS

And reads as follows:

1. From Right Half-Moon Stance
2. Transition to Left Cat Stance
3. While turning 270° counter-clockwise and preparing a #8 block⁴
4. Step out into Left Half-Moon Stance
5. And complete delivery of the #8 block shortly after the transition to Left Half-Moon Stance is complete.

In regards to the use of "error bars" I recommend the following default assumptions:

• Timing is constant.
• Actions on different lines are sequential; they blend smoothly one into the next.
• Actions on the same line begin and end simultaneously.

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1 The "#8 Block" is performed with the left hand. The performer's closed fist sweeps down from the right side of the head, across the lower abdomen, finishing with the elbow fully extended and the fist just exceeding the left knee. It's used to deflect/block low kicks and punches.
2 Pp. 173 - 174.
3 P. 176.
4 I've adopted "#8P" to mean "prepare for a #8 block" i.e. "bring the left-hand up to the right side of the head". "#8D" means "deliver a #8 block".