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View Full Version : How Jennie Finch Struck Out Pujols, Bonds and Other MLB Guys



cmailliard
04-06-2014, 17:15
Don't Google her yet, wait for it.

ARTICLE LINK (http://www.realclearscience.com/blog/2013/11/why-barry-bonds-strikes-out-to-jennie-finch.html)

What the hell is baseball doing here? Well seeing as it is the first week of the baseball season it is kinda fitting. I saw this on CBS Sunday Morning this morning and thought it was pretty awesome, especially because it fits into the idea of training for not just shooting but anything you do in life. I think it ties in with mindset, the midbrain, and specifically OODA Loops (I want a cereal called OODA Loops). The mental database is what got me in this article, when I do my part about OODA loops in some of my classes I speak specifically about this, but use chess players as the example. I think I like Jennie Finch striking out Barry Bonds better.

It ties into the whole perfect practice makes perfect idea and how we must continually train in all kinds of environments and settings. We must train even when we cannot train, we must read, we must learn from the action of others and how they have dealt with unforeseen situations and learn from them. While not actually doing it, this adds to our mental database, why do think athletes watch film of their opponents.

It also got me thinking a little deeper, I use and love the following statement - Amateurs train until they get it right once then congratulate each other and Professionals train until they cannot get it wrong. Here we have Professionals, guys at tip of the spear on their battlefield but throw a slightly different enemy at them and they fail, hard. Now they will never face that enemy (how is Jennie an enemy) when it matters, the same cannot be said for us.

By "us" I mean those who have taken the responsibility to protect ourselves and others in any capacity from the SF guys to a CCW holder. Our enemy is constantly changing or just varied so greatly from the beginning that it is difficult to train to any one thing or standard. For me it is so much about teaching the basics, the things that are common in most situations and then really teach Critical Thinking. Teach situation awareness because we cannot prepare for everything, we must train to adapt, improvise, and overcome.

In almost every Casualty Care class I teach there is someone that tries to get the silver bullet answer for each situation. In the medical world not every patient reads the textbook, so the textbook is a guide and we must look for the common threads that will lead down a path to a diagnosis, until the patient throws a curveball and all of sudden it no longer fits any diagnosis. That patient did not read the textbook, so stop treating the textbook, treat the patient and add that unique situation to your mental database.

So go face a hot softball pitcher and get your ass handed to you, so you realize you need to train more.

Stay Safe






Now you can Google her

Mick-Boy
04-07-2014, 13:17
So I was in our little team gym/fight room scrapping with a couple of the guys on my team today, and one of the guys (hands down the best fighter in the bunch) decides, just for grins, that he's going to do all his striking with his left hand and leg. I'm (a teeny bit) ashamed to say that he tagged me more times than I would have predicted in the first round. We were sitting around talking about it afterwords and Pirate (the guy who was throwing all from the left) mentioned that we'd all been conditioned to expect combos to come from both sides. When someone is throwing a combination that otherwise wouldn't make sense, it throws us off our game. Kinda like when Weidman KO'd Silva in UFC 162.

To me this illustrates a point that I've been thinking about for a long time.

To be truely great (world class) at something, you have to specialize in that thing. But for something like self defense (gunfighting/warfighting/home defense/etc.) there are so many aspects that deserve attention that you can't truely specialize in any of them.

If you're a GM class shooter who burns down a home invasion crew like you're shooting a classifier at the range, but your wife gets hit in the exchange and you don't have the skills to save her, can you still call it a win? I couldn't.

The ball players that were struck out by Ms. Finch are undoubtedly some of the best in the world at what they do. But that skill came at the expense of some other things. Change the look of what they're facing just a bit and they have issues.

To quote one of my favorite authors

A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.

-Robert A. Heinlein