Pro Wrestling Study: Perception and Proprioception (Patreon)

• LMA Curriculum

Something that's taken for granted is the pro wrestler's ability to move, bump, fly, and fight in a ring without constantly having to surveil their surroundings. I can think of no better example of situational awareness or perception than a pro wrestler's ability to move within the ring. For safety and realism, they must always be aware of where they are.

Imagine a boxing match where you can throw your opponent over the ropes. Boxers would constantly be checking to see where they were in the ring, interrupting the flow of the match and making a legitimate shoot look awkward and fake (worked).

What we expect is for professional fights to look, well, professional. (The awkwardness of the early UFCs had people convinced they were works.)

Pro wrestlers not only look out for each other's safety but have to make the match logical and smooth. That takes mental mapping of space.

Since pro wrestlers regularly wrestle in new venues and use the surrounding area of the ring along with props, they have to adapt to new environments quickly. Not knowing their space comes with dire consequences.

A wrestler respects their space and acknowledges that the environment of the fight matters more than anything else. This is true for sports and even more so for self-defense and general injury prevention.

Space is both your friend and your enemy.

When a wrestler enters a new wrestling environment, the first thing they do is check their environment. They inspect the surface, measure the dimensions, learn where the barriers and obstacles are, note the entrances and exits, the potential danger spots, where they want the match to take place, how to use their surroundings, and block their terrain.

Perception or situational/external awareness is how you perceive your environment and the actions that take place there. Proprioception or internal awareness is how you perceive yourself. It's knowing the dimensions of your environment and your own dimensions to navigate your space.

Your mental map has to be personalized to you.

If you're running down a hill, how you'll approach that task will be unique to you. The number of steps before you reach the curb is unique to you. The number of steps before running into your sofa in the middle of the night is unique to you. But only if you're aware that environment (material conditions) is something to be acknowledged, memorized, and reassessed.

Proprioception is often overlooked, but it provides necessary information. Are you tired? How's your balance? How's your energy? Are you taking your usual steps? Should you be taking shorter steps? Are you embodied? Or disembodied and have no sense of your internal signals?

A pro wrestler will memorize the number of steps it takes them to get to the end of the ring for walking and running. Their perception and proprioception are that important.

An elite basketball player knows how many steps they'll take from the free-throw line to the rim. (This doesn't even have to be conscious.) Imagine you didn't know. You'd have to take a stutter step before jumping, perhaps even jumping off the wrong foot, increasing your likelihood of being blocked.

Take an elite running back, they'll know exactly how long it'll take them to run 30 yards. They also understand that running on a football field differs from running on pavement. They know it'll take more energy to push off a soft surface.

An MMA fighter needs to know exactly how far they are from the fence, how far their opponent is from it, and where their corner is. Getting their opponent to the fence is half the fight. Unfortunately, MMA fighters, unlike pro wrestlers, often overlook their environment.

Some boxers have such keen proprioception that they'll demand a specific ring size to give themselves an advantage. This is because they understand what ring size serves their body best. Many boxers do better or worse based on the size of the fighting space.

For MMA fighters, the size, shape, and material of their environment affect their performance. Now with bare-knuckle boxing and ONE Championship, you also have a variety of rule sets and equipment that affect the fight.

The second part of the video dives deeper into proprioception and your environment (material conditions).

When people cross their legs, they aren't aware they're crossing their legs. As a result, you could fall from an unforced error.

This capitalist white supremacist settler society promotes alienation and disembodiment. Being disembodied denies you proprioception. This society didn't invent falling, but its fascist individualism won't help us connect with our internal and external signals either.

Falling is one of the most common causes of injury. Couple this with an uneven or slippery surface, and the injury is that much more severe. The situation only gets worse if your opponent can follow you to the ground and attack you.

Proprioception in a vacuum is meaningless. So is perception. They give each other meaning. Your proprioception informs your perception: you know how many steps it'll take you to get to an obstacle. Likewise, your perception informs your proprioception: you can tell just by looking at the obstacle whether you can clear it or not.

Your environment affords your actions. Your proprioception and perception determine which actions and how you take them.

Whether you use proprioception and perception is determined by habit. Habit is determined by practice. Practice is informed by theory: i.e., knowing what skills to practice and how to organize and prioritize them.

Staying low, hips open, and your feet underneath you are universal rules in athletics (often called the "athletic stance" or "universal athletic position). Likewise, your fighting stance is an athletic stance.

"Walk steady." Walk heel-toe. This is a stylistic choice, but one I prefer. You have better balance, it takes less energy, and it's easier to control your momentum. When the wrestling coach explains how bouncing makes you look, he's talking about ring psychology or how you'll be perceived by the audience. What is the audience reading? Your energy output.

Since wrestling matches don't have breaks like boxing or MMA, they can last for a long time. Bouncing around is, therefore, unsustainable. Likewise, if you want to develop an efficient fighting style you can maintain until you're an elder, how sustainable is bouncing around?

I used to bounce around a lot when I was younger, but now I take steady steps. Of course starting younger would have meant more practice.

Change levels with your legs rather than bending over or leaning forward; otherwise, you'll fall over. (Check the basketball studies.)

In MMA, leaning forward or bending over at the waist can get you kneed or kicked. When you bob and weave, you bend your legs rather than bend at the waist. You don't bend over with your feet behind you, even with takedowns. You still bend over with your lead leg under you. You may end up bending over at the waist, but that's how you ended up rather than what you were aiming for. It's a fight after all.

Perception and proprioception inform your adaptations.

Stay low and staggered for balance and action. L-stance.  When you engage, stay low, don't raise up. When you're further apart, you can stand taller to distort your opponent's perception, but this is only recommended if you've embodied the fundamentals enough where raising up won't become an unconscious habit.

Perception isn't just about sight; it's about awareness of your surroundings. Imagine not knowing where the ropes are, then it doesn't matter whether you know how to hit the ropes or not. You'll go over the ropes, fall through, bounce off and land on your face, or give yourself whiplash.

Many of the student wrestlers had no idea how they hit the ropes, they just hit it. Knowing how you hit the ropes is proprioception. Making that second nature comes from practice.

Ideally, you fall back staggered and come back staggered. Moving athletically, forward and back. Continuous athletic postures rather than transitioning to vulnerable positions that increase the likelihood of serious injury.

You step forward with your left when coming off the ropes because your opponent will also be coming at you with the left lead. You'll be parallel, so you're safe when you run into each other. You want to avoid being in opposite or square stances because not only will it look awkward, but you're also likely to bash heads, trip, or be unable to brace for impact.

Fighting from opposite stances leads to more injuries in both pro wrestling (works) and prizefighting (shoots) because of the nature of the stances. When you're parallel, you're two ships passing in the night. When you're perpendicular, you're ships on a collision course.

If you're square, meaning tall with your feet even, you'll get your head taken off, whether it's a staged clothesline (work) or a real punch (shoot). Of course it'll all be a shoot if you can't brace. A tackle is no different. In fact, when you want to sell a tackle and make it look more powerful, you'll stand tall with your feet even, so you'll be sent flying. Imagine what happens if you're caught in this position in a shoot? Perhaps a slam KO.

As a general rule, stay staggered. If you're standing perpendicular, be mindful of crashes and entanglements.

In pro wrestling, you don't grab your opponent's wrist when they're taking a bump because they need their arms to protect themselves. Arms and legs are posts. Remove the posts, they lose control and fall.

If you want control of your opponent, what should you do? Control their posts. What should you avoid? Allowing someone to control your posts. These minor differences separate looking like you're in control (work) vs. being in control (shoot).

What else do you want to avoid in a shoot? Being near or directed toward hard surfaces and barriers. Where should you lead your opponent? Hard surfaces and barriers.

In a shoot, you'd only let them go if you want to escape or keep the fight standing. On the other hand, if your opponent releases you in a shoot, they've given you a free gift. Which is to say, in a shoot, don't assume they'll let you go, practice fighting for control or the escape.

Whether in pro wrestling or other forms of grappling, it's critical to control your opponent's head because wherever the head goes the body goes. Even in karate or muay Thai, the sweep begins with the head, then you chop the legs. Even in clinch, when you want to raise your opponent up, you put your head underneath their's and then lift their head up. Where their head goes, their body goes.

In pro wrestling, you don't bump each other, you let the opponent bump themselves. In a shoot, your opponent will not release you to safely fall on your own or do a break fall. This wouldn't even count as a takedown because there is no control. Most likely, your opponent will hold you all the way to the ground. That means you'll have to constantly fight the grips even when you're down.

How practical then is the technical get-up you learn in self-defense and martial art classes (shoots)? In cooperative works, it's very practical because your opponent will let you go so you can fall and get back up on your own. But in a shoot, your opponent wants to take you down and keep you down, so you won't have the autonomy to take your own fall or get back up. Instead, you'll have to constantly fight them for every inch of freedom.

Likewise, if you're taking your opponent down, you don't give them any freebies, you make them fight you for every inch, and every inch you lose, you fight to get back. You give no quarter, you stay on them and control their movements. Your opponent is doing the same thing in reverse, constantly fighting to break your control or reverse and attack.

In a work, you're trying to make it look as authentic as possible without damaging your opponent, but in a shoot, you're trying to do damage while anticipating your opponent doing the same to you.

If you do fall, regardless of the circumstance, you don't want all your energy falling onto one point. Instead, you want to distribute that energy onto a wider surface or redirect that energy, so it's not going straight into the ground (e.g., parkour roll).

Most important is protecting your head. If nothing else, you can wrap your arms around your head or use your opponent as an anchor and cling to them to avoid hitting your head onto the ground. You can even use your opponent as a cushion to absorb some of the impact.

You'll never fall the same way twice. Again, it's about perception and proprioception. Knowing where you're falling, what's around you, where you're opponent is, how you're falling (sideways, on your face, back of your head), how high you are, and where your body is in mid-air. Based on this information, you must decide how best to protect your head and reduce the impact.

The referee who broke his arm had a serious injury, but that's still better than bashing his head and possibly having a worse outcome than an arm break. The wrestling coach explained how hard the ring apron is and how it's better to fall on the floor. Well, imagine that same impact on the arm on the head. Even without knowing anything about falling, your instinct should be to protect your head.

Unlike a work, in a shoot, your opponent might actively try to drop you on your head or cause damage with a slam. You're trying to protect your head while they're trying to damage your head. Then it's more than just your relationship to the ground, it's your relationship to the ground and your opponent. Since you're both going to the ground, sometimes what's most important is how you're attached to your opponent.

Think of a seatbelt or a harness system. Is it better to stay attached during a crash or detached? Most often, it's better to be attached. Being tight to your opponent during a fall is often safety. This is also how you get reversals, switching of places, or for the impact to turn into a roll. Your weight being close to the center of their gravity offsets their trajectory.

There's a lot to learn from pro wrestling when it's done purposefully. What you don't want is to replicate worked scenarios unconsciously or not know enough about pro wrestling and do works while thinking you're doing a shoot. (Likewise, if you don't know enough about the problems of capitalism, you may unconsciously reinvent capitalist solutions to capitalism.)

A breakfall is often taught as self-defense against a throw, with the tacit implication that your opponent will give you enough freedom to control your own fall. They're doing a work thinking it's a shoot.

What's being simulated? When do you see breakfalls in a shoot? Almost never. Why? Because even if you could free yourself enough to break your fall, this might not be your best path to safety, and the fight would continue. As you break your fall, your opponent is advancing position or hitting you.

I call the time and space needed to execute a move: time-space. For example, in class, your training partner gives you the time and space to perform an action, such as a breakfall. But if they didn't give you time-space, as in a shoot, releasing your opponent to break your fall gives your opponent the time-space to manipulate your body in mid-air because you're no longer tethered to them or resisting.

Also, as you land and try to reduce the impact by controlling your relationship with the ground, you won't have the time and space to recover position. As you breakfall, they'll mount you, take an armbar, or even headbutt you on the way down.

A breakfall is a big movement which is why it sells so well on television. How breakfalls work is by slowing your descent. Who's going to give you time to do that? You shouldn't be trying to take a bump. Instead, you should be trying to ruin the bump and their slam. You're trying to be noncooperative.

In a work, you're conceding the takedown. If you're falling by yourself, like during a slip, that can make sense because there's no opponent to fight. It's an unforced error. But with an opponent, if you concede going to the ground, it also means you temporarily concede getting back up. A fall doesn't mean the fight is over, but often it's presented as if it is. Then what material conditions are being represented? A shoot or a work?

Lots of things can and do get replicated unconsciously as a matter of habit, conditioning, tradition, or default. This happens in training spaces but also political spaces because these are human biases. To challenge our biases, we should always ask: what is being represented?

Sometimes, in seeking a solution to a difficult and variable question, we answer a simpler, fixed question. (Pro wrestling began as shoots but became works because it was simpler and easier to control.)

In trying to do martial arts, we can unconsciously do works. Similarly, in countering reactionary culture, we can do reactionary culture. This happens when we can no longer perceive our actions and do things as a matter of course. A preexisting course.

In pro wrestling, however, the wrestlers understand it's a work. Martial artists often can't tell when they're doing a work or a shoot. So what does that say about the martial artists who make fun of pro wrestling fans when they can't even differentiate shoot from work? How often is a martial arts demonstration (work) perceived as a shoot? Most of the time.

I use examples from other dynamic activities to analyze martial arts because how you do one thing is how you do all things. Universal athletic rules apply to all dynamic movements, making it a science. Likewise, the US isn't just oppressive domestically, it's also oppressive abroad. How it does one thing is how it does all things.

The knowledge you learn from Liberation Martial Arts can be applied on and off the mat. The boundary between the training hall and the world only exists in your head. Again, perception. What are you replicating? Again, proprioception.

Pro wrestling simulates the world because the world is pro wrestling. All relationships are dialectical. Even in goal-oriented dynamic movements, it's action, reaction, and adaptation. Pro wrestling simulates those same familiar rules, so people get emotionally vested. Our emotions often get worked. Look for that everywhere.

I'm not saying never learn breakfalls, they have their place, but if the goal was to prevent falls in a shoot where someone causes your fall, then the most important action I'd teach from day one is stripping the grips. Attack what is attacking you.

You're taught from day one of martial arts to concede. Why? People come in already feeling like they suck. Why reinforce that? They already feel that at work or school. We're constantly conceding. In this capitalist white supremacist society, the marginalized are always imposter losers who ought to be deferential to the powerful. Why replicate that in training?

An amateur wrestler automatically has an advantage when they go into Brazilian jiu-jitsu because they already know how to take people down, and in Brazilian jiu-jitsu (or self-defense), you learn to concede the takedown.

Being able to come from behind is critical. Being able to win off your back is essential. Some people will be too big, too strong, and they'll put you on your back. That's something they do to you, not what you do to yourself.

Don't concede. Don't bump yourself. Don't give them that. Don't give them anything for free. Make them work for that, fight for that.

You can end up there but don't start from there. Don't make that a habit or your fundamentals. Fight. Make that your habit. You're worth fighting for. A better position is worth fighting for. Fight to stay above water.

For some of us, life is a human right. For the rest of us, if we don't fight, we don't live. If you want to live, you have to fight. Concede nothing. Wherever you end up, keep fighting. It doesn't have to be pretty. Keep scrambling. You're supposed to concede in a work, it's what makes it a work. What makes a shoot is you don't concede. Don't replicate works in a shoot.

If you can't do this in training, where else can you do it? In a safe training environment, your partner won't harm you if you burn out. So build that endurance in training. That's what training is for. Conserving energy is an easy skill that can be developed at any time. Endurance is not. The best time to build endurance, both mental and physical, is yesterday.

Imagine if, from day one, you learned to break grips and not concede? Then a wrestler would be more like any other beginner. It's not about how good they are, it's about how Brazilian jiu-jitsu is taught. It's reactionary, not just in culture or history but also pedagogy.

In a work, releasing your opponent is what gives them safety. In a shoot, breaking their grips maintains your safety.

Don't let them get a hold of you.

If it's about falling by yourself, breakfalls are the most important. Even in practicing throws, you execute the throw, but then you allow your opponent to fall on their own, just as in pro wrestling. Whether you recognize it or not, you're not actually throwing them to the ground. You throw and off-balance, but allow your training partner to fall independently, so you don't injure them. Different scenarios require different priorities.

Theory is how you organize and prioritize training.

Theory is tricky because it requires awareness of yourself and what scenarios you're representing, and what scenarios you want represented through your training.

Put another way, what is it you want to build? If it's a house, is that what you built, or did you unintentionally build a boat because it's easier, but you never noticed?

Instead of unintentionally taking the wrong lessons from pro wrestling, learn its golden rules: prioritizing your training partner's safety and putting over the people who deserve it.

– Sam