What is 'bad/good condition ?

What is bad condition ?

"bad condition"  refers to a quote from a Japanese super player when he was asked about how well he would do in his run the next day he said "The 1CC is possible if my condition is good." What he was saying is that it depended on a phenomenon which he called condition (as an analogy) and that this "condition could be 'good' or 'bad'.

In the hardcore shmup community this is used as a meme, however every joke has a core of truth, and if a Japanese super player who intuitively tries to seriously explains an important question and topic says this, there is plenty reason to assume there is more behind it than just a meme. He obviously was very serious, he wasn't joking at all. Whatever it is, it is real and affects even a player or his calibre.

Even tho it is being used as a meme, the concept also being used semi-seriously to grasp something that isn't well explicated.

Personally, this is how I see it :

"To me good or bad condition is something I am very familiar with from my career (as a semi pro athlete) there were days when I would warm up and I could instantly tell that everything I would do, it would go amazing and I wouldn't make a mistake and it would all go without effort, like automatically. And on the other hand, it was possible that there were some periods where I had days where nothing would work well and I knew I had to use all kinds of tricks, raw stamina and mental game to make it through."

For me the most important matter was too make sure that my level of condition would *never* fall below a certain level in general, and that on competition days it would never be bad. After a few years I started to understand, after alot of experimentation, what was behind it, exactly. (This is something that my coach at the time literally just explained away as something ungraspable,he used to be the national association trainer just a few years before). I think most people would assume that the thing behind this is something mental.

What causes / decides good or bad condition ?

When I asked on Discord if anyone knew what was behind this, I found this answer pretty representative of how most people would conceptualise it : "it’s something to do with the individual’s mental state. If the person doesn’t think they’d do then they might not."

While that's an arguably good explanation, the answer is much simpler (and more complex at the same time)* : it's your tissue (muscles and tendons)

To be more exact : the restedness and especially strength/conditioning of (the configuration) of all the (but especially postural ) muscles and tendons. And with strength I don't mean big, huge muscles, but more in the sense of health and length. So that they physically do their job of making your body's movement apparatus work well. This is by far the biggest factor of performance, dwarfing all other aspects.

Doesn't mind count for anything ?

The mental aspect is real ofcourse but it can only improve or decrease your condition with a certain amount. The mind has an effect but also hard limits, it can't like mentally overcome serious deficits in your bodies muscle configuration. But if those 2 are equal among 2 competitors then yeah the mind can give a decisive edge. And yeah and if your condition is good,day in day out, you're confidence is just superhigh and this will always work well in your favour. Still, it is never an explanation or something more valuable than the status of your body's movement apparatus' muscle configuration in terms of having good condition.

To always have good condition, everything is about muscles and that configuration ( what parts of the bodies muscles are being actively conditioned .

The problem is :

1) The postural muscles are much more important than the big working muscles

2) There are a ton of them and they're very deep

3) No one really knows how to reach them, precisely 

4) This is being swept under the rug and the rug is sold as "natural talent"

What about shmups ?

Now how does all this relate to shmups ? The brain is a muscle (literally even behaves like one) and the cognitive processes are part of your minds movement apparatus (brain-eye coordination) and having good condition of this decided how well you will play shmups (according to the Japanese Super player)

Conclusion

It is real it exists and it determines how well you play

It consist of analogy of what I've described previously, orestedness and conditioning of ocular muscles and cognitive brain processes and/or neural networks

1 supercompensation (restedness and conditioning of reading ability)

2 optometry (conditioning, ocular)

3 Tetris (not sure) 

Thank you for reading this post, bye !!

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