Poetry in Motion: Learning Combos by Back-Chaining

A long time ago I received a bilingual edition of a book of poems by Hungarian poet József Atilla as a gift from my lovely wife. Over the years I’ve occassionally browsed through the poems, reading them in both languages. I have often brought the book with me on trips to the beach, or on long flights, and spent idle moments trying to actually learn a poem by heart (to no avail as of yet). In a video that I now cannot find, the creator demonstrated a strategy for memorizing poetry; back-chaining.

Basically, the approach is to start at the end of the poem with the last line or even few words. Once the ending is solidly in place, you start at say the second-to-last line and continue to the end. You chain together new lines until eventually you start at the start and try to continue all the way through to the end.

Why does this work? An important difference between back-chaining and the traditional method of starting at the beginning is that you’re always going into familiar territory. Each round of practice begins with the most difficult part - remembering something new - and the rest is practicing something that you already know. Putting the effortful retrieval at the end only gives you more time to forget.

This method has been very effective for me, even as I am targeting material in a second language. I cannot honestly say that I have memorized an entire poem yet, but I am consistently getting 24 out of 33 lines on one of Atilla’s longest. Recently this approach helped me unlock another skill I have been chasing.

Finally Getting My 10 Hit Combo

At the end of September I started playing Tekken 8. I have been a serial dabbler in fighting games, casually playing random fighting games as a kid and logging around 15-20 hours in both Tekken 7 and Street Fighter IV.

One of the things I have always struggled with is learning combos. This has probably contributed to me dropping some of the more combo-heavy “anime” fighting games like BlazBlue after only a few hours. Even in games like Tekken, where combos are less crucial, I found myself unable to capitalize on combo opportunties. Knowing that I was forfeiting so much damage potential was demotivating.

Games that provide sample combos or combo challenges present those combos as a string of moves to learn from beginning to end, and if you are like me that might have biased you towards learning them that way. This week I really wanted to build fluency with one solid combo, and I decided to try to apply back-chaining as a way to do it.

A characteristic of Tekken 8’s combo system that makes back-chaining particularly feasible is that it takes an almost literary structure with a distinct beginning, middle, and end. Full combos start by launching your opponent in the air. After juggling them for a bit you use a move that applies the tornado effect. Finally, after a little bit more juggling, you use a high damage combo ender that either sends them flying or into a wall.

In my case I was learning a basic 60 damage combo for Leo. After struggling for a long time to copy what I had seen AyoRichie do on YouTube, I decided to back-chain the combo. This was an especially useful strategy for this combo because the finish after the tornado requires 1) a dash towards the opponent, 2) using f4 to enter a stance, and 3) a crouch dash from that stance and timing the final 2,1 (or 2,4) accordingly.

I practiced the f4, df, CD 2,1 until it was perfectly consistent. Then I added the dash. It took a long time to consistently dash into f4 instead of doing a while running 4. Once I had that timing down, I started from BOK 1,2 and was soon fluent in 2/3 of the combo. I practiced starting from b1, 1+2, and lastly catching the opponent with b1, 1+2 from a launcher. Now I had practiced the entire combo (df2 > b1, 1+2 d > BOK 1,2 > f4 > KNK df > CD 2,1), with most of my practice in the most difficult portion, on each attempt finishing with inputs that were already familiar.

Next Steps

There is a lot more that can be said about learning and fighting games, and particuarly why I held off on combo practice in Tekken 8 for almost 30 hours of playtime. Fluency in combos is important, however, because in a match you do not have time to think; when your opponent is launched those moves simply need to come out immediately. I found back-chaining to be an effective method to build that fluency. Now, in practice mode between matches, I set the dummy to random block to practice reacting to a launch, only letting the combo flow when I get one. Ask me later if I have actually landed the full combo in a match.