Ep. 23 "The Superpower of Perfect Practice" - Guest Dennis Gayness

When Dennis noticed that more and more students were suffering from ignorance he had to do something about it. These students weren’t dumb—they merely weren’t being taught how to learn. Dennis, an experienced martial artist, made a discovery about the power of perfect practice and repetition in the process of learning. Today, he discusses with Melvin the importance of developing a plan to learn and how to implement the Rule of 3 in order to retain necessary knowledge.  

RESOURCES MENTIONED ON TODAY’S EPISODE:

• Discover more about Dennis’ study program here: www.rulesof3studyprogram.com
• Learn more about the development of the Rules of 3 Program: http://www.virginiainnovations.com/info/
• Dennis has some helpful videos about his study program here: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC66nhXNFeXC01XBZxdqWS8Q

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Transcript

Dennis Gayness Video Transcript

Interviewed by Melvin Adams

May 2022

[00:00-38:04]

ADAMS: One of the challenging things of learning is the whole matter of memory and retention. Today we’re joined by a guest, Dennis Gayness. I met him a few weeks ago where I was speaking at an event on a topic of the role of faith and morality in education. 

He came to that event and we got to talking at that time and he shared with me some of the work that he had done. And some of the focus he had on this very issue. [He] gave me some sample material. I've looked at it and decided this would be a good topic for us to talk about because it is a really important topic as we try to educate our children. 

Whether we’re parents, whether we’re educators, teachers—that whole matter of how do you help somebody learn through really understanding what they’re getting and then really retaining it? And so that’s going to be the focus of our topic today, and so Dennis, welcome to the show! 

GAYNESS: Well thank you so much for having me, Melvin. I really appreciate it. You know, it’s a great thing to connect to folks like you that are doing work out there in the educational world—trying to make changes for the better, trying to create more well-rounded, who are more productive in our society. And it’s a pleasure to be a part of that. 

ADAMS: Well, to start off, why don’t you just share a little bit about yourself and your background? 

GAYNESS: Absolutely. Well, I was born and raised in Virginia [in] Prince George county there outside of Richmond. And, again, a little small farming community. And from there, I decided that I wanted to go to college. 

And I went to a small community college, actually not too far from where you’re located: I went to New River Community College there in Dublin, Virginia. The reason I chose that is because they had a transfer program into the ultimate location I wanted to go. My desire was to graduate from Virginia Tech. 

  So I went to New River and graduated from there and then transferred into Virginia Tech. It was at Virginia Tech that I began my martial arts training and career, as it be. Just because I was always an athlete in Junior High and High School, but due to my build I was too small to really play any college athletics, so I started training and teaching martial arts when I went to school. 

From there, I graduated [and] got out and graduated with a bachelor’s degree in wildlife management, fisheries management, and a minor in biology. I spent a few years in the environmental field. So I was a special-projects biologist. With the department of game and fisheries, my focus was on the American Shad Restoration Project which was undergoing in the early to mid to late 90s. A very successful program that we had there. 

And then from there I actually ended up pursuing much of my martial arts. Went down to Florida and spent a long time down there training, teaching, competing, and really just enjoying that aspect of life while also working in corporate America. 

And then in 2008, I came back to Virginia, my home state (I love it here in Virginia—[it’s] one of the best places to grow up and live in the country, of course). And then from there, I started my own business… I did consulting. I had some experience in the outdoor industries, a love for firearms, and at that time, of course, developed my study program. And I’ve been marketing and working on that ever since then. 

My martial arts career … I have black belts in several different styles. But my main focus and highest rank is a third-degree black belt in Taekwondo, and of course teacher certifications in those as well. 

ADAMS: Well that’s very interesting. Thank you for sharing that information with us. The study program that you developed and we’re going to talk about today, you call Rules of Three. So can you give us a run-down of what that program does for students and why it matters? What makes this program unique from other programs? 

GAYNESS: Well, the uniqueness of this program is that I took much of what I learned in martial arts and the repetition that we use and the same things that are used… if you want to become a professional athlete in everything, you have to have perfect practice and you have to repeat things until they’re so-called “muscle memory.” 

Well, those things apply when it comes to the mind and learning as far as comprehending things. You have to use that knowledge over and over again in order to truly comprehend every aspect of it. 

And I put this into a process approach and one of the reasons why is because in order to be successful at anything in life, we teach that you have to have a plan, right? 

If you’re going to be successful financially, you have to have a financial plan, if you’re going to create a business, you have to create a business plan. If you’re going to make chocolate chip cookies, you’re going to have a recipe or a plan. Building a house is the same thing. 

Well, what I looked at and said was, “Where’s the plan in our education when it comes to studying?” We have the tools, we have the ingredients, so-called, which is the content and all that they want us to learn and we have a path. 

We have a path that goes from kindergarten through twelfth grade and then whether to go into trade school or some kind of IT certification or even on into college, to study in the sciences and engineering and English and you know, those different subjects.  

But when it comes to the actual plan for studying to reach those so-called “goals” on that path, where is it? So I put this together. And the great thing about this plan, this step-by-step process approach to studying is [that] it can be applied to any subject. It doesn’t matter whether it’s math or English or science, it just doesn’t matter. 

And it can also be used in, and catered to, preschool kids using repetition. And then as children progress through this system, they can add on the layers to it that apply at those levels to the final point to where they’re utilizing the entire process or the entire program. 

And why that matters… well, again, our system is set up with the supplies—the so-called content, right? And the tools: the books, the teachers, the buildings, the pathway. But there’s no real process. There’s no real plan once you actually sit down to read that chapter and study. 

Read the notes, you know… there’s no plan in place. So this provides that plan. And really, it goes to another level. We are having so many problems in our system today with attention deficit disorders, so-called, and all of these learning difficulties that I had when I was a child and many other people had, but not to the level that we are today. 

And I think that’s because many of the kids are not really, truly being challenged. And if you read government publications on this issue, one of the main things that’s mentioned in every one of those is a structured environment for the children and why structure is so important. 

It’s the same thing with our martial arts training. Everything was structured. Structure builds focus, if that makes sense, right? 

ADAMS: Sure. 

GAYNESS: But again, if you set a child down, particularly when they get to fourth, 

Fifth, and sixth grades when now they really have books. They have chapters that they have to learn in order to pass tests, in order to comprehend and build upon themselves. 

When you set a child down at home, or even in the classroom, and you say, “Hey, read this chapter, we’re going to have a quiz, you know, you gotta learn all this material.” Where’s their structure for that other than there it is, right? 

How do they do that, and how do they get the most out of it? Those are things that have never been taught, which, you know, this program now adds that plan—or that structure—to that aspect of what the children are expected to do. 

The other thing that it really does…. Melvin, you’ve mentioned this in many of your interviews that you’ve had with other people and they bring up this concept, these problems that we’re having today and it’s really occurring a lot in the military and people aren’t aware of this—is that the kids coming out of high school today, and even coming out of college programs, are not prepared to perform at the level that they’re expected to on day one in their jobs. 

And the reason why is because they’re not comprehending what they are learning in elementary school and in high school, and a lot even at the college level. Because we’ve changed the way we’re teaching. We’re not teaching to learn and comprehend, we’re teaching kids to pass a particular test. 

ADAMS: Yeah. 

GAYNESS: So you’re missing that repetition, that comprehension, that understanding, and that discussion that goes into making well-rounded people that can think for themselves. And that’s what this program actually offers. 

ADAMS: Well, you know, Dennis, it’s interesting. Earlier you made this statement about perfect practice. That’s a very, very important statement. In the past, I was a music educator and taught both at the academy level and at the college level. 

And, you know, when you’re training musicians, practice is always a big part of developing their talent. And so often, you give them time and certain things, you know, certain criteria and requirements they gotta put in.

And, you know, students would practice sometimes… you know, I was a choral director and did orchestra directing and all those kinds of things, and as we would play and as we were rehearsing and so often there would be these mistakes. 

And I would challenge them, you know, listen: what the problem is when you keep making mistakes, you are actually reinforcing in your memory, in your capacity to perform mistakes. And so the only meaningful and useful practice is when you get it right and when you do it right over and over and over again until your mind and your muscle memory—that links to your mind and your hearing and your understanding of that composition, you just deliver it right. 

And so that perfect practice element is such an important factor there. And it’s true, and that applies really in everything. So there’s a lot of other stuff I want to talk about, but what prompted you to develop your program, and what inspired it? 

GAYNESS: It’s very interesting because what inspired me actually, Melvin, was a necessity. You know, when I was young, when I got into elementary school, I had some attention deficit disorders and behavioral problems. And one of my teachers—a very, very intelligent lady and amazing teacher, I mean, she truly understood teaching. 

She came to my parents and said, “I want to try something. I think I know what’s wrong, I think we’re not challenging his mind.” Right? And so she sat down in the fifth grade and a geometry book in front of me. 

Now why she chose geometry was several reasons. One, it was much higher math than we were learning at that time, but geometry uses the physical aspect of things, right? All the shapes, sizes, and angles, and that was in the context of the math, right? And it worked fantastically! 

She spent time with me, showing me things in geometry and I would work on geometry while everybody else was doing other math. That challenged me so it focused me. Right? 

So as I went through school… school didn't’ really challenge me as much as it should, I had a few classes here and a few classes there that did. But overall, it just came naturally to me. Well, when I went to New River community college, it was much of the same. 

It was a little bit more workload, but there weren't really great challenges as far as my mental capacity would be considered. The only two classes that really challenged me were Engineering Calculus and Chemistry and I took those at the same time. 

I took those just because they really helped me to solidify transferring into Virginia Tech. When I got to Virginia Tech, Melvin, it was a rude awakening, you know. Halfway through my first semester, I realized, hey, this is not going really well for me.

Now, again, I was working. I was working in a lab, and I was also training and teaching martial arts, so I had a full plate. So I was focused and structured as far as when my study time was, you know when I sat down and studied, my environment was set up in my room, you know, I had all of that. 

But I took a bunch of study seminars, right? They’re going to teach you how to study. Well all of them did the same thing. How to set your room up, how to use note cards back then, you know. But they didn’t teach me when [about] when I sit down and read, what do I do, right?

So after my first semester, I got that little letter that said, “Hey, you may want to reconsider this” you know, but unfortunately, my goal was to graduate from Virginia Tech, that’s what I wanted. So my head was set on that. 

So I took the things on how I knew our education system was set up, right? We build upon general information, we teach ourselves how to write letters and build words and build sentences and build paragraphs and then build reports and then build books, right? 

And it builds upon itself. And then I took how our mind works. Our mind processes information, general information to specific details—everybody does it the same way. That’s why we build computers and everything to process information based on those principles, right? That’s just kinda how it works! 

ADAMS: Yeah. 

GAYNESS: Then I took how we use training and teaching martial arts with that perfect repetition, right? That positive reinforcement through repeating, repeating. If you want to be the number one golfer in the world, you gotta swing your golf club a thousand times a day, perfectly, to become that, right? 

Well, let’s be real, right? You can’t read a chapter a thousand times, right? You can’t read a definition a thousand times. So, again, I took some principles from martial arts and I used my knowledge of math to say, “Well you know what? I can do things three times pretty quickly, right?” and three times multiplies itself very quickly, right? If I do this three times and then I come back and do the process three times and then three times… and then over a period of time, you see where that multiplying repetition comes in? 

ADAMS: Yep. 

GAYNESS: So I sat down one weekend and I literally wrote out, I said,  the number one thing I really need to know how to do is reading. Reading is one of the biggest challenges most people face when they get to higher levels of education because it’s a lot to do and you’ve got to remember and comprehend a lot of that. 

So I focused on that and I literally wrote a process on how to break it down and how to read. I used the fact that our education books, most of them whether it’s math or science or even English, they put a summary at the end and the summary is what the author and usually the teacher wants you to learn out of the chapter, right? 

So I used that and I said, “Okay, we’re going to start with that part because that gives me a general idea of what I need to get out of here. So once I’m done with that, again, general idea. Again—general to specific. 

And then I have a process for digging deeper into the chapter to begin to pull the details out so by the end then I comprehend what’s in there. Then I took another level to that, Melvin, and I said, “Well, what is the challenge for people when they go to take a midterm exam or a final exam or a test?”

Normally they’ve got 3 or 4 or more chapters or more material than just one piece of the puzzle, right? So again, using the repetition in there, I added another level to that to where you’re constantly reviewing that material. 

Well, by the time I got to my senior year, I never even had to study for my exams because I had prepared myself. I comprehended the material I had learned all through the semesters so I didn’t have to do that cramming that comes in with trying to remember and pass a test that encompasses so much information if that makes sense. 

So, that’s really what inspired me to do that. Now, the great thing about it is, that there are other people that are under the same circumstances. I knew a lot of people that failed college, not because they couldn’t do it or weren’t smart enough, it’s because they didn’t have that plan. 

When they sat down to study, they didn’t have that plan and with all the other distractions there are in this world, they couldn’t stay focused and accomplish the goals that they really wanted to accomplish. 

Other students that I saw, maybe just really do need the help. They’re not processing that information as well or they need that assistance. Or they don’t have the parental assistance there in the support network at home. This program, being a plan, a process—provides all of those basis for all of those students as well. 

ADAMS: Let me just kinda recap a little bit with some of the key things that you’ve mentioned here. And just from a practical aspect and application. 

Many times, one of the big challenges that we have as educators—and this really goes back to parents and homes—is, so often … and I’m not really faulting anybody, but it’s a reality and it’s something that I encourage parents to really think about this. Some of them do very well. Others maybe don’t and don’t even know it. Maybe because of their own upbringing or whatever. 

But, developing structure and parameters and schedule for our children is absolutely important because that structure helps create security, it helps create the word, as you [said], focus in our children’s lives. 

They know what to expect. It’s not that they’re just out there in the wind and they don’t know what’s coming next. Structure helps them to focus and to know what to expect and therefore it helps them a great to absorb things and be focused on what the here and now is because that’s what they’re surrounded with and they know that when this is over, I’m going to go to something else and I’m not worried about how that transition is going to take place. 

And so developing structure is so important and that really needs to start very early in a child’s life. We just had our nineteenth grandchild born to us. 

GAYNESS: Oh my goodness. 

ADMAS: And so we were down in Florida this past week visiting our children and that new baby. And of course what they’re trying to—what’s the first thing you do with a new baby? Try and get it on a schedule, right? So that your schedule is not upside down, you know? 

And helping them know the difference between day and night so those patterns happen very early in a child’s life and need to be constantly reinforced little by little, little by little. 

When we get into school with educators—and I’m just going to kinda put a thing in here for teachers—one of the challenges that many, many teachers have is when they get these children and if they don’t have structure at home or outside of the classroom, it’s very very difficult to get them focused when they show up in the classroom. 

And honestly a lot of the diagnoses that are given, ADHD and all of these kinds of things, trying to medicate these kids, you know, it’s not a mental illness, it’s a lack of structure. It’s a lack of discipline, it’s a lack of that child having security—not always, but often that’s the case.

But helping that child get into these patterns, I was—and I hear this all the time—last week I was with some educators and everybody in the nation’s heard of Loudoun County [and] one of the teachers was from Loudoun County, she taught social studies and history and the 11th-grade level. 

And she was talking about one of the huge challenges that she has is that most of her students, in the 11th grade, in one of the so-called top systems in the nation, can hardly read at a fourth-grade level. 

So, if a person can’t read, and can’t understand and retain at a fourth-grade level, how are they going to do 11th-grade work? We hear [about] colleges and universities where more and more are having to do remedial instruction before they can even actually start giving collegiate-level programs to students. 

So that is a huge problem. What we’re talking about today is a huge problem in education. And so, you’re program—one of the things that really… and you just kinda outlined those patterns of three, the rules of three and how you take that first rule and that first pattern of three times and then you expand it to another set of three… with a little different focus each time. 

But that reminds me kind of like (for those that are listening) it’s kind of like if you throw a pebble out into a pond and what do you see? You see that ripple effect. Right? When that pebble first drops, you get that little circle, and then there’s a bigger circle and a bigger circle and bigger circle. 

And in education, the best education happens when that type of focus is provided in a child’s development. So it’s like when they come in and they’re just starting to learn at the early grade levels, you introduce them to a topic and you give them that little circle. 

And then you come back around a little bit later and you expand on what they just learned and you reinforce that and you give them a little bit more. And then you come back again. And that process happens throughout the entire learning cycle of that student. 

And even as we move into adulthood, that same process continues to happen. And if we don’t get the little circle right, we will never comprehend the big circle. 

GAYNESS: That’s right. You know, it’s funny that you mention that because I inferred a lot of this—what you're talking about—from my martial arts training. First of all, let’s talk about that focus for a minute. 

The way we taught the young kids to focus—focus is… it comes and it develops in a person’s mind through positive reinforcement. If you’re not positive reinforcing when someone is really trying and working hard on focusing, they never understand what focus is. 

In martial arts, and in all different types of martial arts, focus is learned by breaking boards really. That’s how you start younger people out understanding what that concept of breaking boards is. You’re not going to break that board unless you focus enough power and energy in your mind on that one solid point to go all the way through it. 

Well, watching someone—a young person or even an adult, okay? When they break that first board, to see the look on their face, that “aha” moment, that’s the positive reinforcement needed for them to understand what focus is. 

Once they get that, they can apply that to many different things to what focus really, truly is. So it takes positive reinforcement. Well, if you’re not providing that at a younger age, right? The kids aren’t really understanding that. 

And then with that ripple effect and the building… what we would do is you throw them a little bit at a time and a little bit at a time so that they understand those concepts. And then you build upon them. 

Like when we talk, you know in the martial arts world, a form is the “formal part” they teach you a form, which is a long series of movements, right? Well when you teach that, you don’t teach it all at once, you teach a little segment here, and a little segment here and you go back and you have to practice those first few segments before you do the next one and you keep moving forward, right? 

That’s the same concept that I use here which is really if you look at how kindergarten through twelfth grade is done. Is that not the same way of moving a little bit, a little bit… 

But you’re supposed to have positive reinforcement. I don’t think we’re getting that today. Now, the other side of that you mentioned, especially structure at home with the parents. There’s more demand on parents today—both parents working, single parents, broken homes, all of this kind of thing, and some parents aren’t as educated as their kids are. 

So the kids are bringing topics home that the parents just aren’t familiar with. How does a parent engage and provide them with that oversight, that structure, right? How do they become engaged with the kids when they don’t understand the material themselves or they’ve got all these other things going on? 

Well, here again, let’s go back to that concept of being successful in business or building a house or making a cake or whatever—if you have a plan to follow, right? If there is a plan there then the parents have a whole lot more oversight, they have a whole lot more control. They can help their kids to provide that structure and to teach that focus because they do step-by-step-by-step-by-step. 

Then the great thing about that is, Melvin, you’ve probably been involved in this in life and raising your children—you know, a lot of times when they have a parent-teacher conference and the parents sit down with the teachers to talk about the performance of their child, the parents really don’t know what to talk about other than the child having problems. 

ADAMS: Yep, yep. 

GAYNESS: In order to solve problems in society, don’t we do the root-cause analysis? How do you do root-cause analysis with your child if you haven't been engaged with them at home? Right? 

ADAMS: Good point, good point. 

GAYNESS: So this process adds another layer, right? So they can sit down and now communicate—if nothing else, if a child has been doing well up to a certain point and now they got that concept that they can’t really-truly grasp, the parents can go back to the teacher and say, “well we’ve been doing this and he’s been good up to here. We’ve got a problem right here and this is what we have been doing.”

Then that teacher knows, right? So there again it just lays that whole structure, the involvement, the engagement, the positive reinforcement of everything, right? At school, and at home. 

ADAMS: So here’s a question for you. Are study programs best implemented by apartments or schools or both? 

GAYNESS: You know, I used to believe… Now when I really started this whole program, it would have been in the late 80s and early 90s and I truly believed that you know, a study program such as this was best implemented by the parents at home related to homework. Because that’s where the structure is normally lost, right? 

And when you go home, you don’t have a so-called plan or a pathway or whatever. You go home and you gotta read this chapter, you gotta read this paper and take a quiz or answer the questions or whatever there was not. But, under the circumstances with the feedback that I’m getting through a lot of different professional organizations…sales, technology, military … I heard a young lady you were interviewing talking about business, you know? About this people are not prepared to perform their jobs. 

ADAMS: Yeah. 

GAYNESS: So now I’m thinking that maybe we go back. Maybe we teach this plan, right? This method in the schools and reinforce it at home so that you’re tying in all of the ingredients of the materials that you’re giving to these kids—you’re tying it all in with a plan and you build that plan from a very young age (as you stated). 

And rather than learning the program, or the plan that’s multi-leveled, all at one time, you’re adding the layers as they go along so they’re used to using it, right? They’re learning little pieces. The reinforcement by the time they get to junior high and high school the challenges are there or they have an opportunity to take advanced classes or excel in some area. 

Well, guess what? Now they’re only adding one little aspect of it, they’ve got the foundation, right? It’s there. So I believe, in today’s society, it needs to be taught at both levels. Absolutely. 

ADAMS: You know, I think what you were just saying is an important point because, as an example, in going through your material, for somebody who just looks at it and goes through all of your points goes, “wow this is a little overwhelming.” 

But the thing that’s important to understand is, that this is a step-by-step, process-by-process, learning perfect practice so to speak. Here’s another way to put it, learning good habits—creating good habits of study and so that always starts with the basics. And then once the basics are down, then you move to the next level, you move to the next level, you move to the next level. 

And so this is not just something you pick up in a week, this is something that you pick up over time and refine and refine and refine. So it’s an interesting study and I appreciate you sharing it with us. I do believe that the principles of it are right and so that’s why I invited you to share with us and so how can our listeners access your study program? 

GAYNESS: They can go to www.rulesof3studyprogram.com. I’ve got a description there of what the program is and what it entails and then there’s a link. I sell digital formats, actually, on Amazon. Amazon is a well-known platform. 

And recently transitioned that over to an all-digital format, I got away from DVDs because we’re going that way. And they can also reach me through the contact link there on the webpage if they have any questions at all whatsoever I’m here to support and ask questions. 

For parents that have younger kids that are really wanting to start instituting this into their preschool, kindergarten, and younger ages, I’m happy to help them [and] show them how to break that down to those levels, you know and just answer any question that they have. 

To me, it’s very important right now to start developing well-rounded young people who can think for themselves and solve our world’s problems. 

ADAMS: Amen to that. So that website again is www.rulesof3studyprogram.com and for those that watch this on our YouTube channel, we’ll have our team throw that website up on there so you can see it. 

If you’re listening on a blog, then we’ll see how good your memory retention is. www.rulesof3studyprogram.com. Alright, well Dennis it’s been great having you on the show today. I appreciate you joining us and thank you for your own work and helping people learn to focus, learn to retain what they learned, and I just wish you all the best. 

GAYNESS: Thank you very much for having me. It’s been a pleasure. 

ADAMS: I hope you enjoyed this show. And if you did, let me encourage you to like our channel and follow it. You can certainly learn more at our website which is www.nwef.org. The organization is Noah Webster Educational Foundation.