The Unconscious Competence Problem: Thinking Too Much Is Destroying Performance- Dr. Ismael Gallo

Dr. Ismael Gallo and I unpack why young athletes are losing movement fluency and how that loss shows up as injuries, stiffness, and underperformance. We argue for a return to exploration and constraint-led play, then break down how flow-based training rebuilds coordination without chasing perfect mechanics. 
• why free play and movement exploration build athletic problem solving 
• how modern safety, screens, and early specialization reduce movement literacy 
• using constraints and imagined pressure to make games feel easier 
• day-one evaluations that combine medical context with global movement screening 
• why isolated training often fails to transfer to sport performance 
• how nervous system training and developmental patterns restore coordination 
• where technology helps with coaching and feedback without becoming the system 
• variability, consistency, and self-organization as the real “magic sauce” 
• when mechanical fixes matter and how the 80% rule prevents paralysis 
• overcoaching, perfection language, and the anxiety it creates in kids 
• stiffness, mobility, and why flow can matter more than stretching 
• defining flow as smooth transitions between movement patterns 
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Transcript

Why Movement Matters

SPEAKER_00 0:00

So, talk to me about movement. Why aren't athletes as fluent of athletes as they should be at young ages?

SPEAKER_01 0:06

Well, I think, I mean, if we want to get started on a little bit hot topic here, is what we find with young athletes is we're not exploring enough anymore. You know, it's just what what I see, especially in the clinic, is I see a lot of athletes who are very sedentary. So what does that mean? They're sitting around a lot, right? I think also is the opportunities that we had when we were young. I mean, I don't know your generation, but my generation is we all we did was explore movement. You know, we rode bikes, we went out with our friends, we played Little League, we played many games, we played modified games, we played over the line, strikeout. I mean, every day for me, I was never really told to go out and play. That I was actually told to come inside and stop playing. You know, so it was the opposite. You know, where now I feel we're in a generation where we have to, I mean, with my even with my own sons, I have to bug them to get off the iPad, get off the couch, get out there and do something that's movement, that's exploration, get on the playground. And even when I take them to the playground, uh everything is so safe now. You know, back in the day we used to have, I mean, it was dangerous when we're growing up, you know? We'd get monkey bars, but then there'd be slides that were aluminum, it was super hot. It was like a gauntlet every time you went into the playground. Where now everything is there's not much exploration. You know, everything is a little bit lower, everything is really, really safe. Uh, and I mean, I understand safety, but at the end of the day, exploration is about challenges. And I feel like now this generation and youth, they don't get enough movement challenges to even become great problem solvers. So then when we put them in sports, which is the ultimate test, right? They end up either getting injured or underperforming, and then we get mad at them because they're not doing what we used to do naturally.

SPEAKER_00 1:46

You know, it's funny. I was just having this conversation, I forget who it was with, but we were talking about the differences between youth now and then even when I was uh a kid. So my generation, you know, I'm 30 now, or about to turn 30, and we were probably the generation that just started to switch, where you started to introduce video games, iPhones, smartphones, things of that nature that become distractions. But even growing up, like we were always outside. I remember one of my best friend's house growing up. His house had had woods in the back. And what we did was we built a field of dreams. We built a tree house. There was this little river creek that we would go and we would we created a swing to swing into and jump and swim and do all these different things. And it was so much more fun as a kid then to be able to go and do all these different things. We played back, we played, you know, uh street basketball all the time. We played backyard football. We played all these different games, and we were outside 24-7, and really we would only come inside to eat or sleep. And then we were back outside playing night games. And I just don't see that to your point as much in this current generation. And from a development standpoint, it does hinder them when it comes to sport performance. One of my favorite stories is Kyrie Irving, talked about how he got so good at spinning the basketball off the backboard, is his backboard growing up had a hole in it. And so he had to learn how to spin it off of certain corners of the backboard because he couldn't put it off the middle because there was a big hole in it. And just that unique, you know, skill set that we're able to build by doing random things. I just, I just, I'm not sure kids are getting that these days.

SPEAKER_01 3:34

Well, I guarantee you they're not getting that because I'm I'm right in the mix right now, working with youth. And my biggest thing is is for them is always it's we just introduced new exploration, new movement, new challenges for them. And the the remedial stuff that we're doing now, back in the day, we would have laughed at it. Right? I mean, we we have a thing even on our app where we have them get up from the ground without using their hands. I mean, you and I would have been able to do that no sweat. Now we got kids that can't figure out, they can't self-organize their body to even get up without using their hands. Their patterns at this point are so underdeveloped that they're struggling with moves that my two-year-old was able to do, no problem. But we get nine, 10, 12, 15-year-olds, even some college guys that have lost that flow and that movement. It's so interesting. And it's interesting that you mentioned that Kyrie story because I'll tell you how I learned how to hit. Because I played professional baseball with the Dodgers for five years in the minor leagues, and I never had a hitting coach. The way I learned how to hit was I grew up in very broke. So we didn't have access to a facility. I didn't have any new bat. I was always using secondhand gloves, but I lived next to the railroad tracks. And my pops bought me one of those big red plastic bats, and every day I would go out there on the tracks and hit rocks with it. Hours and hours and hours. Throw a rock up, hit it. I've even learned like certain rocks, you can hit them further or another just based on their shape. So I used to look at the rock and look like I gotta hit this one with a little bit more backspin, a little bit sidespin, because that's gonna make it carry more. But that's that was a constraint that I had, right? Is I didn't have a facility. Now I feel like we have all these facilities, we have all this technology, but the kids just sit around and wait for another 10 kids to take their swings. And they're doing a whole lot of sitting around and not enough exploring and getting the reps in, uh, especially natural reps, you know? When I was out there on the railroad tracks, I didn't have a coach telling me anything. It's not like my dad was going out there and criticizing every swing and facing my mechanics every single time. I was just figuring out how to hit that rock the furthest I can. And also I had fun out there, man. It was fun to go out there and explore and play a game inside my head as like, oh, it's bases loaded. Bottom of the ninth, you know, I was a Dodger fan. So it was one of those, you know, bottom of the ninth, uh, this pitcher's going, you know, Nolan Ryan's on the mount. I'm gonna go in and take it, take it, take this guy deep. Uh, I feel like kids now, uh, the environment they're growing up in is so different that it's it's constraining them a little bit too much. Uh and it's it's multifactorial, you know. Uh we we just can't blame it on the kids. I don't think we can just blame it on the parents. I don't think we could blame it on facility owners. I think it's it's one of those things where there has to be just a systems change.

SPEAKER_00 6:12

Yeah, it's a culmination of different factors all coming together to create this windstorm that is negatively affecting young athletes. And the part that I really resonates with me in what you just said is the you're putting yourself mentally in certain situations. Bottom of the ninth, two outs, bases loaded. I gotta hit this rock wherever. And now, to be fair, I did not do that with rocks, but my buddies and I, we would paint or we would draw a square on a brick wall that simulated the strike zone, and we'd have a tennis ball and a bat, and we would be significantly closer than whatever the standard distance is from pitcher to home plate, and we would just be firing fastballs past each other, putting ourselves in situations to see who could, you know, theoretically do better. And again, the there's certain things that are really impactful from a young age in learning to put yourself in those environments in your mind, you're in those pressure situations. They don't feel as unfamiliar when you step into it in real life. Because if you can do it when it's hard or harder, you make the circumstances harder in your practice scenario. When you get in the game, it's actually a breath of fresh air because you feel prepared and you feel like that moment might actually be easier based on conditions in the environment.

SPEAKER_01 7:32

Yeah, I mean, you hit the down the head. You know, I think specificity of training has been one of those things that for now we're we're starting to ignore a lot. You know, we're creating conditions that are way too easy for kids, you know. And the reason for that too is because I'm also a coach, so I coach my sons. And sometimes when a kid doesn't move well, you're forced into conditions that are real easy because they have no chance at anything that's harder. Just and it's all movement driven, right? If you don't have fundamental movements that you should be able to do naturally, if you don't have that foundation, we cannot challenge you with all this chaos. Like it doesn't work that way. You know, you need to have the fundamentals to be able to explore higher level movements. And that's what I find now is that kids just don't even have the fundamental movements. And for the last five years, I've been working so hard just training the fundamentals of movement and athleticism. And uh, the cool thing about it is that for us, like as human beings, like we were pre-sequenced already to be pretty athletic. Like the reason we became who we are as human beings in general has been is that we have this nervous system and we're already conditioned. And if you stimulate it right, then we're able to really re-engrain those patterns back into young athletes. So it's not one of those things where I think a lot of people see us as fixed objects, right? Like if you're not athletic, you're never gonna be athletic. In reality, you could take a kid that hasn't been exploring movement, and as soon as you start exploring movement with them, they will become very uh a little bit more coordinated, they'll have a little bit better flow. And the cool thing about it, at that point, then we could do exactly what you were doing, which is put a box, start chucking balls at them, and then have them figure it out, you know, and just have them figure it out and go, like, hey, how are you gonna hit a high fastball? You know, and the way you're gonna hit a high fastball is literally by facing the high fastball, hopefully in a situation where it's fun, but also challenging, and it's also putting some pressure on you as far as like, hey, it's bases loaded, bro. Like you're either gonna hit it or you're not gonna hit it, you know?

Free Play And Real-World Constraints

SPEAKER_00 9:30

So when someone walks in day one with you, how are you creating this experimentation flow day one with someone who may not be as athletic or is super athletic? What does the day one look like with you?

SPEAKER_01 9:43

For me, day one usually because I'm a physical therapist. So as a physical therapist, I always want to look at things first from the like the medical aspect of it. Like, is there a type of injury that you're having? Right? And then once we have that that feedback from what injury you're having, then we're able to backtrack and go, like, why are we getting injured in this area? For me, like, for example, I see a lot of shoulders and elbows that are getting injured. And then from there, we're just trying to figure out all right, is there a cause that's causing this elbow that's putting extra stress on it as far as movement and global movements? Once we get that established, then at that point, then I'm gonna do an evaluation. It's gonna be very typical, like a physical therapy evaluation where I'm looking at joints, muscles, muscle length, the basics of just fundamentals of uh of any evaluation. But I think where we're different and where we created the different things, we look at movement a little bit more global. So we do what was called the global movement screening. So we're actually looking at you getting up from the ground and doing these global movements, developmental patterns that actually give us way more information than the typical physical therapy evaluation. You know, because the physical therapy evaluation gives you segments that you look at. So you look at the shoulder, then you look at the elbow, then you look at the hip. And everything is separate, and you're just kind of trying to puzzle, like create an answer just looking at a puzzle separate. The global movements and the screening that we do give you an entire picture of how it actually flows together, how they're sequencing, how they're able to control their body and actually manipulate energy to be able to perform these movements. And for me, that is a sport, right? Like in baseball, football, soccer, whatever it is, you're not gonna sit there and the shoulder's not gonna work on its own. The shoulder is gonna be connected to your left foot, your left knee, your left hip, your core. So for us, it's always just been more about global movements. So that's why a typical first day for us is let's do the typical evaluation, but also let's get into these deeper movements that are gonna just really drive athleticism and movement on the field.

SPEAKER_00 11:37

So you're looking at it from more of like a holistic point of view and less from like an isolated injury or pain standpoint. You're looking at, hey, from the whole body of work where we're having these inefficiencies that we can correct maybe from a foot to your shoulder or hip to your shoulder that may be the actual, you know, root cause of the problem.

SPEAKER_01 11:56

Yes, 100%. And I think that's that's the biggest difference. Because what I see from a lot of just amateur coaches or trainers, they usually look at our problems in isolation. And for me, I've been battling the last 10 years to go like, hey, we don't function in isolation. The body does not function in isolation, the nervous system doesn't function in isolation, we don't do anything in isolation out on the baseball field or football field or basketball field. Then why are we training these athletes in isolation and then hoping that it would transfer to the global movements? Because I did that for years. I mean, I've been a PT since 2010. And first five, six years, I was very traditional, uh just working on elbows, working on shoulders, and then sending people back out on the field, going like, all right, we're done, you're ready to play. And then six months later, they were coming to me. So eventually that's when I started to realize like there's there's a bigger problem here. And then I saw my colleagues, I saw the whole profession of physical therapy and even orthopedic doctors, everybody was just functioning under, like just looking at it in isolation. But for us, like holistic approach has given us great results. And then me also just being an ex-baseball player, I always think back to the skill and what I had to do to hit a baseball. And I go, like, there's no way me just fixing this shoulder is gonna help me hit a baseball. Like, I actually have to fix that, fix the sequencing, I got to fix the head control, I got to fix how the hit works with the head, how it's all connected, I got to fix the entire flow. And that's why we called our company baseball flows. Because it was one of those where it was like, no, we're gonna do flow training, but we're gonna do it from a very holistic approach. But we also have the detail part of it too, right? So we work at it from different angles on like, hey, if you're having a big global movement issue, uh, we also have the skills to be able to look at it in in separate parts to figure out or is there something we could do on that end, whether it be massage, stretching, point mobilization, to be able to really attack it, not just also everything global, but also being to able to dial it in, which I think is also another big thing that I see.

SPEAKER_00 13:54

What was the evolution of your research that led you from the isolation form of training to the global, whole global or holistic form? That like what was that evolution? What was that transition like where you finally came to realize, like, hey, this is a whole body thing, not just an isolated issue?

Practice Pressure Builds Game Readiness

SPEAKER_01 14:13

Well, it if for me, when I first started looking at movement, I just started looking outside of the US and going, like, okay, how's Brazil? How's Brazil looking at movement? Are they training isolation or are they training more flows? Are they training like natural movements or are they training this isolated like mechanical model that we have in the US? And they weren't. They were training a lot more flows. And then I looked at Japan and I started looking at like, even now you see it now, right? It's so crazy because everybody looks at Yamamoto and I'm like, man, I've been looking at this stuff for the last 10 years, you know? So it's one of those where you're going, like, even Japan, the way they look at it, they they don't look at it in isolation. They look like everything is connected, mind, body. And then you look at like even the Czech Republic. Like, there's this, there's this uh training that came out of their dynamic neuromuscular stabilization system. And that was one of the biggest things for me. It comes out of Prague, that really changed the game, as far as like, man, we're looking at it more from a mechanical model and not from a nervous system model. So the nervous system, here's the cool thing about the nervous system, it's everywhere, right? Like it has to go everywhere, all the way from your left ear, all the way down to your big toe. Like the nervous system is in charge of everything. And there's really nothing else in your body that has to control that much real estate. So for me, it was just almost like a no-brainer when I saw that training out of Prague. And what they were doing that was way different than everybody else, that even in Brazil and in Japan, was that they were looking at it from developmental patterns. So they were actually studying babies and they were looking at how kids move and how they develop movement and like what develops first in a child, right? Like their core, not their extremities, not their elbows, not their fingers, right? Is the core has to first stabilize, and then from there, everything else will work around it. So that for me was a that was 2015, I think, when they took the first course in DNS, and that was a game changer. Uh, but I'll tell you this, Colin, I wish it would have been one of those where it's just like a light bulb moment. It was like I took the course and then I just didn't get it. And it took me forever to finally go, like, man, that DNS course was so right. Like I've been trying to like hammer my head against a wall trying to figure it out when it was right right here the whole time. You know, I had the booklet in my closet, I brought it out. I think it was like 2020, and then I just started diving in. And the cool thing about it too was that my kids were young. So I had a two-year-old, I had a three-year-old at home. So it was interesting because then I would just do the movements with them and I would just see how they would move. And I would go, like, wow, that's crazy. Like my two, three-year-old is way better than these 12-year-olds that I'm seeing in the clinic. I was like, what's the disconnect? What's the disconnect between three years old and 12 years old? And then that's when I got more into the sociology of it, and I got into like, well, guess what? We start sitting at six years old, we start sitting in the classroom. At six, seven years old, kids are getting coached now, overcoached. They're getting coached into this mechanical model. And are we training athleticism out of these children before they even hit 10? And it was just that was the evolution. It was.

SPEAKER_00 17:13

I think about it in terms of why are is it a cultural thing? Like from a US standpoint that we're so mechanical versus some of these other places. Is there is our system wrong in like why aren't we adapting some of these other movement patterns that other nations have?

SPEAKER_01 17:32

And here's the thing like when I look at things, I look at the US model and I never think wrong or right. I just think different. Right? Because I think there's a lot of positives to what we do. You know, we're able to develop a lot of great athletes. We're we're able to really dig into it and really get a lot of information from what it is we do with technology and looking at it from a mechanical model. I think the biggest thing is that we have to think a little bit different in the sense of we have to incorporate the global movements. We have to incorporate this, we don't have to throw out everything we do, right? But I think at this point we can't be so heavy on the mechanical model, which has been historically what got us to this point where all these injuries are happening and we just keep hammering away into this mechanical model. We have to introduce something that's a little bit different, a little bit tweak on what we're doing. But a lot of it too comes from, if you just think about historically in the US, like we had the industrial revolution, right? So the industrial revolution led to like assembly lines. So, like, how did we start building cars? So we look at humans like we look at cars. It's just one mechanical model. And we just use that same model we used for the Industrial Revolution to manufacture. Now we're just using that same model for human beings. And sorry to tell you, like, we're not cars, right? We're organisms. We're organisms, man. So it's one of those things where we gotta look at it from an organism that's able to adapt and change. And the stimulation is not a car because cars, yeah, you're with a car, you can build it separate. Like you can build the engine one place and you can build the tires another place, transmission somewhere else, and then eventually put it together and it'll function. That's not how human beings work, man. Like you have to work with the entire being all at once, and you got to start to develop that. But it's not as hard as it is as people think. You know, it's not as hard. Like our movements are very simple. You know, when you go global, you don't have to be doing these crazy movements and like these animal flows and like these backflips. It's all very basic neurological movement. It's just developed in sequence, kind of how we do on our app.

SPEAKER_00 19:35

I had this conversation with a with a group of buddies. I love so I'm a big soccer fan. And there's for whatever reason, every now and then this conversation pops up, and I'm sure it'll pop up during the World Cup. If the best athletes in the US played soccer, we'd be the best soccer, you know, country in the world. And obviously, it's not that simple. And uh interestingly, interestingly enough, you brought up Brazil. I'm like, you watch the way that you know the Brazilian national team plays and that the typical Brazilian style of football is, it seems to have a an evolutionary component to it, to where all they do all the time is play soccer. And some of that is passed down through you know genetic adaptation of from father, mother to son. And the way the and style that they play is just so unique that even if we put our best athletes in soccer in the US, they would still have a problem playing against some of these nations that have been just focused solely on soccer for you know hundreds of years. And I'd be curious to hear, maybe, and it's probably not your expertise, but just in general, am I on pattern there with just the different styles of training that have been absorbed over time?

SPEAKER_01 20:45

Yeah, I think, I mean, I think there's there's some truth to it, right? If you go like, if we just took the best of the best, maybe we could develop a super team, like a super soccer team if we just left all the other sports. But I'll tell you this the likelihood of that happening is probably not true because we'll mess it up with our training. Right? We will mess it up with our training. If you put LeBron James in a soccer uniform or whoever it is right now, and go like, I'm gonna put uh Tyreek Hill in a soccer uniform, we're gonna get so mechanical with that guy as far as his kicking, his running, everything he does, that we're gonna train the soccer and the flow that you need to be able to create a goal, right? Just to get a goal, like just the create creative movement that you need to be able to do to do that at a high level, you know, at the World Cup level, we will train that out of them. We will, I guarantee you. We will not let them flow and let them move. But we if we send Tyreek Hill to Brazil, that kid would be killing it, right? Just with their training and the way they do and the little mini games they play, and just the constraints and the way they train in their environment is just so fluid. You know, it's just one of those things where for us is we gotta just add that fluidity and that freedom for them to move, but also keep the constraints that we. Have right, like the technology is great, but the trade, like the technology is gonna inform you how good your flow is, it doesn't create flow. And I think right now what we're doing is we're using technology to try to create something different, and that's the we're a little bit backwards with it, right? We're like the technology is like the system now, but tech is not can't be the system, it's just informing us of our outcomes. So if we just look at it that way, where we're going like, hey, tech is great to gather information, but it's not going to be the process. The process always has to go through freedom of motion, through figuring out this problem, that problem, movement problem, uh challenges, right?

SPEAKER_00 22:38

Speaking of fluidity, I was watching some videos of some of the athletes that you work with, and they do move super smooth, particularly younger athletes I'm watching. I'm like, that is super smooth and not what I'm accustomed to seeing with these athletes. How have you used technology to inform you and then create the adaptations necessary without the technology being the system?

SPEAKER_01 22:59

Well, for us, the cool thing that we don't get too tech heavy on our app, right? A lot of it is more analog your movement. We're creating more of like cues that they'll watch a video of me explaining it, but I give them the freedom to flow and move. The way we leverage technology was we got all this training to them through tech. So through the app, I mean, I train kids that are in Minnesota, ICE, doesn't matter. They're training in their living room. You know, I got kids training in Florida, Minnesota, all the way up to Canada. I mean, we're all over the place. That's how we're able to leverage technology. Another thing, the way we leverage technology is we do a movement screen on every athlete. So they upload their movements every month. They send us a video. And through that video, we're able to give them some feedback on how they're flowing, on their movements. Also, for them, they're able to see their before and after. So for athletes, I mean, movement is one of those things that uh most people, especially if you've been in sports for a while, like we're all fairly decent at looking at movement. Like you could tell, calling, right? When you see a guy walking on the football field or baseball field, you're going like, man, that guy could ball. He hasn't run a football yet, he hasn't thrown a football, he hasn't done anything. When you look at that kid walk, you're already going, like, man, he's a pretty good athlete. And he hasn't done anything athletic yet, right? So I usually tell people, I was like, we're all pretty good at looking at movement and looking at our people flow. I think for us, it's it's the cool thing about it is that it could be trained, but for us, that's how we're using technology, is way more on like just visual feedback for the athlete. But we don't use it too much as far as like, oh, we want you to hit these numbers and we're leading with that tech part of it.

SPEAKER_00 24:34

Is there a difference in how you approach an older athlete versus a younger athlete, or is it still pretty much the same?

SPEAKER_01 24:41

It's very similar. It's very similar in the sense that our developmental patterns are basically very familiar or very uh similar to how we're gonna flow. You know, like I usually tell people like no one gets up from the ground backwards, right? No one gets up in different weird patterns. And if they do, we give them the freedom to go, like, okay, we'll explore that movement, see if it could be smooth. But for the most part, older athletes, younger athletes are gonna explore very similar movements. I usually tell people here, and then I'll hit on another point, is we try to create these individualized like programs for players, right? But usually the individualized part of it should be coming from the player flowing and getting challenged and them self-organizing their body. And then their adaptations are gonna be individual to their at to their athleticism and their movements. I think sometimes what we try to do is we'll do an evaluation on a player. And we go, like, man, Colin, I'm gonna take a look at you, and then I'm gonna create an individual plan for you. And usually that individual plan is gonna put you in a box because I already have a box of what a great athlete looks like to me. So anything I do with you is gonna just lead you into that box of this is how you should move. And for me, that's one of the biggest things that I see with coaches is that they're creating individual plans, but the constraint of trying to get them this individualism and this like package that's just for them is getting us in a lot of trouble because I used to do that. You know, I was putting athletes in a box of how I thought they should be moving or how they they should be actually solving the movement problems. But over time I realized that every individual has their own characteristics, and we should give them the freedom through training to be able to develop that on their own.

SPEAKER_00 26:20

So, what is the magic sauce? How do you remove the constraint while embracing individualism without putting anyone in a specific box?

SPEAKER_01 26:28

I think there is no magic sauce. I wish there was, man. I wish there was no magic sauce.

SPEAKER_00 26:34

You can't fix me over here.

SPEAKER_01 26:36

Uh here's the thing is is I I usually tell people, I was like, there's no magic sauce other than consistency and exploring, man. It's you you have to be allow yourself and allow your athletes to be challenged movement-wise and to explore. You know, and I think consistently exploring and actually figuring it out is probably the magic sauce, which is like this is a process. This process is going to be a little bit chaotic, and it's not gonna be as perfect and as clean as everybody thinks it should be. But at the end of the day, you're gonna be a better athlete, you're gonna be a better player. Because you're nervous.

SPEAKER_00 27:08

You can implement some of those like chaos, like the chaos I frequently talk about on this show. You can't be a conditional athlete, you can't train for perfect conditions, you can only train for chaos. And I have my own way of doing it. I obviously I'm not competing anymore. I compete in my own way and in different things. But how are you introducing new adversaries in this free-flow movement? What are you doing to challenge these athletes?

Day One Movement Screen Process

SPEAKER_01 27:33

Usually the challenge point is just different movements. So, variability of challenges is the key. Because sometimes, and we do this, I mean, I do it in my own my own life, right? Is I have like five favorite exercises that I want to master. And if I I just feel like, hey, if I get really good at these five movements, I'm gonna be uh be able to flow well. In reality, for us, we have like about 300 baseball flows that they experience that they uh explore on our app. So through variability of movement and variability of challenge, we're able to create very dynamic athletes. But a lot of it has to do with, I mean, if you look at our flows, some of them are really, really complex, but some of them are also very simple. You know, we believe also in simplicity, but also the challenge point for you, for example, right? When we do your movement screen, we might go like, hey, guess what? The remedial flows might be a little too hard for you. But when you try them and you go, like, actually, Doc, these are actually pretty challenging. Like, I perceive this challenge to be seven out of ten, because you'll give us a grade when you're on the app on how hard you feel it is. And if you're perceiving a challenge to be seven out of ten, then we just continue with those trainings, and every two weeks we change it. So every two weeks you get a five new, five or six new movements you're gonna be exploring. And this goes out for the entire year. Every two weeks, five, six new movements. Every two weeks, five, six new movements. Uh, we have movements also that involve a baseball. So we'll do like athletic throws where you're flowing on the ground and coming up. Like a lot of the things you see on our social media, a lot of those flows are on the app where playing players are actually training those type of movements.

SPEAKER_00 29:03

And you get guys to actually do some of that stuff on their own. That's impressive.

SPEAKER_01 29:07

Well, I'll tell you this, Colin, is I feel like players intuitively understand what's going to transfer to the field.

unknown 29:14

Right?

SPEAKER_01 29:14

Like I hear a lot of people go, like, my players are bored. They're bored. They say they're always bored with the training. And I was like, yeah, because your training is boring and it's probably not transferring to they don't understand how it's gonna help them better, be better players. Right. And for me, that was always the biggest key. Even when I played baseball, the worst thing I wanted to do was something that I knew was not gonna help me hit 95 miles an hour. Right? If they were giving me a uh anything, any cue, any kind of training, I was like, how's this gonna help me like hit this, figure out this guy, man? Like, I gotta be able to hit 97 tonight, and you're having me do A, B, C, and D, where I intuitively went into challenges where I was like, oh, I could see how putting the machine up to 100 might be helpful. I could see how me challenging myself in this soft house to be able to hit the ball 10-line drive straight at the shortstop and just stay zoned in, I could see how that could be helpful. Right. So I was never bored because I always just saw the connection. And for us, that's the biggest thing is when you get buy-in from the athletes, is when they're able to see that connection between what I'm doing now and what I see the greatest athletes in the world do.

SPEAKER_00 30:19

When does the transition to using some mechanical techniques, when is that beneficial?

SPEAKER_01 30:24

Well, I think it's beneficial when it's needed, I guess. I mean, it's one of those where everybody, every situation is different. You know, like I believe a lot in in, like you would say massage is a mechanical technique, right? Where you're going, like, okay, we're just trying to affect the mechanical components of this muscle. And we're just trying to change it. So I think that's a great one. Another thing, too, is I mean, mechanical techniques, I mean, I don't think we should throw them out, but it's very sporadic how you use it. And I think also you should have your give yourself a little bit like a Goldilocks zone anytime you look at mechanical techniques where you're going like, we don't need perfect. Like we don't need 45 degrees, 35 degrees, 25 degrees, just like we used to. I mean, I'll tell you this. When I first started, it was 25 degrees of knee flexion on the front side, was ideal for every pitcher. So I would try to get every pitcher to land with 25 degrees of knee bend on that front knee. And then as they started to rotate, they would get to zero. So everybody was 25 degrees at landing, zero at throwing. Is that beneficial? Heck no, because when you look at the greatest pitchers now, like they all do it so differently. But is there a Goldilocks zone, right? Is there a guy that's landing at 110 degrees, totally bent and just staying bent? There's probably not in the big leagues a guy that's landing. So there's a range, right? Where you can look at mechanics, but give yourself that bandwidth of like it doesn't have to be perfect. It just has to be, I always say I have like an 80% rule. If it looks 80% good, keep flowing, man. 80% good's good. Just keep doing it, keep doing it, keep doing it, keep solving problems, keep going, keep going. 80% good. Because what happens is as coaches, we look for mechanics to be a hundred percent good. And now we're going like, hold on, hold on, Colin. Well, don't take another swing. Oh, hold on, right? You're trying to learn, right? Your nervous system is trying to figure it out. And all you're gonna hear after every swing is like, hey, oh, hold on, hold on. Let's go look at that video real quick. Another swing. Oh, hold on, hold on. Look at this right here. Look at this elbow, man. It's not, it's not, you know? And it's like, that's not how baseball works, man. You can look at a hundred swings all the way from Tatis, all the way from, I mean, you name it, Mookie Betts, Otani, right? You can look at a hundred swings, you're never gonna find the same angles in a hundred swings.

SPEAKER_00 32:37

You're not. I always talk about the unspoken problem and the total analytical mechanical approaches, the overthinking that comes with it. And I can fall into this trap as well because I am very analytical. I am very set on like problem solving. I see a problem, I have to solve it. But the reality is what that does psychologically is it creates like an undue pressure and it creates an overthinking mechanism to where you're like, oh, if I am not in this specific spot when the pitcher is about to release the ball, then I'm not, I have no chance of getting a hit. And it causes you to overthink and create this self-doubt. Whereas, like you say, in free play, which I do a good job again, in my I'm not like a personal trainer, so I'm not training anybody with it. But in my own world, throwing in this free play and these different body movements to get my body in different positions and used to coming in and out of uncomfortable or new spots, you don't have to think about it in the game or in competition because you've put your body in so many different scenarios that it doesn't feel uncomfortable anymore when you're in a new spot on the field. That's why I love the comparison between training of athletes, because I had a sports psychologist on here and he was talking about, again, the importance of training and free play for the psychological aspects, but he talks about like the guys in the DR, because he works specifically with baseball guys. He's like, look at the guys who come up from the Dominican Republic. He's like, those guys are hitting bottle caps with broomsticks. He's like, they're playing on uneven, dirt fields, getting all kinds of brutal hops, and they just have to learn how to deal with it. They have to learn how to move, they have to learn how to get in front of things. And the only thing that they're used to are things going completely unplanned. He's like, that is why they have such a natural component because through development over time of just being in these unorthodox scenarios that they build such a robust skill set that eventually just playing baseball feels very natural to them and it's more like play than it is like work.

SPEAKER_01 34:41

Yeah, and then if you just think about motor learning, right? If we just think about the motor learning part of it, where you're trying to get to is unconscious competence.

SPEAKER_00 34:48

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 34:49

Unconscious competence, 100%, right? And what we're doing now is we're trying to create conscious competence where it's really hard to think and be athletic. Like you can you cannot consciously think yourself through a movement problem the whole time, especially in the game. You might be able to do it in practice and you might be able to do it in a controlled environment, but once it gets to the game, the last thing you want to do is be thinking because it's gonna block your athleticism. So, like you mentioned in the DR, they're creating that unconscious competence all the time. And they're they're doing it through natural feedback, through natural movement, and they don't, like I mentioned, they don't have that coach that's constantly critiquing every little movement that's creating this like anxiety. Like this is what I see with a lot of kids. Like, I I train, I my son's seven, so we have seven, eight, nine-year-olds, right? I see the anxiety in their face sometimes when we overcoach them, right? They feel like at seven, eight, nine, ten years old they have to be perfect, right? And now they're they're doing things that is totally unnatural, and it's totally more driven by pressure and anxiety, especially in the games, that you're going like just let it flow, man. Like it's okay, just have fun. Like this is a game, we're playing. So I'm constantly telling them during the game, like, hey, let's play, we're playing, play, play baseball, let's go, we're playing. And every single one of them is so relieved that, like, oh, I just get to play. Like, cool, let me just go out there and play then. Versus, get your elbow up, get your elbow up, Billy. Billy, get your elbow up. You know, it's one of those where it's like, it's so pressure driven, or like they miss the ball and they're coming in. Hey, you gotta get the glove down. You gotta get, you know, you gotta be perfect. That's what they hear, right? They're hearing and they're listening to coaches very intently on our wording. And what they're hearing is you're not perfect, and we need you to be perfect. And at seven, nine, ten, eleven, ten years old, even as adults, right? Even as adults, last thing you want to hear is for someone that's expecting perfection, because that that really messes with your flow and your athleticism. So I like, I like a lot of that thinking that they do in the DR. But for us, I actually feel like in the US, we could actually even do it better. Like, I'll be honest with you. I I think we could actually embrace a lot of those movements and those flows and just the natural part of it. But I think with the tech and everything else that we have that we've already built on, I think there's it's gotta be a combination. And I think right now what's happening is we have like binary things we always want to do, right? It's oh, mechanical facts, let's do it all flow. Or flow's the best, let's do it this way, right? Where you're going like, no, the combination is probably to marry those. Uh, and that's been the cool thing about what I do is that I've experienced it all from the baseball field to the science to the American way to the Dominican way to the Adrian Beltrade. I mean, I played with Adrian Beltrape, so I saw his flow, I saw his movements, you know. So it's one of those where you're going, like, I've I've seen it all, and I feel like that's where collaborations come in, and that's where I get excited. Where I'm going like a lot of these things should just be collaboration. We should not be throwing valuable information that we've already had gathered from years and years of training in the US, and we shouldn't also just let that go and then go into a different model uh that doesn't fit what we already have here.

SPEAKER_00 38:05

Coaching to me is an art, and everything you just articulated is incredibly art style coaching. When you get some of those younger athletes, I mean, even some of the older athletes, how are you making corrections without showing or without demanding perfection, but just saying, hey, this type of movement or this little tweak can help enhance performance without them feeling like, hey, we are demanding perfection.

SPEAKER_01 38:29

Man, that's that's that is definitely the billion-dollar question, right? Because I feel like every athlete's gonna be a little bit different on how you approach it. You know, like I'll give you an example. I had a girl that's uh she pitches uh for a D1 uh pitcher. She was having shoulder pain, so she was having like a thoracic outlet syndrome. Her pec minor was super tight, but her mechanics, you could just tell that she was not hip hinging. You go, like, you're giving yourself no space. Like the hip hinge, everything we do did from the flows and everything, all the movements, her hip hinging and her abdominal stabilization wasn't there. Every movement, it was almost sticking out like a sore thumb. So for her, the cue was fairly simple. It was just like, hey, how about you sit sit sit into it, stay hinged as you throw? And she was such a great athlete that she picked it up like that. Like last month, she was like the whack player of the uh pitcher of the of the month. And within like two sessions, she had already figured out, okay, how do I hip hinge? All right, that's it. That's my movement. I'm giving myself space. And she was able to master it like within one or two sessions. When you're dealing with a younger athlete who's not as mature, for me, it's always just been driven more through the flows and the variability that we discussed earlier. It's get on the app, learn how to move. Naturally, if you look at a three, four-year-old, they're gonna hip hinge pretty well. And I know I'm gonna get some people who go like, oh, they got a bigger head, so you know, the bigger head and racial and this and that. That's why kids move so well. No, they move so well because we're meant to move well. Like that is how we evolved, right? That is how we became this being that's upright. That's how we solve problems. That's how we even became more intelligent than everybody else, is that we were able to explore different activities because we were upright. So just think about our nervous system is meant for these movements. I think our environment has really just taken athleticism and it's just uh really taken it out of the kids.

SPEAKER_00 40:22

How do you work with your tighter athletes who are a little bit more stiff in the hips or in the joints and aren't as flexible? How do you begin to increase mobility in those key areas?

Nervous System Training Versus Mechanics

SPEAKER_01 40:34

Usually mobility is an interesting one because I I've I've had this discussion because I feel like a lot of people, when they look at our app and they look at our training, they call it mobility training. And I was like, we're not mobility training because for me, mobility training is very mechanical. Like I could get mobility in your hip, no problem. But now, is am I getting being responsible for that mobility? So for me, when I try to gain mobility or am I trying to gain more range of motion, we do it through the nervous system. We just go like, hey, through your flows, you're gonna gain movement and you're gonna gain freedom of motion, but we're gonna gain it through like coordinated flows. We're gonna gain it through sequencing, we're gonna gain it through strength, we're gonna gain it through all these things that you need in that range of motion. So we're always looking at it from we're not just trying to create more like range of motion just for the sake of it. We're trying to get that athlete to not be so stiff through more of a global movement flow. Another thing, too, is that usually stiff athletes, usually for them, they become stiff for a reason. And a lot of it is like, well, the way you're exploring or the way you're training is what's causing your stiffness. So then how are we able to really just introduce an entire different way of training and a whole different way of really stimulating your nervous system where all that tension just kind of goes away naturally?

SPEAKER_00 41:49

I'm super curious in this because I, although an explosive athlete, was always very stiff. I changed direction very well. I could get in and out of brakes, I could jump high, I could run fast, but I'm very stiff and it has caused to at least what I believe some injury concerns and injury problems. I've had five knee surgeries. Now, granted, that comes with the sport too, you know, torn labor and broken bones everywhere, but some of that is due to stiffness, multiple vulsion fractures. I'd be curious, in my old age of 30, how can I begin to increase my range of motion through some of this nervous system training that you're articulating? Part of the reason, too, I'm asking is my daughter's four years old. She doesn't do any type of training. We try and do all kinds of free play, but she's tight in her hamstrings that I'm starting to notice very similar to how I am. She's a very good athlete. And I don't want her to go through the same injury patterns and stiffness that I went through.

SPEAKER_01 42:47

Yeah, I think stiffness, I mean, if you really look at it, I think genetically some of us are gonna be stiffer than others, right? I think genetically some of them are gonna be even hypermobile. So that's what we found with a lot of even baseball players. Like hypermobility and being really, really lax is like a hack for baseball players. Like you're not gonna find an athlete who's in the big leagues that doesn't have hypermobility. Like you just won't make it. You're not gonna throw 100 without being really, really mobile in certain areas. But also, we do get stiff athletes that are in the big leagues. And for us, it's always just been like, well, you're gonna do it through movement flows. Because you want stiffness in certain areas. Like we don't, no one is like doughy, right? Like just super mushy. You're not. You gotta have some stiffness and some spring to it. So for me, stiffness has never really been one of those things where I'm going, like, oh, you got tight hamstrings, so we're gonna have to stretch the heck out of your hamstrings because we want this kind of hamstring length. It's always just been, can you do the flows? Like when you're doing these movements, right, that are very natural. If you could do those right, I'm not even worried about hamstring tightness. That's like the least of my worries. I'm more worried about can you do this movement flow? Can you get through these movements? Because these movements are the same movement. You're going to do to hit a baseball, to throw a baseball, to dive and come up and throw. I'll tell you this that Trey Turner, right? If you look at Trey Turner, I guarantee you he's got a stiff muscle somewhere. But when you look at his flow, you're like, I don't care if he has tight hamstring. Like, doesn't matter, right? What I'm worried about is how's his flow? How's this movement? How's he able to get up from the ground? How's he able to turn his body? Is he coordinated when he does that? Is the sequencing well? Because if you can do that, then all the stiffness and all the stretches and everything else you're doing, sometimes it almost becomes detrimental for some athletes, right? Because we've also seen them now where you look at research and you're going like, back in the day, it was like, well, you pulled the hamstring, go ahead and stretch it. Stretch a pulled hamstring all the time. And now they're going, like, no, that's actually a strength problem. You actually have to, it's a weak hamstring. It's not an inflexible hamstring, right? So now we got to do more eccentric uh training and all these other types of training for it. Versus like old school, which was like, if you have a tight hamstring, stretch it until you can't stretch it anymore. Because we watch, I think we watched too many. Remember Jean-Claude Van Damme when he was trying to do the splits on the trees back in those 80s movies? Yep. I I think I think we're still thinking like that, man, where it's like you got to be able to do the splits where with some athletes you're going like it's not realistic. And we don't have to do that. It's just one of those things for us that we just we try to bring your individual care characteristics and keep them at strengths and not think that everything that you have that's not like everybody else is a weakness.

SPEAKER_00 45:24

Well, how do you describe flow? I I I should have asked this earlier, but in your own words, like what is the definition of For me, flow if you look at it this way, right?

SPEAKER_01 45:35

That it's the ability to transition from one movement pattern to the next. And for me, that's been our biggest thing. And I had this thing where on Twitter, that's kind of what grew my account. It's I say train transitions, not positions. And once coaches heard that, they were like, oh shoot, I've been training them to get into certain positions, and I've been training robotic movements, and I've been training like these perfect landing positions, but I haven't been working on how we transition into the hip hinge, how we transition through it, how we transition from this movement to that movement. So for us, flow, for me, a perfect flow is just a series of really sequenced transitions that players are doing. And if you look at movement from that aspect, it's gonna take you a long ways because now you're looking at the entire global movement and how athletes are actually transitioning from this movement to that movement and flowing. Do you follow golf at all? I try to golf myself, I'm not very good at it, but I do I do follow it, and I'll tell you this: I feel like when I look at golf, they're even more mechanical, I think, than baseball.

SPEAKER_00 46:40

Like they're gonna ask the question because I think because I'm I'm just a big sports fan, in case you haven't noticed, I love sports across the board and I love movement patterns, I love the psychological component of it naturally, given what I do. But you watch golfers, and I think Bryson D.Chambeau is who keeps popping into my mind as we have this conversation, somebody who is super detailed, mechanical, and has engineered every degree of his swing, and it seems to work for him. But part of me wonders if he had more of like the flow training or the flow mentality and less rigidity in his training and practice. Could he be capable of even more, regardless of how exceptional he always is or he already is, could he be even better if he wasn't so rigid in his approach?

SPEAKER_01 47:27

I would I would say yes, right? Because he would be able to hit different shots, right? I think in golf, just like anywhere else, right? Like the more, the more ways you have to solve the problem that you're trying to do, right? Like you're trying to hit a 50 150-yard shot. If you can hit a hundred shots that are gonna get the task accomplished versus just having one solution, you're gonna be way more dynamic because at that point, that one solution, it's it's like in here and there, right? When you're a one-trick pony, like sometimes you're really, really good. And other times that one solution is just not doing anymore. Right? Whether it's the conditions, whether they're playing the Masters, whether they're playing the US, they're all these different things, right? And if you look at the real golf, like golfers from the 80s and 90s, and even Tiger Woods, when he first started, he wasn't super mechanical. I mean, even his dad was like, hey, just hit, go to the range and hit a bunch of different shapes. Like hit it, hit a draw, hit a hit a fade, like just experiment, right? Where now, once technology came around, we got right into that trick of like every great golfer has 40 degrees of thoracic rotation, so everybody better have this perfectly, right? When you're going, like, do they need that? Can we create a flow and let those movements and those motions come naturally, but through the entire flow and the entire movement. Uh, we've actually been approached for golf flows, believe it or not. And I hope somebody, hey, you better not create it if you're out there, and if you do, give us a call, man. But I feel like that that is like the next thing that would be cool to see golfers really embrace it. And and I do see, because I do follow some golf, like I follow some chiropractors that work with like uh Scotty Scheffler, they work with like Thomas Guy, they work with those. And I do see that they're trying to incorporate some movement prep into their training. But I'll tell you this, Colin, and it's still very remedial. It's still driven through like gym exercises, it's still driven through like lunges and squats and Olympic lifts and all that other things they do in the gym, right? So it's still driven through that like lens, and it's not really driven through the neurological uh developmental pattern lens, which I feel like a lot of these players, if they went that route, their golf games would just go through the roof.

Coaching Without Creating Anxiety

SPEAKER_00 49:42

One of uh the golf training facilities I partner with out in Vegas, I think you guys would get along great because he is very much training of just like the overall athletic profile and not being super mechanical with his golfers, but taking the athleticism component and enhancing it in their swings, getting them to hit different shots in different ways. Obviously, there's it there is a more mechanical approach to golf that is probably necessary. Like you said, you got to mirror the two, but he is very much if you become a better athlete and you move better, you will naturally become a better golfer because you'll have access to more in your swing and you'll have more capacity and capability to do more out of different positions in different terrains.

SPEAKER_01 50:22

100%. If you look at Scotty Scheffler, no one's gonna teach that swing. No, right? Absolutely. That mechanically doesn't make too much sense. But now everybody's trying to duplicate it. Now everybody thinks that's a secret sauce, right? Of like, hey, let me do the little scissor kick that Scheffler does because he's winning every tournament. In reality, that guy's just a good athlete. I've seen him shoot hoops, I've seen him dunk a ball, you know, he's he's a good athlete, you know? But I also feel like, like you mentioned, is we get we got to give them that freedom and really build the skill through athleticism and movement skills. And then when you do it that way, I mean, players become very dangerous because now you have the freedom and you have the confidence. You have the confidence of if I could solve any problem that I get out there on the course, and they're not worried about are my mechanics gonna fit this type of shot. Right? If I if my mechanics only could only lead to this shot, but now this course requires this shot. Is there a misalignment and how confident I am that I'm gonna hit my shot perfectly? Versus getting out there, being unconscious, being competent, and just laying it flow and going, like, oh now, now I'm envisioning the shot. Now I'm actually trusting my brain, my nervous system to be able to create that movement, to be able to strike the ball of what I'm actually envisioning, which is the ideal for anybody. That's like the ideal flow and the ideal movement that you're looking for. But it all starts with training and it all starts with a philosophy of like, we got to get away from this mechanical model. We got to get away from training in isolation, and we got to get into more of that freedom of motion, that flow. But it's cool because we've been doing it for five years now, and I'll tell you this is this is the probably the most people I've talked about the whole time we've been doing it. Five years ago when I came out with it, everybody thought I was a clown. They're like, yeah, flow, you can't teach that, you can't teach athleticism. Oh, what are you doing? Get out of here, right? Like, your stuff makes no sense. Now everybody all of a sudden is starting to see, like, hold on. I see Scheffler swing, doesn't look perfect. He's winning tons, right? He's talking about being a better athlete. He's talking about all this freedom of motion. He's not talking about mechanics, he's not talking about perfect angles anymore. And I'm telling you, I told I put a tweet that other day. I said, this is not, this is a shift. And the shift is happening now. And it's one of those things that either people are gonna get on board with it or they're gonna get stuck in the past looking at these mechanical models, trying to replicate something that has led us to the point of it's ultra high as far as injuries right now. You know, and the only way we're gonna solve it is by just thinking different. And the difference for me is that is look at it globally. Don't be afraid. It's it's not as hard as people think. I think if you surround yourself with people that are like-minded and then join our community, we have newsletters. I share a lot of information. Uh, because I feel like for us, we could be trailblazers in just getting people to think a little bit different, but also not be so disruptive to tell people that they're doing things wrong. There's a lot of things that people are also doing right.

Where To Follow And Train

SPEAKER_00 53:20

Well, hey, this is why I love having those conversations. This is why I wanted to get you on is to unpack a little bit more of this free-flow movement that I think is really important for athletes to have and develop. You know, I routinely have, you know, guys who work on the strength and conditioning side, the training side come on the pod. And, you know, this is very in line with with my beliefs around what makes it a more robust athlete is that that freedom to explore, that freedom to play, and that freedom to understand that not everything is required from a mechanical one piece solution, and that you can approach it in situations that are unique to you and really develop a more athletic and robust being. So I appreciate you coming on, my friend. I know you just said you have a newsletter, but if people want to reach out to you, they want to have access to what you have going on, they want to work with you. Where can people reach you? Where can they get after you at?

SPEAKER_01 54:10

The best spot is gonna be the website ww.baseballflows.com. I'm also on Twitter, Flows Doc. So I post tons on there. And then we also have on social media, we got a lot of followers. I think we're over 100K at this point. So on Instagram, you'll find us. It'll be baseball flows. It's uh you can't miss it. It just looks so different and it looks so dynamic as far as how we're training people. But you can't miss it. Baseball flows, look us up, DM me. I mean, I love meeting people, especially people that are really willing to explore. So don't be afraid. I mean, it's it's a community. And for us, is we're trying to create a community of like minded individuals that have this growth mindset. And I think that's what's gonna be the future.

SPEAKER_00 54:47

Heck yeah, brother. I appreciate you, doc. Listeners, thank you for tuning in. Tune in next week. Download the pod, subscribe to our YouTube channel, five stars only, baby. Appreciate you, doc.