Learning to Fight - Dr Steve Smith - Episode 15

Learning to Fight Podcast — Conversations in Combat Skill

After a year-long hiatus, the Primal MMA Coaching Podcast is back—Rebranded, and refocused as the Learning to Fight Podcast: Conversations in Combat Skill.

Your hosts are:

Adam Singer — Co-owner and head coach at SBG Athens, BJJ black belt, long-time MMA coach, with years of developing novice to elite level fighters. Student of Matt Thornton and SBG's philosophy of 'aliveness'.
Scott Sievewright — Co-Owner at Primal MKE, MMA skills coach and obsessive student of how humans learn to move and fight. 

Together, we dive deep into the art and science of coaching, training, and skill development in combat sports.
 Expect honest conversations about MMA, striking, grappling, practice design, contemporary research, traditional approaches, ecological dynamics, and the messy realities of learning under pressure.

No gurus. No dogma. Just two coaches trying to understand fighting a little better each week.

Same curiosity. New lens.
Learn how to learn.
Find your own style.
Thrive on the mats—and in the cage.

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:05

Okay. Three, two, one, and. Okay, well, this morning we have uh Dr. Steve Smith. All the way from the old country. Welcome, Dr. Smith. Thank you very much. Good to be here. I don't know. Let you take it away. You can explain a little bit about what we what we're doing. I read your book. I read your book.

SPEAKER_00 0:23

Oh, the what from chat to chat? Cover to cover.

SPEAKER_01 0:26

No, God no. Um I read I read all your intro stuff and I think it's really good. I actually I'm gonna grab it when you uh when you and Scotty start talking a little bit because there are a couple things in the in your intro chapters. Um the one of the people you wrote the half who you wrote the BJJ section with is a is a friend of mine. We we speak often um on these topics. Um I've been dabbling in without knowing it, I've been dabbling in an ecological approach through my organization for a long time. Um my organization was the primary driver of our training methodology we call it aliveness. And so uh without without even knowing it, and then you know, as more information became available and more people started getting involved in constraints-led approach and and uh nonlinear pedagogy and things like that, I started to realize why aliveness was um, and then I met Scotty, and uh I've been um I developed a group of of MMA fighters from zero to professional now over the last four years, using nothing but uh an ecological approach for for lack of a better term. And uh, you know, but I think Scotty and I both have some questions and and have some things that make us uncomfortable. Um some of it's navel gazing, some of it's functional. And so we're just talking to people and asking them questions.

SPEAKER_00 1:43

Brilliant. I think it's um it's really interesting. You've you've very much gone down the route, and and I consider these types of coaches, such as yourself, to be good coaches who have a really good understanding of what they're doing in their practice, and and they do ecological approaches without even realizing it. And then all of a sudden, there's a name to it, there's research, there's theory, there's models of how it works, and all of a sudden you think, oh blamey, that this is something. And I think that's that is absolutely when I when I speak to people who you know uh I again often hear that, you know, the rabbit hole of ecological dynamics. I mean, I I don't particularly like that term because I think it almost makes it seem uh not mystical, but something that um potentially isn't main, well, certainly not mainstream, but it but it is a very viable way to conduct a whole coaching practice, a whole coaching environment, something that for me completely sh should run your whole skill acquisition philosophy. Um I I came at it, I I I sort of refer to myself as a failed full-time athlete. I was somebody who was completely uh trained and coached in linear, isolated practices. And during my time playing, I just thought none of this is relating. I can't get this relate to match play. And after I finished playing, I went into coaching, and I did exactly the same as you did, Adam. I started to think, well, actually, no, that doesn't make sense doing it that way. What I need to do is this. And all of a sudden, I I found, you know, you sort of find ecological dynamics and you find these people who talk about it. And ever since then, I've gone on this journey, but my journey now is not actually to look for what I'm desperately trying to find now is evidence of why traditional coaching approaches, linear approaches, are beneficial and transferable. Because the whole industry is completely captivated by this approach, and I often get into debates, which often turn into arguments with people that say to me, Oh no, do it this way because it works. I then ask them to prove it. Give me some give me some theory, give me a model that try that transfers that to that, and they don't have it. And I'm constantly trying to find, I'm trying to debunk where I am now. It's quite an interesting. I just can't find any evidence to go against ecological dynamics. So I'm I'm trying to make sure I I I am completely clear in my mind. And yeah, and that that's my story, and similar to you.

SPEAKER_01 4:04

Um then I think what you'll appreciate is Scotty and I spend a lot of time trying to steel man what what we'll call traditional coaching. And in our in our sport, there are some very specific examples of um that model used, like pad work and bag work and combination of the day and and um things of that nature. And we spend a lot of time trying to steel man and trying to figure out if there is something we're missing, if there's something we're lacking. And and like much like you, you know, we have not necessarily maybe there are areas we can give a lot of grace to certain things, but in general, we haven't, yeah, we haven't found anything like that.

SPEAKER_00 4:44

Yeah, yeah. It's a I think um like BJJ is a really interesting sport. I mean, I've I've been doing it for I I've been involved in sport all my life, and I did combat sport when I was younger. I then went through loads of sports, and eventually I actually fell into in love with badminton, and that was a sport that I you know, I like I said, I trained full-time uh while I was studying and then while I was working, but it just never it never went for me, you know. Uh and I there's lots of factors, but I do believe the coaching I received really hampered what I did. But I finished playing, dropped everything, dropped, dropped my rackets over two years ago, never and since haven't picked them up, haven't I been a massive part of my life, and then jumped straight into BJJ, didn't know what it was. I walked in off the street. Um, and two years I trained now four times, maybe five times a week. I'm absolutely just my personality, I get obsessed with things and then I jump straight into it. Um, yeah, so and I think that with combat sports, it's difficult. It's difficult when you're getting punched in the face to say, you know, well, I'm gonna punch you in the face now to give you that representative uh perceptual information. We can't we can't have that, right? But I think with things like BJJ, as opposed to other striking sports, it is, in my opinion, when it's coached, is completely it is intentions on steroids. It's it's right, let's teach everyone and let's practice what you're trying to achieve at the end, and let's do it slowly and let's do it methodically, let's isolate different parts, let's let's work as work on the end goal. No one ever works on the 95% of how you actually get to that finish position, right? No one does that. In in major, I'm talking majority traditional coaches um and schools out there and clubs. Um, so that's why I call it sort of intentions on on steroids because all you're working on is intention, and then you go to the role, and that's where you actually learn. But I would agree at the start, you have to have some intention of what you're trying to achieve, but no one learns from that. You learn in the role. That's when you bring, and you guys know this, that's when you bring all of that um that that intention, that movement. You're you're taking the information and you're moving it into the right places to then get um the required outcome. So I've been I've been fascinated with BJJ over the last uh last two years. It's been something that's completely captivated me. Um, but there are problems with other obviously with striking sports, we do have to have a lot of thought that goes into it.

SPEAKER_01 6:59

Well, tell tell us uh so I I I think that BJJ did I agree with you, BJJ lended itself. Grappling sports lended itself or lent itself to this methodology uh very easily, right? And I've argued that every BJJ school ever has used some type of ecological approach because you roll live. And so it covers up a lot of the um rote repetition, it covers a lot of the do it this way, 10-step moves, kata, if you will. Um it covers that up because everyone rolls. And if you are in a healthy gym with a good culture, then you roll with 10 or 15 people a night or a week, and there's a tremendous amount of variety and variation in the environment, and it covers up for the all the other type of training. And the people that get good accumulate more of that live training, not necessarily more of the dead training.

SPEAKER_03 7:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 7:54

Uh Scotty and I, and and there aren't too many coaches in this in the full MMA space, including striking, that have tried to apply this to that. And um, I'll let Scotty talk about some of the methods that that we use, but we'd certainly love to hear how you would if you were developing a striking program from whole cloth, uh what might that look like um well striking, I do know what I've I've never really I've spoken to people about little elements of it.

SPEAKER_00 8:22

I've never thought about how how the whole program works, but the the the So I'm just gonna go back one step just to fill in, I think, what's a really important area we need to discuss first is when we have isolated practice, we produce an element of movement which has the perception and the action completely decoupled. So if you're punching a bag, for example, or a pad, let's call it a bag because the pad might move, right? Let's call it the bag. So you're punching a bag, so you the the the the punch is being the action is there, but there's no perceptual information of when to throw the punch, right? There are people, and this is traditional coaching that goes back forever and it does produce amazing people. But I believe that it really pushes forward and is most beneficial to people that I call stitchers. Now they are able to stitch that skill back in to live play seamlessly, the stitch and the seam, seamless there, um to go straight into it. Now, we I believe there are people who are very talented that get uh that don't have the advantage of that one adaptive ability. And it's not doesn't mean it's an adaptive ability of the sport, but being able to take that piece of information and plug it, stitch it back into the stream where we have our information uh from the environment, we then have our our reaction. It will be like a module that plugs back in. Some people aren't very good at that. So that that first of all, that's the problem that we have, right? So when we come back to striking, we look at okay, what's the key if we go offense and defense, but I absolutely um some some sports are very clearly offense and defense. Probably the most obvious would be something like American football. Um, you have a clear stages, but invasion game sports, you will have a couple of seconds of offense, a couple of seconds of defense. In combat sports, it switches like that, okay? And often the offense needs to be, you need to be thinking about the defense while you're on the offense and vice versa, because things can change very quickly. So the first thing I think you have to look at is right, what are the key bits of information? So if you're hitting a bag, for example, it gives you zero information, it gives you nothing. It gives you a static target that isn't moving, that isn't producing you to worry about anything coming back. So if you're going to deal with a bunch of kids or novices for the first time, getting them to hit a bag for a year is utterly pointless. They'll have the movement, but then what they've got to do is now reattach the perception back to that movement, and that's a whole new skill. So what I would look at, if you're starting from bottom up, your first job as a coach, as a creative architect of the practice environment, is you need to decide on what are the most uh important perceptions, so the basic constraints of the system. So I think your first argument would be, well, I need to have a moving target if I'm if I'm working on offense. So that's why pad work is better than bad bad work, first of all. The second thing with that is if you're going to do pad work, you absolutely have to add in the defensive element to the strike straight away. There's no point again waiting to develop the offense and then have to move the defensive parts back to the skill because that skill is offense and defense together. You know, right, if you throw a jab and you're not you're not covering with with your right hand, if you're jabbing with your left, you're gonna be in trouble, right? So if you spend a lot of time just jabbing, jabbing with your right hand down, you're gonna be in trouble a lot of the time. You know, we need to get this hand here. So if you're not introducing those elements instantly with someone who's learning and developing, you're gonna fall down straight away. Um, it's then the the creation of the coach or the create the creator of the environment, you then have to look at where we have our constraints in regards to safety. And striking is I I think absolutely one of the most difficult sports to start to ramp up um ecological approaches, much like rugby would be in this country. Um, and so therefore there are ways to do things better without going all the way, if that makes sense. We just have to be very, very clear on what's the percentual information we really can't lose. So I hope that makes sense for getting the balance between offense and defense as well. Because often they get trained separately, right?

SPEAKER_02 12:25

So I uh actually I think um sorry, often it's heavily weighted towards offense.

SPEAKER_01 12:30

Yeah, because I I think beginners um and even early fighters can be successful driven purely by action almost. Now I know nothing is nothing is there is no nothing separable about perception and action, as we feel. Um but they can almost just close their eyes and swing until they're exhausted, and and we see that in a chaos. So I I think that's part of um what I've tried to do, and this is a change I've only made over the last couple of years, is I don't necessarily separate offense, defense, counter-offense anymore because they are part of one system. And I and I and you are always defending and and offending. You are always on both. I I know in invasion sports there is a period where you're you're on offense, you're on defense, you're on counteroffense, you're on counter defense. Um, I think when I stopped looking at it necessarily as that, um it it helped me create my my drills a little bit better. Um and so just but I I agree with you. Um, but I think in sh in early striking, we see people have success driven purely by action. And I think that feeds back into coaches thinking what they're doing is um is successful.

SPEAKER_00 13:39

Yeah, I guess if you're a if you're a big strong guy, we'll go and you start swinging and you're five and oh, it's also going to give you some pretty good feedback to be thinking, oh, what I'm doing is right. And it's only until you get to the point where you have that sixth uh sixth fight who watches your videos, knows what's coming, and can deal with it, and you can't defend against it. I mean, that that's a big problem. For me, when I look at sport now and the element of ecological dynamics, which is built upon, which is dynamical systems theory, is this constant interplay, this constant balance between stabilization and destabilization, and that was massive in the in the BJJ chapter written in the in the textbook, is we're constantly in this rapidly changing um system where you're either on top or you're not, and you're constantly having to work on that. So, that is a philosophy of how you then coach, I think forget forget the the more technical bits at the start, just worry about the interplay between whether you're on top, as in not on top from a physical point of view, but whether you have destabilized and you've got stability or you've been see destabilized. That is the absolute. And I think if coaches focus on that more and more, they start to not worry about isolating skills and really worrying about um you know specific things around perhaps about a certain way that a punch is thrown or or um a defensive position is held. That athlete is going to be able to work out what works for them based on whether they are stable or unstable.

SPEAKER_02 15:04

I like I like this. So um I like where we're going with this, and I want to revisit stability here shortly. Um so Adam comes from a lineage we had his coach on a couple of weeks ago, Matt Thornton, who introduced kind of a bit of a pioneer in his own way, uh, the the three eye method. And but he was very much a proponent of aliveness. He recognized this many years ago that the seemingly the most effective martial arts did a lot of live watch. We coming through this and it's to be quite honest, it's when we talk about hybrids and um novices needing some you know motivation and and confidence at the start, his three eye method makes a lot of sense to me. Um the traditional I was introduction, which would be more isolated, a bit more uh cognitive, if you will, would kind of help people do the general structure of of of the movement and get that understanding. Adam and I are trying to squash that into an ever decreasingly you know, ever ever small space, or get rid of it at all. Um so you made a point about striking being a real challenge, and we recognize that. So what we've done, and it's something you brought up in your your last last discussion I want to uh visit back to. We spar immediately. If someone comes into Adam's gym or my gym, we're giving them gloves, we're giving them shin pads, we're giving them a responsible partner, and they're getting into jockeying back and forth immediately. But they're not allowed to hit each other in the head. So they just go to the shoulders and down. So I I love what you said, and I'd like you to maybe flesh out a bit more about uh stability and instability, because I agree, I think that's what fighting is. Fighting isn't about, you know, let's produce all let's make all these uh stable uh patterns offline and expect them to be robust and hold up in in in the actual action. Uh so I think yes, um fighting for me is not just uh it's maintaining and regaining stability, so to speak. I think when we use the word stability, maybe people assume it it's a balanced thing. And I think it can be a balanced thing. I think balance is part of it, but that's not what we mean when we're talking about stability from a DST perspective. So do you mind maybe fleshing that out or giving an idea what you what you consider in a in a fight with two fighters, how we characterize uh stability and instability?

SPEAKER_00 16:56

Yeah, absolutely. So um are you okay if I go from a grappling point of view? Just because I'll probably be more uh more uh more confident with that. So a very simple way to understand it would be let's say that you have um half guard on on an opponent, so you're in bottom position, they're starting to pass, right? But let's say you've got a fairly solid half guard, you've got a nice your knees producing a nice fray on your elbow, arm, so you're stable, right? And that would be that would probably be seen as it's 50-50, they're not progressing, um, you've got the opportunity as well to just hold them in that position and stop them from progressing. Now, let's say that they manage to slip past the knee. Now, in that instant, you have been destabilized, you have lost one of your defensive positions. So at that moment, the the scales have tipped in favour to the person who's passing. Okay. Now, let's say they've gone gone round the knee, they're starting to encroach over to the midsection. Your your your elbow is not going to, uh, and your your arm frame is not going to do much when their full weight is in on top of you, right? And anybody who's rolled, grappled in that live situation will understand that scenario. At that point, the defender, the person underneath, is in a massive destabilized position. They've lost their frontline defense of their leg, they've got a probably a crappy secondary defense as well, and maybe they haven't moved their butt out so they're able to reconnect the knee into a position, let's say that the person's passing's held their hips. Bad position, complete destabilization of the system. Now, that will either end in a pin, let's say a side control pin, but there's always opportunity, and this is why combat sports have got this split second uh change. If you're able, as the person underneath, to control, let's say, and stop them from getting the underhook, you either can you either gain the underhook, which then you can pop out, uh, take that back, or let's say you were to control the arm coming through, you were able to bring their weight onto you because you had that split second opportunity and you were able to sweep them over to the side, right? Now all of a sudden, the passer who had completely destabilized the bottom player's defence has now been destabilized. And the stability is now completely shifted over. So going back to your your question of you know, what does that mean? Well, what it means is if I destabilize the defensive system, it means I've got a better chance of scoring or or getting to a position where I can then go and score. If you've been destabilized, it means you've you you're losing the odds on that ability to have control over your opponent and to score points yourself. And and that's the thing with combat sports, it is literally a fine balance all the time with anything. You know, you could foot sweep and think, oh, brilliant, you know, their foot's up, their foot's up in the air. If you don't apply the pressure to the upper body and they recover and they counter your sweep, then you're in trouble. So it's this constant balance. So when we are practicing, and this is the problem of practicing, for example, um a pass like I've just described, we will just practice the pass on a fairly um uh uh um an opponent that is is gonna be compliant, right? They're gonna let you do it, or you know, cover a little bit of defense. That's not how we learn that because the big part of the learning is if I do overcommit, or if I don't go for the underhook, or if I don't deal with these elements, I'm gonna destabilize myself. So all I've learned is to put myself in a position where I can now be destabilized. So the only way I realized that, and the only way I realised it when I started training was, oh, that's happened to me five times in a roll now. There was one night, I I always remember a couple of months in, I got guillotined three times, passing three different people, one after the other, um, was trying to pass someone who was who was on the floor. And and that was enrolling. And that taught me that my head position and the and the distance between between them when I was passing had to be adjusted. And you know what I did after that? I completely adjusted my head position, but I only got it, I only learned that because it was in that life situation, and I so therefore they destabiled. I thought I was in a stable position passing, I passed them, my head was in a terrible position, I basically destabilized myself. So this is this constant interplay. Um, and by by taking parts individually, we lose that understanding of stability and and um instability.

SPEAKER_01 21:16

In in um in striking we that those moments of stability and instability appear and disappear uh very quickly, right? And um I know that uh in our intro programs uh and I I don't want to speak for Scotty, but I think two of my main goals in in my found in my intro program, my foundations program, is to one see them starting to understand the relationship to the other person, right? What what that's like. And in in BJJ, that happens automatically because someone is connected to you. In in striking sports, it's a little more difficult, takes a little more time because you you don't have that the tactile. It's all it's almost all vision. Um and then two Watching them move from stability to instability. When they throw a punch and they're unstable, can they restabilize? They get kicked and they lose stability, gain stability, as it all those things. I think that when I'm watching beginners improve in in most places, it's are they throwing their punches better or straighter or pivoting or whatever the hell that is? And I guess Scotty can add to this, but what I'm just looking for is are they starting to respect distances? Are they starting to respect the relationship? And are they starting to become more stable? And we we see that in in every sport. American football, every that the difference between the better athletes and the worse is their ability to restabilize. Because it's not always up to you, like like in the grappling, it's not always up to you whether you're going to remain stable or not. But can you re-stabilize? Can you work your way through all this traffic on a football field and then get stable to make a tackle or rugby field? Um, so in in our foundations program, we've de-emphasized, well, we've removed striking from the head for safety, but I think it's also it de-emphasizes what most traditional coaching emphasizes, which is hidden. And then it emphasizes this relationship and stability idea.

SPEAKER_00 23:16

Yeah. Yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_02 23:19

I I have I have a qu a question about that. In fact, I've got a bunch of questions. Um like Adam said, we're always trying to maybe uh steal man, make a case, play devil's advocate against ourselves. So if we take um the idea, you know, um the organism environment relationship seriously and perception action being continuous, blah blah blah. Um we could would it be fair, so there's a question, right? Would it be fair to say uh characterize it that we are constantly perceiving some kind of structure in our environment, right? That we're that we're relating with. And whether it be a bag, whether it be uh passive um that you're doing a jujitsu move to, could we say that there's at least some of that structure? Some of the structure that you're gonna be relating with in a live situation. I'm not suggesting it's it's much, but some of that structure may be there. And could maybe this be a little insight to, well, it's not completely useless, but there might be something there. Dead drilling is completely useless, and uh we need to be going live all the time. Adam and I are always trying to you know make this case. What what what how can we be generous to the the the drilling and the you know the root reputation side? We're not very generous, but how can we be generous? And I'm wondering if if that question makes any sense. Is there is there some kind of similar structure that may map on?

SPEAKER_00 24:37

And and and and this is this is the that's the exact question, Scott, that I I am struggling with, and that's the one I'm looking for looking to try and uh try and understand because there's a clear map between practicing something with all of the perceptual information, maybe not all of, but with perceptual information based on the constraints of the system, i.e. the constraints of the sport, right? If we practice uh um anything uh in that scenario, there is a clear map, if you like, produced which then works in competition, right? How so there is no theory or modelling or or anything that says if I practice this over here, this movement, it will magically now fit into my performance. Now there must be some people might think, hold on a minute. Now there is transferability, right? And there so there is there is transfer of skills, absolutely 100%. I see that when I when I train with people who've come from a sporting background, they've and especially with grappling, they're they're very good movers, they're people who can hold their weight very well. These are people not from say combat sports, but just people who've trained. So there's definitely some transfer over. So, yes, I think there is clearly there must be I don't want to say some benefit, but you can train like that, and then that skill transfers are over. But it's like I said before, you have to be quite skilled at that. I think that there are people who are better now. I I I had quite a rapid rise in my sport when I was a kid because I think that I was always quite good at taking information from the practice environment and putting it into match play. There's a lot better people out there than me at doing this, but but that's what I think they do. So, what's the benefit of doing things which are completely uh decoupled? I'm I'm struggling with that. I'm I'm struggling to answer that question because I I can't come up with a with a theory or a model of how it would be because it's not the same. So I I've I recent research I've conducted, right? We've looked at, and this is not the only research in this area, this has been replicated several times across other sports, but I'll just talk about stuff I've done recently. So we've looked at um match play, biomechanics, mechanical, mechanical load, and visual search behaviours, right? Let's take those three elements. We've measured the body and and and and um and and how we perceive our environment, let's call it that, from from match play and then isolated drilling, like you were saying about you know road repetition and things like that.

SPEAKER_02 27:09

And sorry, Doc, this is for Batman?

SPEAKER_00 27:11

Yeah, this is this study was for Badminton, but this has been replicated across across uh many, many sports. Um, and what we find is not a pattern of of biomechanics, mechanical load or visual research behaviour which is similar. I'm talking 50% differences. So not even like a little bit different, wildly different. So the body is doing something different when it is when it is not um coupling perception and action in match play. It it then does something different again. And it's because, for example, i in in um racket sports like badminton, because we we can't know where the shuttles go, we have to wait for it. So that in that means we're always later than we would be when we know where it's going. So all the biomechanics change, all the mechanical load change, and what we do if our eyes changes as well. So we know we know that there are vast differences. So when I get asked a question, well, there must be some benefit to it, but I'm sure there is, but I can't I can't answer that, to be honest, with any real confidence to say, yeah, do that for 10%, 20%, 30%, because I I just don't have the evidence. And that's and I'm constantly searching for that evidence. I can't find it. All I know is if I train in a representative manner, well, that is literally training for what you're doing, right? You wouldn't you wouldn't send out well I hope people wouldn't send out um like they used to, fighters for thinking back to the days of uh the Rocky films where Rocky goes out for a one hour steady state run around uh um uh uh around uh um Philadelphia. Yeah, now we realise that um okay, what happens in in combat sports? Well we have we we often have elements of not relaxation or low activity, but you could be held against the against the cage for a minute or two, and you're both in a static situation. So that's using the body one way, then all of a sudden you need to have this explosion, yeah. And five minute rounds, three minute rounds, whatever they are, we don't the body's not in a steady state. So nowadays you will be hard pushed to find any top-level sport who when they work their athletes, they do a steady state like 70% run, they do interval running because we know that's the energy system that works. So then I relate it to when I say this to people in this the question you just asked, well, if we know that, we wouldn't send people for steady state runs, we send them for interval runs because that's what matches what they do. So then why are we training skills in a completely different way than we'd apply them? Like that logic just doesn't make sense. So but that's what I grapple with. I I I I can't find a reason, which is why I'm all in for ecological approaches, because it just makes sense.

SPEAKER_02 29:41

Yeah, it makes sense to me as well. I I guess if uh not not to not to push too hard on this, um, because I'm the same. I I think what it can do, again, correct me if I'm wrong, um, or you think I'm wrong. I think what it can do is guide intention, right? Give give the athlete someone where to look at their search space, you know, some intentionality there. So I think I'll I think I grant that. How much do we need of that? Do we need two rehearsals of that? Do we need to be shown at once? Do we need to practice it 20 times statically? I I I don't know the answer to that, right? I have my have my ideas. Um but with with regards to the the the interaction with the you know perceptual information. So if you take pad work, for example, you said because we already kind of alluded to that, right? The pad work might be better than bag work. Yeah. I think that's kind of what I'm trying to get and suggest that maybe there's some there's some interaction or some part of the structure that you're engaging with in padwork that's that's probably more has more utility than bag work, and maybe that's just the the jockeying proposition, the moving back and forward, the in and out of the range. So maybe there's something there.

SPEAKER_00 30:32

But you have a target to enforce, that's one of the things.

SPEAKER_02 30:34

I mean moving target. Yeah, and Adam and I hear all the time, well, you know, you get a pad holder, they it's they're so good at holding pads, it becomes like sparn. And what is it? Begs the question, Adam. Okay, well let me just throw in the fucking gloves and let's be a bit sparm.

SPEAKER_01 30:45

Yeah. I also uh I wonder if whatever percentage we think is coupled in pad work, and and I guess a better pad holder maybe could couple more, what is the downside that's occurring on the part that's not truly coupled, right? They are perceiving and acting on impoverished or even incorrect information when people are holding pads. So are we are the good parts canceled out by the bad parts? And and I am starting to notice more fighters where I see them fighting in the cage or sparring in a manner that tells me they hit a lot of pads.

SPEAKER_03 31:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 31:27

And in MMA, um, you know, that could be really uh that could be a tell that could be uh a real detriment to them.

SPEAKER_00 31:35

Yeah, so so absolutely, and that's where we we might risk creating bad behaviors. Now, if you look at spinal reflexes, now this is this is quite interesting. So it it doesn't take very long, 0.1 milliseconds for um uh, for example, muscle spindles, goggy tendons, which which sit within our um our muscles and and tendons in in that sort of neuromuscular pathways. It doesn't, we it's like putting your hand on a hot plate. You don't need to it to go up to your brain to realize your hand's hot, right? You withdraw it straight away. So all all of these things are have happening at uh more of a sort of spinal cord level rather than going up to processing, especially in very quick aspects such as striking sports. So the the worry we've got is we train muscles to do one thing that they would do with the pad work. So they'd be working one way, and and the feedback mechanism would be probably like you were saying about athletes that do loads of pad work, is that they would move in a certain way and hit in a certain way because that's how their their reflexes are now behaving. That's a massive problem because the reflexes, the spinal reflexes needed will be very, very different when there's a live opponent trying to hit them back. So I think the answer to the whole thing is yeah, you could probably do a bit, but you don't want to do a huge amount because actually, are you causing, like you said, Adam, are you causing more damage to your behaviour? Because what what you're doing in any situation, in any um system, you are behaving to the constraints in the system. So if you are producing maladaptive behaviours, that's a bad thing, right? The problem with combat sports is you can't have live fighting all the time because you just can't do that. Um, so there is a trade-off, and that's the big question, isn't it? Is how much how much do we do um until we get AI robots who can actually, you know, the move around for us and uh and go within uh well maybe touch touch us within a a millimeter, so at least we can feel that there would have been impact. Um until we get to that point, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 33:34

Well, we're not quite at that point yet, but that's you you've described kind of the room and environment that we're trying to uh create, right? So with respect to can't just come in and practice fighting all the time, that's kind of what Adam and I do. It's all 100% live. Um our main concern, as you said, is in Adam uses I think you Adam uses the quick contact, not impact. And I say something similar like a correction or a punishment. So after the our athletes have got enough kind of that they've gone through that coordination phase, they're starting to be able to control their um their movement a little bit you know more more um effectively. We can get them into sparring where they're going towards the head, they're touching the head, they're going back and forth, but they're not causing damage. Now, yes, there's a case to be made, all these tiny little shots will likely add up over time, there's no free launch free launch. But I think Adam and I run very, very similar rooms in being that the guys are able, the the experienced guys are able to spar and almost wouldn't say quite get to flight speed, but getting close to flight speed where the impacts and the forces are you know dramatically reduced, and we seem to be having a lot of perceived success with that. Uh, one thing you mentioned mal uh being maladaptive, and I hadn't thought about this before. You were talking about the soccer study, and I'll redraw your memory. Um, because I'm familiar with some of the research and stuff said, like Rob Grace said that the the fundamentals will emerge anyway, right? So if you're to take if we're to take ecological what ecological dynamics is telling us seriously that we believe that movement solutions are emergent properties, right? From the interactions between tasks to organism and environment, blah blah blah. Um so in many ways, I think Rob was made the case. Well, you're gonna get there, you're gonna get there with both with both approaches. But it doesn't but you don't necessarily have to be taught the fundamentals first. And I think Adam and I uh somewhat agree with that. But you made a case in the last podcast that because you're learning these fundamentals with different uh perceptual information, that indeed may have a long-term maladaptive effect. Can you talk a little bit about that study with the soccer players? Or or what you were taught if you can remember.

SPEAKER_00 35:24

No, yeah, so I'll be referring to the soccer study where we looked at I mean I think we did two fairly recently. Oh, might have been three actually. Oh, I know what it was. It was it was a small-sided versus full-sided games, I I believe that, and it was the the scanning behaviors, the visual search behaviour. So um we looked at the so yeah, the scanning behavior. So looking around the pitch um for information. Um, and what we found is that when we studied players in a small-sided game, so let's call it five aside versus um the full-sided game with I think at that age group, it may it may have been eleven aside, actually. I think it was seven, nine, eleven. So let's go seven aside and eleven aside. The behaviours were significantly different in their scanning. So what you were actually so in in soccer, what you've got is um this um you can say football today.

SPEAKER_02 36:16

I understand. Sorry, say again. I'm saying you can say football today. We owe a number of things.

SPEAKER_00 36:21

Sorry, yeah, good, yeah, yeah, yeah. Football, yeah. Sorry, I wasn't quite sure. I got told off. I did a podcast in Brazil the other day and um for some uh for a Brazilian audience, and and I kept using soccer and they can I got told off because I should have been using football. Um yeah, so the uh yeah, in the football study, so we had we it's it's almost like a it's got a this small-sided um idea, brilliant, game-based, excellent, because technical um interactions do increase more passes, more tackles, and more everything. Brilliant, all for that. But no one had ever talked about the changes in scanning. So what we found was that if you so when you put someone in a small-sided game with less information, they were scanning differently. So there would be less scanning of of um opposition players when you were defending because it's not rocket science, there were less opposition players. But in a larger sided game, you would have you would therefore potentially not be looking for people on your left-hand side if you're sort of facing inward, because in a small-sided game, you're only interested in a very small corridor of players. You might therefore be missing people over here. Um, we had times where scans per um with um before you got the ball was different as well. So you're actually changing, you would be changing your technical action because you wouldn't have made as many critical, um, critical scans before receiving the ball. So it was a real eye-opener to, well, actually, yes, it's great that we are producing more technical actions, more passing, more shooting, more tackling, but actually, what are the problems with it? So if you go full full boring to go, right, 80% of our practice is going to be all around small-sided games because it gives people more touches, you're then going to produce people that have behaviours in their visual search which are not going to adapt well to the full-sided game. Now put that across other sports, and yeah, so that that's the idea. This is not something I've come up with. This has been this has been well known for a long time. It was the first time that I but I believe that anyone has put this towards football and said, well, hold on a minute. Is there a let's not, you know, everyone's wax liberal when it's like a completely sweeping European football academies, this idea. But I wanted I wanted to look at actually, we need to be a little bit careful with it. Yeah, it's good, but the caveat is we might lose those behaviours. So yeah, that that's uh and it's a such an important element that coaches often just forget about. Now, what have we lost? We've gained something here, but we lost here. So what's the trade-off? If you have a rationale and you have evidence and you have good philosophy behind why you're going to sacrifice that for this because it will eventually move the player up or the team up, that's fine. But when you don't even think about what you're what's costing you or costing the development of the player, that's the problem.

SPEAKER_01 38:53

I could see I could see a small side of game maybe even being sort of an over-constrained um situation where you would have to make sure that at some other point you are making sure that the the drills or the games reintroduce whatever you were losing. Um I think which brings me to a good question, one that we we talk about a lot. And you've said it already. You mentioned representative design. And so I'd like I'd like to some to hear more about how you see representative design, how representative do you think our practices need to be? And is representative design a scale or is it binary? Just some of your thoughts on representative design.

SPEAKER_00 39:36

It's infinite, really, because the the system of the sport and and the constraints and and the movements possible, um, the type of perception that different people have produces an infinite environment, first of all. Coaches can then choose to like I think is is like a dial, you turn it up or you turn it down. Um I think in a if I go to a grappling BJ scenario, if if you wanted to uh um produce, let's go with the passing from um a half guard position. I I think with that the objective is pass the guard, get to a pin, right? I'm not gonna tell you how to do that. I'm gonna tell you that this is your setup position, and what I want you to achieve is chest to chest, chest to back, knee on belly, something like that, right? Off you go. So that is a very that's dial turned right up. That is completely representative. You might have someone who fails for the whole session, the whole week, a month of doing it, but eventually they've worked out every single thing that they need to know on how to get past someone's guard in that position. Not and they've done it much quicker than somebody who would just be practicing it um in an isolated way and then rolling. This person would be practicing it representatively in the same scenario as the role, and then they go and do it in the role as well. So not only are they getting the right information, they're doing it more and more and more. And that and that's the true power, or one of the true powers for me of representative design. Um, you you can change things. I mean, now we're starting to talk about communication feedback as well, and bandwidth um feedback is incredibly important. I'm actually doing a session on this tomorrow with my um undergrads, um, how we communicate, because a lot of coaches are far too uh far too uh um uh easy to verbally instruct or communicate. Um, if you look at pure representation, there's no coach on the side telling you what to do. There's nobody um noticing that you've got your leg in one position and you need to put it in another position. You've got to work that out for yourself. So even from the with a representative learning design, you have to make sure feedback and communication are aligned with that philosophy as well. So you don't need to tell that person that person can work out themselves. If they don't pass, or if they do pass, they've got that internal feedback mechanism working. Um, and another important thing, and I think this is really important with individual sports, especially combat sports, that anxiety, right, which we don't get in very decontextualized environments. Um, there is absolute anxiety when you are face to face with somebody, right? We know that. We know there's anxiety when in grappling you're going to be put in a really difficult pin position, um, and you don't want that, you know. So the person defending, um, I think, well, the passer, let's link the skills. Let's just not get to a point where you pass and get to a pin, let's then maybe give you 10 seconds to find a submission. All of that anxiety then starts to, not fully, because it will never, but you can't really create that, but you're starting to add elements like that as well. So for me, it's not just about the movement, it's not just about perception, it's about things like the anxiety as well, problem solving, exploration, the coach not interrupting and telling you what to do. I I don't believe anyone can can tell someone how to move or what to do, because they're not in control of the movement or or the perception of that person. And I think coaches get far too stuck in the idea that these people are listening to what you're saying. There might be something going in, but I'll tell you what, there's far more benefit to allowing people to work things out for themselves. So, yeah, that in a nutshell, there's representative learning design.

SPEAKER_01 43:05

I've had I've noticed recently that my um my grapplers, uh even up to blue and purple belt, that have have never learned a different way. Like they have never been in other rooms, they've never, this is the only thing they know. They actually, when I have tried on occasion to get them to do something, we're in a position and I'm like, hey, get on your side or get this, like they have no idea what I'm talking about. They they have no conception of following my directions. And it's just a good reminder of exactly what you're saying. And Scotty and I talk about this all the time. We have we have really started to be really sparse with our language because we're not sure that much of it does anything at all.

SPEAKER_03 43:44

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 43:44

If if we want them to do something, we see a problem that needs to be fixed, it has to be presented as a drill. It has to be presented in the live matter. But I want to I want to go back um uh a follow up. So you were talking about they they do this drill over and over and then murder. Miraculously they can do it in live training. So that's sort of the idea of rep repetition without repetition. But my question is how much, like how much do we how how many reps of that drill? How much time? How much before we can see it transfer to the performance environment? You know, repetition without repetition, but is there a quantification? Is there an idea? What are we looking for to know we're on the right path? It's very, it's just a very undefined idea. Sorry, within representative learning design. Yeah, just so you're talking about you do this passing drill over and over, you know, for a week, and then by the end of the week, they figured out all the ways to pass.

unknown 44:41

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 44:41

Which and I assume you just showed him when Adam uses the word drill, he he talked about it in a live context, which is never fucking never fucking helpful. He continues to do it, but I get it.

SPEAKER_01 44:50

I'm taking it back. I'm taking it back. There's no better word.

SPEAKER_03 44:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 44:54

So you were talking about they they play this game. How's that? Over and over, and by the end of the week, they have figured out all the different ways to but I I think you're I don't think you mean necessarily by the end of the week, you're talking about in some amount of time and given some amount of repetitions. But how much repetition, how much time should we be looking for before we see these behavior changes? Because what I've noticed with adults is they they are terrible when it comes to being creative. They are terrible about, they're very stubborn. And so how much repetition does it take to get these behaviors to emerge or change or these problem these solutions to appear?

SPEAKER_00 45:34

Yeah, it's it's how long is a piece of string because there's so many factors that come into it. It's the have you got previous how what's your so general athletic ability like? What's your what's your ability to develop and adapt like? What is your uh when you go home, do you scroll through hours of uh BJJ um grappling, whatever it would be, videos on instructions, and you're completely you're obsessed with it, that you'll be thinking about it. Um I I I often do my best thinking when I'm possibly just in the gym or driving or walking my dog, I will I will come up with things in my head having a shower. The other day I thought of something, uh I thought, oh blindly, that's a really good idea. I was having a shower, and it just it just came into my mind because I'm constantly thinking about these things. So there are other factors that go on. So if you have got people who are more dedicated to development, if you've got people who have got natural athleticism, if you've got people who are just naturally more gifted at adapting, they will adapt quicker. But I am under no illusion and I'm completely for when you look at somebody who goes through a decontextualized, isolated system of training with rolling compared to someone who does undertakes representative learning design and rolling, by the end of a set period, the majority, I think big majority, I'd love to do this as a research study, but the big majority on the RLD side, so the representative learning design side are going to get there quicker and are going to get there with far better behaviours than the other group. Um, that that for me, I I'm convinced by that, that's what I think will happen. But when you ask the question of how long would it take, it's incredibly difficult. I mean, I I train with people who um uh or have trained with people who take a long time to learn skills, a long time. Um, and then others that pick things up very, very quickly. It's it's just humans are very individual individualized, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 47:27

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 47:28

But the training will help. The quality of training when you because what you want to do is allow the skill to be in its um entirety from the start of the skill to the end of the skill. Now, if we're breaking it down and then the person's having to then um pick it's a bit like Lego blocks, right? You just scatter them around the floor and you get people to start picking them up and and and baking a tower, you scatter them again, they've got to pick them back up and put them together. The person who has them all in one place and doesn't have them scattered and just can continually build up is gonna get there quicker, right? It's gonna get there better than if you're constantly scattering and they're having to re-put the blocks back together in a stitching manner.

SPEAKER_01 48:04

Can can you so you've now used the word skill a couple times, and this is Scotty and I often navel gaze about what what does that word mean? Because in the ecological space, that word seems to carry a tremendous amount of of I I can't think, you know, it is thrown around, let's say, by people without ever being defined that this is a better way to develop skill, or we're doing skill development or skill acquisition or skill, skill, skill. But then you ask someone, what do you mean by skill? And it it ends up being a very circular discussion. When you use the word skill, what does that mean? What are we trying to do here?

SPEAKER_00 48:45

So it's the application that produces a performance movement, let's say. So I had a I had a chat with someone recently a couple of months ago about the difference between technique and skill, and the people will do technique practices and then they build that into a skill practice. All they meant was a skill is something that has most people, you might say, okay, the let's work on our our jab skill, right? Now, most people will hold a hold a pad up or bag and and that and the skill will be just jabbing, right? But that's not the skill. The the skill is the ability to first of all understand when the the jab can be thrown. That's not easy, right? The skill of a jab, you have to get the distance, you have to you have to see where their hands are, you have to see their body movement, are they going to throw? Because if you if you're both gonna throw at the same time, or they're slightly ahead of you in the throw, that's not gonna be good for you. Um, if you're throwing with the left and they're coming to the body um on the right, you've got a problem there. So that perceptual information is all part of the jab skill, right? So the skill is not just the punch, it's all the bits before. And then once you have punch, you think getting yourself back into say the next skill, I guess, which would be possibly the next movement. Or you could describe the skill as a set amount of moves if it's all together in one performance outcome. So when I think of skill, that for me is what a skill is. So it's the it's the the action of something that produces performance, perception, action of performance.

SPEAKER_02 50:16

Is it helpful to even use the word technique then? I mean the way I hear you talk about the way I'm hearing you talk about skill is that we can become skillful at punching a bag, but it's a different skill.

SPEAKER_00 50:28

Hunt do absolutely, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So it annoys me when when people go, oh yeah, this player is so technical, you know, because they move their body in a very like the blueprint, right? All coaches will have a blueprint of you know, you need to punch like this. And traditional coaches will go, no, you need to I'll tell you how to do it, and you now need to do it like me. So they're teaching you their technique and their way of moving, but but that's not the skill. That's just the way so that I hate the word and and don't ever use the word technique in that sense. Um, it's skill because you cannot decouple perception action. They are they are they have a relationship, they are completely linked. So yeah, I I I don't like that term.

SPEAKER_01 51:08

Scotty and I was I'm sorry, we we often talk about coaches chasing an aesthetic.

SPEAKER_03 51:13

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 51:14

Especially in striking, and that the the techniques, the perfect techniques, would fit in with that idea of chasing an aesthetic.

SPEAKER_00 51:22

Yeah, you know, which I'm I'm trying to think from a combat sport point of view, I'm just trying to think of um uh in other sports there are some ugly movers, right? Really ugly movers, and they're Olympic and world champions. So who are we to say that we are able to understand how another person moves, and that our technique is so much better than anyone else's, and that we can, if we make them move like our blueprint, our technique blueprint says, it's crazy. And what we do is we then lose people lose their um individuality. I what one example, Adam? I I imagine you probably wouldn't have watched the cricket world cup recently, the T20. Um I have not, no. No, sorry. Scott, I don't know if you would have done. Um but cricket's a great example, right? There are some bowlers. We know you know what the sport is, though, right? Yes, yes. There are some bowlers. Um, Malinga, the the Sri Lankan years ago, who used to bowl from the side. There's a guy called um an Indian called Jasper Um Bummer who bowls with the strangest um action but with the rest, and and he is, I think he's probably the number one bowler in the world at the moment. That would have been coached out of him completely because the technique is not very aesthetic at all. A coach would look at that and go, nah, that won't work. They would have looked at Malinga's technique. Everyone bowls from above the head. Malinga bowls from the side. If he came into an English cricket academy, they'd have coached out of him, and he probably never would have been the world-class bowler that that he then became. So, yeah, I I think this idea of you have to do it this way is so dangerous because we lose, we lose the potential for people to um to be incredible. And I think sport is is is is too far down that road.

SPEAKER_02 52:57

I I have a question about that. How a big map on uh information pickup and perception action coupling. We can look at that two ways, right? I forget uh I won't even try and mention his name again, but he has this kind of unorthodox, unusual, atypical uh bowling um action. Yeah. We can look at that two ways and say, well, he's he's managed to come across this new kind of bowling action which is more effective. Or yeah, we we make the case from our perspective is this is giving novel or unusual information to the batter. Because the batter's seen this, you know, so on, so to speak, typical set of kinematics constantly. Now they're hit with this new novelty. So the question is, will batters eventually catch up, or will more bowlers try to emulate that that that that that throw? Uh we see all the time in combat sports with uh there seems to be uh and I think this probably uh accounts for most sports, that there's like a um disproportional moment of success from lefties. Now, can we say is there's something special about lefties? I would say from our perspective is that no lefties are generally going with righties and righties are generally going with righties, and so when you put lefties in front of a righty, there is kind of a uh asymmetry there and how much of that information they've been attending to.

SPEAKER_00 53:59

Yeah, no, I completely agree. And it makes me think back to Tyson Fury and Usik's first fight, when you I don't think you can replicate the way Tyson Fury moves with his um stuttered and staggered punching style, where he's you know, you don't know when it's coming. And up to about, I can't remember the exact rounds, but Fury was doing quite well, and Usik was struggling somewhat, probably up till about the seventh, eighth round of that first fight from what from my from memory. But then all of a sudden, Usik worked it out. So it took him the best part of say 20 minutes to now understand this style that he'd never seen before, and the rest is history, you know, he he was able to work that out. But you're absolutely right. Um, this is something that batters now all of a sudden, oh my god, I I've not experienced this at all. So actually, you could say, is he a good bowler because he's got a good action, but it's only good because batters don't know what it is, and it's always difficult when you come up against someone who's unconventional, isn't it? You just it's very difficult to have any experience of that. It's yeah, it's a fascinating approach.

SPEAKER_01 54:59

Time time will tell, right? Because we see this in sports all the time. We have these new species evolved, and some people are going to see that success and mimic it. And if it's something that works against the the it's not just novelty, but it works, then it will become something that's or it will go extinct. And and we see that in we see that in MMA also all the time. A new the calf kick, right? The calf kick, the first couple of guys that were kicking the calf were were just it was people just couldn't stop talking about the calf kick. And but it's a real thing. It works very well in the distance that we play, it works really well with the threats that we face. And so now people are better at defending it, but it is a part of the game now. And only only time will tell. Um, something with the pitching, though, which is interesting in American baseball, at least. Well, cricket's not cricket and baseball very similar in some senses. Um part of what I see happening biomechanically is an attempt to reduce injuries. Right. And so they are collecting more data than probably has ever been collected in the history of the sport to see if they can figure out biomechanically what causes injury. And I truly believe in talking to people in that sport, that they will not be able to do that. What they will figure out is that it is the demands of the sport that they are putting on this really tiny ligament that that ligament either survives or it doesn't. But everyone is built differently and those constraints of the system are gonna play a big role. We're not gonna be able to fit guys into this box that says if you do it this way, you won't get injured.

SPEAKER_00 56:41

Yeah, yeah. But that's what that's what we do as humans. We need to have measurements, we need to have order, we need to have processes, don't we? Um, and and that's the problem with coaching. We we we've got to a point where because we need to have measurement and we need to have progression, we need to have we need to be objective. We've we put everything into these this staged approach. Um, so yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 57:04

Can you so I have my book? Yeah, and I got to your chapter on feedback. And feedback is something that I am definitely uh trying to learn more about. I've studied in some other ways because I spent my entire life, even in a live room, using your traditional feedback, if you will. And so on the top of the page, I wrote, I wrote, I need to look at all see this is what how a nerd reads a book, Scott. I wrote, I need to think more about feedback in general. So talk to us about feedback in an ecological room, if you will, if that if there's a better way to um talk to us about that.

SPEAKER_00 57:40

So let's go with let's go with the idea of the bandwidth, because I think it's the best way to explain it. You set the environment, you set your practice design, you set your objectives for that individual, those individuals, those athletes that you want them to achieve. If they are exploring within your parameters, within your bandwidth, so let's say that let's say it's a novice and they're doing something wildly wrong that is never going to work, you could speed it up by going, hold on a minute, don't do that, because that's that's really not gonna help you. You might get injured or something, right? But when you've got people who who start to understand, as long as they are exploring and failing, and this is a big this does lead us into the idea or a separate area that we need to change our relationship with failure massively in these environments. Um but as long but as long as they are exploring successful and unsuccessful, because it's very important to explore the unsuccessful, probably more important, um, leave them alone. You don't need to say anything. Their internal feedback, their understanding of whether it worked or not, the feeling that they're getting of their body is the greatest teacher. Um at the end, you might ask them questions. You might say, well, which one worked for you? Why did that work for you? How did that feel? How might you, how might you improve that? So you're getting them to reflect. It might be that they haven't got a clue. Well, that's okay. But they're clearly doing something because they're playing out, they just can't articulate it. Um, but but they're using their body, they're getting the kinesthetic um kinesthetic feedback. Um they're not needing the coach to say, that was good, that was bad. They already know. So for me, an ecological, an ecologically dynamic environment is a very quiet one from the coach's point of view. And one of the biggest problems, a good study by, I think it was Sonet L, uh, I want to say 2016, 2019, something like that. They looked at what the biggest problems for coaches were. Um, and it was the being quiet and then not looking like you're doing anything, right? Because you'll stand there and you'll be looking, and then people might be going, but what's the coach doing? The coach isn't telling me, the coach's job is to tell me what to do. No, the coach, the coach has spent hours probably devising an amazing um practice environment and and a and a uh designed a system where you will learn and teach yourself. That is far more powerful than the coach telling you what you've done right or what you've done wrong. So if you've got it right, the coach says very little.

SPEAKER_01 59:55

That's uh I felt cheerleading more than anything during my practices. Yeah, yeah, motivation. Motivation, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:02

Yeah, uh and that's I've been talking about this recently. It's it's almost been a bit of a crisis. I've been talking to my um professors in at school that it feels like I'm dangerously under coaching and perhaps I've overstretched or taken these ideas too far. But this this this is this is where I am now, Dr. Steve. Uh and actually the assignment I'm working on this week, we had to kind of compare maybe uh a more cognitive uh framework with an ecological framework. I I couldn't come up with a clear uh cognitive like skill acquisition framework. So I picked uh Wolf's optimal, uh which was interesting. But I'm always trying to take these ideas. I I know that's not it's it's kind of theoretically agnostic, I would say, maybe more leans towards more IP. Um but I'm always trying to map these ideas onto how that would look through an ecological lens. And when I think about motivation, because that's a lot of uh the Wolf stuff, right? That a lot of these earlier theories were kind of motivationally agnostic. Um and when I think about what motivation means, it's like this fucking readiness, this optimism, let's let's let's let's fucking get after it. Um do you think that's maybe what motivation is? It's just an increased sensitivity to the affordances in our in our in our environment. That could be wildly speculative, but I'm trying to take the uh how affect it changes the way we uh perceive and act in the world. So when I was writing about optimal last night, I was thinking, is this really what motivation is? Is it is this what it is? Is it just this kind of heightened sense of uh receptiveness, of um sensitivity to the to what's going on, the opportunities are there? Do you see different things when you're motivated as opposed to being maybe more kind of pessimistic? Or down full of anxiety?

SPEAKER_00 1:01:28

Yeah, absolutely. Um and I I think I I always say to my students, motivation should always be spelt for me for a capital M because it it dictates uh it underpins everything you do in life. Your your motivation to get up and go for a walk, your motivation to go to the gym, your motivation to go to work, it has massive impacts on everything you do. So, how do you create an environment where people are, yeah, I I guess it's that the approach when they get to something. And I'll tell you what, it's an interesting element actually of sort of overtraining. And if you've got people who aren't motivated because they're absolutely knackered, I I was exhausted. I went training last night. I thought I shouldn't have gone, I did go. I actually started to get a migraine three quarters through, and I ended up leaving, and I just thought to myself, I and I got there and I just wasn't motivated at all, but my effort levels were terrible. I was too worried about um uh you know how I was feeling. I think I broke my toe again. It was like one of the nightmare situations, and I'm not sure I really learned anything last night. Or I say learn anything, I'll be careful with that because I don't think you learn every time, but because we were drilling actually, drilling as the old little little D drill. Um, and and I felt that um yeah, and so yeah, that impacted my motivation massively. And and I know it's a huge thing because I will that there's some there's sometimes where I roll against the bigger guys and I need to be absolutely on it because I know that they have affordances on me because of their strength that that they will be able to access. So if I'm not motivated to give that, to give a when we're in a scramble, I need to give a hundred percent, I then get destabilized. We go back to that destabilization language. So yeah, and that then impacts what I do. So I think if you ever train, if you're a serious trainer and you're training demotivated, I I don't know what the future holds because you're not gonna be you're not gonna be accessing the information as you should be, and therefore, no, sorry, you're gonna be accessing information potentially the same, but the what you do with that information is gonna differ. So you're absolutely right.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:19

Yeah, sounds like you use motivation and intentionality almost synonymously, is that is that right?

SPEAKER_00 1:03:25

Yeah. Yeah, I I would say I I think I mean motivation is a very it's a very deep human thing, isn't it? It's uh like I said, it covers every single part of our lives from you know whether you can be bothered to get up and make yourself a cup of tea or you know, you're going in for a hard, hard gym session, or or whatever it might be. Um so uh yeah, your your intentions or or what you're intending to do is going to be massively impacted by motivation. But I'm thinking that pretty much everything is for me, everything's impacted by motivation. Um you motivate to get on in life. I've got some students who are highly motivated, I've got some students that aren't very motivated, and it it it you know, you can see it in their grades, you can see it in their future prospects. It's um it goes across everything that someone does.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:08

Yeah, and I think um I I think I could probably speak for Adam here. We're coming more and more towards the the culture is everything. Oh yes, everything's so to get that motivational culture they go back to like STT, you know, optimal kind of um covered it too, you know, gives people a sense of autonomy, their you know, sense of agency, that they're in a they're in a real tribe. I mean, Adam calls it, you know, uh the tribe, um from which we can kind of foster this motivation. Um I'm conscious you're tiny. I did want to go into afforders. I have one one extra qu one other question, um and I'm gonna just kind of spitball here as we go. So one of the one of my concerns is when we are doing a striking practice, because we're bringing down reducing impacts, inevitably the speed comes down a little bit. So they're sparring and operating at submaximal speed, submaximal forces. Bear with me here. So I'm thinking, so see if we go to the gym and we we lift it 80% or whatever, we we we can make probably a reasonable assumption that our uh one rep max will increase, even though we're not hitting that one rate max. Would we agree with that?

SPEAKER_03 1:05:09

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:11

Does perception action work the same way, do you think? Like if we're working in submaximal speeds, and then we get to a fight and the speeds are all increased. Is there any way we can you know map that on to my analogy for for for for the gym? Like we're working at a submaximal lord, will you do you increase the capacity to your your your your full limitation?

SPEAKER_00 1:05:32

Oh that is the golden question. And that is the one that we I don't know if that'll ever be answered. Um because we know we know in the gym that you can work in an 8 to 12 uh hypertrophy rep range, let's say 70 80% weights, and your one rep max will improve. But if you're working one to three, three to five reps to failure, your one rep max improves better because your strength increases, because it starts at Target not only the muscle but also the neuromuscular system, right? So the closer we get to one rare max training in training in the gym, we know our strength increases. So I guess if we took that into percept perception action coupling, we could then just argue, I guess, because it's very difficult to measure, um, the more you um undertake the the higher perception action coupling in your training, the closer you will then be to match readiness, match relatedness. Sure. But the the figure, I mean that that's the golden question. And yeah, no idea. All I know is we have to get it as close to it as we possibly can.

SPEAKER_02 1:06:41

Okay, let me add on to that then. If we can if we can express it, uh like if we have the capability to punch harder and faster, yet we're not expressing that in sparring, but we have that capability when that affordance um becomes salient within a competition or fight. We have the capability, but we're not maybe used to cracks in it that that that that level. I'm curious here, because it it's something I wrestle with all the time. Um, can we exploit that affordance? Can we hit harder and fast than we would do normally in the gym? I would say probably yes, but again, I I've accelerated back and forward on this. I'm not sure I'm not so sure. I never want to be doing athletes of disservice, that's the problem.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:17

Yeah, when you say hit faster and stronger, are you referring to a different movement as well? So you could then start to think about well, I'm gonna retract my arm back a little bit and I'm gonna swing my body more, and therefore, yes, I can hit harder, but actually I'm now producing perceptual cues for my opponent that they now can read to know that I'm going for more of a power shot. Or is it the fact that I can throw the same tech technique? This is the technique, it's just that it's this it's the outcome. I uh this I can have the same outcome, but I can increase the power.

SPEAKER_02 1:07:50

I would say the latter, but I completely concede what you're saying. I mean, I I I've talked about this a lot. In fact, I use the the reel of uh it's corner McGregor, Dustin Warrior, and uh Leon Edwards, they're punching the you know the things you get in the bars, yeah. And they were just fucking swinging, right? And that was my point. If you change the intention, um you change the behavior. Adam talks about this a lot. He sees the problem as guys are trying to try and get hit too hard in flights. Yeah, that's that's changing the behavior. So we'll see that um, and now I'm now I'm really deep because if you think of the the the the bodies like being a segregate system, that the the harder they're thrown, the right the if they're throwing a big leaping left hook, the fact that the right hand's coming down is probably how the body is organized and to remain stable in a way, right?

SPEAKER_03 1:08:31

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:08:31

Because it's not easy, and then do then we go, so do we practice uh throwing wild left hooks with our with our with our hand tight? I don't know.

SPEAKER_00 1:08:38

Yeah, yeah. But you know, novices will come in and and you know, you'll you'll be right, you know, this is how you you're gonna keep nice and nice and controlled, and you're gonna be nice and safe and keep your hands there, and all of a sudden it's uh the anxiety takes over and they start windmilling, you know what I mean? Because they're thinking I need to, you know, I need to take this person out. And yeah, so you've instantly you've added in a little bit of anxiety, well not a little bit, probably quite a lot, and all of a sudden everything that they learn to use has now completely gone out the window because it's the idea of actually what I need to do. But that's the idea of control, though, isn't it? It's when when you have a and we think we touched on this a while ago, we'd be talking about someone who looks stable, who looks like they're in control. That's someone who is applying their skill very, very well, but still able to um uh increase speed, dig decrease speed, and not be overtaken by that need to, well, I'm now going to change my technique and I'm gonna hit something harder. We now that circles back to, well, do we then do pad work to produce that action? Probably the answer is yes. So there probably is an element of pad work, bag work needed to create that. But the problem is you've got no one on the other side. You might be changing your technique when you now change the bag work because you're maybe hitting a little bit harder, and therefore you've now got perceptual cues for your your opponent little triggers that they're going, ah, he's just about to throw a big right. So it it's a minefield, isn't it? It's an unbelievable mindfield to try and navigate. Um, but yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:10:00

I think when we accept that mindfield, the complexity of that mindfield, and we give up the idea that we can control all of that.

SPEAKER_03 1:10:06

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 1:10:06

Then I think that's a big leap from a traditional to a newer type approach, is what can the coach really control?

SPEAKER_00 1:10:14

Exactly. Very little. Uh well, very little in what the person Yeah, look, you just that and that hits a nail on the head. What we could control is the environment that we put the people in, but we can't control their bodies like we're a puppeteer. And I I think that is that is coaches don't do that. The idea of coaching is that we instruct, especially in combat sports, we instruct and tell people what to do. Whereas the control needs to change, you need to flip it.

SPEAKER_01 1:10:38

And I I don't know, I don't know what time we're working against here. So if we've got to wrap it up, just please tell us. Um, I wanted to ask the question. So Scotty and I do a lot of navel gazing about affordances, and I don't want to I don't want to ask you to navel gaze with us, but I do want to ask you about your use of the word in um you were talking about a three different approaches to creating activities, let's call them. And so you had um, no, it's in the front of the book, I'm sorry. You had a constraints-led approach, which I think we're we're all familiar with. Then you had what you called an affordance-led approach, yeah, and then a third one, which you called an intention-led approach. Can you maybe give us an example of how your activity might change according to those three ideas? What that same activity would look like focused on constraints, affordances, or intentions.

SPEAKER_00 1:11:30

Yeah, absolutely. So, first of all, any coaches listen to this, when we say constraints-led, what we mean is the constraints of the system, not adding in constraints for constraints' sake. And it's really important. I've I've witnessed and met a lot of coaches who constrain their coaching. For example, there might be a um, let's go back to a racket sport where they they want to concentrate on the swing motion. So they put the other the other hand, a non-racket hand in your pocket to keep that one out of the way. But that's a constraint that's not in the game. Like, so we're not constraining for constraint's sake. So, first of all, constraints is constraints and approaches. What are the constraints of the system? Every sport is constrained by task, environment, um, individual. Um, if we looked at an evasion game sport, it would include things like the lines, what the opposition do, the timing of how long you usually have with the ball or the object, um, the rules around tackling or those sorts of things. Within combat sports, there will be constraints to the system. You can't spend too long with your hands down when people think or when you throw a punch, you need to cover up. Right, we are we have these constant constraints. So the constraints that approach is let's work within the constraints. Okay. So a lot of coaches don't quite understand that. So, therefore, this is why in my book, every single chapter after the initial ones are all about setting the dynamics of the activity first. Because we need to know what the dynamics of the activity are before we can then start to understand how to coach it. So we need to understand the constraints, for example. So, affordances, as you guys both know, are the um the possible actions that are available to us. Now, um I'm I'm a blue belt and and our spar with our with one of the black belts of the club. Now, his affordances are far greater than than what I than what I will that I have, and that's clearly obvious when we roll. So if we're looking at an affordance-led approach, it's more of an individual, individualized approach. So it's very tricky because you if you're in a large group of people, you need to look at, okay, what can each person achieve? So I might now need to set things up a little bit differently so they're individualized. But it's more about rather than just the constraints, it's getting people to think about what is it that I can do and what is it that I understand from the information that I'm receiving. The only difference, so one of the big differences between a high level and a lower level, is the same information comes in, but it's the how we specify that information, how we understand, how we interpret, how we use that information. All the information's there is that some people have spent a long time understanding that information. So the the affordance-led approach is that one where we are more looking towards, and it's a subtle change, but it but it leads in the fact that, okay, rather than just constraining it, we will constrain it, but we will have a focus on what you can achieve in any given moment. The intentions-led, I think, is one of my, I think one of the maybe the best ways now to coach, but it is fairly difficult, is you have an intention. So let's go back to the example of of um that we used before, because actually that was an intentions-led um approach that I described. Is someone's got you in a half guard knee shield with a with their with their elbow up as well, um, with an arm shield, you're in that position, um, you've got to try and pass the guard, off you go. Another person's got to stop you. Your intention is just, let's say, chest to chest. That is your intention. I'm not going to tell you how to get there. You work it out. That is that is where you have to have a culture, tribe, and understanding, a difference in then how you um get people to understand what is success. Because success could be you've just turned up and had a workout rather than I got three submissions tonight and no one submitted me. Right? That's you usually people turn up. I mean, you know, I I would admit that, you know, I think when I turn up and I get a few submissions, I don't get submitted, I think of that as a win. But actually, did I learn anything? I didn't, and I know I'm not, you know, I need to put myself in situations where I constantly fail. So, yeah, that intention-led approach, hopefully I've explained that well enough. But it's it goes a lot, there's uh an undercurrent of understanding around failure, around the communication, the uh the um objectives. You you can't you can't think, right, I'm going to achieve this. It's just I'm trying to get to this point. How am I getting there? And it could take you hours, could take you days, could take you weeks of training, but but that's a difference. But I think that is a far more um focused approach. Hopefully, Adam, I've explained that.

SPEAKER_01 1:15:45

You have it. And it's interesting because when I read it, the note that I made was I don't think the intention-led approach is a separable idea from how I view the constraints-led approach. Because I think grappling has some universal intentionality, right? It can be uh if you're on top, stay on top, if you're on bottom, get on top. If you're neutral, get on top, right? And so I think that drives the behavior because it's a r it's the rules of the sport, if you will, or what Scotty considers sort of the fundamentals of the sport. So I think the I I I appreciate the idea of paying attention to the intentions, if you will. Um, but I think that's almost baked into uh the sport. And what you're describing with passing, I might even call um positional sparring, and that requires some previous knowledge. So it it's not as it's not a methodology that works equally well across all experience levels, right? Beginners have to be the the search space has to be shrunken down for them. Um the intentions still have to be there, but the space has to be shrunken down. As we get more experience, I think we can expand that space because they're already understand some of the behaviors, the movements, whatever we want to call them. So um I like the idea of making sure the intentions are known, but at least when I design games or big D drills or whatever the hell you want to call them, um the intentionality is always sort of baked in. And what that allows me to do, at least in my room, is I don't have to instruct both sides because then there's a lot of a lot of talking, and I don't want to do a lot of talking. And so on your passing drill, as a good example, the bottom person doesn't necessarily need any instruction because they already know the intentions of a bottom player. Stand up or sweep, let's say, right? Get on top or get to neutral. And so I think maybe that's I appreciate you separating that out. I try and keep that coupled with the drill, if you will. Yeah, something to think about.

SPEAKER_00 1:17:52

Yeah, they're very, they're very subtle. I mean, it's probably all within constraints, like the constraints led idea. Um, they are very subtle differences, but I I certainly think that if you if you're just concentrating on the constraints, you might forget or well, the constraint is okay, we we have the constraints of the system that we want to work on, um, and we might put someone in that position, whereas actually we then just work on on intention as the sole objective. And I think from my experience, we will get potentially different outcomes. And I think what you've touched upon there between novice and and more advanced is again lean on Bernstein and degrees of freedom, is that how do we control the degrees of freedom? And one way that a coach does that is by is if we go back to communication and feedback, is setting up bandwidth and setting up a practice environment where it could be. Um, you know, the only goal um at the moment between these two novices is so if we if we again we go back to intentions led, is that you have to have control of one person's arm with both of yours. So you have to have control of their body. So we don't tell them what to do, we don't give them um an environment where it's over overly focused on just the constraints, but we just say, here's the intention, let's go. But I absolutely agree, it's probably and that's gonna be one where we need a degrees of freedom which are far more narrowed with people that that understand what they're trying to achieve. So yeah, I absolutely agree with that.

SPEAKER_02 1:19:15

I have a couple of questions about affordances, and I feel it's okay to be unsure about affordances because I don't think there's a like bona fide consensus of of exactly what they are and and uh in in ecological psychology. I may be wrong on that. But um this this idea of do you do you think there's a resolution to affordances? What do you mean? Okay, so if I go back to my so when I'm trying to talk uh maybe affordances with some of the students again, like i we we can imagine imagine a gap in front of us, right? Yeah. One that gap that clearly affords jumping. And then we'll get to this demarcation point. There's somewhere along that line where we're not quite sure if it's if it's jumpable, afford jumping or not. I think the the more experienced we are at jumping, that line, the blurriness of where that jumpability or not jumpability is almost gets uh a higher resolution to it. And you can I think we can maybe map this on to like parkour people and whatnot. I watch all these parkour wheels and I'm just like f you guys are crazy. But there's always a confidence and a sensitivity to them of what what is truly affordable. They're not really taking they can't be taking they can't be taking guesses at that stage. There's such a fine resolution to their like a sensitivity to these affordances. So that's that was my question about do you feel like affordances can have kind of a a resolution to them? Or am I just adding in my own fucking meanings and words?

SPEAKER_00 1:20:29

Yeah, I I think affordances are really tricky because every single person on the planet probably with with jumping a gap will have a different affordance um in some in some way if we if we really drill down into every single thing that was going on. Um but uh I think really I I think possibly that's uh I don't know. I I don't I don't see affordances as particularly overcomplicated. I see them as that they are there's an opportunity for me to act. Have I seen that in the first place? Do I have the skill set to do it? Have I done it before? Do I think I can now do it against this opponent? And I will have probably I might have 10 different options, three of them I probably didn't even think of. Three of them I might think, oh, I'd wish I could do that, and I'm left with four that I could probably go with, and then I make a decision out of those four. Whereas actually the list could well be hundreds of affordances, thousands, millions of different affordances, because if you take the highest level to the lowest level, that's what you end up with. Um yeah, so I I probably haven't thought about it as deeply as that. I I s I see them as probably fairly simple as simple a simple thing that is just the result of our action and our our perception and action.

SPEAKER_02 1:21:52

Yeah. So and if we map this on a question I asked Adam, so Adam and I are are are s you know jogging around uh do sparring and he perceives affordance to punch me in the face.

SPEAKER_03 1:22:03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:22:04

And he acts upon that, but as he's punching, I I pick up an affordance for avoidability or or however you want to use that word. Did that affordance collapse during the punch in action? How do we talk about that? I told you we do a lot of naval gazing about affordances.

SPEAKER_00 1:22:19

Yeah, yeah. Well, so so Adam's seen the the affordance, right?

SPEAKER_02 1:22:24

Adam's acted on the affordance to punch me. So that's an opportunity for action, but he's ultimately failed. What can we say about that affordance?

SPEAKER_00 1:22:30

Well, that affordance has now changed because against in that same situation, or or that, or a similar because it'll never be the same, a similar situation to that in the future, Adam will get to a point where he will he will now have to update his um his affordances, his affordances will be updated because of your action that then nullified his action. So and that's that's the whole the cyclical nature of all of it, where you've got perception, action constantly happening, and his affordances coming to life, dying, coming to life, dying. Now, when we get to that extreme situation, let's say it's somebody who has always had success one way, and all of a sudden he's come up against someone who he doesn't have that success against. That affordance either has to change, um, there has to be a change in it could be, I don't know, it's possibly biomechanics. So at that point, will it be, well, am I telegraphing it? Am I quick enough against this opponent, they're quicker than me. So against that person, that affordance drops out. So I always think of them, you know, you know, the game whack-a-mole where you've got all these holes and you have to hit the the mole. I think of them as in situations you'll get all that um that thing with with uh that sort of game with all of the the spikes that come out, and you can put your hand into it and you've got a handprint or you're facing something. It's a little bit like that where you have certain things that come up in every single situation, and a novice will only have maybe a couple of things available, and then as they've as they as they compete more and more with that other person, there's different things that come up that maybe actually by the end of it, less and less have come up. Whereas more advanced guys, you guys will probably be going through waves of of different things that can come up, and things that you might have thought was an affordance at the start is now just shut down completely, but that might then have afforded something else to pop up somewhere else because it may be that Adam's now realised as he throws that that punch, your reaction has always been that way, and in that moment or in those few moments he's realised that, so now his affordance has now become right. I'm now gonna I'm gonna flake with that and I'm gonna go with something else. So I think that there's a constant, uh constant movement up and down. I quite like that in my mind's eye, it works quite well to think of things like in those individual perceptual skill moments that make up the affordance, they pop up, and there's so many of them. Um so in my mind, that's how I sort of see them.

SPEAKER_02 1:24:43

And do you think affordances are out there just waiting to be discovered? I mean, they talk about latent affordances, I know there's different words, dispositional, blah, blah, blah. Um, so let's go back to the striking example. Um, so Adam's able to punch sees affordance to punch me in the face in round one, uh, and he does so successfully, but in round two, he's exhausted.

SPEAKER_00 1:25:01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:25:02

Is that affordance still there?

SPEAKER_00 1:25:04

Well, no, because he doesn't have the ability to so he he's lost that affordance due to physical um degrading.

SPEAKER_02 1:25:12

So we could say in the sense that the affordance the affordance isn't there.

SPEAKER_00 1:25:16

Not in the same not the same affordance in in the same sort of category, no. Um it it would it would disappear, it would drop out because of that situation. Now let's say by round three he's recovered, the affordance then comes back, pops back up again as something available. Now, um, in the fact that are they all just out there ready to be, well, not for everyone. Um, you know, I'm not gonna be um a six foot four um you know built guy who's gonna be able to smash through brick walls, so I don't have the affordance of a of like a knockout punch, let's say. Um so no, I don't so for me, I at the age of 45 now, I've got limited affordances to what I would have had maybe 10 years ago, 20 years ago. Um so I think yes, they are there to be uh discovered, but it they're discovered within yourself, but as well as in the environment. So again, that links us straight back to um where where we have the have our triangle of task environment and and organism individual.

SPEAKER_02 1:26:13

Like I said, a lot a lot a lot of enabled games. Yeah, yeah, no.

SPEAKER_01 1:26:17

Well, I I I think about like when I watch a child whose confidence in their ability to do something far exceeds their physical ability to do something, right? And so they should see a gap as not jumpable, but their confidence, their fearlessness overrides that. They still see the affordance as jumpable. And it's always it's always interesting to me. I mean, that's what we're talking about, right? We're embedded in the environment, so you can't parse the mental, the physical, any of that apart. Um but to me that that affordance isn't, they've almost created that affordance for themselves in some sense. So I I don't know. Yeah, it's all it is naval gazing.

SPEAKER_00 1:26:58

I don't just ignore me. I think you have to have a sense of there has to be some form of so the action has to lead to some success in some way, right? So a kid on the climbing frame couldn't say, right, what I'm gonna do is I'm now gonna swing on this bar 20 meters, you know, even though in their head they might think I'm gonna do that and I'm gonna land on that swing. So I I think there's I think possibly that, but that's the exploration that allows us to build our amount of affordances. So I think the exploration, as an analogy of a kid's great because the kids should be exploring, they should be failing and messing themselves up on a playground because that's how they learn and what their affordances are. Um, I think it's a fascinating area. I don't think you're wrong in in how you're thinking about it, because I think a deeper understanding of affordances really does set you up to then understand how your athletes are going to perceive and then act within um their environment that they have that they create, because everyone creates their own environment. We we we we set up our environment as coaches, and it's got it's it's a physical environment, but every single person perceives it incredibly. Be differently, and that's why affordance-led approaches I think are superior, um, certainly to just a constraints-led approach if you use it correctly and you're focusing on affordances, but there's a massive difficulty in that if you've got 20 people on the map who all need to have that individualised attention potentially to their objectives and their affordances.

SPEAKER_02 1:28:18

Yeah, I think and and that's um something Adam I and I talk about a lot. You know, the I think the CLA or the um what we're talking about here is probably the best game in town, presently for me, but it's really hard to implement in a group setting. So I think how Adam and I Adam and I are uh navigating that is by creating a culture of kind of ownership of curiosity, of exploration and support. And I was thinking about this last night, so yeah, we we're doing a lot of naval gazing and this is fun and we geek out about this stuff, but let's just say there was a series of research came out or some new rated test that we said absolutely unequivocally, uh the ecological account of motor behavior is is the truth, or IP is the truth. So just say there's there's no debate anymore, there's a clear winner. Now what? Now what? Um I think in the information processing um perspective, we we have all these study designs, these reductionists uh, you know, this data, we're gonna uh select practice like this. Is it blocked? Is it variable, distributed, all that? So we we've we've searched for answers there to try and find order to this from the IP. I think what what I love about the what I'm getting comfortable with in the ecological approaches is just not really knowing. And I'm getting more and more comfortable with that because like, okay, so we we've we've ascertained that yes, ecological account is is the truth here. Now what? No one knows what the fuck we're doing.

SPEAKER_03 1:29:33

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:29:34

And it's so complex. I'm I'm just becoming happier with having the little bit of control I have and letting the culture do a lot of the heavy lift.

SPEAKER_00 1:29:41

Yeah, and I think the um sorry with um with information processing theory, I've not got an issue. Uh here's where I think things fell down. Um, I probably think there are generalized matter programs working. I think I think that's a good as a good way to describe how we're doing uh how how everything's working. Um I've not got an issue with that element of it. My my issue is then the training and the skill acquisition. So what's happened is we've looked at the brain as a computer and we said, well, if we are developing the if we develop like a computer, therefore we must, we can break things down, we can have linear progressions, we we can't work on this skill because we haven't learned this skill yet. Um, and that's how we build our generalized motor programs. No, I think back in the day when all this was first coming out, um when Schmidt was first sort of putting papers out in this area, what what would have been lovely if somebody would have gone, well, hold on a minute. And people with a I could call it the traditional view, but there are some people that I I probably um have arguments with on LinkedIn that will say, no, no, no, that the traditional traditional coaching is not what you're saying because there was always variability um involved in it, but it's not really. Um so I what I wish it happened is that, yeah, let's go down the idea of there's a generalized motor program and okay, fine, but how do we train that GMP? We train it not by the linear system, we train it by an ecological approach. That would be so that would have solved a lot of the problems. And I think now we'd be in a situation where we go, yeah, okay. Um, what the body does is it produces a general program that does fit sort of different scenarios, but this is how we train it.

SPEAKER_01 1:31:22

Yeah, I I've started to, I'm sorry, Scotty, let me let me say one thing and then I I have to go to the science factory and my dog is trying to get in a chair. I've started to explain to my athletes that the difference is I am not programming you. The environment, you and the environment are programming you. And I think it's more, if we're going to use a computational idea, it's more of a deep learning idea than it is a programming idea. But when I put it that way to them, that I'm not programming you, you're programming yourself almost, you know, the environment, you, all that. They seem to understand that really well. And so that's that's what I'm it's not about traditional or new or eco or what that seems to jive with them pretty well. So and then doc, I have to run, I have to go. Uh I work in in biotechnology, so I have to go to the science factory and make some stuff happen. You guys enjoy the rest of this conversation. Thank you very much.

SPEAKER_00 1:32:12

Right to me, you added. Thank you very much.

SPEAKER_01 1:32:14

You too, sir. Won't be the last time we talk.

SPEAKER_00 1:32:16

Brilliant.

SPEAKER_01 1:32:16

Thanks, Adam.

SPEAKER_02 1:32:17

Have a good day to talk to you soon. Thanks, Dr. Steve. I I do um I am conscious you're tiny. I want to just uh add to that last point there, though, because I agree, right? I I on revisiting through my studies here um from my master's, on revisiting schema theory, that still doesn't get me to isolated road training. We still need that recall recognition schema, you know, that feedback system. So we still need we still need to apply context. And I'm not sure Schmidt would have disagreed with that. I think the way that you know this idea of the motor program that the muscle memory we're gonna create this stable pattern uh is is very, very dominant today. But but the whole idea doesn't make sense to me because like even if it says it is general, okay, so we build this general motor program for uh uh a jab cross. But what if our uh our body's in a different position every time? What about if our stance is narrower or if our weight distribution is different? Do we need a mortar program to get to the start of the next more program? It just seems it's like add infinitum, it's just absurd.

SPEAKER_00 1:33:10

Yeah, I think it's the way that we I think the language then produces something that in our minds, doesn't it? Um, and I've got a real problem with with the whole reason a computer was invented is because they modeled it on the brain, right? The processes that were the sort of we go through. So um, yeah, and so I I think if if we looked at it as there's a generalized motor program, sort of, which we don't have one for every single movement. But the way that it's so it's not so I I think I think the fact that now I say generalized motor program, there's all this history and all this other context behind that that wording. But if we just looked at a general, so for lots of variability program where the body will move. So so you could have you could take a thousand fighters and you can say, show me a jab, okay, show me a jab uh counter from what's you know, and you could okay. The the the program's about you could sort of put an umbrella around that skill, that movement is a jab, right? So we can put an umbrella over that. Um, and then we're at the position where, okay, well, then how best do we train that? So my my my big problem with it is just being it's the language used and it's the sort of the connotations of it and and then how we perceive it when actually I I think that there are these, if we want it, let's call them a general motorcycle, uh a GMP, right? But it's the way it's trained is therefore not what is called a GMP in the literature and in the research. It's slightly different because it has it has got to be um trained by the environment and trained by the person themselves. Um, so yeah, it it and that for me sums up probably the coaching problem we certainly have in the UK.

SPEAKER_02 1:34:45

Yeah, I think we I think we have it everywhere. I I mean again, and just visiting both sides because that was one of the reasons I wanted to go back to school and make a because it was the easiest thing to do, just shit all over traditional approach, right? But I don't think we're shitting over information processing. There's a rich history of researching out there. So despite the different ontologies, I do believe that there's not much daylight between the practical implications. Both both theories are kind of nudging us towards the same practice environments. Not not like closer than you would think given they're different ontologies.

SPEAKER_00 1:35:14

Yeah, but I I think the I I think we have I think we can separate this is how information is stored and recalled and okay. But then it's okay, how is that programmed? So it's a bit like hardware, software. It's the hardware sits there and does its thing, but the software then trains the hardware. So the the the I haven't got a problem with the hardware. My problem has always been with the software. So if you take that sort of analogy, is that I've not got a problem with with how it's stored and how it's described in that sense. I think the problem has been how we then think that that information or that is all filled up and how that is changed. Um and and that for me, so so you know, I I learnt about the traditional skill acquisition, and then all of a sudden I was like, hold on a minute, we've got this thing called ecological dynamics. Well, I first started off with ecological psychology, actually. Um, and then that took me down to the root of okay, there's this thing now in teaching that I wasn't aware of, which is ecological dynamics, which takes into account that dynamical systems theory, and then we can branch off and all these other areas. That's how you train the system, but the system is the system that that's how I see it. So, yeah, well, I mean, we'll we'll never really know. I mean, I'm at the moment I'm I'm I'm trying to find answers through um neurobiology, actually. So I'm looking trying to work out from an ecological um dynamics perspective what we believe to be in support of IPT, for example. Actually, if you looked at it from a different lens, and and I've I've done this multiple times now, I've actually looked at things in a different way and thought that doesn't actually that doesn't describe IPT, that describes ecological dynamics, what's happening there. For example, that when when you first learn a new skill, right? So you learn a new skill and then your your neurons will will create pathways and they get trimmed for what you don't need, right? So that's how you get more of a stable pattern. So let's say you start off with a kid um who just started and you say, right, I want you to do it this way, and they do it that way and that way and that way and that way, and and and they trim down, they trim down, they trim down. Now all of a sudden you say, right, your next step is to include the perceptual, this different perceptual information. They've now got to I so this is why you get talented people that that are very good that have a ceiling because they can't then add in all this other information because you've already stripped down their ability to add to that. So that's why, and I think it perfectly explains why you would need to train someone with full perceptual information as soon as possible, or as much perceptual information as possible. So when they lay down their movements, uh uh the neurological pathways, it's already set to include perception and action. Does that make sense?

SPEAKER_02 1:37:45

Yeah, it makes a lot of sense. I guess what I'm uh when is the discussion started and having listened to you, it seems like you take the ideas of uh eco-syc or eco dynamics really seriously. Um and so I'm kind of curious at the end, then when you're kind of conceding there might be some kind of uh motor patterns, doesn't that imply some kind of storage, some kind of representation?

SPEAKER_00 1:38:04

Well, yeah, well, in my in my mind, we we have to this information must go somewhere, right? We have to we we have a memory of the of a movement, we have we have some ability to store it, okay? We we have to. So that's why for me it's more about well, how do we store the right information rather than so the argument should be rather than worrying about how we store it, it's it's more about what information are we storing is a far better question than how do we store it. Because if we're worried about that, then then all we're worried about is how do we then acquire skill in the right way, and we don't need to worry about how we store things. That that becomes that becomes a question that's completely redundant when all we then need to worry about is just how are we gonna get that, how are we gonna get the right information in?

SPEAKER_02 1:38:57

Yeah, I totally agree. Yeah, I'm not so sure. I'm not so sure. I don't think I have uh I'm just I again from you know I thought about a um yeah you're familiar with Andrew Wilson, yeah?

SPEAKER_03 1:39:08

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:39:08

Um I I'm it's way above my pay grade, but the way he talks about um storage, memory, you know, changing the verbs to nouns and whatnot. Um I i i it's it's all very it's all very interesting to me. And it's really left for these podcasts. It doesn't, you know, it meaningfully shapes how I coach. But uh again, I'm I'm I'm pragmatic. I get them in, I try not to rob the experience from my my people, I try and encourage them, I try and give them a ton of autonomy so they can share ideas. And this is this is exactly what I'm seeing. And I've again I've spoken about this a lot. We uh I think the IP or traditional approach have been very, very focused on on the task, the task, the task. And now this kind of new kind of movement, uh, eco-boys, so to speak, where we're all about the environment, and I still don't think we give enough uh ownership or enough trust in the in the person themselves. You know, they have agency, they have motivations, they have interests, they are curious, they can explore. So um that's what I'm that that's the culture I've been trying to trying to make it urge him. So when in and our classes are generally mixed, so I'll have experienced people come in with the beginners and vice versa. And that's the that's the culture I'm trying to foster and co uh promote. Help each other out, you know. If you if you think you're you know, you if you think you're going with a partner and you're there a shitty training partner, you don't want to go over them that round, or if you there's a partner you don't want to go with that round, outside of being heart, right? No one wants to go with someone who's dangerous, but if you feel you're above them or you're too skilled for them, then you're the shitty training partner. You should be able to get something out of every interaction, out of every experience. So it's kind of this this this uh pass it back or or pay it back kind of thing. That's that's where I'm going with when I'm room.

SPEAKER_00 1:40:32

But that idea of development of so what you basically what you're saying is the development of information, and so we look at the so specifying of information is really, really important, right? So you will have a high level of information, high so you'll be able to deal with information better than me because you have um uh information, let's not call it memory, right? In that compute IPT sense.

SPEAKER_02 1:40:53

Can we call experience? Can we just label experience?

SPEAKER_00 1:40:56

Yeah, but but but but this goes back to my point is I don't think there's there's there's really much worth in a debate over uh um whether we call it memory, experience, where it's stored, how it's stored. The main thing that we need to be focusing on is how do we best uh create memory, experience, information. Because you'll have far more information than I will have in one of these combat situations, right? So you so you will already have experience, but we might think of it as okay, someone calls experience, but there's got there there's some there's some memory of it somewhere that there has to be some formalized behavioural pattern in the neuromuscular system, which means that you can call upon those movements that I can't call upon because you've got access to more information. So that and that's when I look at IBT and I go, Oh, there must be something going on around some storage. But for me, I've never really focused on that. My focus has always been that's a redundant question, because all I'm worried about is, and what coaches should be worried about, is how do we actually get that information uploaded, remembered? Do you see what I mean? That's that's a critical thing, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:42:02

I I totally agree. That's why these are kind of vanity, little vanity projects, these these podcasts. I'm just generally, genuinely curious about it all. And I and I would I would prefer to use personally, I'd prefer to use the word experience, and that's why as long as I have students that are relatively safe and engaged and curious and explorative, they are experiencing the dynamics of the sport. And I and beyond that, how long are the rounds been, how long should we spend on this particular theme, how specific or general should we get? I don't fucking know. I'm just I'm part of this, I'm part of this continuous culture, and we're I'm just turning dials and pressing knobs here and there and and and seeing where I can get. Yeah, I've no idea what it's gonna look like next year, but um I think it would say to these principles uh of of keeping the experience front and center. The experience of these dynamics. And so last question, yeah. I'm sorry, I can be here all day or see. So are are are we if we're both grappling item, are we uh of course every situation is wholly unique, are we experiencing the same information or are we just per are we just perceiving that information differently at a different resolution or whatever? Yeah, I I don't are we sharing the same environment or do we have our own environments?

SPEAKER_00 1:43:12

I mean Yeah, we we now get into some ontological and epistemological uh discussion points now, some proper philosophy, don't we, round this? It's are we are we are we accessing the same so so humans don't access all the information anyway, we know that we can't because we'd be overwhelmed. So, first of all, are you accessing more information from the environment that I than I am? Probably. Is it all available to me the same as you? No, because our bodies will be different shapes, we'll have different go back to spinal reflexes, they will be different. Um, those things will will absolutely be different. So I think the first point is we've probably got um, we're actually we're not, we're not, we don't have the same information, first of all, I think, I believe. And we are certainly you are able to access far more information or deal with the information you're getting better than I am as well. So you'll be more efficient with that information. I I think it's that is an absolutely fascinating area for for deep reflection. Um what is you know well, I my word my wording is what's my perception, you know, the the the the perceptual information, what do I perceive with my sight, my hearing, all of my senses? Um yeah, I I think that's uh and and so I don't think it's uh I don't think it's the same for everyone, and that's why I'm more I think that really underpins where ecological dynamics is is is the way to go. But that's why it's probably far better to try and look at affordance-led approaches if we're gonna concede that everyone experiences the world completely uniquely.

SPEAKER_02 1:44:46

Yeah. Yeah, I like that. Just from our brief discussion here, um, I think when we talk about are we receiving the same information, that that's almost implying that we're kind of these passive receivers. But if we again take the ideas uh seriously, it's an uh uh energy information exchange. So yeah, what we're what how we're acting on the world is different too, which is changing information we're coming in. So I guess I've answered more in question at the end of that.

SPEAKER_00 1:45:07

Yeah, yeah. Well, I think you probably knew the answer anyway. Um, yeah, no, I I mean I we sat here for almost well two two hours, 15 minutes, and and I'm sort of sitting here as uh you know the guest who um I I guess you know you're asking questions and I'm answering them, and I'm supposed to have the answers. And I've I've never ever felt that I've ever had um all the answers. I just I just try and put forward what I believe to be the most feasible based on the research I've read and and and my experience and uh and my scientific endeavours. Um I will talk, yeah, I was speaking to you guys today, and there's things that you said that I've picked up on. Um so it's constantly, you know, my my my thoughts around this are constantly evolving. I will talk to people like uh you and Adam and and um my my knowledge gets updated or I get more questions now and I have more thoughts. So um I think the danger is when when coaches completely uh closed-minded, and I speak to a lot of those that are this is how you do it, not interested in anything else. Um, and we should be constant learners, shouldn't we? That's the that's where we should be.

SPEAKER_02 1:46:06

Yeah, I'm just coming uh more and more comfortable with the how absurd absurdly complex it is. Yeah, I'm just becoming more comfortable with that. And I think it's it's it's shaping how I coach again, become into almost like I feel like I'm dangerously undercoaching sometimes. So I'm glad I'm I'm glad when you characterize at the start that people are standing around saying, What the fuck is this coach even doing? Yeah, um, there's probably a sense of that in my room, but I'm becoming more comfortable. So then it becomes the kind of interpersonal relationships and how I engage with my students that's important here, kind of make them feel like maybe I'm not giving them all the answers, but I'm there and they can do this and they can have fun and they're kind of safe. So we'll see where it goes from there.

SPEAKER_00 1:46:44

But the problem as well is they turn up to this environment and they have their expectations of what's going to happen. Um, and and I think I think athlete education is incredibly important, especially if you're dealing with children, parent education is massively important. Um, because a lot of parents will think that the coach is there to bark orders and tell people what to do to improve, and then and and and they will be very happy to um to complain uh if they don't see that without any education in this area whatsoever. You know, so I think one of our jobs is absolutely to to educate others to say the reason why I'm not telling you what to do is because you need to work out how how to succeed from failure. And what I'm gonna do is make sure that I provide you with, and this is now why I look at a lot of coaches and I I call them architects really rather than coaches, because what your what your job now is to design an environment which teaches the individual. Sorry, it doesn't teach individual, the individual um adapts to that environment because the environment is replicating the information and then the actions, the informants, everything they need, right? So we become architects rather than coaches barking instructions from the sidelines, and it's very different. And a lot of people will look at it and go, Hold on, this isn't coaching. And then you say to someone, well, tell me about skill acquisition, and they go, Uh, I have no idea. Well, let's uh let just well you go over and say, Trust me, or give them a little bit of information to say, you know, this is why we're doing it, you know. What did you learn from that? And and and hopefully that they're they're they're buy-in. But when you go back to tribe and culture, that is so important that everyone's on the right page, same page.

SPEAKER_02 1:48:14

All right, the very last question, Doc. Um, for my one of my later assignments, I have to come up with my framework and I have to come up with an assessment tool for skill. And I'm completely lost how you assess skill from an ecological perspective, given that it's complex, it's relative, and it's so fluid. I mean, I think we can probably make some assessment tools. Um it's unclear to me how valuable that data would be. No, there's a feel to it. There's a feel to it for me.

SPEAKER_00 1:48:42

Yeah, what what what you know traditionally you're looking at have they achieved this, have they achieved that? Uh really if if you're looking at it from an ecological lens, you'd say, okay, what are you measuring? Um, how engaged were they? What types of questions did they ask? How motivated were they to uh did they enjoy the session? Did it did they at any point um I think quite a good measurement as well is um uh sort of engagement to no engagement. So there's something in in football where they look at um how often the ball rolls, and so therefore in a training session, and how often is a coach standing there explaining things compared to how often a players working with the ball so they become the measurements of ecological dynamics, I believe, because we are by by design not measuring progressively because it's just not that, but but that what you've just described is purely, and this is why traditional and ecological approaches don't can't exist together. Um, I've spoken to enough coaches to know that there's a lot of them out there that deliver game based approaches for ecological dynamics, um, and then use measurements of success based on did someone achieve X, Y, and Z in that session? So I say I say something that you've completely you've merged two styles and and and you've completely got yourself confused. So you're you're trying to use the great approach for the game base, so you're getting all this great learning, but then you While using objectives and measurements which are completely against that. So, yeah. So my advice would be to use measurements which don't actually have any skill or possibly technical, especially if it's in one session. If you're looking over a year, right, you could probably come up with some measurements of, you know, how how how well I don't know what they might be, but but that's when you'd expect to see um probably differences in in approach, differences in control. Um, you're probably then looking at, okay, um, how many times did this person get deep? So there's a performance analysis um work I'm doing at the moment in football, where we aren't analysing how many throw-ins, how many tackles, how many ball recoveries. What we're looking at is how many destabilizations did we have on our side and how many destabilizations did we have on the opposition. Now, within that is all the information we ever need because that's what that's what sport is. It's a destabilization of one side or the other. So that then becomes your measurement over the let's say a space of six months. Is that person now getting destabilized less against this opponent compared to where they were six months ago?

SPEAKER_02 1:51:01

Yeah, I like that. And I have a friend of mine, Sam, that's been kind of helping me work through these ideas. He talks about like a vulnerability um aspect and trying to measure that uh between exchanges. And I I think that maps on well to what you're talking about, this kind of destabilization. I'm still lost, but yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:51:14

Anyway, listen, I uh sorry, go ahead. No, I'll just say I think you're so so you you're um so master's study, you said, right?

SPEAKER_02 1:51:20

Yeah, I'm over with Ed Collin, Alan Duncan. Oh Munster, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:51:25

Okay, they had Stu Armstrong, didn't they, recently?

SPEAKER_02 1:51:27

Sure it was Stu was uh uh guest on just on Monday, don't you?

SPEAKER_00 1:51:31

Yeah, yeah, Stu is um Stu's excellent. Um yeah, and and I think I I don't know what their what what their well have had a look at what their masters does, and I think it does I might be wrong on this, but it looks like it takes more of a general safe approach to skill acquisition rather than uh um my approach is to skill acquisition is that I will introduce people to the history, but I'm not gonna be someone who says um pick and choose which philosophy that you want to because I'm an advocate of of one over the other because I'm I'm still yet because I think it's advanced. I suppose I was speaking to um uh Cal Jones uh um uh podcasting the other day, and he said um it's quite interesting. He says, We've won the war, you know, the war, the war has been won between IPT and ecological dynamics. Um, and I thought, well, actually, you that's quite a good good term to use. I think we we've got there's enough evidence and there's enough knowledge now. When you look at skill acquisition experts, there's not many that are that are championing an IPT approach. Um, but yeah, no, it's interesting. Then how do we do we educate people to find their own way? Or probably I shouldn't be saying pushing someone in one direction, should I? I should be saying, here's all the information, you find your way.

SPEAKER_02 1:52:45

Yeah, and I think both Alan and Ed and Sam are doing a good job of that. They're staying impartial. It's they clearly have their own persuasions, but um they're staying partial. And uh far I'm awake with this assignment I've got, so um, so far be it for me to to to say anything negative, but I I really wanted to get into nitty-gritty, like really get into the geeky stuff, and it it does seem to be more of a uh a general presentation of the history of sports science and the different the different because it's it's just it's it's it's fascinating. Um for me, what I'm enjoying is revisiting the other side to try and make um you know ste steel man the other side and it keeps coming back to it. We can we we ignore the environment at our peril.

SPEAKER_00 1:53:24

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Uh yeah, your thinking is is well above master's level. That's what you're that's what you're struggling with, I think. Yeah, but remember it's not you know getting measured in that way, it's not good. But then that oh god, I can go and now talk about education. The way that we measure progression education is completely wrong because we're looking at a a system that covers the majority or tries to cut cover the majority, but people don't think in that way. It could be that you know, you by the end of your whole degree, I I've had students in the past that have that have just scraped, not scraped through, but been fairly mediocre, but in their undergrad, by the third year they've got it. And they are they are absolutely in in an amazing place, they've got incredible knowledge, but their degree classification will end up being something like a 2-2 because they didn't it was it they were measured from the the first start of the second year to the end of the third year rather than that bit of the end, which I think is quite unfair.

SPEAKER_02 1:54:16

But well, I think I think personally for me, as maybe my just my challenge academically is the the word counts just seem draconian. So I start a draft offer my assignment, it's like the fucking Gettysburg Address, and I'm I've I've already just got past the reduction, you know. So that's that's been the challenge for me, being concise and and getting, you know, um uh achieving the the the metrics in a in a small amount of words, and I just feel like it's they're forcing a generalization of things. And I like to I I'd like to pick something and go right deep, deep, deep, deep. Again, it's just all bullshit, that's just navel gazing, but it's uh you've got to be a little bit more than a lot of yeah, one easy fix of word cancel is get AI to reduce it down.

SPEAKER_00 1:54:50

That's what I always do.

SPEAKER_02 1:54:51

Oh the well, we're we've been I I I guess I mean I I I use it for research, summarizing papers and that. But I'm curious at that. I mean, you so um just as we round off here, what it uh you you teach?

SPEAKER_00 1:55:02

Yeah, yeah. So I'm I I program lead the undergrad sport coaching and physical education degree at the University of Winchester. Um actually have put in uh a proposal for um a skill acquisition um masters actually at the moment because I'm I'm aware that the the the the term skill acquisition and coaching is really lost um I think across most qualifications. I think that there is this is why you've gone to Munster, right?

SPEAKER_02 1:55:30

To to to get more information and um I went to Munster because I live in the US and I and I couldn't afford to do it over here, to be quite frank. And I was I was somewhat friendly with Alan and Ed. So when it came up, I'm just doing it part-time too, so it's over uh over two years, but yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:55:44

Yeah, yeah. So so I spoke to a few people that have done that um got over that masters, and and and I've and I just thought we we need something that that really uh really starts to focus on ecological dynamics, and whether that be critiques of it, but we don't have any focus on it, and and it really is got a huge movement behind it now, and I think we understand if we have the whole the whole history of skill acquisition, it it's it's moving along in a way that ecological dynamics is now explaining. Like, like I said before, we don't need to know what's going on, but we need to know how to make it work. The how is really important. Um, there needs to be more in ecological dynamics. So when I look at sort of masters in this area, I think I'd really love to put one together that looks at um look looks at skill acquisition, but from an ecological perspective.

SPEAKER_02 1:56:28

Yeah, well, as you know, it's it's I feel it's got you know reach critical mass in the grappling space. I think we can attribute a lot of that to to Coach Greg Sauders and and the the disproportionate success he's had. He's still and he's able to walk through the door and take all the mud slinging and and a lot of it's probably we're very well deserved, but um yeah I gotta I gotta give that man credit. He's he's really he's really pushed it into that space. And Adam and I are not quite as um you know a seraph or both when we're out there. Um we'd like to see a shift in many ways, I think striking, and for good reasons, right? Because of the the potential danger, but striking is is so far behind. It's so far behind. Yeah, I mean it's Mr. Miyagi wax on, wax off shit.

SPEAKER_00 1:57:09

Yeah, yeah. Scott, I've got uh somewhere against you now, but it's been fascinating. I've really enjoyed it, and thank you very much for giving me the opportunity to chat about it.

SPEAKER_02 1:57:17

Thank you very much. I'm sure you know there's a kind of a podcast group that talks about this. So uh if anyone wants to get in touch with you.

SPEAKER_00 1:57:24

Yeah, yeah. Um Steve.smith at winchester.ac.uk, google Steve Smith Ecological Dynamics or Winchester, and I'll come up. And um, yeah, always happy to I mean I could chat now for hours, but unfortunately I've got to do proper work.

SPEAKER_02 1:57:35

No, I get it. I I gotta do that too. Um well thank you for your uh generous uh time today. Um I enjoyed that discussion and I'll let you know when it drops. I do put um I will take your photo and cartoonize it and put it on our thumbnail. Hope you're not offended by that. I could probably just use my I could probably just use my own here.

SPEAKER_00 1:57:51

Yeah, yeah, yeah. All good with a beard. Yeah, yeah, that's the that's the grappling look, isn't it? Great stuff. Thanks a lot.

SPEAKER_02 1:57:57

Stay in touch, my man.

SPEAKER_00 1:57:58

Yeah, good man. Thank you. Bye. Thanks, Doc. Bye bye.