Today I chat with Irish National Kickboxing Coach Jon Mackey about the role of training tools in striking sports. We'll explore whether these tools actually support skill acquisition and debunk some of the popular training gimmicks that are flooding social media.
Coach Mackey brings not only an extensive coaching experience, but his academic perspective as a PhD is skill acq candidate.
Jon gives his thoughts on the effectiveness of tools like noodles, ladders, flashing lights, and frisbees for improving athletic performance. He'll explain why these tools may not be as beneficial as they're often portrayed and offer alternative strategies for developing the skills and conditioning necessary to excel in striking sports.
Whether you utilize these tools or have wondered how effective they might be, hopefully this convo will help challenge the conventional wisdom and leave you with a better understanding of what most likely works and what most likely doesn't when it comes to training tools and equipment.
Today I chat with Irish National Kickboxing Coach Jon Mackey about the role of training tools in striking sports. We'll explore whether these tools actually support skill acquisition and debunk some of the popular training gimmicks that are flooding social media.
Coach Mackey brings not only an extensive coaching experience, but his academic perspective as a PhD is skill acq candidate.
Jon gives his thoughts on the effectiveness of tools like noodles, ladders, flashing lights, and frisbees for improving athletic performance. He'll explain why these tools may not be as beneficial as they're often portrayed and offer alternative strategies for developing the skills and conditioning necessary to excel in striking sports.
Whether you utilize these tools or have wondered how effective they might be, hopefully this convo will help challenge the conventional wisdom and leave you with a better understanding of what most likely works and what most likely doesn't when it comes to training tools and equipment.
Hello and welcome to the Primal MMA Coaching Podcast, an exploration of the training and development within mixed martial arts. My name is Scott Severi and, together with my guests, we will discuss how the science of coaching, ecological psychology and skill acquisition can help us design practice more effectively. No matter what your martial art goals are, surely we all want to be better, so let's try to be better at getting better. Okay, well, today I welcome back my friend coach John Maggy. John is an Irish national kickboxing coach and is presently pursuing his PhD in skill acquisition. Since our last talk, john and I have stayed in touch and I often reach out to him when I'm chewing on a new idea or struggling with a bit of research. While we both seem largely aligned in our thoughts on practice, cultures and approach to skill act, we are less so on the subject of the nature of perception. Now, that's a discussion for another time and hopefully a time where I have a deeper understanding of my own positions. Today we connected to discuss something a little closer to my pay grade, which is that of training tools for striking sports. Yep, today we're going to chat all about noodles and ladders and flashing lights, frizzbees and a few of the other peculiar training gimmicks which are increasingly prevalent on social media. Now, just so it doesn't get glossed over at the start of our convo, I do think I speak for both of us in saying that these training tools and equipment can absolutely be valuable for those participating in the sport, for fitness and fun and or just simply want to move around and learn some techniques. But this podcast is about skill development, and so our discussion is about how these tools support and facilitate skill acquisition. The short answer, as you might have guessed, is that they don't. The longer answer takes about an hour and a half, I guess here.
Speaker 1:Oh, and before we get going, I have never been interested in trying to monetize this party or include ads, but I do want to give a clothing manufacturer that we use a primal plug. For about four years now, we've been working with Isaac International in Pakistan and at the beginning I was super wary of sending any money overseas for merch after hearing countless stories of gym owners being ripped off. Anyway, I really like this company. I've built a lot of trust with them and they really make fantastic and good quality gear. I'm not making any money out of this, but I do like these people and I'm happy to put anyone in touch that may themselves be wary of these overseas manufacturers or have previously been ripped off. So this is not an ad, but a bit of an endorsement for Isaac International. Anyway, hit me up if you're interested in being introduced. Okay, that's the pitch over. Now let's get on to crapping on agility ladders. All right listeners, please welcome back returning guest and my friend all the way from Ireland, coach John Maggie. How are you, john?
Speaker 2:I'm doing well, Scott. Thanks for having me back. It's good to see you again. You're looking well.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, well, thank you Not feeling so well. Well, as I said, I cracked my ankle at the weekend trying to reclaim my youth, but anyway, we'll get on with discussion. Today. We've been going back and forward a little bit. We wanted to chat today about some potentially I'm going to use the word gimmick there, but potentially some of the training gimmicks we're seeing online, and so we're going to talk a little bit about that. Some of your interests and where your attention recently has been on that of transfer, transfer of skills from practice to performance, which is presumably the whole point of practice, or at least a large part of practice. So once we get our pants off here, we'll start going through it. So, yeah, tell me a little bit about that and what's been going on with where you're at with the whole transfer thing and maybe differentiate right away between near and far.
Speaker 2:Yeah, sure, I think, just to give the conversation some an extra layer of context. And then what we're talking about is some of the nonsense you see online nowadays and particularly around Instagram, not Instagram coaches, and I think what's happening in Scott is there's, there's, there's, I think, genuinely a cohort of coaches out there who are the genuine in their ambition to be creative and think outside the box and bring novel ideas into their training to, I guess, enhance and improve the athletes that they're training there perceptual cognitive ability and you boil that right. Then we're talking about decision making and stuff. And then there's a another layer of just chanceers who are out there who are just looking for recognition and just putting the ball sorts of really stupid things. The problem is, scott, is that a lot of these chances have 1.5 million followers and up. You know.
Speaker 2:So we've got this issue where there's a proliferation of just bullshit going through the coaching world, and you know, we know it's. You know I've been one of these cultures where you can you look to see what other cultures are doing and sometimes you just copy and paste what they're at and you know, really apply no critical thinking around what you're seeing. You know. So, in the very, in the very simple sense, that means just asking the hard questions about what are we trying to do by putting flashing lights, or dodging frisbees being thrown at me, or the tennis ball drills that you see? What is it exactly that we're trying to do?
Speaker 2:And I guess the simple answer to that is and what these cultures online would say is that and you see this a lot you know, we're improving reaction time, we're improving hand-eye coordination, we're improving decision making and speed to use a vertical commons. Well, I guess in general sense they're all correct, but those concepts, when they're trained that way, will not, in the majority, transfer a skill into the sport performance domain, and I think that's where a lot of this stuff falls down. So, while many of them are well-meaning and looking for kind of novel and creative ways to enhance that, it's only when you start really investigating these concepts for yourself that you realise that none of this is actually any use to the athlete and in fact, it's probably a complete waste of time.
Speaker 2:So you would have seen them a lot of them exist on Instagram and I think it's because it's a safe place, because it's very, very hard to get called out on Instagram, unlike Twitter or X or whatever you want to call that platform now, where there's a much more robust debate around practice and practice design and practice fidelity, etc. So it's a little bit of a squirt. I mean, if you're working with in-coach education and coach development, which I do with kickboxing Ireland, here in Ireland we see a lot of it come up of courses you know where, coaches getting involved, coaches being around for a long time would take a lot of this stuff and just apply it as gospel, apply it as fact, and some are very reluctant to investigate and to ask themselves our questions about what they're doing. So that's, I think. I think that's the rabble hole we're going to go down to today, scott. Now, in relation to skill transfer and there's a couple of concepts and principles in relation to skill transfer and you'd be familiar with a lot of them from your own experience, in your own research and reading. I mean, ultimately, our goal as coaches is to develop, coach, teach whatever label you want to put on that skillful performers, autonomous skillful performers and one of the ways that these methods are these gimmicks are meant to do? That is, by this improving reaction time or decision making ability or speed and was to what they might say.
Speaker 2:So I guess to look at those concepts through the lens of skill transfer and you spoke about near and far and transfer, just to give maybe a little bit of a background to that, and it's related and unrelated at the same time as he is kind of representative design and stuff like that. So near transfer would be, for example, and so you've got a volleyball player who's good at jumping and who's very good at blocking at the net and if they were to take a basketball for example, they would have the skill that they developed when volleyball transferred to a relatable domain within basketball, for example. Far transfer of skills would be a martial arts athlete who has started to play soccer and as the ball comes into the box they're able to get up off the ground, get the legs in the air and do a bicycle kick three or four foot in the air because they've learned that skill within their martial arts and it's transferred into an unrelatable domain. So that's the concept of near and far and transfer from a sport context.
Speaker 2:And I guess when you look at some of these gimmicks that have been used that you see online in terms of the near or far transfer. Some of them will say that they are methods or concepts used that might be aligned with far transfer, but bring it into the sport, and research in particular says that that's not actually the case, and there's some papers that have been published recently. I'm not sure we've got to listen to Jobe Fransen's podcast, where he spoke about some of this. I'll send you the link Stroboscopic visual training, neurofeedback training and so that, which is meant to enhance performance, and, of course, there's no evidence to suggest that at all. But I think what we're looking at today, scott, is the concept of skill transfer and what we're doing as coaches in order to get skill to emerge or develop within the performance domain.
Speaker 1:Well, thank, you, there's a tonne tonne pack there. I took a bunch of notes and I want to preface this conversation by also saying that this is, as it pertains to skill, this is what we're interested in. Okay, skilled action. I want to again the caveat, or preface it and saying some of these things, if it's for fun, if it's getting people involved with sport, if it's getting them off the couch, if they're able to do engage in combat sports, feel like a fighter without taking any damage, I think they have tremendous value. I think that could be fun and all that.
Speaker 2:So I want to put that to the side just now, and I'm not and Scott, if I may yeah, if I may put my hand up there and say I have used tennis balls, I have used ladders, I have used pool noodles, but within a specific context. So, like you say, fun engaging in warm-ups and stuff like that, but never in my experience and even never have used them purely for the point of developing skill or helping athletes. But their skill then transfer, so there's a time and place for them. So I guess it's important to kind of differentiate that from the start, because I'm sure there'll be some guys listening in who have trained with me saying I'm actually used to use tennis balls and warm-ups and throw things around and use ladder drills and stuff like that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I did for warm-ups and fun engagement, but never to develop agility or our core skill.
Speaker 1:Okay, and that's really the discussion we're going to have today is what perhaps is being presented as a logical outcome of these training tools. We don't. We tend to disagree and don't think that's supported by the science. And again, we're always talking about this right, and I'll mention it. I went down the deep, deep, deep Franz Bosch rabbit hole yesterday and scurried myself back up because you just realized, you realize there's levels to this and yeah, so the imposter syndrome was cracking hard yesterday. One word to jump to. I made a bunch of notes. So when we talk about decision-making in sports from a skill perspective, let's look at it from through the lens of a martial artist or a kickboxer. What is pass it out? Because I think there's this tendency to feel that decision-making is very much this. You know, if they do this, I'm going to do this kind of if, then kind of thing, but that's really not what we mean necessarily by decision-making. Can you broaden out on that concept a little bit more? Yeah, absolutely, I think you're right.
Speaker 2:I think a lot of the time, decision-making within combat sports training is seen as some sort of reactive kind of concept. So, like you say, if I do this, the other person does that, or how do they stay, do the other. There's a lot more of play. But I think, in first of all I guess maybe understanding the definition of skills overall on the same page is that you know. The fact that you're doing is that and I took a couple of notes from reading two papers this morning that looked at skill and how skill was defined, and I, as I said, took notes, so I'll read the melt and you'll hear, in both of these definitions, decision-making is a key part of skill. So in one 2010 paper, it said skilled movement, described as learned multiple patterns Now that's up for discussion and that are produced with a high level or degree of accuracy, consistency and decision-making. And in a more recent paper, which was an investigation within soccer coaches and their perspective of skill, they said in their understanding, skill was technical proficiency, adaptability, being effective decision makers and, overall, influencing the success of the team. So, as you can see, decision-making is knitted very tightly into skill, and skill, I guess, is the delivery of certain number of techniques or kinds of techniques in your own way within a specific context, at the right time Now, when we dig a little bit deeper into decision-making. To purely say that it's just about reaction time or reaction, I guess is a very surface level understanding of what we're talking about. It's not even textbook. It's probably even more surface. Research will say that high level athletes, athletes of good experience who've been around their environments for a long time, generally don't react to many things. In fact, they're anticipating, predicting and perceiving what's going on as opposed to trying to react. And I guess we could probably lean a little bit into that old fits and posthumous kind of model in terms of, okay, well, novices would probably be more likely to react to certain things because they're not used to the stimulus that they're involved in. And the more you progress in your proficiency, the less reactive decisions you're making and you're becoming a little bit more of an anticipator, a predictor, a perceiver in relation to what you're actually doing. And there's great examples to be, I guess in relation to that. There's really great examples from the likes of cricket and baseball that I got.
Speaker 2:My understanding in relation to perception and prediction was that high level batters in both baseball and cricket have a really good understanding of the trajectory of the ball before it leaves the pitcher or the baller's hand. So they're perceiving kinematic cues so the angle of the run, the dropping of the shoulder, the position of the head, the position of the wrist and even for some cricketers, some batters, the position of the fingers on the ball will give them all of these views as to where the ball is likely to travel to. And it's the same in baseball. So these guys aren't reacting to the ball flying at them. They haven't got the time to react to a ball traveling at them. At what? 90 kilometres an hour or so, at this crazy speed. In fact, they have a good understanding about where the ball might be.
Speaker 2:Now, down the other end of that experience spectrum, where you've got novices, they are trying to react to the ball because they haven't gotten a full understanding of all of these kinematic cues that are presented by the person throwing the ball, and so they're reacting and nine times out of 10. They're missing the ball. There's a great story in the book the sports team, david Epstein, and he talks about a bit of research that was done in baseball. So they have this. I can't remember the names, so forgive me for getting this anyway wrong.
Speaker 1:It was a very famous baseball batter who had a very and I was like Paul, your always name was. Have you read the book. I know that story.
Speaker 2:This is the rounders.
Speaker 1:The softball pitcher, yes, but go ahead and tell the story.
Speaker 2:That's the one. So they were able to use baseball pitchers against them and he had a high degree of success against hitting all of the balls and they brought in softball pitcher Softball pitcher for anyone that doesn't know and I didn't know, I guess, being from Ireland they pitched the ball completely different, so it's an underhand throw as it falls to a pitch across the shoulder, and he had a lower degree of success because all and what the research kind of said on the back of that and it was very in depth, but essentially what they said was the kinematic cues that he is used to in allowing him to perceive, anticipate, predict where the ball might be were now absent from the pitcher that was using the underhand or the softball pitch. Now, when we bring that back to a combat sport environment we can take, we can learn a lot from that. And now we start to see why some of these methods of perceptual cognitive training are in fact completely redundant, because throwing frisbees at somebody to help them develop their head movement and their reaction to stimulus coming at them is not the same as somebody throwing a right hand or a front day ground kick or whatever, because none of the contextual information is present.
Speaker 2:It's the same with flashing lights.
Speaker 2:So you know you've got the lights go off and if they run up and touch the light when the flash is, if they run down the other end and touch it, or even you know, as if you were punching.
Speaker 2:So what that's going to develop is your simple reaction time, or even your choice reaction time within that context of you and a set of flashing lights, but not you and somebody else who's trying to take your head off, because they present a whole pile of different stimuli. And if you're not being trained to identify, if you're not being presented with opportunities that will help you to develop an understanding of what these perceptual cues look like, or these kinematic cues, you're going to get caught up by the mile of the time and you're going to end up like a novice who is reacting to things as they're coming. So that's why, when you've got novices in striking sports, for example, and you know you put a stimulus towards their face, the response you get is this kind of well, head and hands going up, when you get the kind of automatic fringe response, because that's their reaction to something that they're not used to.
Speaker 1:Does that make sense? No, it makes a lot of sense, and I'm going to go off on my first tangent here. So your point and we'll get back to the, to these kind of training tools that the red herring is that you're getting, you're going to get better at doing these activities, you're going to hit the lights faster, you're going to look better on the agility ladders, you're going, you know all these things. So this is almost reinforcing a false kind of sense that this is hey, this is working, yeah it's a logical fallacy.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely yeah, and it becomes a vicious circle and and your point about the.
Speaker 1:It's fascinating all that stuff about the reads. Would we agree and saying that the, the cricketer or the, the batter and baseball probably couldn't articulate exactly what they're seeing. They're highly sensitive to it. But it's very much, it's innate and it's implicit.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, I think they call it tacit knowledge, you know, or again, and there's some there's there's criticism to the fits and positive model.
Speaker 2:Now, it was all of its time right, you know, you reach the kind of the automaticity stage where doing things automatically the example, I think, maybe driving a car, you know, you're kind of you remember this a lot of you've used the manual or gear stick in a while, but you know you're clutching and you're using your gears without actively thinking about it. Now there is some, there's theories they're called mesh theory to suggest that well, actually, you know, there is a there's a high level cognitive function going on here and what I think the overall kind of principle is that, yeah, we reach a level of of that expertise where everything just happens automatically. And from talking to experts, what you read in some of the literature and some of the textbooks is that when they're asked to describe how they came to make this decision at the time, they can't do it. They just say, ah, it just, it just happens. You know, of course, it doesn't just happen. They just can't verbalize or relate to to how it is just happening.
Speaker 1:And maybe second tangent here. But to your point about the story about Poyol, I think I'm saying his name, right, with the softball in there. I got fucking ridiculed when I was talking about Francis Nganu. His awkwardness and his lack of smooth boxing skills or pure boxing skills might be the one thing that causes Tyson problems, right, 100% and it did, and I was I was.
Speaker 1:I'm not going to sit here and say I thought Nganu was going to win, but I did consider that this kind of awkwardness Tyson's used to going against boxer, pure boxers, for his whole career. Mixed martial artists tend to see it all. They tend to see a lot more styles and I think that's why that mixed martial artists going into the boxing domain they're maybe not doing you know they're, they're, they're, they're struggling because they're not. It's a difference. It is a different sport, different age, everything. But they're doing well and they're given they're given pure boxers a real run for the money. And I think there's something in there with the adaptability that comes through martial arts training and all the different kind of the looks and what they're getting.
Speaker 1:And I actually, when I was in Paris about eight, nine years ago, I was at MMA factory in Paris and I think it's coach Fernando Lopez there and they, their, their, their practices are pretty much all sparring, which was the first kind of glimpse, you know, before I fell down and, you know, opened my own gym in that and I thought this is fascinating and this the sparring was heavier than I'd that I like to advocate for, but very, very dynamic, very, very dynamic. So he's been in that environment having kicks and punches coming at him year in, year out, so I wasn't wholly surprised that you gave Tyson some problems.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. And Tyson wouldn't have been used to I guess that style you know of he would have been used to kind of longer ranges and closing the range and opening the range up and just moving very differently to what he would be normally used to. And I think I think that came through on the fight. You know, I think he felt that really uncomfortable and difficult to deal with and he was tricky.
Speaker 1:And what is that kind of telling us? You know, is it kind of to that? That is highly, highly. We're highly, highly sensitive to the kinematics. That's the word you spoke about and then, interestingly, I was talking about this other day. You see, so when you bring on a novice, right, and I want you, you'll do a better job of explaining this, this, this phenomenon phenomenon, easy for me to say of gay behavior, right, I know it's a novice right away and I don't try and correct this because I'm starting to learn. Things will correct over time. But they tend to look at the peripheries, they do, you know. You tell them let's, let's look for low kicks in this round, and they're eyeing that leg up like it's a fucking.
Speaker 2:Watch the ankles all the time. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:And over time that gaze behavior changes. Can you talk a little bit about gaze behavior as it pertains to skill, skill movement?
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely, I certainly try, and you know you're right. And novices. I guess that one of the tells is that they do tend to focus in on the extremity. So they're watching the hands and watching the feet why? Because that's where they're expecting the stimulus to come from. And this might lean into a little bit of that kind of theory of degrees of freedom and stuff. You come a little bit more of an expert mover or you're more comfortable in understanding your own skill and behavior. You tend to develop and automatically this is not stuff that you can teach or culture or even suggest to people you know that have a soft gaze on the chest.
Speaker 2:Maybe some people like to focus on more expert kind of performers like to focus on the neck because they can get a holistic view of what's going on in terms of whether it's punches, kicks, coming in for a take-down or whatever the context might be.
Speaker 2:So I guess that kind of leans in to how decision making is enhanced through training and allowing the environment to kind of give the stimulus that's expected within the context of the performance.
Speaker 2:I think when you allow that, I think people rather quickly come to an understanding that if I focus on the hands I'm going to miss the legs. If I focus on the legs, I'm going to miss the hands. If I focus on both, I'm going to miss the take-down or whatever. So I need to have more of a holistic kind of view of what's going on and from that perspective then you get to, I think you get to build out your understanding of what these kinematic cues look like. And to bring it back to Valsport, for example, that's pretty much the same in relation to. You've got these mechanical machines that throw out balls for people to hit. So that means we'll focus to where that line of ball release is, as opposed to all of the richness of a person running at an angle at you from a cricket perspective with a ball in their hands. So you're kind of focused to think and explore a little bit more in relation to what you're seeing unconsciously, I think Would you agree or would you have a difference?
Speaker 1:No, I agree with you and so well, I want you to just kind of define kinematics here shortly. But you mentioned it like and I think it's the same for kickboxing and boxing and striking and MMA that all the pertinent information and we'll flesh out the word information too that's coming actually before the ball release, which is truly fascinating how sensitive expert performers are to that. And you can see that manifest in fighting, where the speeds I don't know if you're I remember looking up a while ago and I don't know, you maybe have a better idea that the average speed of a jab is around 150 milliseconds, but I think the general reaction, just to think even a single reaction time, is around 200 for the average human. So that would suggest we're not seeing the punch. It's not the punch from the release, it's these kinematics. So two words I want you to define and put you on the spot here, to flesh out a bit that is kinematics and that of what we're talking about when we talk about information.
Speaker 2:Sure, no problem. I guess my first understanding of kinematic cues was in relation to a front leg sidekick. What novice intermediate athletes tended to do was, if you can focus on their hands here for a second this is the back leg and that's the front leg. They would step their back leg into the front leg before the front leg lifted up and kicked.
Speaker 1:So we developed a little shuffle right, Because this is going out in audio. Sorry, yes, exactly.
Speaker 2:So the back leg was shuffled to the front leg and then the front leg will reach out. Okay, so this is the performer adjusting their weight, adjusting their mass in order to get into a position where they can actually throw the sidekick. So for a skilled performer, they will be able to intercept that kick because of the kinematic cue of the back leg moving first.
Speaker 1:So you've got this, and this is a very broad example. You've got this big back leg moving in, which is a.
Speaker 2:It's a gross motor movement that can be intercepted with a front hand jab before the front leg comes into action. So that's a very I think for me a very easy example of intercepting using a kinematic cue. So you've got this back leg movement, but the more, the more, the more developed your skills become in terms of understanding these kinematic cues. They will. You will start to develop the ability to know what's happening from the drop of a shoulder or the tilt of a head or a bounce rate or the lifting of a hand or the sinking of the knees before something happens. So you're looking at all of these kinematic these are kinematic in terms of movement cues that will give you some expect, some understanding of what to expect or anticipate is probably a better word.
Speaker 2:None of that exists. None of those cues, none of that rich information from a performance exists. When you're standing in front of somebody with a set of pool noodles, even when it's set of focus and it's on when they're touching lights or having frisbees thrown at them, none of that exists. So you're not developing anything that's going to actually help with the transfer of skill and understanding kinematic cues to the performance domain. So when we talk about information and, I guess, having a specific context and we spoke about this last time in terms of maybe representative design and practice, fidelity, and there's some overlap there, kind of slightly different theories, but there's overlap.
Speaker 2:Essentially, what you want to do is maybe scrap all of these gimmicks and start to bring that creativity that brought you to flashing lights and pool noodles and other gizmos, to think about how you're actually creating your practice sessions for your athletes to be able to develop this kinematic understanding. So bringing in more of the information that would be within the context of the performance. Now some people might say, oh, should? That's just sparring, you know, can't just spiral all of the time, but sure, there's nothing like a spark to have all of that contextual information in place. But our sport doesn't allow that to happen, or shouldn't allow that to happen all of the time because of the risks associated with sparring.
Speaker 2:So we can scale it down in terms of the representative of that you applying constraints maybe, or, you know, using like scenario based sparring or understanding how your opponent moves. So kind of video analysis and all of these other kind of things can be, can be brought in to help you understand the broader context of information that is present within the performance. So it's about making when it's right, when the time is right and when the person is ready to bring more of that information into your practice sessions so they're developing a more of a holistic understanding of what it takes to perform in the arena, but also to assist them with their decision making ability, because you will not assist them with that by using the likes of pill noodles and flashy lights and frisbees and tennis balls getting flung at you and things like that. Does that answer the question, scott?
Speaker 1:Yeah, answers, it very much does. And to just circle back quickly to decision making even with my, with my novices and the sparring now I get it, I probably my guys, my guys and my girls we and I'll validate this. You know what I'm talking about here. We only spar right because we do MMA for most of them and we only spar. So a big part, a big section of the group, they spar with no head contact. Then the rest of a really, really proud of the sparring culture with with built John, because it's exceptionally light.
Speaker 1:Now there's there's there's drawbacks to that. How authentic is it? But we're having to as coaches, we have to make that trade off in that balance. So I've talked ad nauseam about that. But what I think the value is is picking up on these over time, the compound effect of reading and detecting the information in these kinematics.
Speaker 1:So even when I see, like like a kicking drill from from novices you know we might be the left kick or the right kick, which is a switch around house, there's a very, very simple piece of decision making baked into the pie. And that's how. That's how simple you can make this. Okay, if one size pranks in there, the roundhouse kick, while others blocking, just have it either a switch or a roundhouse. So so right from the right, from the get go, you are building, you're baking into the training pie this, this perceptual element, and it's such an easy change to make and this is something I try and get across. You know it now, if it's too chaotic and there's too much to pick out and it becomes overwhelming. So this is the craft of the coach and yeah, yes, absolutely right.
Speaker 2:I think you've hit on a very important point there that we can. We can actually bring this training, this perceptual cognitive training or decision enhancing, decision making or just allowing them to understand what it's like to have somebody else in front of you moving in a certain way. You can bring that and you should bring that into your one. So I find a lot of the time in Ireland in particular, combat sport coaches will have a very regimented kind of strict approach to the wall. You know we're running around in a circle, everyone do 10 push ups, everyone do 50 squats or whatever. You know all of this kind of mundane stuff and you know the intention is obviously to raise the heart rate, mobilize the muscles, lubricate the joints and all that kind of stuff. All that can be done within decision making games.
Speaker 2:So, like tagging the shoulder, for example, you know you've got someone in front of you. You have to have your shoulder tied and you can take their shoulder and you can. You know you can apply different constraints to that where you're now moving your shoulder out of the way so you don't get tied and you're also trying to tie theirs. It's fun. The kids love that kind of stuff. It's fun, it's engaging. I was loving it. But without them even knowing, they're now looking and moving and thinking like combat sport athletes. That makes sense and you can do that by tagging the hips or bringing more targets into it.
Speaker 2:If you're in a sport that has low kick and like you can, you know, tagging the knees and then you're pulling back on the, on the toys and stuff like that. So they're starting to learn about how these things happen and they're responding to live stimulus. I know the person was trying to tag them. I hit them in some way. That needs to be brought into warm-ups. Traditional, outdated, old textbook style ramp protocol stuff needs to be. I think it needs to be challenged. And we start. I think the warm-up needs to be from the very start, looking at developing and just being, maybe just bringing an awareness into the fact that, yeah, this is a sport that is hot. This is a sport that is highly, highly embedded within decision-making ability and that needs to be. I think that needs to be relevant to every part of your training.
Speaker 1:And you have a bigger challenge than I do, john, because you're a striking coach and you mentioned just not sparring all the time. So the striking element of my MMA program is all sparring. Right, we don't do anything else. They can do the pad work and the condition on the side, but it's all sparring. Well, that might come across as negligent, or I get that. First of all, again, my sparring is extremely playful and extremely light.
Speaker 1:Yes, there's drawback to that, but this time that I may have been spending on focus mix or footwork drills or noodles and by word stuff, I can take all that valuable time and put it somewhere else because I have the luxury of having an MMA program. So there's a ton of stuff we can do, because that's really, for me, the only reason not to be sparring all the time is the consequence of the headshots. And I'm not talking about just open and going for it. I'm talking about constrained spar, situational spar, task-oriented spar. So there's liveliness. So all my striking activities are all live and, depending on the trust that we've built between training partners, depending on where their aspirations are, depending on whether they're hobbyists or where they want to go, that's when we'll move the dial of the intensity up and down, but for the most part it's very, very low.
Speaker 1:Yeah absolutely Great.
Speaker 2:And when I say sparring, so my definition of that is actually it's competition, sparring. So it's all in All, rules are in play, Act is there. You know you have a corner working with you, so it's very much about the end product, so it's the performance. But in the build up to that, we are moving against each other live. So we've got an opponent. We might take a part of the performance, take it out and work on it. That might be creating angles and being creative with head movements and working around the back of the opponent. It might be taking it and walking it off the ropes, walking out of corners and maintaining center of the ring, all of that kind of stuff. But all of that is done like you just, I think, is a great example of math.
Speaker 2:Thornton, I think, was the first to come up with the concept of a live training. It's all alive, but the intention and the contact is scaled right down. Yeah, scaled right down to where we're now focusing on being creative with our movement, as opposed to buying in our opponent and trying to knock them out and heavy shots to get them to stop and stuff like that. So that's not the intention of it. So I think we're probably doing the exact same stuff here in relation to that, but I don't think there's, with a certain level of athlete.
Speaker 2:I don't think there's anything to be gained from, apart from maybe conditioning from hitting the big bag. Padwork has a very specific role, I think it's. If you're working on certain combinations, it probably allows athletes to link them up and get an understanding of the mechanics in relation to that, but then that needs to be transferred into something more alive, if that makes sense.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and to your point, you're dealing with higher level athletes. We got our pants off right away today, john, so you've already been on the podium. Just to give me a. You work with Irish Taekwondo and kickboxing team.
Speaker 2:Well, my background was originally Taekwondo for many years and there was always an overlap with kickboxing, but I ended up in the kickboxing domain, so I work with the national team. I've been national coach within one of the disciplines for five or six years now, working within the ring, sports and full contact. Of course. A number of athletes to elite level and world and European championships were in Waco, world Association of Kickboxing Organizations, which has Olympic recognition, and it is my absolute pleasure to be coaching Amy Wall at the moment. So she's a 60 kilo European Olympic and world champion. We're in full contact. So, yeah, so I guess, but I would have. I would have started when I entered into coaching 20 something years ago and they were kids and novices and that. But at the moment it's going to work with all elite amateur kickboxers.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and so the reason I wanted to just introduce that was because you talked about the hard competition spar that you use infrequently but you do use. I'm not quite at that stage at the moment with my team. For me that's the amateur, that's the amateur fight opportunities that we're going to keep it. All you mentioned I use it all the time. Now, our last podcast title name was Light for Learning. I've really, I've really embraced that I do the light for learning. And then I said, okay, if you're not going to compete, there's never any reason to go hard. And if you do want to compete, well, we're going to use this, we're going to use this amateur career as an opportunity to do that. So for sure, yeah, so I'm not, I'm not, I'm not really changing my. The message that I'm sending to the team isn't okay, we can spar really hard one day, but then we're light, the rest it's just, it's all light, it's all playful. And then, if you want to do this, we're going to put you in a cage and see how you go on. And to my and I have to admit I was pleasantly surprised the power in the, the power is showing up Now, again, ad nauseam. I don't when you say light, we don't mean slow, right, yeah, 100%, but I think, to our point, the more you spar, the better you get at sparring, the better you get sparring, the more you can spar, and there's a snowball effect of the sparring culture that you build. So, yeah, it's great.
Speaker 1:Okay, right, let's, let's, because our original, when we spoke about talking about it let's start going through them. When I open my Instagram which I normally regret doing, but it's part of the job right, when I open my Instagram, there's a. There is no shortage of the, the, the footwork drills. Sometimes they're not on ladders, they're, they're around bits of tape and coins and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Would you agree with this statement that footwork is footwork is really agility? The footwork in itself, for me, is just your is just being stable and an effective posture, right and but. But that is information driven. Yes, so you are not movement for movement sake. I think that's something you mentioned before that we are moving in relation to something, so our footwork has to be integrated and tied to an opponent that's moving with us.
Speaker 2:It's like training and soccer but no football. If you're just focusing on footwork and you see this a lot in Instagram and a lot of it just reflects dancing and just rhythm, and rhythm is important, but you can develop rhythm and understanding of weight distribution and stuff within the context of of the sport. So if you're training just footwork, this is how you improve your footwork, but you're not putting that into context. That means training it with striking or training or whatever your combat sport is. If you're not training it within the context of that, you're not training it. You can't separate out footwork. You can't just say you were going to look at our feet, at our feet separately to the rest of our body. It would be like learning to take penalties without the football. That's how absurd it is, in my opinion, and Instagram is absolutely saturated with this kind of stuff, right down to just ballpark dancing and this agility ladders and stuff being used to enhance footwork.
Speaker 1:That's not footwork.
Speaker 2:That's not what footwork looks like at all, and footwork is embodied within the context of the sport. It can't be separated out. To do so is a mistake, I think, and is missing the point between.
Speaker 1:And I think we just need to. You know the message that we're getting from, and it's normally a well intended message to get your footwork pure, but it's coming from when it's in agility ladder and it lacks a part of basions We'll flesh that out again shortly when it lacks a part of basions and it lacks this kind of contextual information. It is just movement for movement's sake. And if you watch I was watching, we were visiting Izzy versus Perea the other day and as he throws his jab and no one's going to, izzy is one of the most skillful movers on the planet in combat sports. When he throws his jab, he makes one of the I guess one of the kind of mistakes that you would often be corrected for very front foot heavy in that back foot kind of sweeps, sweeps behind him to the rear, and this is, this is a footwork foo par right. But this is Eddie Arasanya.
Speaker 1:So what, what we see as these ideal movements? They don't show up at the highest level, at the very, very elite level, and that's the reason I'm using Izzy. I'm not, you know. It's easy to say well, it can look at amateur fighting and whatnot, but the highest, highest level, these things that were were so called practicing in the sterile environment. They're not present, so they don't show up. It is telling us something. It is telling us something.
Speaker 2:And I think it's pointing towards the fact that there's no such thing as the perfect technique and that we need to be very careful in over constraining movements. When we're, you know, we're introducing these concepts to athletes and you see that a lot where in these footwork drills that they're using, you've got the area that the athlete standing on is completely constrained. They've got a centerline that the foot needs to be over and the back foot needs to be on the other side and you've got something stopping in front. They're just confined into this foam box, which is completely inhibiting their ability to develop their own kind of movement, but in the understanding of what footwork is meant to do. So you're right, you never see any of that kind of really prescriptive movement turning up within the performance at the highest level, and you're right. It does tell us something.
Speaker 2:I think it tells us that there's probably no such thing as the perfect technique. So should we be actually trying to train that or drill that? Should we be using overly constraining methods in order to try and force somebody to move in a certain way? Probably not. I think Princeton, as Ian Hammer was one of the first, I think, of my generation of watching who just broke the mold of what boxing was meant to look like and he got a lot of flack for that and he was cocky and all the rest of it. But, boy God, was he effective. He didn't have a conventional job, he didn't have conventional footwork. Maybe people could say that about Ali as well as how he broke the mold in terms of his challenging what is conventional boxing or what that's meant to look like. Is there a point on there somewhere for sure?
Speaker 1:Is there an argument? Or to be kind of generous, because that's what we're trying to do a little bit, I guess is that if we get this perfect technique down, sure it's not going to quite show up in the fight, but it'll be closer if we don't try. For that ideal Is there? I think that's the general thrust of it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think that's the general thinking behind it and I look I get completely, depending on where the person is on their stage of development may need some prescription in terms of just understanding what this might look like and to get a feel for it, but let's not overemphasize that.
Speaker 2:I think once there's an understanding of what it looks like and what it feels like for the person, give them the opportunity to explore with that and adapt it to suit their needs or to suit the context that they find themselves in within elements of the performance of your training and kind of scale their own way. Allow them to elaborate on that, to explore it and to come up with their own to use the term, their own movement solution. Right to make that happen, because the end goal is to get the hand on to the torso, to get the hand on to the face or whatever the case may be, and that might not look like your textbook jab or your textbook leg cross or whatever it is, but I think if we give them an understanding of how that might look or where it might fit, give them that, don't overemphasize it, and then allow them to go and explore and work with them on that.
Speaker 1:And would we agree that effective footwork is inseparable from this perception of interpersonal range and distance 100%.
Speaker 2:It can't be separated. It's a mistake to think of it as a separate set of movements or scales that are integrators. It's embodied. We can't look at footwork when we're looking at evasive maneuvers and taking angles and breaking centreline and all this kind of stuff without understanding what's happening within the broader context of the sport or of the performance. It makes no sense whatsoever.
Speaker 1:And the last thing, just to pile on and move on from agility ladders, whether they're straight ones or the new one that's out, that's in a circle which is changing the agility ladder game, the webby, I think they call it. Maybe I'll edit that out. That's unfair. One of the finest ways to fuck anyone's footwork up for me is having them concentrate on their feet, and so I think these little playful games of movement with a live partner and I don't worry now, john, again, I'm a younger coach than you, not biologically, but in terms of experience. However, it does emerge. The footwork emerges over time. And you know what? My earphones are just gone out. I'm going to change up this. Yeah, you go ahead. Yeah, I'm going to change up this now. Just gives us a second. Okay, we're back. Yeah, so we're just to round off the footwork thing and the perceptual thing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, I think it's probably worth just spending maybe 30 seconds on ladders. Maybe the definition of agility and agility within combat sports and boy ladders offer very, very, very little if anything in relation to how we develop agility within combat sports and there's papers there If people want to dig into them. There was met analysis done. There's no evidence at all that shows ladders and ladder drills are effective for developing sport specific agility. So I think once we get an understanding, we have a shared mental model of what agility is within combat sport. It becomes very obvious very quick that there's linear kind of hippie-tappy stuff that you do with your feet and this change of direction that you do with a ladder is not relevant to combat sports or relevant to lots of sports actually, and you could be better developing this kind of agility through different methods of partner training and responding to certain stimulus and learning how to anticipate these stimulus at the same time.
Speaker 1:And I mentioned the word perturbation. That can be a kind of fluffy buzzword but I think it's an important word that we need to appreciate as coaches. So maybe just define perturbation as it would be, from a moving partner and not even with the forces, maybe from punches and kicks coming at you. But why? Ladder drills lack the perturbations required for effective footwork.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, it boils back to relevant information, doesn't it? From the sports side. So the ladders and the way we move when we use ladder drills have? No, they don't represent how we move in the sport. And there is when you talk about perturbations, you talk about having somebody in front of you who's doing their best to engage with you and outsmart you and outthink you in terms of what they're doing. So you're engaged in that game of chess with them and none of that, none of that is in place when you're looking at ladder drills and the development of agility, I think needs to be developed within the environment of having somebody else or people around you moving and offering these perturbations that you can kind of develop and move within and make decisions around.
Speaker 1:All right. So I think we've covered the ladders. Let's start moving up the body now to and this is something that was apparent to me Did you, did you manage to watch the Superlek? And oh, I forgot his name Iron man? Oh, I didn't actually know, oh my. God, I can't believe I'm forgetting it. He's a little tired.
Speaker 2:A little tired. I actually. Yeah, I actually know him as just Iron man. Hang on, let me check.
Speaker 1:Why did I? Why am I brain?
Speaker 2:farting, it is early.
Speaker 1:Iron man yeah, not super born. The other kids Wrong wrong. Rotang Rotang yeah.
Speaker 2:Rotang. I can't believe I forgot it. I've not got to pronounce his second name anyway.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Rotang, the Rotang Superlek fight. A few weeks ago that was just two Muay Thai gods going to war.
Speaker 2:Incredible, wasn't it? It was a few months ago.
Speaker 1:Yeah, three. Well, the whole fight was a highlight, will.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it was yeah.
Speaker 1:But again to our point. So we're moving up the body, these hard. You know beautiful technical kicks, that I think there's value in kicking pads and bags and whatnot, and I asked you a question about that the other day that we'll get to, but they don't appear to manifest in the fights either. They're kind of sloppy on that. And again this comes back to the time constraint, the temporal constraint of being able to throw that kick and act on these affordances and opportunities. Also, the constant perturbations are getting buffered and thrown around and knocked off your feet and unbalanced. So again, this technical ideal, which I'm not sure I buy into that much, but again it doesn't appear to be even appearing or manifesting in fights even at the highest level.
Speaker 1:And that's why I talk about the highest level fighters, because we can look at them and say there really isn't greater skilled performers than these guys at the moment and look at the way they're kicking a fight and look at the way they're kicking on bags and in training.
Speaker 2:Yeah, cool and sad, and I guess they're working in that area. That might be defined as that automaticity, so things are happening automatically and they're adapting to their environment intuitively and that could be built on. Maybe that could be built on previous experiences of just understanding the mechanics behind the kick and then not needing to reinforce it too much. So we get these. I guess we get these different kind of what's the word I'm looking for, these adaptions of the kick that look differently within the performance, I guess. But yeah, they're able to adapt to what's happening in front of them and it might not always look. Most of the time doesn't look like what you would be teaching, I guess in terms of kicking the pads and textbook technique and things like that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I didn't. I'm not going to lump pads in at all with the training gimmicks that we talked about. I don't think they're a gimmick, but I'm always sending you little voice messages, john, and I ask you a question on the day, because I'm always looking for this wiggle room is is there a rationale for pads that we hear are for speed and power? Can that in and of itself improve speed and power? And you spoke to me a little bit about which is lovely the way you explained it to me force expression, because I asked you, is speed and power? Is that perhaps a athletic capacity or an action capacity? That is, speed and power developed more in the weight room through strength and conditioning, or can it be achieved on pads and can you talk a little bit about that as it pertains to force expression?
Speaker 2:I'll do my best.
Speaker 2:I guess we're going to delve into the areas of biomechanics and the expression of force. So when we hit something, we are applying force to the target and when we talk about force we're talking about mechanical properties. And then we can start to think about speed and power is a mechanical property and what on over time, from a combat sport maybe? A sports perspective is probably is it slightly different understanding in terms of how fast and how hard you can hit something? Can it be developed via pads only? I think there's a physical limitation on that. I think we're talking about developing speed and power. I think a lot of it, the fundamentals of that and the basics of that are built in the weight room, but then that's just a capacity that sits untaped unless you learn how to express that force within the context of your performance.
Speaker 2:We talk about force expression I prefer the term force expressions, probably a little bit high-brow, but in terms of speed and power, how hard and how fast you can hit. But even at that, how fast and how hard you can hit is constrained by what the opposition is doing at the same time. So that's underpinned by your ability to make good decisions. Under pressure you can hit the bag hard and fast and have no consequence. But when you're moving against an opponent there is consequence. So now you have to have that layer of complex decision-making attached to that, because without that you can be the hardest, fastest puncher or kicker in the world. But if you've not been exposed to that environment, you won't last long at all.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I'm going to mention another, and I'm an enormous fan of these guys, so when I talk about them it's not in any derogatory way at all. I'm trying to identify. You know, as it pertains to the conversation, we'll have Rafael Fisev. He's a trains down in Thailand. He is a ferocious kicker. In fact, even after a lot of fights he's won. You'll see him on crutches because he just throws. These kicks will reckless abandon. But there's a, there's this technical ideal that still lacks, even from when rafts throw and kicks and fights. You just kind of wings them, you know. And so again it all comes, it keeps, it keeps. Coming back to the message for me, the limitation of pads, or the narrative that I think coaches have of what pads are useful for and I'm not ready to throw them in the gimmick basket at all. Yes, I think it's important to recognize these limitations.
Speaker 2:There are limitations for sure, and I think I think the problem might exist in that. I know from experience that some coaches put a lot of value on pad work. Some might say it is just sitting under a lot of sparring. To be honest with you, and I don't agree with that. I think there's value. I think the value is more from the position of the coach. So you get to stand in front of the athlete you're working with and you can get a very unique coaches perspective of what you see and then how you feed that back to the athlete.
Speaker 2:But there's a lot of limitations to pad work and one of the major limitations is that it completely removes autonomy from the athlete because the coach, nine times out of 10, is calling the combinations. Calling the combinations based on it's a bias. It's what you can pad, it's what is probably pre-understood set combinations. I know I've got limitations to it because I try to probably call the same shots all of the time, which is really limiting to the person that I'm training because it does them really not good. So for me, pad work is useful from a coaching to coaches perspective and just allowing the athletes maybe understand the kinetic linking or the kinetic chain in terms of throwing shots together and getting what it feels like to go from the hands to the feet.
Speaker 2:So, for example, if you're coaching an intermediate athlete you tend to if they're boxing and then they go to throw a kick to finish the combination, you'll get a shuffling up the feet as they readjust their body weight and their balance to throw the punch. So if you want to get, maybe you want to focus on just minimizing that reorganization of the body to be more efficient. Pad work is probably a useful way to do that, where you can focus in a safe environment of punching and then linking straight to the feet without having to reorganize your feet drastically or shuffle the body around. So you're getting a little bit more efficient. But then good coaching will bring that back into the context that's required for it to come out within the performance. It cannot just be developed there.
Speaker 1:So pad work- has its uses, but it's a limited use, I think. And do you think I think some of the rationale for pad work can often be to correct bad habits? And I kind of see it the other way, john. I don't think. I think, if anything, it may reinforce habits or maladaptive movements and strategies that are not being corrected through the consequences of kind of a life partner.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. I would agree, and I think that's where we need to be very cautious with how we employ pads and it shouldn't be all about that. I know some coaches that they are all about that 25 rounds of pads in a very prescripted fashion. It has its place, but it's limited. It's limited.
Speaker 1:It's a good point.
Speaker 2:It's a good point and, yeah, it can reinforce bad habits and prescriptive movement patterns and stuff like that.
Speaker 1:So I think it's something to be mindful of, Because I think sparring a live work is the ultimate kind of. It's a self correction relationship.
Speaker 1:You know and like and I don't. While I don't use pads, I got a squad getting ready for some of them, amateur debuts. Some of them are second and third amateur fight coming up in December here and we've had hard practices and they're starting to get a little dinged up because there's a ton of shooting and there's a ton of takedowns and whatnot. So for the last couple of we're going to get them to Thanksgiving. The last couple of weeks I'm going to bring the pads in, because now it's the haze in the barn, so to speak, and we're going to just kick and punch things hard and my rationale is to reduce the potential for injury coming up and just getting them feeling, getting a bit confident, you know, but I don't think it's going to add too much to their skill set.
Speaker 2:Yeah, 100%.
Speaker 2:No, I was just thinking that while you were talking, I agree, I mean, there have been times where we use pads effectively and that's just before a performance.
Speaker 2:So where we're, I guess we're kind of priming certain movement patterns.
Speaker 2:If we will have studied a fighter, for example, and we've identified gaps in their movement patterns, so these unconscious movement patterns that they might have in their footwork and stuff that we can intercept and exploit, and the interception might be from maybe a step in and come over with the right hand or something like this, or step on off with a left hook and just before going in to the fight, we will just go over these things on the pads. Now I don't know for sure whether that's actually priming them in a way that they're going to deliver it accurately, but what I have noticed is that it does perceptually anywhere and my understanding is that it improves the confidence in their ability to maybe do that. And I think a great example of that from the MMA world is if you remember Conor McGregor back room before the Aldo. So he was just constantly going over that kind of check left hook over the top, constantly drilling it in his head, so kind of priming his cognitive end of things and then in 13 seconds was able to floor Aldo with it.
Speaker 2:So I guess that's an example of where pad work might be useful in terms of just priming certain or just embedding certain movement patterns. Now I know that is we're moving into the murky world of internal representation and cognitive cognition around skill pattern, movement patterns and stuff like that. But I think there might be room for pads in relation to all of that.
Speaker 1:And this is a third conversation I'll have you come back for John, while I'm getting my thoughts around it. We're not fully aligned when it comes to our thoughts on the nature of perception. I'm a little agnostic on it, although I tend to. At the moment I tend to kind of buy into the direct perception model. You're not quite there, so that's a whole other discussion. So what Conor was doing in the dressing room for me is he was drawn as a tension and tension towards us. You know you had this kind of that's where all his attention was was going to go and that looking for this opening. You know so he was. He was sensitive to that opportunity when it arose and it rose immediately, Right and interesting yeah.
Speaker 1:Conor almost got clobbered himself in that sense, yeah, he did. He took a bang on the way in.
Speaker 2:Yeah, he did, for sure, he was lucky he didn't connect fully. No, look, you're right, and we could be here for the next 24 hours discussing the theoretical kind of woman pinnings and all of this. I mean, I'm fully aligned with perception and action. I think, my, I think I come across sometimes as somebody who puts all the rates and information processing theory and that motor patterns are learned and stored and then retrieved. You know, I don't, I don't think that at all, but I do think there's a little bit more going on and I've been pushing that direction from my reading around active inference and predictive processing and stuff like that, which does suggest that, you know, perception and action are embodied and they're real. But there might be just something else going on in terms of how the brain uses its prediction capacities in order to make sense of all that kind of stuff. So when I get to the end of that rubber hole I can talk.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I'm just, I'm just just peeking down at right now. Yeah, it's interesting. So I said we're moving up the body, let's get to the and I think we've kind of covered this already. We'll get through it pretty quickly. So the ubiquitous well, ubiquitous from the, from the Instagram perspective, the pool noodles yeah, let's talk a little bit about pool noodles. I tend to get triggered by them.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I don't understand. Yeah, what's your thoughts?
Speaker 1:Well, I think there's just just a bunch of horse shite. To be quite honest, I think you're robbing. You're robbing all the the rich perceptual information from from the exchange. And where can I find, where can I find some rational wiggle room, I think, for for pad holders. I don't need to worry about that because I don't hold pads for my guys, but I think there's something to say, you know, for for the coach, so they're not jacking their elbows up routinely. It's a little less. It's the forces that the coaches haven't to deal with. It's a low impact. I think there's something there, but I think pool noodles have zero value. No, okay, close to zero value. What's your thoughts on pool noodles, john?
Speaker 2:Share some of our thoughts to the honest which is great.
Speaker 2:I think they're a great asset when you've got a big bunch of kids and you want to get them moving and get them active and have a bit of crack. They think it's super fun when you're getting paid over the head with a pool noodle and trying to catch people with them and stuff like that. But when we do start talking about decision making and developing actual skills in the performance context you're right, it goes back to contextual information and it's lacking there. It's not there.
Speaker 2:And you see a lot in boxing. You know they're using the pool noodles in a fashion where they're getting the athlete to move the head left and right. So they're not responding to pool noodles and those kinematic cues within the performance environment. So they have to be questioned and I think you're right. But just before you finish speaking there, you give a little bit of a glimmer of hope to pool noodles. So there's something in there for you. Is there in relation to pool noodles?
Speaker 1:Yeah, the coach is elbows, I think.
Speaker 2:Okay, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, sure, that's as charitable as I can be with pool noodles, to be honest, and then the straw man would be well. So what are you just going to spar? Well, again, we are very different. Every coach has a definition or what they feel sparring is. Sparring for me is just adding that kind of unpredictability and that kind of perceptual nature to the exchange to keep it kind of alive and authentic. And I can be extremely like you know, I call it. Usually at the end of practice I'll say, okay, let's do some. I call it tickle boxing, right, that we're trying to just just just just touch. And I said this is the time to explore your movement and get fancy, you know, at the end of the round, when you're tired, you know, and stuff like this. So I think we can probably move on from pool noodles Limited use.
Speaker 2:I think yeah, limited use.
Speaker 1:Limited use.
Speaker 2:Within the area of actual decision making and skill development. Yeah, limited use. Full warm-ups yeah, for sure.
Speaker 1:And for kids and stuff again, getting people moving and moving and grooving and off the couch. I think that they have value in that sense. So, yeah, so we're moving up. Let's get to the so again. There's a lot of them, and so I see fighters at the highest level, and I'm talking to Canelo. Canelo is the one that you know uses the swinging bag and he does all that and he moves beautifully. I don't attribute any of Canelo, who might be one of the greatest boxers of this generation. I don't attribute any of his head movement skills to these drills.
Speaker 2:No, normally it's the same with Lama. It's the same with Lama, tenko and Ladders. You know two Liliy Ladders 100% degree. That's not where that skill came from.
Speaker 1:Can't be Because it lacks the kind of contextual information for it. So the where's your wiggle room for the head movement? And let's bring a bit of context to the gimmick we're talking about. I see and you said there was some wiggle room here before we started the conversation the it's becoming more prevalent now the boxing, the boxing glove on the end of the broomstick.
Speaker 2:Yeah, do you know why I gave that wiggle room? Because when I'm, when I'm coaching one on one with Amy and my tendonitis in my elbow is really, really sore, it's useful for a small amount of time if we're working on, if we're just getting her to move the head and step off. So rather than me having to thrust out the hand all the time in the life fashion against her, if I need to take a break, that's what I'll do. So it's the. It's not the same, but it's as close as I can get it until the elbow is cooled down a little bit and then get the glove back on and we start to go in. That's the only wiggle room I'd give it.
Speaker 1:You've got sore elbows John Tendonitis on both elbows. Maybe you need to get it.
Speaker 2:Maybe you need to get the pool noodles out.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that came to mind all right when you said it, my elbows feel great.
Speaker 2:I might give her a look, sorry yeah.
Speaker 1:So let's talk a little bit about again this is going full circle back to the end. We're starting to maybe repeat yourself a little bit, because it's the same themes. But this kind of the pollo and the baseball slugger against the softball pitcher, what is head movement to you? How is it trained effectively and authentically?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I used to think head movement was reactive.
Speaker 1:When you look at some of the explain what you mean by by reactive.
Speaker 2:Okay. So you might see this in a session where the culture saying I want to work on head movement, so their partner, which is out in a straight line, say a job, and they move their head against it. So you drop the shoulder, you keep a chin pain, all these descriptive kind of instructions. This is how you move your head, this is how you slip, this is how you roll and it becomes reactive. So you've, you've now given the athlete the perception that head movement is reactive. Look at what Tyson used to do, one of the best head movers in the game, probably all the generation. He was never reactive, he was proactive, he was always moving, was he wasn't seeing punches and reacting to them, he was just always moving and I guess sometimes that gave the impression that he was able to see things ahead of time and he was effectively because he was that much of an expert but he was not seeing something and then reacting to it.
Speaker 2:He was consistently proactive and you see all the best head movers in the game proactive in their head movement. So it's not something that can be trained reactively. I think once you understand how it feels and you've got a you know your own kind of understanding how it feels for yourself to be moving your head within the confines and context of the sport, you need to be able to develop that proactively. So now it's up to the coach to create sessions where that can be done safely rather than reactively, because when you start to look at it being trained reactively and I've made these mistakes, I've made all of the mistakes they get caught, they get hit, they get frustrated, they lose confidence in their ability to do that and they lose confidence in you as a culture in assisting them to get better at that.
Speaker 2:So number one, I think, is something I say all the time, is be creative with your head movement, be ahead of the you know, be ahead of the core of all of the time in terms of what you're doing. Keep moving. Don't react to stuff, keep moving and in certain situations within you know, within the context of a spar or a fight, you know there will be certain head movement patterns that will just regardless of what's happening, will just get you out of the shit, to get you off to the flame, to get you around to the back of the opponent by just some time. They have to reorientate and feel settling on you again gives you an advantage, but only when it's doing proactively.
Speaker 1:And would you maybe it's something like a bit of a pushback here could you say head moving in and of itself is both proactive and reactive.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I've called it proactively reactive. Yeah, 100%, yeah, yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 1:And so when someone's like, saying like, and we'll play that a lot too I spend a lot of time on the initial strike and I think there's a rationale, for you know, as soon as an exchange starts to unfold, I think the, the, the, the technical aspect of it decays very rapidly. So just say, someone's thrown a four piece order, there's some kind of exchange, that initial strike. I think there's probably a rationale for being very, very quick and powerful and explosive from that initial strike. I think once you get to the second, the third or fourth, the fifth strike if there's ever even a fifth strikes there, it's a complete. It's just disintegrated into a fucking mess by then. It's a mess by then, yeah. So we spend a lot of time on that initial strike and in that sense it can even come off as a little bit drilly and a little bit prescripted, because you know you one side's waiting for this initial. So it isn't almost like a stimulus response thing going on.
Speaker 1:But I think there's value in that, on that, in the initiation of the exchange, and if you look at a fight, generally speaking one side has to initiate it.
Speaker 1:So I spend a lot of time on that. I've borrowed that from volleyball too, this kind of serve and return they spend. Every. Every point starts with a serve and presumably, or ideally, a return. They spend a ton of time there and so, even in the sense you were talking about a head movement of someone's feeding the jab, I still think there's some kind of magic information in there and that, to your point, is more reaction rate than proactive. But that's where I think we can find common ground is there's probably some value in that. Now I don't see the value in that perhaps on a you mentioned with your 10 nights and you'll use the maybe the stick with the broom, stick with the boxing glove sometime you say a little bit. There's a little bit, a little bit of shame coming through when you're talking about it, because I was shitting all over it the other day, but I think I guess that's why you might need personal circumstances.
Speaker 2:I was giggling away at it.
Speaker 1:But I think there's a little bit of an overlap there, that as long as you can kind of stay within that almost single reaction time thing and you're still getting something out of it, you still have to anticipate that jab coming and get your head out of the way. So it's, it's somewhere in the middle. Yes, absolutely.
Speaker 2:And I think what's important to add on to that is, if that's the way you're going to practice, don't just stop with head movement or slip, you know, or go to the body with the front hand so the jab comes in. You slip, move your head, you drive your front hand to their body. Don't just stop at that. What happens next and it shouldn't come from the couch what happens next? So sometimes the alley will take me. What they do next?
Speaker 2:So what feels natural, do something like my philosophy is just to try and work off Centerline as much as possible. Pull your opponent around so you're not front of them all the time. So if you're going to slip, get the head off centerline, put your front hand to their body as they jab out. Now keep walking around. Just make the shape, just get an understanding that it doesn't just stop at that. Now you've got an advantage. You've made them miss. You're being proactive. You've got an advantage. Use that advantage. Don't just stop at that and don't be prescriptive. Don't tell them what they should do next, because you've no idea what's in their head.
Speaker 1:Bingo, bingo, bingo, because I play a lot of that even in our foundations. I call it kind of a read, read, react, return. And I know that's that's easy for me to throw out there, because I know we're not kind of reacting. But I don't ever tell people what to throw back because the body, the body is kind of, the body is kind of informing you. Anyway, I'm telling you you have to throw this one. There's this cognitive aspect that I want to remove right away Just throw whatever feels right. But it's important if you get someone to at least throw something back, it keeps them in that exchange, which I think is very valuable and compounds over time, but they're learning what's going to work for them, where their body is in that unique moment in time.
Speaker 2:And you're assisting decision making, autonomy and performance by doing that.
Speaker 1:So in that sense we're almost we're almost leaving some room there for a won't quite call it a drill, I won't quite call it sparring.
Speaker 2:It's kind of in this in between zone, right, that there's still some of that information there, but it's it's, it's the variability and complexity is low enough that they're able to pick up and gain something from that 100% and if you've got an athlete, and because we work with a national team I think I said this before Scott we get athletes from all different clubs, from all over the country will come and they'll all come from different backgrounds in terms of how they've been coached. So for some of them, who have come from very prescriptive environments, it's enlightening for them to be told what do you want to do next?
Speaker 1:What feels natural.
Speaker 2:It's like getting. It's like they're getting hit with a wet fish across the face. They've never, ever been asked what do you think you should do next? The coach has always said now move your foot there and make sure your hand comes up here and I'll say land around the chin there. And it's enlightening for them to have that kind of experience and I think it's really important that coaches who kind of understand that, how important it is to develop autonomous Live thinkers within the performance, they understand that it's so important that the coaches get their head around that that we can't be, especially athletes that are competing at a reasonably high level. It cannot be prescriptive. You're dumbing down their ability to develop their own autonomy and their own decision making capabilities. That were in the sport and the best fighters out there. Technique aside and honest on the side, the best fighters are the best decision makers. That's the bottom line for me.
Speaker 1:And I don't think we should gloss over this concept of autonomy and that's a lot of Gabby Wolfe stuff and whatnot. It's extraordinary that I was reading some papers. I've told the story before but I think it was some kind of putting test. They were doing golf putting test they're doing and merely by having the participants choose the colour of the ball it was manifesting in better performance. That's incredible to hand that little sense of autonomy over to your. Do you want to expand on that a little bit?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, I'm very much a believer in the self determination theory. I'm not sure you've come across that sort of Decay and Irons or Decay and Irons self determination theory and that's built on a connection, you know, social connection, the feel of belonging, mastery and autonomy, so having power over decisions that you're making as you're developing yourself as an athlete. And I think sometimes as cultures, we can be guilty of taking autonomy away from athletes, and this is the coaching behaviours and philosophy that that espalves. I am the knower of all things and you are an empty vessel and I'm going to tell you how to be good. I mean, that is not how the world goes round. So I think creating an autonomous, safe learning environment is absolutely crucial for people to fully appreciate the potential as athletes, and that's across all sports, I think, and environments never mind sport, but just all the words where people are developing or learning.
Speaker 2:development and environments.
Speaker 1:All right, we've almost got through them all. Let's get to the flashing lights and this concept of improving hand coordination skills as a general ability. Yeah, first of all, I think hand coordination as it pertains to hand I coordination I'm not even really sure how we define that, but you'll do a better job than me but I don't, especially as it pertains to fighting. I think that's highly context specific. So to our earlier point, where you're going to get better at doing the activity that you're doing. Talk to me a little bit about the tennis balls on the elastic strings on the headband and the hand I coordination things in the flashing lights and whatnot. Talk to me about the utility and the value of that as it pertains, or is hand I coordination a general ability? I don't believe it.
Speaker 1:What do you think?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean it's the same theme across all of the other other gimmicks. I mean, when we talk about general hand like coordination, it's your ability, essentially to reach out and place your hand on something that you see, so you understand the distance that you're away from it, where it's how fast you get to it. So, for example, if I want to reach out and open my kitchen press, that's hand I coordination. I see the handle, I put my hand out, I reach. It's one of the first skills that toddlers learn in terms of their reach ability and understanding, engaging distance and stuff like that. That's all fine, but within the context of performance, again, it goes back to having the relevant information in order to be able to utilize that hand I coordination within a performance context, if that makes sense. So to talk about these elastic bands and tennis balls and tennis balls being thrown at you and catching dropping sticks and stuff like this as to how you know they held out the sticks in front of you and they dropped them and you have to make sure your right hand catches over your left hand catches it. That's going to make you really, really good at that task. And that's where it stops in relation to now there might be some neuroscientists out there who will say, well, hang on a minute, there might be a little bit of transfer, and maybe there is, but at the level I'm coaching and my understanding of it, I would push back on that and say, well, hang on a minute. There's a lot of information missing from this.
Speaker 2:If we're talking about speed and reaction when decision making and we're just going to call it hand I coordination, I think we're missing the picture here. We're missing the big time Again. All of these methods of training, whatever you want to call them, these gimmicks. They have absolutely no relevant information. You're not providing the athlete with any stimulus to make the right decision at the right time, underpinned by what they think their movement response might be. Does that answer your question?
Speaker 1:No, it answers it. And I know we've covered a lot today and I think coaches I'm a little cynical the ones with maybe the 1.5 million views or whatever they're not going to stop this. But if there was a coach listening that says, oh, you know, I've been, I use these tools, I use these methods. First of all, it completely sympathizes Hard to let go of something that you may be believed in or something you've been promoting and advocating for. It's very, very difficult to do it, but it can be done, because I know I've done all that stuff before. It can be done and it takes a little bit of a shake up of your ego and what your beliefs and changing beliefs, but it can be done.
Speaker 1:And I think the way you and I and many other coaches are curious in that it's something we should always be open to saying OK, critically evaluating what we're doing and perhaps starting to implement these changes. So it might be a good time to start. Rounding off here is OK, where can we move to? And not just say, ok, let's just spar all the time. I think you can get to a stage where we can do that within my definition of sparring just being unpredictable and in little slices, but what would be some actionable things that either people could maybe even keep some of these tools I'm advocating for getting rid of them all completely because I don't see value in them but maybe even keep some of them and make them more representative, to make them get something a bit more out of them.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's a great point and I'm probably a little bit more aligned with your own thinking. I'm not sure how. Maybe there's a creative culture out there who can demonstrate how that can happen. And it's really really tricky if you're, if you're close minded, if you're shut off to other ideas and other methods and if you haven't developed the ability to be reflective and you know, developing your own reflective capacity or ability is something that we focus on a lot within the culture, education, training and kickboxing Because I think that's your starting point for keeping an open mind, and what that means is to be reflective is it's just ask yourself the hard questions what am I doing, why am I doing it and how am I doing it?
Speaker 2:And if you don't get the answers that you're looking for, well then there might be, there might be time to go and maybe re evaluate what you're doing.
Speaker 2:But you can do all of that reflective practice in an echo chamber and tell yourself you're doing a great job and still kind of be promoting all of these kind of nonsensical, sciencey kind of things that are really not relevant. I think you have to be really comfortable with kind of stepping out of your echo chamber and engaging with other cultures, whether that's through social media, communities of practice, reading a book, being online on some of the social platforms that are healthy and promote healthy discussion, maybe challenge your views on certain things. You have to be comfortable with getting challenged and I think this when my own journey, when I think back about it and I was I'm not here, but if you came on to the earth, none of all these things and now I'm the best it's not always the worst culture imaginable, scott and when I meet some of the young people that I used to train back in the early 2000s jokingly but not jokingly at the same time.
Speaker 2:I apologize for being a terrible culture, because I was very autocratic, was very prescriptive and that was the old traditional martial arts way. I eventually evolved out of that, thankfully and I'm still evolving.
Speaker 2:I'm not nowhere near where I'd like to be, nowhere near it. But part of that evolution was about Engaging what other cultures would and open mind and just seeing what they were doing and asking why they were doing it and you start to see other trends emerging and within that I kind of fell my own way and I was using constraints early on in my coaching career without understanding what they were, what constraints actually were in terms of the theory behind them. So that's so. For example, making the ring smaller to force more decision making and rapid decision making and in close firing and stuff like that. Just be open to that.
Speaker 2:I have people who I know, who I would have deemed I thought to be friends, one follow me on social media because I think they felt maybe challenged in some of the stuff I would post up. Now I have pulled back a little bit from being. I guess I might have poked fun a little bit too much at some of these things and then I realized, hang on a minute, some of these cultures are well meaning, well intentioned and they're trying to be creative and more power to them. They're just looking in the wrong direction. So I pull back on some of the kind of poking fingers and just because I've lost and I'm not chasing followers, by the way, in case that comes across that way.
Speaker 2:But I would love to be in a position where we can just engage with more cultures to have these kind of conversations that we're having, but sometimes what you see is cultures will pull the shutters down but close them themselves off the conversation because they feel challenged. And one of the most enjoyable I'll finish with this piece with an old rambling one of the most enjoyable modules that we have on our culture education course is part of that challenging practices in a very healthy and respectful way. But you get some of the best conversations from people when you, the group, starts to challenge what's going on at practice level and you can nearly see the ideas going off, little light bulbs emerging over the head where people are like oh jeez yeah, I didn't know that, and we get that from well what's your definition of agility?
Speaker 2:What's your definition of skill? I'm not getting people thinking so I'm not really have a definition. I think it's just doing things the right way, developing the right technique. So we have really healthy discussion around what is skill, what is agility when? When you pull up some definitions of some of the research literature on the avenue or just off the internet, a lot of definitions of agility, will and skill will include decision making and that opens up all of really healthy debate around.
Speaker 2:Okay, now we're talking about decision making. That's a bit different what I've been doing in my practice session Just be open to the fact that there might be better ways to do things out there in terms of developing human beings and you all that to the people. Your coaching I think that's our job as coaches is not to be prescriptive and tell them what they're doing wrong and tell them to do it right. It's to create environments where they feel comfortable in exploring and learning in their own way and within their own context.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think that you know, sense of humility goes a long way and with that, you know, I think it's in especially in certain combat sport environments that this concept we spoke about the coach being the know all, and I think when you start kissing your coaches ass and them to have, I think that Creates this incredible credulity within the group where I think is wholly detrimental to development as a whole. But I get why it is. I get why it is and if students encourage students to ask these questions and maybe poke and prod their coach of the why, why are we doing this? That's difficult. That's difficult right.
Speaker 1:With that coach with that diet, that coach and student dynamic. That's a very, very difficult thing to do. Do you have any thoughts, thoughts on that and because, because you know, especially maybe in more than the traditional jiu-jitsu models and some of the black belt and anyone you know, purple, blue and white, they really don't have any value. There is passive receivers of all the knowledge and I think that's a really Unfortunate, that's a really unfortunate thing to have in the learning environment. You have any say on that about pushing back events, your coach respectfully, but To challenge them in certain ways, I think that's really healthy I think it's a really healthy environment if you can create it.
Speaker 2:I think it would be challenging for some people. If you get your head around that, I think you can learn an awful lot about the audience and the people you're dealing with. Asking them for feedback so some coaches are very, very good at providing feedback all of the time, but have you ever asked for feedback from the people you're coaching? What do you think? My underwrite track here? What do you think? Give me your opinion or you know, even just having conversations with them or something? Thinking about this in terms of practice? What do you think? Give me your feedback? And this is creating autonomy. You know this is creating a healthy Relationship with the people that you're coaching, showing that you value their input because you don't know everything.
Speaker 2:We don't know everything you know, human beings are complex, interesting, deep, rich species with their own past experiences, their own emotional Networks and, you know, their own understanding of the world. They might say it see it through a completely different lens. I have learned some of the Best coaching methods to asking teenagers what do you think about this? Because they're thinking in ways that you never think, you never think of. You get like moments yourself and I remember sitting back at a national training camp one day I'm just allowing Peer to peer coaching take place and I just sat on the side of the ring and watch and I was one of the most enlightening experience watching how these guys interact with each other.
Speaker 2:I didn't need to be there. I need to be there at all. I could have went home. I just said what we do today, couple of concepts for thinking of, and damel dark, one of our top cable athletes here in Ireland, had some suggestions. I said right off you go tease it out with the rest of the group. I was like pulling the ring off a grenade and just throwing it. The whole room just exploded with ideas and conversation and I just I posted on instagram.
Speaker 2:I said I said, just sit back and watch the athletes, just engage with each other and just get a notebook out, because you're gonna pick up Absolute gold from watching this. But that's hard to do. I think it's hard to do for some cultures maybe. To release that kind of power and that Authority off the athletes. What is one of the most empowering things that you can do and one of the most educational things that you can do, in my experience anyway.
Speaker 1:No, I really love that and it's something. It's easier for me now because my my team, in my environment, they know that it's To a certain extent that the coaching is decentralized. You know, I'll set up the games, I'll set up the practice, but there's often there's a good chunk of the week that I'll tell them Get going, grab a partner and make your own rules of engagement up, make your own game up, because they have an understanding of how how we approach training and learning. It's just wonderful. Engagement, engagement level just skyrockets and just create this creativity that, you see, is really and we talk, they talk a lot about and child development and whatnot, that we just batter the creative nature of kids. Yeah, I think there's a maybe a tendency to do that. To course there is with adults and combat sports course there is, yeah, 100% of it.
Speaker 2:I'm very lucky to be married to a primary school teacher and she teaches junior infants, so that's the entry level, and then she teaches to a concept in irish and gay languages called after, which is learning through play. I went into see her classroom so every start of every season and she goes in and does up the classroom and in every part of the room there's this little play station. It's not just playing for the sake of playing, but it's things that involve themselves and where they're actually learning certain skills. So one of them is a little play shop, you know, or somebody plays shopkeeper and the understand kind of having things to each other and engaging and transaction and stuff. So when you get money you get something, but they're playing.
Speaker 2:So she just sets this all up and just let's the kids go at it and they figure it out themselves. They need a little bit of structure and a bit of guidance and little johnny might need an arm around the show but he's a bit shy or Mary's gonna hug and all the play money and stuff like that, you know. So you know teachers there for a reason, but she's created the environment where they're engaging and interacting through different tasks that are relevant to the curriculum and education in life as well. So I've learned a lot from that and I brought that concept to coaching adults as well as children, create, and I guess it was back to that kind of, you know, being environmental designers and stuff from an ecological dynamics perspective, and that there's a lot to be gained from that at the right time within the right context.
Speaker 2:And there's maybe a mixed message here, because I think we both really value that playfulness In our training environments, but not playfulness to the extent that we end up relying on these silly gimmicks, exactly yes, so I'm a son, so I can't set up teaching games for understanding, which focuses on strategy and tactics of certain sports, but teaching them through, or allowing the athletes to engage them through Play through games, through the game, game based learning.
Speaker 1:Great john. So I think we did a reasonable job of not Holy shit and keep no more primitive thoughts about these, these training and keep that for offline we'll keep that for offline.
Speaker 1:But yeah, if anyone got anything out of this again, if we can kind of recap the, the and you know what I'm gonna leave, because I Downloaded a transcript of the french bosh interview and I'm gonna give him a shout out. I'll. Very much doubt is anyone that will ever come on the podcast, but I made a joke to Greg Souders last night. I sent him a text saying you know, we're all sent around jerking off over rob gray, rob gray probably jerks off to france bosh.
Speaker 1:All right there, there's levels to this and A hierarchy of jerking yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, but he, there's something that that I pulled out here from the transcript and he wrote here. Obviously, this is a quote. Obviously, the fact that you have to act in order to perceive is a lot to do with the direction, perception theory and so on, and then the final line was so. So in any situation when you were, perception plays an important role. You have to be very, very precise, and what you're doing and I think that can encapsulates in the sentence what we're talking about today and combat sports is highly, highly, highly perceptual, and so get, given that we understand that we need to be very, very precise in what we're doing.
Speaker 2:Yes, and there's tools out there now and scott was online tools like chat, tpt, that you can have conversations with. So if you wanted to Investigate these concepts a little bit more and sometimes they sound a bit arcy in the bit science in terms of perceptual cognitive training and Perception, action coupling, and sometimes like, what does that mean? You know, I don't even want to look at it because it's confusing. Pop it into google, pop it into a. I say let's have a chat about this. And, very quickly, what we're talking about is Developing decision making on agility and skill within combat sport. It's just it's, you know, it's as simple as that. Tease it out. Send an email for a message to somebody. What does this mean and how? How? My understanding, how, how can my understanding of these concepts improve my culture? That's a starting point of view for everybody.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think there's a great opportunity here, the way i's you know, and it's absolutely going to affect every aspect of life. But I think it's really gonna. It's gonna get tentacles into our sport to and we spoke about. You sent me a paper and I was like fuck sake, yeah, chat, chat pdf. If anyone's not using it, you can take a white paper now a white pdf paper, and put it in there.
Speaker 1:And I do I one of my prompts when I start off explain the concepts to me like I'm five years old, yeah okay and then I start building off that and you know, I know the complexity, so I get the very, very coarse grain understanding what the fuck the actual papers saying yeah, and then I start teasing out and narrowing my search a little bit. So it's, it's, it's an extraordinary Value tool because I think when maybe coaches there may be not quite as academic than client, sending them a white paper is isn't very useful.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I understand the result I think these we spoke about today boss and whatnot and it almost seems like they're egregiously wordy sometimes. Yeah, I think there's a. There's a tremendous opportunity here to use the robots to kind of parse out the main messages and takeaways from the.
Speaker 2:I think so I think you're understand right. Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 1:All right, john mickey, great, it's been great. I really enjoyed talking to you. Will we will get you back to burst a few direct perception bubbles in the future. Well, yeah, well, I get a little further into those studies.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'm scratching the surface. At the moment. I'm scottlin, I'm really excited about where it's going. I think, well, yeah, let's get back and have a chat. And yeah, there's more going on. Scott, I think there's more going on.
Speaker 1:And I do. I do appreciate you, john, because every time I feel like I've got a good hold on things or like I have a almost an absolutist position in my thoughts, you're always very, very good at reminding me. Hold on, sunny boy. Yeah, who's an idea? Cool, your jets. So agnosticism, which I finally got a word out the first time, and that's kind of where, where I'm, and I think I think we're pretty aligned there, right?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think so yeah, I'm just gonna stay curious. I mean, I started this journey, I think, trying to make a point, but now I'm not too concerned about what the point is. I wanna, I wanna learn, I wanna be curious about what's going on. What's driving me is the underlying, my underlying belief that, yeah, there's validity in ecological dynamics and validity in ecological psychology, absolutely, but there's more. There has to be more, and that's where I'm at the moment. I'm happy to be proven wrong, I really, but I think there's more. Let's see where it goes Likewise.
Speaker 1:Well, john, you're one of my several returning guests and I hope to speak to you again in the future. Well, we'll pick some other topic to scratch down on what's next for you competitively.
Speaker 2:Well, I would be traveling with the team on friday with the national team for the world championships. Of course I can't because I've got work commitments here with the olympic program within the canoe sport here in Ireland and so I think that's pretty much that's pretty much my international competition calendar done for the year, but we'll be starting pretty early next year, so we've got a lot on next year.
Speaker 2:Hopefully, kickboxing goes back into the olympic european olympic program, which is where we spend a bit of time. This year was a great experience, so all eyes on that.
Speaker 1:Okay, well, great, well, I wish you all the best. We'll continue our little offline chats and messages, going back and forward and I appreciate your input on learning lots to our own dialogue to the.
Speaker 2:Very much appreciate it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, much love brother and always appreciate our exchanges.
Speaker 2:Thanks, scott, good bye, you, you, you, you you Okay.
Speaker 1:Well, today I welcome back coach John Mackay. John is an Irish national kickboxing coach and he is Brit.