This is an excerpt from my newsletter series, sent on September 22, 2022. To get posts like this, delivered weekly to your email inbox, head to just-fly-sports.com/free-ebooks/ to sign up.
Are the most easily recognized training methods out there, the most effective ones?
The “5 second attention span” of modern humanity has highlighted, more than ever, the way that humans desire to learn and process information, but how effective can our training be, without having depth of understanding?
And where should we dig deeper into training, as not to waste our time?
To help answer the question, consider what philosopher, Ken Wilbur has written about the concepts of “depth and span”.
The “deeper” you go into the mechanisms of the cosmos (or in our case, concepts of the body) the fewer people you have who want to explore those depths (as you get more depth, you get less span).
Wilbur’s initial three levels of depth are:
• Matter/physics (greatest span, least depth)
• Biology/life (more depth, less span)
• Psychology/Mind (even more depth, even less span)
If you follow trends on social media, I find this is very much how a representation of how things tend to go, based on the above list.
• Look at an exercise that is presented based on simple positions, simple actions, angles, (i.e. physics), or singular muscles and you get a lot of likes and interactions (bonus likes if the creator is shirtless and staring at you while dictating/performing the exercise).
• If you start posting based on the timing of movement, principles of movement/adaptation, and the interaction between systems in the body/environment you get a big drop in viewership.
• Start talking about sports psychology and the mind… and you are going to start crashing and burning in the facebook/IG algorithm (unless it’s an incredibly simple and popular platitude). For 1000 people who try a simple exercise advertised to bulletproof a joint or improve their vertical jump, maybe 1-2 will explore a visualization practice to improve that aspect of their physiology.
The deeper we go into the principles of the body, the fewer will follow.
As I’ve experienced it, the best coaches, the ones who get the broadest spectrum of results, are the ones with an intricate understanding of all three layers listed.
Now, the first layer isn’t “bad” by any means! It’s simply limited, but yet, it’s also the essential starting point, and one we must periodically return to.
Being good with the first layer (popular, or simple exercises) can certainly help athletes. It represents the basics of good training structure (i.e. periodization), transfer of training, and basic muscular function that is necessary at least as a starting point in coaching (you need to know the rules before you can “break them”). To me, this also represents, to a large degree, the basic “strength thresholds” for any sporting skill, in regards to one’s lifting numbers and where the athlete is in their current stage of development.
At some point, however, to continue to progress, we must move past “layer 1”. The novelty effect of exercises will wear off, and periodization eventually becomes too rigid without channels of variability (or even planned variability).
Unless another layer of depth is reached, athletes will be stuck on an ever-revolving wheel of novel, simple exercises, or they’ll just be doing the same exact drills that reflect only a fraction of true sport movement, ad infinitum (mistaking those drills for the true dynamic execution of a sport skill).
The beautiful elements of those second and third layers of depth (biology and psychology) is that they link with life itself in a powerful way. The same principles that make a training session amazing are the principles that make life amazing (such as exploration, community, awareness, FLOW states, perception-reaction, and experiential participation in movement).
We could also look at the first layer as “muscles” (matter), the second layer being “biomechanics” (biology + physics), and then look into the governing mental space of the third layer (athletes will only be as good as they want to be, as good as their subconscious programming allows).
Recommended Further Resources in Layers 2 and 3
It’s ‘interesting to look at how this plays out in podcast views and downloads, and the types of episodes I’ve released over the years. Episodes that would be considered “Layer 1” type, are by far the most popular (the most span). They are an important starting point, but eventually, we need to work our way towards layers 2 and 3 for the ideal long-term results.
Layer 2 (Biology and Bio-Mechanics)
Adarian Barr on Rotational Force Principles
Adarian Barr on Rotational Forces, Torque and Speed-Multipliers in Athletic Movement
Adarian Barr on Gravitational Principles in Athletics
Layer 3 (Psychology and Psycho-Social Training Elements)
Logan Christopher Written Interview on Mental Training
Mental Training, Hypnosis, and Strength Development: An Interview with Logan Christopher
Logan Christopher on NLP, Learning Styles, and Mental Training
Logan Christopher on Critical Mental Training Concepts and Athlete Learning Styles
Simon Capon on Present Moment Awareness in Athletics
Simon Capon on Present-Moment Awareness and Flow-State Cultivation
Nick Winkelman on Dynamics of a Meaningful Learning Process
Nick Winkelman on Dynamics of a Meaningful Learning Process in Athletic Development
Rafe Kelley on Play and Structure/Chaos in Movement
Rafe Kelley on Returning to the Core of Human Performance and Movement
About Joel Smith
Joel Smith is the founder of Just Fly Sports and is a sports performance/track coach in Cincinnati, Ohio. Joel hosts the Just Fly Performance Podcast, has authored several books on athletic performance, and in 2021, released the integrative training course, “Elastic Essentials”.
Formerly a strength coach for 8 years at UC Berkeley, Joel worked with the Swim teams, swim professionals, as well as tennis, water polo, and track and field. A track coach of 15 years, Joel coached for the Diablo Valley Track and Field Club for 7 years, and also has 6 years of experience coaching sprints, jumps, hurdles, pole vault and multi-events on the collegiate level, working at Wilmington College, and the University of Wisconsin, LaCrosse, and now works in the private coaching sector.
Joel has had the honor of working with a number of elite athletes, but also takes great joy in helping amateur athletes and individuals reach their training goals through an integrative training approach with an emphasis on the full depth of training elements. A former NAIA All-American track athlete and multi-sport scholastic athlete, Joel enjoys all aspects of human movement and performance, from rock climbing, to track events and weightlifting, to throwing the frisbee with his young children and playing in nature.
His mission through Just Fly Sports is: “Empowering the Evolution of Sport and Human Movement”.
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