The list of polarizing topics in the realm of motor learning and skill development is endless: Self organization, cueing, generality vs. specificity, open loop vs. closed loop drilling, and the myriad ways these concepts can be applied in any given context.
I believe this polarity to be a direct result of the overwhelming complexity of the human body.
Because of this overwhelming complexity of the human body, a mathematical model called Dynamic Systems Theory (DST) has been used to help understand the body’s intertwined biological systems. One of the defining aspects of DST is that of emergent properties, or epiphenomena.
Essentially, epiphenomena are traits that emerge in a system that are greater than the sum of its parts as a result of the pattern of organization of the system as a whole.
A couple of examples could be the “emerging” complexity as atoms bond to form molecules, and then as molecules interact to form living cells, or the “emerging” symbolism of letters compared to words compared to sentences.
There are many examples of these emergent traits, particularly in such a vast and complex system like the human body. But the most significant is that of human consciousness.
I understand that this is a topic reserved mostly for discussions in the realm of spirituality, and I don’t want to encroach upon any belief system. But I also believe that it’s in the first-person perspective of consciousness and the mechanisms of human thought that we can better define and resolve some of the issues we face in the area of skill acquisition.
Ultimately, skill acquisition is a bit of a fuzzy topic, blurring the lines between physical and psychological. I believe that in order to conceptually bridge this mind-body gap, we have to explore what I introduced in previous articles as movement concepts and movement capacity. It’s my hypothesis that skill acquisition comes in the form of our uniquely-human ability to create analogy between our first-person conscious experiences.
The first step down this rabbit hole begins with the introduction of a few key concepts.
Quick Primer on Consciousness
Note: My views on this topic are strongly inspired by Douglas Hofstadter and Sam Harris. Hofstadter’s book Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid is a must-read to understand the logic of complex systems, and Sam Harris has an amazing meditation app called Waking Up.
If you are familiar with DST and emergent properties, then you understand the idea of parts made of parts made of parts. The body, for instance, is made of organs made of cells made of molecules made of atoms.
Consciousness (aka your own first-person experience of conscious awareness… nothing more, nothing less), with the assumption that it is an emergent property of the brain and nervous system, can be viewed from multiple levels: Is it just a swirling mess of billions of interacting atoms? A collection of rapidly firing neurons? Or is it a collection of beliefs, emotions, thoughts, feelings, and sensations colliding somewhere in between your ears to produce an experience?
“It’s in the first-person perspective of consciousness and the mechanisms of human thought that we can better define and resolve some of the issues we face in the area of skill acquisition”
In terms of raw data, you may be tempted to say the first option is the most accurate; That in the grand scheme of things, if we had all of the necessary atomic information, our experience could be boiled down to a mathematical equation.
But the truth is that this perspective is almost entirely useless to us. We are completely unaware, from the perspective of experience, that we are a swirling mess of atoms. The perspective of beliefs, emotions, thoughts, and feelings is a much more relevant, and in my opinion, much more accurate description of who we are.
What’s important to keep in mind is that (while far from a mathematical equation) there is still a logical relationship between these human-level aspects of consciousness. An extremely simplified version could look like this:
Electrical Input through our five senses → Chemical (emotional) reaction through neurotransmitters/neuromodulation of different parts of the brain → electrical output (thoughts/actions)
Our five senses are our first filter of information. They give the raw sensations our consciousness is bombarded with each moment. Our attention is our true first filter. You only notice what you notice.
Along with what we notice and experience is the meaning we attach. This stems from our beliefs. Our beliefs are planted in us starting in our childhood, from every idea about ourselves and the world around us that our minds have been fed up to the present moment.
The attached meaning is what governs our emotional reaction, and we have all, at some point or another, experienced the effects different emotions can have on our thought processes.
Our attention creates beliefs that give meaning, which creates emotion that governs thoughts and actions.
Quick Primer on Human Movement
Just the same way that there is a logical coherence of the flow of information in consciousness, there is a logical coherence of the different aspects of movement, which I presented in my last article:
Technical concepts (which are based off movement concepts that are based on which paradigm of movement you subscribe to) come to fruition through movement skills. These movement skills are based entirely on the athlete’s movement capacity, as the brain can only use what the body has to solve problems. Movement capacity is attained through targeted exercise selection (organized coherently through training concepts) based on the desired adaptation.
From this perspective, a 90-meter javelin throw must be looked at as an emergent property of the body. We can’t just copy and paste 90-meter technique onto our throws. There are prerequisite adaptations that must first be obtained. And it would be equally ludicrous to say there is a sequence of genes that translates as “This human can throw 90 meters.”
Of course I’m being flippant, but the fact is that without understanding the logical connection from choices of exercise selection to your technical model, these logical fallacies are our default setting.
All it takes is enough time scrolling through Instagram to know this to be true.
Ultimately, technique is the summation of all adaptations caused by actions and choices up to that point, which were based off beliefs in regards to how the human body functions as a self-organizing (or not) biomechanical system.
In other words: The same way thoughts can arise from a swirling mess of billions of interacting atoms, we can say that movement is born from beliefs.
Movement Concepts
Before I lose any of you with that last statement, understand I’m not talking about any sort of power of positivity or anything like that. I’m talking about the specific model through which you perceive the world (or in this case, movement).
Here’s an example: Let’s say you have a technical model you believe is optimal and you train and adapt accordingly and everything goes perfectly to plan. But you end up performing worse. Where did things go wrong?
As complex as the human body is, we all have the same basic template of anatomical architecture. We are far more similar than different. Understanding the relationships and dynamics of the human system of joints and levers gives us principles and concepts by which we can understand optimal movement.
On a side note, this in itself is probably the most important concept of movement: Much of what we consider as our uniqueness as an athlete is really just the manifestation of our accumulated movement deficiencies. Address yourself as a human first before individualizing your technical model to fit your deficiencies. If you were a javelin thrower with the same movement capacity as Jan Zelezny, why wouldn’t you use the same technical model? And if you don’t have the same movement capacity, why wouldn’t you train to obtain the necessary qualities?
Taking that all into consideration, for any given gross movement pattern (legitimate anatomical idiosyncrasies aside), the human body will have an optimal sequencing to maximize energy transfer. Just as cracking a whip has a necessary sequencing based on its shape, and bouncing on a pogo stick has an optimal alignment with ground and gravity, the body plays black and white by the laws of physics. We’re all playing the same game with the same biomechanical rules.
This is where how you conceptualize movement becomes critical. Every misconception you have about the body’s relationship with the laws of physics will have trickle down effects into technical modeling, cueing, and exercise selection, which will then have upstream effects on the buffering system of your body’s own intelligence of self organization.
Meaning: You can get away with a lot of stupid stuff because of your body’s ability to self organize. But if your conceptual understanding of movement is too far off base for a long enough period of time (4 years seems to be plenty in many cases), training can lead to constraining adaptations both on a physical and neural level. Joints stiffen, muscles tense, inefficient pathways myelinate, and before long, the athlete is no longer athletic because they believed the answers were found in barbell numbers.
There are less extreme versions of this same idea: The athlete who runs just a little bit slower because they think their arms have to swing at 90 degrees; The jumper who can quarter squat a house, but loses centimeters because their spine adapted to rigidity instead of fluidity; The javelin thrower who overemphasizes a long, over-the-top pull, overriding thousands of years of evolution that optimized a relaxed, whipping release.
To try to pinpoint the blame in any of the above examples to anything other than ill-informed beliefs and misconceptions of movement would be to miss a huge problem (and opportunity) in the field of sports performance.
The Articulate Athlete
Now, talking about movement emerging from beliefs is really only half the story. The hierarchy of causality is obviously much more tangled in systems as dynamic and complex as the body.
Movement capacity is the lynchpin of technique. Because sport technique is just a highly specialized, integrated form of movement, it’s important to recognize that if you can’t hit a position in a lift/stretch/drill then there is exactly a zero percent chance that you will hit it running full speed down a track, runway, or field (Note: If you’re looking for a practical takeaway from this article, here it is).
In this sense, movement capacity is like your body’s version of conceptualizing movement: it only knows what it knows.
Consider that while most people are capable of articulating their feelings at any given time, the people with the larger relevant vocabulary will be able to communicate even more clearly and specific. A huge part of developing emotional intelligence in children is helping them put words to feelings they couldn’t explain before.
Consider that while most people are capable of performing rudimentary movement patterns, it’s those with the largest movement capacity who can move most freely and creatively. Even within the same movement (let’s say a step back crossover in basketball) having a greater ability to move gives more opportunity to differentiate. Your stepback is not the same as Kemba Walker’s stepback, precisely because Kemba has a greater range of motion (see: hip internal rotation) that can be used in a more effective, deceptive manner.
It’s those with the largest movement capacity who can move most freely and creatively.
The same way that emotional intelligence is contingent upon the ability express emotions through an improved vocabulary, movement capacity can be considered the vocabulary through which athletes can demonstrate their “movement intelligence.”
Analogy as the Driver of Skill Acquisition
While I’m a strong believer in the body’s ability to self organize when given the right concepts and tools, I’ve also seen cases where a gap needs to be bridged between having adequate movement capacity and seeing movement concepts come to fruition in an optimal technical model.
Consider that most athletes are not blank slates. Everybody comes with the baggage of preconceived ideas of what a movement should or shouldn’t look like. The idea of allowing an athlete to self organize movement relies pretty heavily on an athlete wiping their cerebral slate clean.
This is where the power of movement analogy comes into play.
Analogy is just a mental comparison of two things. Something where your mind sees some overlap of information, concept, or essence. It can be obvious or extremely imprecise with exactly where the overlap lies, but there’s something that sets off a light bulb. In a way, analogy is about creating a feeling of familiarity in new situations.
Consider the powerful effect that building an expansive movement library can have on future skill development, particularly in children. When learning new skills when they’re older, they have a huge pool to (consciously or unconsciously) draw comparisons to: Learning to pole vault is like gymnastics class. Throwing a javelin is like throwing a baseball. The rhythm of a long jump approach is like the rhythm in dancing.
The powerful thing about analogy is that we all have something to draw from: some ace up our sleeves in regards to the bigger, broader aspects of movement.
Maybe you played music your whole life so you have great rhythm and timing. Maybe you were a gymnast, so you have amazing body awareness and flexibility. Maybe your childhood was rough, so you have a chip on your shoulder that drives you through workouts no one else can get through.
The point is, analogy creates meaning out of mundanity, and links together the physical and conceptual sides of movement.
Movement Skills and Conceptual Supersetting
Movement skills are what can bridge the gap between the physical and conceptual sides of athleticism. By nature, associated skills can be as broad or as specific as the concept of movement you are trying to connect it to.
To be fair, there is really no difference between this idea and “chunking” technique into bite-sized drills. But what tends to be missing in many cases, is the ability to articulate exactly what is being trained in a drill and why. The point of this idea of movement skills as a necessary part of movement to train is to avoid pointless drilling-for-the-sake-of-drilling, and to eliminate the “just play your sport” mentality.
If you have terrible running form, sprinting more will not make you faster. And neither will A-skips, B-skips, and marching drills. If you have terrible throwing form, throwing more will not make you a better thrower, but neither will standing hip drive drills that involve questionably thrusting your hips forward (trust me).
I also want to make clear that movement capacity is still the limiting factor. If you lack rotational capacity at the hips, you could say that a workout specifically targeting hip rotation is more specific to sprinting than sprinting itself. If we define “sprinting” as the coordination of our optimal technical model using our body’s optimal movement capacity (which if you want to be fast is how you should define it) then trying to sprint without the optimal capacity isn’t really “sprinting.”
In my opinion, the greatest example of breaking things down into bite sized, trainable skills is Adarian Barr. His work is the best example I can give of what the idea of movement skills is all about. “Squatty” is a skill. Athletic posture is a skill. The flap is a skill. Understanding and finding positions of full body torque is a skill.
Other examples of bigger, broader movement skills would be rhythm, relaxation, hand-eye coordination, kinesthetic awareness, information processing, and using gravity and momentum to help drive movements.
Bringing this back to the last section, I believe movement analogy is the key to linking skills together to allow athletes to better conceptualize a movement to facilitate transfer of movement capacity to technique.
I believe movement analogy is the key to linking skills together
One of the biggest before-and-after moments I’ve had as an athlete (and coach for that matter) was my first workout after attending the ReWire Clinic put on by Adarian Barr and Mike Kozak. Somehow, after just one weekend, I was running faster, easier.
Was the mild sleep deprivation, long days on my feet, and many hours worth of traveling the stimulus I was missing to become a more fast-twitch athlete?
Did I stumble across a new peaking protocol that involves cross-country flights, Uber rides, and Moscow Mules?
Maybe. But I would argue that what happened at the Rewire clinic involved bridging the gap between my athleticism and my conceptual understanding of running. I was given clear instruction and a foundation of drills, positions, and movements that built a coherent conceptual framework that I could relate back to in my subsequent running workouts.
What’s important here is that the improvement was instantaneous. There was no adaptive process. The improvement came from being given the instruction on how to harness the intrinsic power of the human body as it relates to running.
I also realized that what happened at ReWire was similar to something I had been doing with my javelin athletes, but hadn’t quite been able to put a name to it. I call it conceptual supersetting.
This could be considered something of a motor learning complex, but linking in some sort of mental anchor (based off a specific movement concept/skill that you want to be transferred into technique).
To give a javelin-specific example: An important concept in throwing is the analogy of the arm being a “whip.” In other words, using the body to move a relaxed arm.
To break this down then, we first need the ability to relax the arm and then “discover” and use the intrinsic pathway of energy to move the arm using the body. I use a drill I call “Dead Arm” Circles for this. During this drill, there will be a clear figure-8 pattern and rotational sequencing that the athlete will need to maintain to keep the arm moving.
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To build off this, we can harness this same pathway of energy transfer to actually throw the javelin. Since the athlete now has a conceptual understanding of the figure 8 motion driving a “dead arm,” we can put a javelin in their hand and relate a standing throw to the previous drill.
These two simple drills set a huge foundation for cues and mental anchors to be used in throwing. Now, I can remind them to think “Dead arm!” and there is an immediate available analogy for them to grasp that is deeper than just a concept, and deeper than just the self organization of movement capacity into a throw. The extra layer of depth comes from the movement analogy that comes from first-person conscious experience of those previous movements.
It might seem unnecessary to label it as a “first-person conscious experience,” but I would argue no other term could get across the fully integrated experience of the visual, auditory, kinesthetic, emotional, and cognitive bombardment of information processing that the movement consisted of.
To summarize these ideas a bit more clearly: If all you do is learn about something, then all you have is a conceptual understanding. If all you do is do something (with no conceptual understanding), then you are relying entirely on self-organization of movement capacity. Bridging the gap between these, by creating movement analogy is what the idea of training movement skills is all about.
Do We See the Same Colors?
We’ve probably all heard of this conundrum before: What if my experience of blue is different from your experience of blue? Can we really prove it either way?
I think a huge problem in the field of sports performance is a bit of a diet-coke version of the question above. Is my experience of movement the same as your experience of movement?
Of course the answer is no. But I’d also encourage you to dig a little bit deeper into that question having been introduced a bit more in depth to the ideas of movement concepts, movement skills, and movement capacity.
What does it feel like to have the flexibility and body awareness of a gymnast? What does it feel like to be able to throw a javelin 90 meters? Or if you can throw the javelin 90 meters, what does it feel like to only be able to throw 40 meters? What was Usain Bolt thinking about when he broke the World Record? What was he feeling? Is there a fundamental difference between what he feels and what you feel while running? Or is it just a more “forceful” version?
Again, I think it’s pretty obvious that the answer to the original question is no. But I’m interested in how the answer is no. And I think a fundamental disconnect between what we learn from exercise science/sports performance research and what anecdotal observations of elite athletes tell us stems from the lack of first-person experience of being fast/throwing far/jumping high.
Some might argue that it’s not very important. That watching and studying elite athletes, and talking to them about what they think about when performing and practicing is more than enough to draw conclusions from.
But I think discounting the first-person conscious experience of being fast (or getting faster), being strong (or getting stronger), or jumping high (or jumping higher) is a huge disservice to the field of sports performance. It’s pretty clear that it’s the coaches who are walking the walk who are changing the game right now: The guys who are extremely educated, extremely in tune and interested in what their bodies are doing, and who are in the gym/on the track/on the field experimenting and exploring to relate their own first hand experience to the collective knowledge of the field (and vice versa).
There are certain ideas, lessons, skills, capacities, and concepts that can only be earned, learned, and gained through diving into the deep end of movement yourself. It’s the cliché of all clichés, but first-person experience transcends language. You can’t just read about doing pushups.
So in a system as dynamic, and as complex as the human body, the only Capital-T truths are residing in the swirling mess of atoms between our ears. And if you disagree I think it’s an important idea to think about: Are you sure we see the same colors?
About Kevin Foster
Kevin is a former Division I javelin thrower for the University of Connecticut. He is currently training to compete post-collegiately for the 2020 Olympic trials while working as a private trainer and consultant.
He runs the Javelin Anatomy Instagram page whose mission is to break down and simplify the anatomy and physics that go into the javelin throw in a logical, critical, and holistic manner. Follow the page @javelin.anatomy to learn more about the science of javelin throwing and training. For any questions or feedback, email javelin.anatomy@gmail.com.
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