#193 Drake Roth: How to Set Intention for Practice, Measure Progress, and Make Adjustments to Continue Improving

In this episode, Drake Roth (@dek_grappling) returns to talk about open vs closed skills, how individuals can be intentional with their training, measure progress/learning, operationalize improvement, and adjust task goals over longer periods of time. 

Drake also writes periodically on substack, Grappling with Skill. The blog post we referenced can be found here.

Hope you enjoy!

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 1:01

Hello.

SPEAKER_01 1:02

Drake, you hold the record for the fastest repeat guest on this podcast.

SPEAKER_00 1:08

I was thinking about that. I'm incredibly honored for having it back so quickly, man.

SPEAKER_01 1:13

Of course. I I uh was telling you before we started recording that last time after the conversation, I was like, damn it, I really should have prepped more, like been more careful with which topics and like stayed on track because we went a little bit all over the place. And then it was during that episode I was like, oh my gosh, I definitely have to have you back one day if you will be so generous with your time. So thank you for coming back.

SPEAKER_00 1:32

Of course. Yeah, it's uh it's always hard. Like sometimes, yeah, the conversation just bounces all over the place. And uh um, but it kind of makes its own path in a in a way. So, but yeah, no, I'm I'm honored to be back on. Thank you.

SPEAKER_01 1:43

Yeah, the topics are just so exciting. Um, so yeah, this time I do a little bit more and thank you for your insight on this. But we're gonna talk about two big topics today. One is the difference between open and closed skills, how to break that apart in practice, and then the second is how to implement intentions and practice uh for you as an individual. And then kind of some subtopics in there, like how does someone set an intention, how to operationalize it, measure progress, and then design tasks for themselves over a long period of time. So lots to cover. But um, which one should we start off with, do you think?

SPEAKER_00 2:16

Um, we can start with either maybe the open and closed skills, just because I don't I don't know if I have terribly much to say about it. Um, but yeah, I think we can start there.

SPEAKER_01 2:26

Okay, cool. So yeah, can you share uh what is an open and closed skill?

SPEAKER_00 2:31

So when we're talking about skills, and we'll we'll we'll leave aside the definition of skill right now. Just I guess just use the one use the definition you have in your head. Um we have kind of two broad categories that we like I see skills being broke into when I like read. Um basically they're closed skills and like continuous or open skills. One thing that I think people should be careful of is that there are like open and closed skills. There is a separate thing called open and closed loop control. And sometimes you see people they're very, very similar, but sometimes you see people mix those things up. Um, I don't know how terrible it is to, I don't know if it's like necessarily wrong to mix them up, but just be aware there's open and closed skills and there's open and closed loop control. Um for skills specifically, an open skill is just something where the environment in which the skill is being performed is uh changing a lot, and there's not really like necessarily a hard start or a hard stop to the skill being performed. A really classic example of this, and the one that I put in the article is swimming. Like the if you're doing swimming, the start and end are defined by the rules of the sport you're doing, but there's not like the the activity itself could just go on forever. You're constantly dealing with the water, you're constantly moving through the water and adapting to it. And there's not like necessarily a defined start or end, which a closed skill, the environment is stable. There's not a lot changing while you're doing the skill, and there's a very well-defined start and stop. Again, that classic example is dart throwing, though you have a start, a stop when the dart leaves your hand or hits the wall. Um, and nothing necessarily is changing that rapidly during that performance.

SPEAKER_01 4:25

Yeah, this is actually interesting because as I started learning about CLA and jujitsu and stuff, I was thinking about how I would have applied it to archery. Archery was like the big hobby I was into before jujitsu. And it felt just so different. It's very similar to the dart though. You like there's an initiation, a setup, like a follow-through, and that was about it. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 4:43

You see, you sort of see like um when they when like they you get into like the nitty-gritty of like classifying skills, like there's a bunch of different stages that they use to like talk about all that. So there's like movement preparation, which is like what you do before you even start to move. Um, and then there's the like the movement itself, and then um like post, I think they call like it's like a post-trial. I don't I don't know the particular words. So the the point is there's like there's a lot you can read about classifying skills. Um I'm reading a book on it right now, which is uh it's very interesting. There's even like a lot of um like taxonomies for types of skills in opened or closed. You can there's a lot of them. Okay. Gentile, there's one called uh Gentile's taxonomy, um, where it's like the muscle groups, how many muscle groups are involved in the skill? Are you manipulating yourself, an object, yourself around space, or an object around space? Like there's a lot of tools out there to have boxes to put things into. Um yeah, so it it the distinction I think is important because that distinction, open or close, can give you a hint on maybe how you can best practice that type of skill. Um, so like a really open skill where things are changing and there's not a well necessarily a well-defined start or end, that may not lend itself super well to like classic repetitive practice because you're you're in a way artificially slicing out a piece. Um, and you you you may need a rationale for why you're deciding to slash out that particular piece. Um closed skills, I guess, lend themselves a bit better to it. Um however, there's still some like there's still so much there. And I my brain's a little messed up thinking about this sometimes. So like thinking about a closed skill, I'm just thinking like an example that's in my head, like um uh like Rob Gray uses this one a lot. So let's say we're on a driving range and we're hitting a golf ball, and I want to teach you how to drive the golf ball. Ideally, like, or you may approach that practice session with like, I want to teach Josh to drive the ball straight down the fairway, straight down the range. That's one way you could do it. Another way is I could have you try to hit the ball as far to the right and as far to the left as you can. So you understand the like where the boundaries are and what you're doing. Um once you understand those boundaries, the middle now becomes more defined for you because you're starting to understand all the ways you can hit the ball so that you can hit the ball one way rather than just hitting the ball one way over and over again and not exploring that space. Um and that's where you get into like a maybe where you can kind of get into weird things because it's like is hitting the ball all the way to the right or left a different close skill than hitting the ball down the center, or is just hitting the ball the skill? Like you can get you can get really, really wrapped around the axle and talking about these things. But again, where like the important thing I think to think about, especially when you're coaching, is where do you think a particular skill starts? What is the start of this skill? Um, Scott Sievright and Adam Singer love them. Um, they asked this question to all their guests on their podcast about MMA. Where does a punch start? When does it start? Um, does it start when the hand is moving? Does it start when the body starts moving? Does it start when you as the competitor notice the movement for the punch starting? All three of those are gonna have different implications on how you potentially try to practice that thing.

SPEAKER_03 8:27

Wow.

SPEAKER_00 8:28

So closed versus open, academically fine, but uh for a practical coaching thing, where do you think a specific skill starts? Um that's gonna help you help inform you how to start designing a task or set the drill, whatever drill you might want to be doing. Uh right.

SPEAKER_01 8:45

And it's interesting to think uh there's some sports, it seems to have both, like for example, basketball. There's like a free throw that's maybe more of a closed skill, and then there's other pieces of the game that are more continuous. Uh, but then the continuous part directly collides with the free throw. It's like, did I just was it a fast break and then got fouled?

SPEAKER_00 9:04

Now I got a free throw and my heart rate's higher, or was it like, you know, it's all like yeah, you can you see right it you can think of a lot of examples, and and again, like the second takeaway, I guess, is like it's gonna come down to your subject matter knowledge as the coach. Like if you are a master of your sport, you're gonna think about it a particular way. If you don't have a lot of subject matter expertise on the thing you're trying to do, you're gonna design it a different way, obviously. And I and again, maybe there's a right way, maybe there's a wrong way. I think where I think the only actual wrong way to do it is to not be reflective and thoughtful about that after your training. Um, so think about the skill you're doing. Where do you think that skill starts? How does that start point that you're deciding is the start point inform how you're practicing the skill? An example, like using that one from the article, is like a knee cut. You could say the knee cut starts when I'm in the kneecut position, or you could say the knee cut starts when I am just like in a standing belly up guarded situation. And I like it doesn't start until I clear the get to the line of the feet. Those are two different start points that are gonna have two different um implications on how you practice it. Another example is with a knee cut too, which is funny, is uh like uh Tynan Dalper just uploaded that teaser for his he'd uploaded something about his knee cut. And his that knee cut particularly started when he was already like on the hips, like he was already past to some extent, the legs weren't in front anymore. That's a different start to the knee cut. If you start a new person there, they're gonna be missing some skills that get them there. And so if you have them rep that out, then put them in a standing seated situation, you might run into some problems because they they didn't practice maybe the pieces of skill they needed to. Um, so again, just being thoughtful about that, where you decide the start and endpoints are super, super important when you're designing practice for yourself or others and tells you how to adjust things during the practice. Oh, this isn't working the way I wanted to, this doesn't look right. What what do I change?

SPEAKER_01 11:52

Right. Um in grappling, it seems like the skill is way more leaning on the open side. Um, although there are some pieces of it that maybe because he could be on the closed side if you think about like the last step of a submission. Yeah, yeah. Last step of a submission, or maybe even closed or I don't know.

SPEAKER_00 12:13

Back the more the more, I think just the more connected we get, the less variable things get. And you know, you you can hear Greg say this, but the more comfortable we can be giving more discrete A than B than C type stuff. Right, right. Um, it's an example, like if you take two brand new people and you have them start disconnected and standing, it's gonna be mayhem. But if you start them connected over an underhook or in a single leg, maybe a little bit less because that you've just you've sectioned out the available space for them to move through. So less you start, you're closing it a little bit.

SPEAKER_03 12:48

Right.

SPEAKER_00 12:49

Um, so yeah, I think submissions are a really good example now that the particular way you get into a submission, how tired you are, this and that and the other thing. Then again, like we start getting back into that weird conversation. But as long as you're cognizant of you know how you're classifying these things, where you think it starts and stops, um, you're gonna be a little more amenable to um setting up well-reasoned practice and have a better rationale for why you might be changing something at the time you are based on what you're what results you're getting in the training room.

SPEAKER_01 13:20

Got it. Gosh dang it. The next question I'm gonna ask, I'm so tempted to ask it, but I'm like, maybe I should save it for after you stop recording. I was gonna ask, is is it closed and skill and open like a binary thing, or is it is it a spectrum? I I don't know if that's just like too deep of a rabbit hole to go into.

SPEAKER_00 13:35

Well, I I think I think the binariness comes from like one one thing to remember with a lot of the skill acquisition literature is that the studies, like the way they have to set up the studies to do like proper science, like they need to set up easily controlled, low variable tasks for these people to do when studying. And so that distinction between open and closed in a laboratory setting is very, very, very, very simple because like it's very binary because they're specifically designing it that way to control for all these confounds and whatever the case. But in the the and this is like part of the argument from the eco side is like we're not we don't compete or practice in a laboratory. There's so much going on that to try to say that it's any one specific thing is very, very challenging because you just don't know. And even when you look back to like um like the op like behaviorism studies, like Michael Domjan's uh principles of learning and behavior, they call it um uh behavior shaping. So, like, how do we adjust the conditions um and rewards and all of that when we're doing like classical conditioning to teach something or uh to teach a behavior to something or get a behavior out? Even then in that book that he's like, you know, it's like that's the book on it. And even then he's like, yeah, for shaping behavior, we're not really sure. And he says it's up to the subject matter expertise of the coach, of the scientist to know what needs to be manipulated when, what needs to be present, and what doesn't need to be present. So again, it just keeps coming back to like you have to be reflective about this stuff, and you gotta really know your subject matter deeply, or just and if you don't, like just be open to the to the idea that you you're gonna be wrong, and that's part of the process of learning. So it's not um, it's not a problem necessarily.

SPEAKER_01 15:34

Right. Um so for open and closed skills, this distinction um and jujitsu being a very pretty pretty continuous game, um I guess that lends itself to an the argument of why CLA is is quote unquote more effective for developing adaptations personally.

SPEAKER_00 15:53

Yeah, I think I think that's a really strong argument. I think um when you look at some of the like research that's comparing CLA versus more like linear teaching style, especially for more open, continuous, complex skills. Like there's one on like soccer for fundamentals, just like kicking the ball, interpersonal distance, and all that. Like the CLA group gets as skilled as the linear group, and then they're also better at the things the linear group specifically drilled. Um again, there's people debate how good those studies are. There's you know, lots of much smarter people talking about it, but I I I think it's rather intuitive for those more open, chaotic things that CLA gets you there just as well as any other teaching style does. And the other thing is that with the CLA, you don't accidentally pull something out. You might don't run the risk of pulling stuff out on accident. Or I think for like jujitsu, the example would be like um so there's a there's the joke about newer people getting stuck inside control. And uh, and I think Craig Jones has talked about this too, but the way that we teach um the the the difference between like retaining guard and pin escaping, since we teach them as two separate things, as two separate skills, you run into issues where you may accidentally be training people to wait to be completely pinned inside control before they start to uh escape, before they start to try to extend and push people away. And when really you're always doing that, like a guard is a version of unpinning yourself. Um, and so if you set, if you train people to view those as two distinct phases of the fight as binarily like that, you may be creating a problem that you didn't need to create in the first place. If you just teach people to constantly be pushing, get their legs back in front, all that as a way to stop from being pinned versus teaching pin escapes as starting from this well-defined alignment. You people may wait to get into that line alignment before they start escaping. And that's the hardest place to do it from. So it's no wonder they're not having a lot of success. And so you may be setting that person up to have an extremely frustrating time training because you had them practice the side control escape. It felt good. It you're talking, you talk about it like this is this easy thing. And then when they actually experience it, it's not, and it's very difficult and it's not going at all like Coach said it did. And now the students left to be frustrated. Some people deal with that frustration very well. Some people get really discouraged. And um, it does that problem need to exist? Maybe, maybe not. I don't know. Um, so I guess that's kind of where we can draw it into jujitsu is like we're again, maybe we're you could be cutting things up in a way that makes it really confusing for people.

SPEAKER_01 18:51

That is such a good example. Um, maybe we can shift gears into uh this topic of implementing the intention for practice as an individual uh with some concrete examples as well. And then um, yeah, maybe first can you talk a little bit about what is an intention? How does one implement it for practice?

SPEAKER_00 19:10

Yeah. So broadly, an intention is just like being intentional is just doing stuff on purpose. You have something you're trying to do and you're actively trying to do it. Now, in like being intentional, like really for me, that is the biggest rate limiter to getting good at jujitsu. If you have a low capacity, a low ability to stay intentional for an extended period of time, you won't, you can't get good because you're never gonna be able to focus on anything. Everything's gonna kind of happen at random. It's gonna be very hard to kind of do anything. Um, so really intentionality is the biggest rate limiter you have for a skill. Um the nice thing is that like intentionality being intentional, like initially, like because it's so the grappling can be so new for people, like there's not there's not necessarily a wrong way to do it. And all I mean by that, like is that like we just especially in like CLA or even a more traditional class, like we we're trying to get the athlete focused on doing something, whether that's a particular movement or um, hey, stand really close to this person and don't let them touch you with your feet. We're giving them something to do, however we're setting that up, and then we're giving them an opportunity to do it to the best of our knowledge. Um, but again, like I mean, it you know, it's it's a trite example, but like if you give someone a drill to do and they don't do it or they get unfocused on it immediately, well, yeah, they're never gonna get good at that thing. Um they can be as broad or as specific as you need them to be, as you may want them to be. Um, but the important thing is, yeah, it has to be done on purpose. You have to have the thing, a thing you're working on, something you're paying attention to, something you're trying to do.

SPEAKER_01 21:05

Um, maybe I can selfishly ask. So uh once I had Rob Cole on the podcast, I started a new journey, no more guard pulling in open rounds. And so I'm wondering how so my intention in the open round portion of class is to get better at wrestling. And so I constrained myself, no, no pulling guard. Now I'm like dealing with a lot more standing engagement. Um, to me, that seems like a really broad intention. And I've been trying to get better with having more and more specific intentions. Uh, there's a guy, Jonathan uh Crincia, who's been really helpful. Rob Cole mentioned it on the podcast. Maybe going yeah, he's awesome. They were like, maybe getting to underhooks or getting to specific connections uh that are more effective could be another layer of an intention. Any thoughts here on helping me shape my intention here, just as general, wanting to get better at the standing engagement.

SPEAKER_00 21:49

Yeah, and yeah. Um there's so many ways, especially in stand-up, because it's so open, like there's so many things you could do. Um, so like, yeah, getting an underhook is great because we want to get connected to center mass or the shoulders or whatever. Um, in my head, sometimes like um, so we think about an underhook as this shape we can make with our body. And we sort of talked about this last time. Yeah, but as an intention. So like I want to get there, but so like let's say you do a week of training and you're like, I'm kind of making underhooks, but I like it doesn't feel like I don't know, it doesn't feel right, or it feels like random when I do get them, or I'm only getting them on people that I'm you know bigger than, or like, you know, we we don't want that. We want to be able to get an underhook on anyone should we choose to do it. And so it can help to say, like, okay, well, I set an intention of making underhooks for the past, you know, however length of time. And it's I don't like it yet. I'm not sure where I'm at yet. Okay, so maybe, you know, we can look at the problem from at the problem or before the problem, what end of the what side of the problem we're looking at. So maybe it could be, okay. Um, maybe for the next few weeks, as I get close to people trying to get to that underhook, I'm gonna take my hands and try to just keep them on top of my partner's hands. Because every time I try to make an underhook, their hand gets in the way and shoves me. Um, so I'm gonna not let them put their hands on me. That's the problem I'm having. And so then you're just trying to get your hands on top of your partner's hands and then looking for that underhook if you can make it. So you're you're stacking intentions or however you want to talk up, talk about it. But it can be like, I think. Where you can run into trouble is when your intention is very specific. I'm gonna show up at the gym tonight, I'm gonna do an I'm gonna do the armbar on everybody. Maybe if you're that good that you can do that, you that's probably the wrong intention. But it could be like as a thing that leads to getting an armbar or an underhook. Tonight, everyone I roll with, I'm getting underneath elbows and I'm staying there. Because if I can't do that, I will never get this armbar that I'm intending to do. Um, so really like in intention, you're picking something you want to do, you're picking something you want to do on purpose, and you're constantly looking for it while you train. The only wrong thing you can do, I think, is as you start getting information feedback as you're pursuing that intention, you don't change anything. So you stick with it for I would say like a month. Like you're, I'm just I'm a machine that tries to make underhooks for a month. Okay, what happened? What problems did I run into? Their hands kept getting in the way. Okay, my intention now is to no one can touch me. I'm keeping my hands on top of the hands. Um, and then once I'm really, really good at just doing that, then maybe I start adding in looking for that underhook again. Um, because we really want to like explore this all the space around whatever it is we're trying to do to get a really robust understanding of how it works and when does a certain thing like stop being available or stop working, if that if that's making sense.

SPEAKER_01 24:54

Yeah, that that makes a lot of sense. Um it seems like uh people can have more or less effective quote-unquote intentions, depending on what their their goal is and how fast they want to get to that said goal. Um, because yeah, mine has been underhooks, two on ones, touching behind the knees, and then trying to snap down. It's those are like my general four. Um, but uh anyways, do you think I can make it better? Or is that good? Just stick with that for a while.

SPEAKER_00 25:24

Observe that's good. And so I think like you want to live there, like you want to pay rent in those intentions. Um, there's there's two reasons you want to do that. One, like as you start to work on something new, you're not gonna be good at it. And if you if you if you shy away from it the second it starts feeling difficult, I that's that's the universe telling you that your capacity to be intentional is low. Like if you start getting frustrated and you're like, I it's okay to be passionate about wanting to do something, but if you start getting in your feelings about not being able to achieve something, that's where you got to buckle down. And that may be telling you that like maybe it's not a skill thing right now, really. It's just a capacity to just keep trying to do this thing that I'm trying to do. And I don't like I don't care that much what happens. I'm you know, I'm a machine that snaps people down or tags their knees. And I don't care what else happens, if I tag a knee or snap them down or move towards that, I had a good training day today, and that's all I'm gonna worry about. Um I think like it's very important to confront that difficulty when you're setting these intentions, and that's why like it's you should kind of just pick pick whatever you're gonna pick and stick with it for a while. Because if you if you're constantly changing and fiddling with things again, you you lose all ability to track what the heck's going on. Um so yeah, like I like that snapping down on inside in between or outside elbows, snapping hands down or touching knees, yes, keep that up. What you could adjust in that is potentially like the order that you try to do that. So I'm gonna try to go in between snap touch. I'm gonna try to get outside snap touch. Or today I'm getting outside, and when I get outside the elbows in the two-in-one, I can only touch legs. When I get in between elbows, I can only snap. So you can play in that space, you can you can change the constraints there and just see what does that do to you? What is it, how does your opponent respond? Um, how do you feel about it? What are all these things that I'm noticing about what's happening when I'm trying to do these things? That's where we get like that. That's I think that's where you get that the skill building is like you develop, like the tricky part is like you do a couple of sessions like that. And then if I came up to you, I'm like, Josh, what did you learn the past few weeks? You may not like you may not be able to verbalize that. Yes, but you did learn something. And I and if you get stuck in the trap where it's like, I need to have this nice takeaway that I can speak to someone, and that means I learned something, be careful because you you're gonna set yourself up for being extremely frustrated, you know, session to session sometimes.

SPEAKER_01 28:05

That is such a good note. Um, because I do I do think about what did I what went well today in practice, what do I want to work on? And I can't always explain it, but a lot of times effort the efforting to be there to try to do those things is already the win, I guess.

SPEAKER_00 28:20

Yeah, I I yeah, I that developing your capacity to be intentional, like there's no, I don't think there's any high-level guy out there that like, you know, you couldn't give them something to do, however specific or general, and they're gonna be, you know, focused to the like to an like an unhealthy manner on them, like that. Because they like they're just you know, you have to have that in you to like to to excel, I think. Um just be focused like crazy. You can hear about it um trying to think of who I was listening to. Like you hear guys like uh, you know, Keith Krikorian or or some of these high-level guys, or they're just like, yeah, I've just been trying to do a K guard or some specific leg lock thing, and I've been doing it for like three months. And I that's just been my thing. I'm trying to do. And it's like that's the time you got to spend to like develop expertise and and mastery and learn all the ins and outs and all the garbage that can happen in between. You know, you have to be focused on it day to day.

SPEAKER_01 29:18

And then how do you start to measure progress and then start to adapt? Because like, like I've taken this on, I'm gonna start doing this, but there's gonna be days where I'm like, oh, I'm not sure if I can verbalize what I learned. Then there may be days where I'm like, huh, like you said, maybe inside does lend itself better to snappy, where outside maybe not so much, and you're kind of like sparking a learning for me here. So yeah, how do you how do you measure that?

SPEAKER_00 29:40

So measuring progress is extremely difficult. It's very, very hard. There's a couple of reasons it's hard. One, like there's a distinction between like any performance you have at a practice, and that's different than like what you may have learned that day. So like what you see is not always what you get when it comes to learning. Um, and we can see this, you know, we can see this all over the place. You have the guy who smokes everyone at open map and he shows up and competes and he's terrible. Or we have uh, you know, on uh you have a day you go in and you're snapping everyone down, and then the next night, you know, you're you're getting put on your butt over and over again. And so again, it's allowing that time for like you know, the the stew to to cook, you know, you gotta let yourself, you gotta let yourself cook in that manner. Now, for measuring progress, I think there's two things to keep in mind. One is the people you're training with. So if you're training and practicing kind of the same stuff on the same people, you have to keep in mind that in a way you're training them to fight that version of you. And so every time you touch that person, they're gonna know on some level, oh, Josh is gonna try to knee tap me or st or stuff my hands down. So I'm not gonna let him do this today. So it's you're gonna like, you're not gonna be able to necessarily see any progress that you're making. So you have to keep that in mind when you're trying to look for what your progress is. The two ways that I think are just the most powerful for measuring your own progress is one, setting intentions about looking for specific, like looking for conditions that lead to the things you want. So with everyone in the room today, can I get in between or outside elbows? Because snapping down or getting to a lag on someone may not be available to me depending on the day. If I show up in the rooms full of brown and black belts, it's gonna be a hard day to do anything. If the room's full of white and blue belts, yeah, I'm gonna do whatever I'm gonna be able to do whatever I want probably. Um, so keep in mind who you're training with. Stay focused on the conditions that lead to these outcomes that you want and make sure and be intentional about meeting those conditions as much as you can. The second thing is um, like in regards to other people, is uh cross-train. Like you have to go touch other people that don't know you and you don't know them super well, you don't know each other's games because you want to know how does my skill get expressed? How does this stuff emerge when the other person doesn't have any history because that's part of being skilled, you know? Um the then the second avenue I would I would go down is like have kind of two differing, like two different ways to explore that same intention. So you could explore inside, outside elbows from standing, and then you could have explore inside and outside elbows from guard. Um, you're on your back. Those are those are two conditions that can be present in both of those alignments. Both of those lead to similar but different effects. So you're kind of exploring it from both ends, and also that can give you some time. Like, I've been doing a bunch of stand up, I've been really focused on this. I'm gonna take a break from doing this for a couple training sessions, and then I'm gonna come back after a little bit of time, after I focus on something else, and I'm gonna see what's stuck, like what still feels good, what doesn't, you know, because and that that then in a way, like, oh, well, whatever's stuck is what you learned.

SPEAKER_03 33:02

Right.

SPEAKER_00 33:03

Because it's it's the only thing that's stuck around. Um, but yeah, measuring progress is really, really difficult. Um, there's not, I don't, I'm not aware of like a lot of like academic literature that looks at it again, because they're not it's it's hard to invite a bunch of like really high level or very skilled people in a skill and measure how they get better because there's just so many, there's so many variables you have to you have to try to account for. It's very difficult. Um Rob Gray in one of his books talks about setting up like uh stations. So like you have you you wouldn't necessarily not necessarily like free sparring, but you have like one spot where you have a group where they're doing one type of game or drill, another group doing another, and you move between them to see how people are um constantly touching the same types of problems on different people, the level of success or what outcomes they're getting. Um but again, you need a couple people to do that and and all that good stuff. So yeah, measuring progress is really, really it's really, really hard. And um, you just have to remember you can only measure it in retrospect. So don't like you can't measure learning during a session. That's not a thing you can do. So you have to give yourself time, you have to give yourself some grace, and you have to make sure and just be reflective on like your measurement for a good or bad training session was not necessarily did I hit the move or thing that I wanted, but was I staying focused on what I set out to do today? When you're driving home in the car after training and reflecting, if you achieve that, you had a good day. You had good training. That's gonna carry you forward into the next session. If you end training, you're like, I I saw red the whole time, I don't know what happened. You're gonna be getting good at random. It's gonna be very, very difficult.

SPEAKER_01 34:51

Right. Interesting. Um, it's it's so funny. I I wonder, uh, it seems like closed skills are easier to measure, uh measure properly.

SPEAKER_00 34:59

Yeah, I think so. Yeah. Yeah. Um that's where you can and you and you can kind of see it like with like uh like biomechanics measuring and stuff. Like they'll like the the proxies that we're using to decide what improvement is, like, oh he in the sprint he kept his knee angle like this very consistently. So that means he's learning something. Like we're maybe, I don't know, we're guessing. Um we're guessing again.

SPEAKER_01 35:25

So uh because I was I was so obsessed with with this stuff, like uh with archery, I used to track all my scores every single practice, you know. And and that and that's something that you can measure over time and at least like mentally feel like you're getting better. And even in rock climbing before with bouldering, there's like the V different ratings for how difficult the climb is. I used to track every single one. What was the average of the ones I did today? Yeah, stuff like that. It's crazy. But in jujitsu, it is, it feels way more esoteric. But I like this uh is like how much time under tension are you spending in the exact purpose thing that you're trying to get better at and all that that point meeting that challenge point, like all those minutes in that challenge point area is the win itself.

SPEAKER_00 36:05

Yeah, it's it's it's so so important. And you can, you know, you can journal, you can use uh Sherpa, like but you have to have you have to have some sort of system in place to to reflect on this a little bit. Don't reflect on the mat, don't reflect during training. Yeah, do your training. Once you're done the work, then you know, then do then do your reflective practice, whatever that might be. Yeah. Yeah, you have to do stuff on purpose. It can be it can be maybe your intention is I'm gonna show up today, I'm gonna train, and then I'm not gonna think about, I'm not gonna drive myself crazy about training. I'm showing up, I'm having a good time, I'm going home.

SPEAKER_01 36:37

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 36:38

I'm not taking anything in the gym home with me.

SPEAKER_01 36:41

Totally. Oh, that's awesome that you know about Sherfoot. But yeah, totally the uh today. Um, some of the days when I'm doing my intention for practice that day, I'm like, today, just sweat. And then I'll be like, oh, and focus. Try to focus as much as you can, you know. But it's so broad. Other days it's like, okay, yeah, get the get those things in there.

SPEAKER_00 36:58

Really, I really I think my my favorite story right now about um setting intention and training and measuring progress is this. I had a guy that trains with me. It's a purple belt, um, really, really good guy. And he comes up to me in the winter and he's like, Yeah, he's he's feeling down. He's like, Coach, I'm not the training's, I'm not feeling good in the training, like I'm not feeling successful. I'm I'm just like I'm really frustrated right now, this, that, and the other thing. And I'm talking to him about him, like, hey, well, you know, when I was watching, you know, I'm trying to give him the best advice that I can. And this was a learning moment for me as a coach because we get done talking, and I'm like, man, I don't know if I like I don't feel like I really helped him that much. And he's like, all right, coach, well, I gotta head home. I I my wife is like due with our first baby in like the next few days. Like she could be a pregnant, she could have her baby at any moment. And I was like, Well, that's why you don't feel good at training. Like you, you like you're on this like big life life step that's a that could happen at any moment for you this week. Like, that's probably why you're not focused in training and nothing feels good. Like, you there's something external to jujitsu that's messing you up, whether you know it or not. Like, you know, so cut yourself some slack. But your jujitsu and you are not the problem. It's you know, this like the life circumstances around you are just lowering your ability to be intentional in practice or how you feel about the practice. So, yeah, have some grace for yourself, be reflective, do things on purpose, but keep in mind that like stuff changes day to day, you know.

SPEAKER_01 38:26

And this actually leads into that topic of like how do you then uh design task focus for yourself over a longer period of time? And now you have a little bit more room to play with. Um so going back to my example, you know, start finding more success there, then where do you go next in in customizing, I guess, your your task focuses or just your intention in general?

SPEAKER_00 38:47

So the an a nice like three-step, like I guess you could call it a framework that I like to use or I think about. And I took this from uh Kabir Bath. I can't remember where he said this, but essentially um you have a set of conditions or a connection that you're trying to so for you uh inside or outside elbows. That's a condition or set of conditions or a position that we're trying to do on our partner. Now approaching that, okay, I have this connection or set of conditions. Can I start there and maintain it for an extended period of time? Good. Now can I get to that from standing, from anywhere? Can I get to that connection? So can I keep it or can I get to it? The third is can I use it to do something? Can I use it to put hands on the mat? Can I use it to get behind my partner? Can I use it to get to their leg? Can I use it to pull guard? You know, like what can I use this position for? Um, because a lot of this is like a really fun thing. Probably the most fun thing about grappling is like one set of conditions that you like impose on someone can lead to a million different things. Like it branches off very, very, very, very quickly. And so, like a really classic, like a classic example is like if you're working on your guard and you, you know, you can make really good connections, you're doing a good job keeping your partner in front of you, and you're putting them on their butt. Once you put them, like making connections that lets you put your partner down onto their hips or hands, there's now a bunch of directions you can go. I could entangle, I could stand up, I could just keep them there for as long as I can. Um, I could adjust to change a connection to get up to the shoulders. And so, like if you notice, like I'm getting in between elbows, outside of the elbows, and I'm snapping down to get to the leg, um, change what you're functionally using those set of conditions for. So now instead of getting to a leg, I'm not gonna stop getting to a leg or not until I completely get behind my partner. Or I'm gonna try to lift them up this time and start to start exploring that a little bit. So that single set of things that you're practicing to try to get to a certain outcome, change the outcome, change the connection, or change how you're trying to get to the connection and attack it from all angles.

SPEAKER_01 41:15

Wow. Is that what we would call a skill becoming more robust, well rounded, uh stable?

SPEAKER_00 41:24

You uh that's we could talk about it like in terms of dexterity. I have a lot of ways to get or achieve some specific outcome. So um, you know, I there, I don't, I'm not particular about where I am when I start trying to do something. I will find my way to get there and do it because I understand um I've explored the entire space of trying to do that thing, and I understand some of the like more global conditions I'm trying to get to on my partner, in between or outside knees, in between or outside elbows, um, those those types of things. But yeah, that that that that's where you develop like that term. We use that in the CL CLA world of like dexterity. Like I can I can get to this outcome in many, many different ways. Um, I'm not particular about doing it a specific way.

SPEAKER_01 42:14

Right. Okay, cool. Wow, that is like the cool North Star, I feel like, of like a having a very strong skill, it seems.

SPEAKER_00 42:22

Yeah, yeah. Um, you know, and it and it and it can exp it can express itself like very different ways, right? Like there are some people who it's like they they're very, very dexterous at getting to this one specific thing. And they will they'll get to your legs, they'll put you in a uh inside entanglement, and they'll break you. Um and you have other people who like they're they're very they have a lot of dexterity and like you just can't hold them down. Like they're they can always find a way to rotate, base off the mat, push, like they they're not, they they don't care how you get connected to them, you're not putting them on their butt. They're always gonna bounce back up off the mat. Um, so it expresses itself kind of in different ways depending on the type of person. But again, like um, and I think for me it comes back to being intentional. Like if you're if you need it to look a specific way, you might run into trouble because the time it doesn't look that specific way, and you get a little emotionally rattled or surprised, you're late. And when you're late, you know, you're you're responding to what the other person's doing. You're no longer imposing, you know, whatever thing you're trying to do on them, they're imposing on you.

SPEAKER_01 43:28

Right. Uh when you coach athletes, it how do you help them shape what's a good intention? Maybe like too many intentions. Do you try to have an intention for every engagement?

SPEAKER_00 43:38

You know, um, there again, like I don't know if there's I don't know necessarily if there's any wrong, wrong intentions. What's wrong is if you're not being intentional about it. But really for new athletes, like the intentions are very, very general. Um, the specific ones will come from like whatever we're doing in the training room that day. So, hey, we did um I don't know, we did body locks today for guard. Um, I want you to try to body lock, like look look for look for opportunities to just lock your hands around your partner. Because if you can't see any of those, you're never gonna see a specific one. Um, but I'm really big for me, um, especially for newer people, like an intention of I'm gonna keep my palms on my partner the entire time. No matter where I am in the exchange, even if they're they're passing me, they're smashing me into the mat, I'm gonna constantly be looking to get my hands back in front because that that puts that retraction of my arms puts me in position to do all of jujitsu, to get push, to turn, to do all these things. So, very general condition that gets them a point of focus in the mess of grappling. That is a bedrock for all these other behaviors that were looking to come out. And they're they're you know, the general ones are fairly simple. They're just really basic human movements. So stay, try to stay facing your partner the entire time. Don't let them get behind you. Like very, very, very simple things, but um, that's your those, those give people like their North Star. Um, another one, like Rob Cole, um, Greg, obviously, but you see this with a lot of people, they have like uh uh principles of play. And those are like those are kind of global intentions. They're not super specific, but those are like again, those guiding principles that no matter where you are, no matter what's happening, the athlete or student. Has an understanding of the direction they're kind trying to go. We're segmenting periphery to get the center mass. We're neutral, we're top or bottom. Um, those types of things. Like um, it's helpful to have those built into your game design as a coach because that informs your gym culture and and you know how practices how practices are going to run and like generally what you're training people to do outside of any specific technique. We we do jujitsu like this. We're top heavy players who like to wrestle and pass and take people's backs, or we're guard players who are always looking to get in between the legs and put people down to entangle. Um those those principles, those principles of play help you guide those global intentions um generally rather than specifically, like we would do, you know, in a in a game or training activity.

SPEAKER_01 46:20

Yeah, I heard Greg once say of like keep their hands and feet off you and off the floor. And I tried to use that intention for a little while and it was just too broad for me. So then I had to go, I think, a little bit more specific because I was like, dang, this is everywhere. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 46:35

And again, like that, that, that, like you, you, you had an idea, you intentionally tried to enact it in some way, and then you realized, ooh, this is this feels way too hard. Now you now you can abandon it. That's I guess that's fine. Another way you could do that is like, okay, well, how can I set a training situation up to where that's a little easier to manage? And so keep their hands and feet off of you and off the floor. Let's play some rounds from half guard, where I'm just like you're talking about um like the wrist pinning stuff, right? You're doing that. You're keeping their hands off you, but it's you're connected at the hip, so it's less less crazy, right? Right. So you can constrain the situation to make that opportunity to to be intentional about those things. You turn the volume way up on that, and then you can back it back out, make it more variable um based on how successful you're feeling or how how how um overwhelmed you are or aren't feeling in a specific alignment.

SPEAKER_01 47:33

Yeah. That's what's so nice about CLA. You can kind of show up, and then a lot of times you don't even have to have an intention. The coach will give you one in every single scenario, and you could just be so focused. Then it comes to the open rounds. And I feel like maybe the open rounds is where there's a lot of opportunity for individual athletes in training in CLA to have an intention in in their open rounds.

SPEAKER_00 47:52

Yeah, and and that's I think that's definitely a hard part for CLA coaches, is like without running your mouth for a super long time, like instilling that those values in in your students. Because I get like, you know, people show up for training, they have a good time during the structured part of the training, and then when the open rounds come, it's like, oh, I'm just gonna fight. When that's fine, but you can take an intention into those open rounds, um, however general or specific it might be, to get a lot of good work in. Um, make you can really like because that free sparring is really fun, but probably not the best thing for skill building. And so having an intention when you're in those open rounds can help you max or make that time efficient if that's something that you really want to do. If you want to get as good as possible as quickly as possible.

SPEAKER_01 48:47

Yeah, it's it's so interesting. Because maybe if they want to go fight in the um open sparring, and maybe that's most people's intentions, they might not even be aware that that's their intention. That that's just like how they treat the situation uh versus like intentionally being like, actually, I just talked to an another guy earlier today on the podcast, and he uses open mats uh to help him prep for competitions. Like he'll do more and more open mats as he gets closer. And his intentions for those open mats are like very specific as you get closer to come.

SPEAKER_00 49:14

And yeah, and and that's like back to measuring progress. Like, yeah, to prepare you're in a tournament, you're touching someone you've never touched before, and you need to impose on them, like you need to you need to win, right? Maybe the training room where maybe you're a big fish in the small pond or you're the best guy in the room, and everyone kind of knows on some level that you're gonna you're gonna roast them in the training. Maybe that's not a good place to practice that. You need to go to open mats, touch people you've never touched, and try to do your shit on them so that you know where you stand in terms of someone who you know you have a blank slate with, right?

SPEAKER_01 49:49

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 49:49

It's super important. That cross-training is so important.

SPEAKER_01 49:52

Um so then uh anyway. Any advice on that open round portion of class, the unstructured part? Like, do you tell people like, hey, before we start the open rounds, like think of something you're working on? Like, how do you how do you approach that?

SPEAKER_00 50:05

How do you suggest people don't so much in my classes? Just because most of the time when people like we do open mat after every training session, they've already gotten 45 minutes of intentional focused work in. So you're good. Have fun if you want, you know. Um it's funny, a lot of people like they'll be tired from the class and they'll leave before the sparring starts, and they'll be like, Coach, I'm so sorry. And it's like, you you're good. Like you got a ton of work in today. You got 45 minutes of focused work. You're that's fantastic, like that's amazing. Um but yeah, in terms of the open sparring, again, like you you unless you're the best person in the room, you're gonna have to pick pretty general intentions because you you're, you know, you're going with the other black belt and you want to work on like some offensive focused thing, and then they just plant you on your back the entire round. Then you're gonna get frustrated that you didn't get to work on the thing you wanted to work. Now you're getting in your feelings, you're not necessarily focused on the training. Might, you know, you're gonna get frustrated. So, really, really general, like keep keep them pretty general and and but have some like scaling set up for yourself to make things more specific. Me personally, um, I have like a a weird take on difficulty in regards to this. So you want to make something as people get better at something, you want to make it more difficult for them to do that thing, to make the skill more robust. For me, I find a lot of value in the difficulty that comes from doing something very, very simple or boring for a very long time. Um, so can I hold the knee line splitting legs on a guarded player for eight minutes without without losing focus, without getting frustrated, without getting anxious, without I I could, I could totally pass right here. No, stay there, cook, cook, cook. Um, I find a lot of value, especially with more with some of the more skilled players that I've worked with. I have a uh brown belt now that I've been working with, and like his capacity for intention was lower than I felt it should be. And so we play a lot of games where he was all he could do was just keep a specific set of conditions on people. He could not do submissions or advance to get him to kind of catch his breath in these places and make uh you know, make more make decisions on purpose rather than just go trying to go with the flow too much. Um and we were doing that like a lot with like leglock stuff because he would just kind of turn and burn out of leg locks or try to jump out of stuff and he would create lots of problems for himself. So we just gave him a lot of time. You're just you know standing in that leg, you're standing in that guard, you're not trying to do anything else, you're just disrespecting their jujitsu clearing feet. Um, so I find a lot of value in really simple things for extended periods of time. Um, your training partners might not like that so much because it can be miserable and it feels kind of mean, but that's that's a game. That's the game we signed up to play.

SPEAKER_01 53:05

Yeah, developing that uh is capacity the right word for that.

SPEAKER_00 53:08

I I think it's a capacity, yeah. It's a capacity to be intentional. Um you can see it come out. Um you can see it at that, you can see the level of capacity expressed. Like if you set up some sort, some type of training, specifically a CLA game, and when people start saying, like, oh, this game's broken, I could just do this, it's like, well, sure. But also that may be showing you that your your capacity for being intentional is a little lower than you think. But if you're already like, oh, I could do all these things, it's like, well, we're not doing that. We're doing this specific thing and trying to keep it. Um, we're trying to build capacity just here. Um, you know, I there's values looking at it in both ways. Is the game broken? Are you actually not that intentional? There's value looking at it both ways, but again, depending on the intention you have for the training activity you set up, that's gonna inform you what what road is the correct one to take.

SPEAKER_01 53:59

Yeah. Uh, what are your thoughts on like a failure rate? Like how much should people be failing versus succeeding at the intentions that they're setting?

SPEAKER_00 54:07

It's gonna depend on the person.

SPEAKER_01 54:08

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 54:09

As a coach, you have to have a relationship with your athletes where you understand how what what are the signs that they're getting frustrated and how much frustration can they tolerate on any given training session. Um ideally, you set the pairings up, the partner pairings up, or you give them a little bit different tasks or focuses to make that smooth for them. Now, the goal for me is I want everyone to have a really high capacity for failure because that's just the nature of the game. Um, you're gonna fail a lot, it's gonna be frustrating. If you don't have your point of focus on being intentional about conditions or whatever, you're gonna get really, really frustrated really quickly. Um, there's a lot of great literature also about this. They call like the challenge point hypothesis. Um so I think I I'm off the top of my head here, but I think the like the success rate you want to typically see for people is like between 60 and 80 percent. If they're winning more than that, they're not developing skill really because it's too easy. There's no stimulus there. If they're not failing, if they're failing way too much, it's way too hard, it's too chaotic. They're not they're not gonna have any information there that they can really perceive and use in the situation. Um, so you want to kind of adjust things or make sure to keep an eye on things to make people make sure people are um succeeding just enough. Your sign for that, I think, as a coach generally is just are people being are are people focused? Are they intentional? Are they being intentional? Because if they're losing intention, it may be too hard or too easy. Do things look messy, but they're still doing the things they're supposed to be doing? Because if it looks perfect, it's probably too easy. If it looks if it looks crazy and they're just starting to do anything, it's too hard. You want things to look messy, but they're still orbiting around. They're still in the neighborhood of the thing that you set out to do in that training today. Um, so yeah, when I look out in the room and I see that that messiness that, you know, that I don't I can't think of a better word for it. It's just mess. But they're still focused, they're engaged, they're doing, they're still looking for these outcomes that I told them to look for. That's good training. Um, it may not look very pretty, depending on the person, it may not feel like learning, but that I think that's where the learning is. That that intentional messiness. Um, trying to get to those results regardless of where I get pushed or pulled by my partner.

SPEAKER_01 56:40

Yeah, I can already feel a lot of it like with this whole new standing uh focus of mine. I can already feel progress, even though it looks so messy. It feels so messy this whole time. Yeah. But um yeah, it it's a good uh thing you're mentioning. Like if it starts to look too clean and you're hitting it on everyone, you're like, okay, maybe it maybe it's time to like challenge this even more in a different way.

SPEAKER_00 57:02

And it's also it can kind of it kind of comes back to that um like skill classification a little bit. The reason I say that is this. So going back to that competitor I was talking about, um uh he's he's he's got like a gnarly ankle lock. Like he's so good at straight ankle locks. He he could tap everybody in the room. Um, he has tapped everyone in the room with it, right? But it's like I had I talked to him, I'm like, man, you can get anyone with this. Like you're not like, but you're not practicing anymore because you're just getting you're just getting it and going, getting it and going. And so we had to like put a bunch of stuff in the way of him being allowed to do the ankle lock. Can you pass the leg? Can you um can you entangle, stand up, entangle, stand up, entangle, then do the straight ankle lock? Because the skill that we're trying to work on at that point isn't the ankle lock, it's moving his opponent's legs and moving his legs around his opponent's legs. That's where we want to spend our time. That's this that's the skill that we're working on. He's already good at the ankle lock, but if because his capacity to like entangle legs and and live in that mess was low, when he encountered someone tough or who was a better entangler than he was, and who would eat that first attempt at an ankle lock he had, there was no other place for him to go. He would just go, oh, I can't finish this ankle lock. Uh-oh. So we realized that like the skill we needed to be working on wasn't that endpoint. It was all those things that led to it that what that was what we actually needed to work on. And I think that stuff pops up for everyone in everyone's game. You have those, like, you're really, really good at the triangle. Okay. Can you use what can what out what other function can you get out of that connection? Can you start putting people on their back before you try to finish them? How can you complexify the thing you're really good at to continue to get stimulus from practicing it? Or do you just need to stop doing it because just keep it in your back pocket for later because you're already really, really skilled at it? But that that kind of stuff and skill classification, I think, is is really is really important because you always have to be asking, um, you know, what am I going to do next? If this doesn't work, what do I do next? What where where am I looking to go next? Um, how do I get to the top? How do I, you know, et cetera, et cetera.

SPEAKER_01 59:19

Such a good example with the ankle lock because he was so good at that. But now you had him focus on all these other areas. You're basically like giving him expanding all the opportunities for future ankle locks.

SPEAKER_00 59:31

Yeah, and it's an intention thing because he originally he was coming in and hitting this ankle lock on everyone and being like, that was a good training session, man. I tapped everyone. Which, yeah, but that's not that's not the measurement maybe we want to be focused on right now. How much time did you spend doing leg spaghetti? That's where we want to be. Um, so yeah, again, that that feeds back into intentionality, how you're classifying the thing you're trying to practice and how you're gonna go about giving yourself opportunities to practice it. Um but again, it's so, so important. And again, it's it's just you have to do it. Like there's no wrong way to do it. You just got to jump in the pool and start to swim. And as stuff comes up or obstacles get in the way, you deal with them. But that's how that's how you learn. That's how all the best guys, all the best guys I've ever trained with, like they're good at doing that, whether they can consciously articulate the process that they're using or not. And I it feels like in my experience, like when I listen to really high-level people talk about their training, they're doing a version of that. How you know, whatever methodology they're they're they're using, they're doing that.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:36

Yeah, that makes sense. Um, maybe to wrap up here, can you share um a little bit about your sub stack? Because I want I did want to you to mention that because uh yeah, you sent me a uh recent blog post that you wrote and I listened to uh you reading it, and it is phenomenal. Um maybe before or after this comes out, I'll put a little like sneak snippet of it. I'm hoping to send people there. Um yeah, can you tell people about it?

SPEAKER_00 1:00:59

So I have a substack. I post on it um infrequently. I try to just post on I feel like I have something interesting to write about. Um if uh it originally started, and if I can just brag on myself a little bit, um Rob, one of Rob Gray's last latest episodes, he did uh with someone named Stephen Smith, who just finished his master's degree for Munsters Technical University. They'd have a master's in skill acquisition program. Um and he had mentioned on that on that episode how he had heard about someone on a Discord um taking all the material from that course and collecting it and reading all of it. That was me. Um that was me. Um, but originally the blog started as a way for me to write through all the reading I was doing, pretending to take that master's program, just because it was all this, it was a bunch of material all compiled by much smarter people, and all I had to do was just go find it and read it. Um that quickly, that plan changed completely because I it was like an obscene amount of reading, and I just had no ability to like condense it down into writing that wasn't like just me doing a book report. And I didn't like that. Uh I didn't like that it was like so theoretical. Um, so a couple of months ago or like last year, I changed it to like trying to just be very, very specifically applied stuff. So I wrote some articles about um really just kids, kids' classes, because that's what I was, that's what I've been trying to get better at this year. Um, so some practical things that I was trying to do to solve problems I identified when I was running classes with children. Um, I broke that rule of being practical with my last post um because there was just something that was bothering me and how people were talking about training. And what was bothering me was that there wasn't a good explainer out there for like the headspace that people are in, depending on what they're what they're what they're biased towards. There wasn't a there wasn't like a good place that explained that I felt. And when I listened to debates at the sports move and skill conference, um you know, there would be weird moments where no one was really disagreeing, but they were disagreeing. And it's it at times it was hard to tell what exactly people were disagreeing about. And I realized then that it it was just, you know, it was just like kind of different worldviews colliding, but it was just very hard to really articulate it because people in those people in the debates and I think people in discussions broadly, like maybe haven't done their homework to like really understand foundationally where these this thinking is coming from. Now the problem is it takes a lot of work. Um, it's not fun, and it's really confusing, like diving into the deep end on all this stuff. Um, so what I tried to do in this my latest post was articulate what the differences are, um, how things are different, but also more similar than we think they are in terms of views about learning skills, um, how skills are learned, where skills are, what skills are. Um, and I tried to write an article that didn't use any too crazy jargon or went too out on the deep end talking about um like perception and ontology and all this stuff. Um, and you know, tried to make it, you know, as practical as I could in regards to that. Um it ended up being pretty long, it's like 12 pages, but I also um recorded a complete voiceover for it. So you don't have to read it. You can if you can tolerate my voice, you can listen to it like a podcast. Um again, um, it's not written to tell anyone why they're right or wrong. It's just trying to explain foundationally where these two kind of competing looks at scale acquisition are coming from and where they converge and also some of the history on why there was a split in the first place. Um, there's a lot of really cool history there. Um gotten some good feedback on it from a lot of people. Um again, I'm biased towards you know, the constraint-sled approach and all of that, but um, I took I took painstaking care to make sure I was very um even-handed and uh uh you know graceful to both sides of the aisle, so to speak. Um, and uh in in hopes that it would be useful for everyone to kind of under get a better understanding of where everyone's coming from, because yeah, you can just hear people talking past each other all the time um without maybe without understanding that there is talking past each other available in some of these conversations. Um so that was my intention for it. Um I hope people get something out of it. Um, I've gotten some nice feedback so far, but it's also feedback from all the nerds that I know. So I don't know, I don't know if it's broken containment to to general population people just yet.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:57

I think listeners of this podcast will probably be on the nerdier part of the spectrum of general population. Um hopefully they'll uh they'll enjoy it.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:06

But um the other thing to note too is um the end of it, I have like a little bibliography. So if you're curious about um listening to me, some of the reading that I've done, or you want um maybe a more general starting place for doing your own research. I have some books in that uh article that are a good starting point. It's really just a list of textbooks that I've that I've read, but um, there's some good reading there um to help you develop that perspective, develop your ability to reflect on your practice, what you're trying to practice, and um how to you know, measuring progress, all that good stuff. So again, really it's it is really important to to have a little bit of a grasp on all these things because it's such a big bang for the buck knowing just a little bit about this stuff. And I we're still in a weird spot where like not a lot of people have really done any research, it feels like sometimes, um, if I can be that bold. But um yeah, I hope people uh can get through it. I'm always open to questions or to chat more about it as well. So please reach out on uh uh Substack or Instagram if people want to talk about it too. I'm always open to chat.

SPEAKER_01 1:07:13

Awesome. Yeah, we'll link the Substack if you want to read it. Um, and then I will find some snippet of it or maybe work with you on which snippet would be best to cross-post on this podcast. And yeah, they it was beautifully written and extremely clear too. Um so yeah, I hope people check it out. We'll we'll link it in the description.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:30

Um Thank you so much. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:07:31

Yeah, Drake, thank you so much for coming back on the show uh a second time so soon. So I appreciate your time.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:37

Yeah, I really, really, really appreciate uh appreciate you having me back on again. Um, I appreciate the the show as well, man. I think it's uh it's it's nice to hear just people talk about um training in the way that you do and the interviews that you do are um you do a really good job of creating a space where it feels very much like a casual conversation and not like some done up uh presentation or ever. So it's yeah, it's really fun. Really enjoyed talking to you. Thank you. Thank you so much.

SPEAKER_01 1:08:03

Yeah, of course. Thank you. Thank you all for listening. We will catch you on the next episode.