Hi, everyone. Rob Gray here again with another reflection from the road, this time from Seoul, Korea.
So it's time for a call to action.
Hi, this is Rob Gray from Arizona State University.
I've been on a now over 25-year journey as a researcher, professor, and high-performance consultant
to understand how we acquire and adapt our perceptual motor skills.
Welcome to the Perception in Action podcast, where I discuss how psychological research can be applied
to improving performance, accelerating skill acquisition, and designing technologies.
Now on to the show.
I've been doing a lot of workshops, working with coaches, doing exercises, designing constraints,
doing designing constraints that approach activities, or get them to do hands-on activities.
I typically start by asking them to identify a particular type of movement, movement pattern
that they want to apply.
I want to move their athletes away from, that they think is problematic.
You know, obviously I get them to explain why they want to do that,
not just because they don't like the way it looks.
And then we go from there in designing activities, I give them feedback, and so on, and we demonstrate them.
A few times I'm getting people kind of struggle.
They can identify a problem, but they have trouble identifying a good constraint.
And what I've kind of realized is there's two kind of questions I ask people from there.
Two why questions that I think help you design a constraint.
The first one is, why do you want to get rid of it, right?
And typically what I'm getting you to do is think about the outcome that your movement pattern produces, right?
If it doesn't produce a poor outcome, then why are you getting rid of it, right?
You could still want to because it's injury-causing, but in most cases you're going to get rid of a poor outcome.
For example, in my fly ball study, people with flat swing, right?
Flat swing path, I wanted to get rid of that.
So move them away from that solution because it leads to a lot of balls hit on the ground, right?
So the first question is, why do you want to get rid of it?
And what outcome is it producing that you don't like or is not effective, right?
From there, obviously, it's simple.
Design a constraint where if they achieve that outcome, they fail the task you gave them, right?
That's what I did in my fly ball study.
I put a wall of fence in front of them.
If they hit it on the ground, they would hit it into the fence.
Or you can make a simple rule.
You're not allowed to do this outcome.
If you do this, you get zero points.
You fail, whatever, right?
So that's a very simple way to do it.
The second question you ask yourself is another why question.
Why do you think it's occurring, right?
What's causing them to engage in this movement pattern?
Is there something earlier in the activity they're doing, early in the action that they're doing
that's causing this movement?
Or is it just one, this one, this movement pattern you don't like?
For example, they just, this just may be the symptom.
We want to try to address the cause, right?
So I have said this many in my, so my last book, like what I'm commonly seeing in a lot of baseball
batters is not correctly, and in other sports too, not having efficient gaze behavior, not
effectively stabilizing gaze and having a ball tracked well causes mechanical issues later on,
right?
You know?
So the batter will feel, feel like they have less time because they're not seeing the ball well, and
the push away from the ball, they'll drop their hands and move away from the ball in some way.
So if we just focus on the moving away from the ball, that's what we see in the swing that we don't
like, right?
But the real, the real cause of that symptom is something that's happening earlier in the movement,
right?
Most movement things are knock-on effects, as you know, Randy Sullivan likes to say, there are
effects that, you know, if you look back.
Back earlier in the event, you'll see they're caused by something else.
So if you can identify that, and then, you know, for example, a thing that looks like a purely
mechanical thing, dropping the hands can often be addressed by something completely different,
right?
Training gaze, getting people to stabilize their gaze.
I found that affects that.
So as I said, if you're having trouble identifying a constraint, ask yourself two why questions.
Why, why do I want to get rid of it?
What is, outcome is it causing and why might it be occurring?
Why are people moving into this coordination pattern?
What earlier in the movement might be causing it?
Both of those things I think will help you, guide you, give me more ideas for designing effective
constraint.
Okay, that's it for now.
I'll see you next time.
Okay, that's it for today's episode.
Remember, you can contact me at
[email protected] or follow me on Twitter at Shakeyweights.
To find out more about the podcast, please check out perceptionaction.com.
Finally, to support the podcast and receive bonus materials,
including a monthly coach's meetup, please head over to patreon.com/perceptionaction.
This is Rob Gray from ASU, cheers for now and keep 'em cupped!
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