This is part of a doctoral assignment. These ideas come from an educational psychology perspective, so many of them are quite different from what you are used to reading on Combat Learning. I am exploring things largely from a constructivist perspective right now to understand cognitive perspectives that overlap with the ecological approach.

Many of you are familiar with Teaching Games for Understanding (TGfU). For those who are not, TGfU is a games-based learning approach to physical education and sports training. In many ways it is a sort of spiritual precursor to the constraints-led approach (CLA), and many CLA coaches have borrowed from or built upon games and coaching tactics from TGfU.

Teaching Games for Understanding originally came out of constructivist learning theory: the idea that knowledge is actively constructed through experiences with the subject matter to be learned. It is active participation versus passive consumption. Constructivism is also the theoretical basis of discovery learning, which is a method I have referenced perhaps hundreds of times throughout my writings and podcasts.

Constructivism is technically a member of the cognitivist family of learning theories, but you will notice that its approach to knowledge is strikingly similar to the ecological one. This fact combined with the historical reality that it provided the fertile ground from which to grow both TGfU and the discovery learning method is what interested me to more closely study constructivism as a theory and what I can learn from it as an ecological thinker.

In this article, I’m going to be exploring an important concept in educational psychology through the lens of constructivism—and doing my best to connect it to the ecological approach for my readers.

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The Importance of Attention, Knowledge, and Memory

In educational psychology, attention, knowledge, and memory are key elements of the learner. Teachers should design lesson plans and curricula with the intention of garnering and maintaining learner attention, building learner knowledge in the domain, and facilitating memory retention of that knowledge.

Now, I know memory is a hot topic in the ecological dynamics sphere. I have not come to hold a cognitivist account of memory, but cognitivists and ecological thinkers alike can at least agree we remember things; and those things, especially propositional things, persist through some sort of storage mechanism, even if that mechanism doesn’t quite work like the ubiquitous computer analogy.

Some activities are very much memory-based activities in the sense that they chiefly revolve around remembering certain facts or sequences. In martial arts, competitive kata and poomsae (forms) are huge artistic sports that require as table stakes for performers to recall and perform each form’s movement sequences with perfect accuracy. The process of learning forms, therefore, can be accelerated by incorporating evidence-based memory strategies.

Attention Best Practice: Collaborative Learning

Attention is a critical part of ecological learning theory as well as constructivism and educational psychology more broadly. We want to arouse attention, because attentional focus is a prerequisite to learning.

In the ecological approach, we also value attention as a resource in the learner that can be directed and guided to further enhance the learning process, something that perfectly overlaps with the assisted version of the discovery learning method from constructivism (Alfieri et al., 2011).

This time, I want to explore something different than external focus cues or typical one vs one games when it comes to attention. I want to talk about collaborative learning.

Collaborative learning puts students in situations where they have to build explanations together, which naturally pulls and holds their attention (Long, 2024). This can easily be added on as a dimension of inquiry-based and problem-based learning, which are related constructivist approaches. Meta-analytic research on constructivist approaches suggests that this kind of active engagement can boost both achievement and social outcomes across age groups (Kurnaz, 2022).

In sparring-heavy combat sports like Olympic taekwondo and Brazilian jiu-jitsu, you can leverage collaborative learning by turning emerging tactical problems from competition into cooperative problem-solving sessions. When a new meta or strategy is tearing your athletes apart in tournaments, you present that sparring problem—using footage or a live demonstration—and then group students to troubleshoot possible solutions together.

They make hypotheses, experiment together, identifying plausible solutions before testing those ideas in sparring. This locks in student attention because it is both socially engaging and directly connected to performance (Long, 2024).

In an after-tournament sport taekwondo session, I might structure the learning activities something like this to add a collaborative theme throughout:

1. Cold review

Ask students to reconstruct key lessons from the tournament. After the students have had a chance to give their summary of their own performances and the performances of their teammates, they then compare their recollection of events with the coach’s notes on what went well and what did not work. Students are more likely to remember the lessons they learned and how it connects to what they are about to learn (Adesope et al., 2017).

This also works the memory but for a more analytic purpose.

2. Inquiry-based exploration

This is both an attention and knowledge-building exercise. Working off the coach’s tournament notes, the coach summarizes the main theme for why students were losing or giving up points they should not have. Students will then be randomly placed into small groups to work together, so they can generate and share possible explanations for why these things went wrong (Kurnaz, 2022). Teams will share with the coach, but the coach will not weigh in with his own opinion until later.

3. Team-based problem solving

This is both an attention and knowledge-building exercise. The previously established student teams make hypotheses and experiment together, identifying plausible solutions before testing those ideas in sparring. This locks in student attention because it is both socially engaging and directly connected to performance (Long, 2024), but it also builds knowledge through analysis, hypothesizing, and troubleshooting of real-world problems.

The great thing about collaborative learning is that it is also deeply knowledge-building as well as attention-demanding.

Knowledge Best Practice: Inquiry-based Learning

Constructivist theory focuses heavily on how learners actively construct knowledge through experience in a problem or task space rather than simply receiving finished answers.

Inquiry-based and problem-based learning are closely related constructivist approaches where students either generate and clarify problems or work through pre-defined problems (Rahmawati, 2025). Both approaches are backed by meta-analyses that show they can improve achievement when learners deeply engage with problems over time.

Again, I’m going to explore an atypical direction here. Where most of ecological learning content revolves around serving students, I want to talk about how inquiry-based learning can be used to facilitate learning for trainee coaches.

Deep Coach Development through Simulated Fight Camps

For combat sports, you can apply problem-based learning by designing simulated fight camps as training for coaches rather than only for athletes. Coaches typically have to deal with long time-scale, multifaceted problems involving skill development, strength and conditioning, nutrition, sleep, and psychological factors.

In a problem-based camp simulation, coach trainees design and implement an entire camp for athletes, coordinating training loads, and other support factors. You as the coach trainer track outcomes such as fatigue, perceived improvement, injuries, and motivation to see whether the camp design actually works.

(Obviously, even as an ecological coach, you want to intervene before any injuries happen if you foresee it from the design of the program.)

It is a common error for new coaches to forget to account for training accumulated outside the martial arts mat, such as lifting for strength and conditioning. This helps coaches construct richer knowledge about integrating multiple constraints into a coherent plan.

As coaches come into contact with problems in their camp design methodology, they inevitably have to make inquiries into why. Feedback from real performance and senior coaches will help guide the coach trainee to deeper knowledge about coaching and especially the design of fight camps.

Memory Best Practice: Spaced Repetition

Spaced retrieval practice focuses on a robust empirical finding: people remember better when they are required to retrieve information after some forgetting has occurred and when those retrievals are spaced out over time (Murray et al, 2025; Carpenter & Endres, 2025).

This was on of the major premises behind Bruce Hoyer’s flipped classroom model of jiu jitsu instruction.

Spaced retrieval practice is particularly useful in martial arts forms training, because the task for performing a form is heavily based on remembering and reciting exact sequences of movements. You can expose students to one segment of a form, have them work on unrelated but still relevant tasks such as conditioning, flexibility, or a different segment, and only after several minutes bring them back to the original segment.

Within and across sessions, you can weave multiple segments this way so that students must reconstruct sequences after partial forgetting rather than simply repeating them immediately.

References

Adesope, O. O., Trevisan, D. A., & Sundararajan, N. (2017). The testing effect in the psychology classroom: A meta-analytic perspective. Scholarship of Teaching and Learning in Psychology, 3(3), 233–247. https://doi.org/10.1037/stl0000096

Alfieri, L., Brooks, P. J., Aldrich, N. J., & Tenenbaum, H. R. (2011). Does discovery-based instruction enhance learning? A meta-analysis. Journal of Educational Psychology, 103(1), 1–18. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0021017

Carpenter, S. K., & Endres, E. J. (2025). The distributed practice effect on classroom learning: A meta-analytic review of applied research. Journal of Intelligence, 13(6), 771. https://doi.org/10.3390/jintelligence13060771

Kurnaz, M. A. (2022). Analysis of constructivist learning model’s effects on student outcomes: A second order meta-analysis. Afyon Kocatepe University Journal of Social Sciences, 24(3), 953–970.

Long, N. T. (2024). An experimental study on improving first-grade students’ mathematical learning achievement and social awareness through an instructional approach based on constructivist theory and collaborative learning. Higher Education Studies, 14(2), 1–15.

Murray, E., Horner, A. J., & Göbel, S. M. (2025). A meta-analytic review of the effectiveness of spacing and retrieval practice for mathematics learning. Educational Psychology Review. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10648-025-10035-1

Rahmawati, N. (2025). The effectiveness of the constructivist approach on students’ achievement in mathematics: A meta-analysis. Journal of Multidisciplinary Research, 5(6), 1–15.

He writes,

Aliveness is about the freedom to use whatever works in the moment. It's the right action at right time.

The first mentions of aliveness in Bruce Lee’s work speak of authenticity and spontaneity in…

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It triggered huge growth of the email list, and riding that excitement, I wrote a frenzy of new articles after only publishing three articles for the first four years of the podcast.

I’ve slowed down a bit since then, but I’m not done. More is to come! But in the meantime, I’ve assembled a list of posts that were most popular over these first two years of the “Substack era” of Combat Learning.

Best of Combat Learning ‘24 & ‘25

Combat Learning in 2026

I’ve had limited bandwidth between a demanding day job (I changed jobs this year), freelancing, and scraping through a doctoral program. I haven’t disappeared, and I am figuring out how I can carve out more time for my readers and listeners.

I also want to be a lot more active in promoting CLA in striking sports, especially sport taekwondo and karate. These are still virtually untouched spaces.

It’s the best way to support the show, and you’ll get access to exclusive articles and recordings on how to practically apply the science of skill acquisition to martial arts training.

Right now, I’m taking Rob Gray’s How We Learn to Move and applying it to martial arts practice design, chapter by chapter.

Other premium articles include:

- How to Manipulate Constraints to Build Deep Skill

- How the Fundamentals Emerge on their Own

- Representative Learning Design for Martial Arts Training

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Thanks for listening. Before you go, can you do me a big favor? Positive reviews help the show get more listens. If you got value from this episode, please leave us a review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.

See you on the next episode!

This episode was produced by Micah Peacock, including the intro and outro music.

Other topics covered:

• The value of some information processing concepts

• Performance vs learning, instruction as a constraint, and how to measure learning

• Did the research you’re using include representative design?

• The limits of representative learning design instruments

• The importance of taxonomies and classification systems

• How do decide density of drilling vs live work anyway?

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It's the best way to support the show, and you'll get access to exclusive articles and recordings on how to practically apply the science of skill acquisition to martial arts training.

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Right now, I'm taking Rob Gray's How We Learn to Move and applying it to martial arts practice design, chapter by chapter.

Other premium articles include:

- How to Manipulate Constraints to Build Deep Skill

- How the Fundamentals Emerge on their Own

- Representative Learning Design for Martial Arts Training

All that and more is available to you when you upgrade to the premium combat learning subscription. It's less than an open mat drop in fee per month!

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Thanks for listening. Before you go, can you do me a big favor? Positive reviews help the show get more listens. If you got value from this episode, please leave us a review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.

See you on the next episode!

This episode was produced by Micah Peacock, including the intro and outro music.

Other subjects covered:

• Praise the process, not the outcome (fostering intrinsic motivation)

• Warmups

• Athletic skills

Bring your CLA coaching and ecological dynamics knowledge to the next level and upgrade to the premium combat learning newsletter.

Subscribe now

It's the best way to support the show, and you'll get access to exclusive articles and recordings on how to practically apply the science of skill acquisition to martial arts training.

Right now, I'm taking Rob Gray's How We Learn to Move and applying it to martial arts practice design, chapter by chapter.

Other premium articles include:

- How to Manipulate Constraints to Build Deep Skill

- How the Fundamentals Emerge on their Own

- Representative Learning Design for Martial Arts Training

All that and more is available to you when you upgrade to the premium combat learning subscription. It's less than an open mat drop in fee per month!

Thanks for listening. Before you go, can you do me a big favor? Positive reviews help the show get more listens. If you got value from this episode, please leave us a review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.

See you on the next episode!

This episode was produced by Micah Peacock, including the intro and outro music.

What I found in the comments is embarrassing.

Snort.

A study lol.

Why would scientists call a neurological phenomenon “muscle memory?” Doesn’t even pass the smell test.

The article states that muscle memory is making muscles remember movements, but then Zahabi says it’s neurological.

Sloppy, sophomoric, embarrassing, does not even merit reply, frankly.

EDIT:

I just noticed he calls it “muscle memory/motor learning”—this is idiotic at best and dishonest at worst.

Of course motor learning is a empirical phenomenon; every conceivable theoretical camp in motor learning believes their own discipline of study exists.

Greg is arguing for a view of motor learning. Why would he be arguing motor learning doesn’t exist? You can’t use the two interchangeably.

Muscle memory is not motor learning. It doesn’t define motor learning, and it’s not a position inside motor learning except to people who have no idea what they’re talking about.

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I originally formulated the Scalable Live Training construct with two scaling levers, task simplification/complexification and intensity control. These are directionally correct, I think, but they do not provide enough guidance on the actual design of skill games for martial arts.

What does a more or less complex version of a game look like? What are its features?

Over the last two years minimum, I’ve been trying to cook up some sort of tool to help coaches scale games in a more systematic way—and it proved extremely difficult.

I took inspiration from Gentile’s taxonomy of motor skills, but it was hard to dial in on dimensions general to combat sports but specific enough to be useful.

After torturing over it on and off for years, I think I’ve finally devised something workable: the task complexity taxonomy (TCT).

I’m affectionately calling it the “taskonomy.”

Disclaimers

There are some inevitable misunderstandings about this taxonomy that I want to get ahead of, so I’m placing the disclaimers section before the actual tool.

Keep these things in mind before attempting to apply it.

The taskonomy presupposes aliveness.

Aliveness is the necessary foundation representative learning design in martial arts.

There are no categories in this taxonomy that are not predicated on unscripted and uncooperative interaction as a condition of participating in the task.

Dead patterns—rote drilling, flow drills, one steps, kata, overly cooperative exercises, etc.—necessarily fall outside the categorical hierarchy of the task complexity taxonomy. They are at best conditioning exercises, at worst junk volume, and are not part of skill work, as defined by scalable live training.

If you are trying to classify activities with scripted or cooperative elements in them with this taxonomy, you are doing it wrong.

The taskonomy is not a complete picture of complexity, intensity, or difficulty.

The taskonomy is a guide operating on the most observable ways to make tasks simpler or more complex chiefly via task design. It is not an exhaustive catalog of all factors influencing complexity or difficulty of a given task environment.

Constraints not accounted for that can influence complexity and difficulty of a task include, but are not limited to, affectivity, uncommon equipment constraints, additional non-sport scoring methods (e.g., adding takedowns to taekwondo clinch practice), more skilled or physically dominant training partners, individual injuries or weaknesses, tightened or loosened time constraints, and/or limitations on or expansions to defensive tactics (the taxonomy only indexes scoring methods).

Therefore, it is still incumbent upon a coach to monitor the activity on his mat and make adjustments accordingly.

The taskonomy is NOT a proper representativeness measure.

It has a relationship to representative design—and a degree of representativeness is necessarily woven into its structure—but a higher category is not always higher representativeness than a lower category.

I noted the subtle difference between RLD and task scaling in a previous article:

There’s certainly a relationship between task complexity and higher levels of representativeness, but the two are not one and the same. In fact, it’s possible to make the task much harder than the performance environment, which is technically less representative of the game itself but nevertheless could be hugely beneficial to an advanced player.

In the above cited article, I put together a different tool, the combat action fidelity index, to help more specifically measure representativeness within combat sports practices. It is linked below.

Other, more established tools also exist, like the RPAT and the representativeness dial.

The taskonomy is not a finalized tool yet.

It’s in version 1 as of the writing of this article, which I define as “sufficiently useful.” I expect feedback from real usage by other coaches, and additional thinking and research, to refine the tool over time.

The taskonomy is also not a perfect tool. Because it’s likely in its most unrefined form right now, there are aspects of it that require some instruction to know how to use correctly.

Those aspects also require some additional conceptualization provided by the individual seeking to apply the taxonomy (always a perilous thing when it comes to martial artists).

Introducing the Task Complexity Taxonomy

The TCT or “taskonomy” tracks complexity along two main dimensions:

• Tactical Demands

• Task-Environment Type

Tactical demands refer to the amount of (generally offensive) scoring methods available to successfully complete the task, which also necessarily stipulates a lesser or greater number of variables to manage for defense.

Task-environment type refers to the physical conditions, as dictated by the task parameters, that most commonly contribute to a more simple or a more complex task environment.

This dimension breaks down into four subdimensions following the theme of attachment and unattachment and enforcement of a meaningfully limiting practice boundary.

I unpack some theory and background on task-environment interaction in the article linked above.

The TCT Visualization Chart

The figure below is a crude visualization of the TCT, modeled after Gentile’s multidimensional classification system.

Each “C”—Class or Category—has an adjoined number to denote the specific intersection of each subdimension on the X and Y axes. C1 is these least variable and complex, and C16 is the most.

There are several elements here that need further definition and instruction. I break everything down below.

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Explanation of Tactical Demand Subdimensions

Scoring methods are primarily defined by the rule set that you and your students compete in. There are other considerations here, however, which we will discuss in later sections.

The tactical demand subdimensions, concisely explained:

• No scoring for one player. This is a highly asymmetrical game parameter where one attacks and the other defends. Only one had offensive scoring options. Not recommended.

• High scoring limits. This is a game where both players have at least one scoring method available to them and as many as half of all available scoring options for your sport, as as defined by your own method breakdown.

• Low scoring limits. These are games where most scoring options are available but at least one is constrained out. Limitations are minimal. These games are much more variable and representative and therefore of higher skill acquisition value generally.

• All scoring methods available/no scoring limits. This is typified by free sparring to the full rules of the competition rule set, but it can hypothetically encapsulate enhanced rule sets even freer than the anchor modality.

Explanation of Task-Environment Types

An attachment is any entanglement or grip between one or both players. It is commonly understood in the eco community that starting in or from an attachment lowers the overall variability that has to be managed in a learning environment, at least for one of the players, but often both.

No/large boundary means there is no defined practice boundary as part of the task or the defined area is so large that it does not meaningfully add complexity to the play dynamics (i.e., a boxing ring).

Enforced boundary means the boundary is small enough that there is real and consistent danger of stepping out, and the stepping out is penalized by point deduction or match forfeit.

• Attached, no or large boundary (ANLB). Where the players start attached to one another, but the total practice space has no boundaries enforced by point deduction or loss, or the boundary is so large that it does not meaningfully demand mindfulness of it.

• Attached, enforced boundary (AEB). Where players start attached to one another, and there is an enforced boundary small enough to change the dynamic of play. Enforcement includes point reduction or match loss.

• Unattached, no or large boundary (UNLB). Players start without connections on one another thus must mediate connections to facilitate task engagement. Thee boundary is not an important consideration for successful task completion.

• Unattached, enforced boundary (UEB). Players start without connections on one another thus must mediate connections and also be mindful not to step out of bounds. In some combat sports, this might represent greater complexity than the performance environment.

Understanding the Color Coding

Below is a key to understand the color coding on the taskonomy chart. You’ll notice the color progression matches that of Renshaw’s representativeness dial.

However, since all taxonomically classified exercises are at a base level alive, the meaning of these colors for the taskonomy differs and thus does not cleanly map onto a representativeness scale.

• Red: always over-constrained, should be rarely or never used in skill work

• Orange: probably useful, but possibly over-constrained, especially beyond a few months of training

• Green: generally useful for various purposes across skill levels and training goals

I have two comments to add:

First, I hope the colors do not serve as a point of confusion regarding the differences between Renshaw’s dial and my so-called taskonomy.

Second, these color codes are heavily based on my own speculation but informed by research, especially regarding variability and RLD. In other words, I believe they are theoretically sound, but they are not all empirically validated.

Your mileage may vary.

How to Apply Tactical Demand Subdimensions 2 and 3

The tactical demands dimension has four subdimensions, the middle two of which require some calibration before they can be applied. This lends itself to a high risk of misapplication, so I’ve written out extensive guidance on it here.

Please read this section carefully, because a sloppy attempt here will ruin your ability to accurately use the taskonomy.

Rule of Thumb: Anchor it to Your Most Dominant Competition Modality

These subdimensions are tied to available scoring methods, which are defined by your competition modality. It’s for this reason that you, as the applicator and coach, must first structure your conceptualization of scoring in a way that can be operationalized by the taskonomy.

The simplest and most easiest place to start is by anchoring the your understanding of tactical demands in the competition rule set you most often compete in or most value.

If you’re like most grapplers, and even many strikers, it’s likely you compete across different rule sets and even different sports (e.g., many Olympic TKD athletes also compete in point karate). Designing games with those elements is recommended, but your program should be structured around the most dominant rule set, which will calibrate your usage of the task complexity taxonomy.

For example, if you compete most often in IBJJF tournaments—perhaps you consider IBJJF Worlds the top tournament, because you’re a gi grappler—you should understand the scoring subdimensions of the tactical demands in terms of officially recognized scoring methods by the IBJJF.

The spread of scoring methods looks like this:

• Successful takedowns

• Achieving recognized mounts

• Sweeps

• Guard passes

You might also consider including advantages, but I’m afraid it would complicate things too much.

If you want to be an over-achiever, you can spin up multiple versions of the taskonomy calibrated by all the different sport modalities you and your students participate in.

I don’t think this is logistically prudent, but it might be a useful intellectual exercise for coaches. In fact, this might help you test different curricular focuses and decide which one is best for your mat’s needs and your goals as a coach.

A caveat

I understand pinning in terms of Greg’s nomenclature: chest-to-chest, chest-to-back, and perhaps we can through in knee-on-belly as an outlier. On the other hand, the IBJJF recognizes side mount, full mount, back mount, and knee-on-belly.

This is important:

Even if you understand the theory of the game one way, the tournament organization still understands and scores it their own way, and this can affect in-game strategy.

This is something to keep in mind for practice design.

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Edge cases like boxing

Boxing’s only objective scoring methods are landed punches, knockdowns, and knockouts.

These are too few safe top-level scoring methods to productively use the taskonomy in many cases where method subtypes (e.g., “straights” vs “hooks”) might be useful to target in learning environments and when other scoring methods are too damaging for training.

Boxing is not the only case where this might be useful. Sumo has pressing out of the ring and takedown as the broadest scoring (in this case, winning) methods, but there are many different subtypes of pushout and throw that might be useful to target in some environments.

For these cases, existing conventions for classifying those methods are very useful, although you can amend those as-needed for your own purpose or according to your own philosophy.

I say this because we want to avoid working on singular techniques to prevent over-constraining, preserve representativeness, and encourage creativity and exploration.

Overall, some of these alterations won’t surface in the taskonomy, so I must reiterate that this tool can’t automate anything about your practice designs. It’s a guidepost.

Tell me what you come up with. I’m confident there are multiple productive ways to structure scoring methods compatible with the taskonomy.

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A Note to Coaches on the Danger of Labels and Systematizing…

In labeling these elements, and coding them as increases in complexity, there’s a danger that coaches will artificially limit the rate of learning of their students out of fear of too much complexity.

This is an irrational fear, an unfounded anxiety. For example, a jump from AEB to UEB might be a meaningful change in complexity, but it’s realistically not a large jump, and is always doable within the same session—even for day one beginners.

The taskonomy should never be used as an excuse to hold students back. It’s a structure to help you scale complexity and simplification in a more systemic, and thus consistent, way.

To the karate folks, I have to be extra clear: if at any point you are stratifying these task categories across belt ranks, you are horribly off course and entirely out of step with the spirit of this project.

Think about it: you can compete in the whole game of taekwondo at yellow belt in a tournament, so it makes no sense to wait until a more advanced belt to conduct C15 or C16 tasks, i.e. sparring with the whole rule set.

I Covet Your Feedback

Ask questions liberally.

Take and run with it.

Tell me your findings.

I want to hear from everyone. You can meaningfully develop a tool that thousands of future coaches might benefit from. Please give me your input, because you never know how useful it might turn out.

Let’s make the constraints-led approach more accessible to all.

Leave a comment

Both see the same visual structure, but they don’t engage it the same way.

Why?

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Affordances are opportunities for action in the environment. Scientists will represent an affordance by taking an action word …

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The internal schema notion from information processing is so engrained in the populace that martial artists who came across the ecological idea dismissed it immediately on assumption that it’s impossible…

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When we criticize information processing, we’re not saying—or at least, I’m not saying—there is no form of process whatsoever.

I’m criticizing the view that sense perceptions…

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Indulge me in a thought experiment.

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With these things in mind, my gut reaction while listening to this debate is Dr. Mike showed up just to (politely) play a sort of “mean girls” game where he (nicely) lays down the law of what the science is, and what it says, and that we’re not in that clique.

He does not apparently understand the scale of study of the ecological approach (many don’t—we’ll discuss this more), and, just like any rank and file martial artist, is not willing to learn or use terminology specialized to a discipline outside his own.

Summary

The halo effect of the PhD looming overhead was much more pronounced in this discussion than his one with Greg Souders.

Dr. Mike makes unilateral pronouncements from the standpoint of an exercise scientist that do not even begin to acknowledge the variety of credible positions extant in the skill acquisition discipline, including more recent developments in schema theory via researchers like Gabriel Wulf. It frankly amounts to a great deal of question-begging, and it felt like an attempt to simply shut out Cal's attempts to merely explain the ecological psychology position.

At one point, he asks Cal about language specialized to skill acquisition -- IP vs ecological approach -- and rather than sus out the differences, attempts to declare all things information processing. Dr. Mike seems to want to drag everything back into exercise science terminology instead of talk skill acquisition on skill acquisition terms (where have we seen that before?).

We’ll dig into specifics in the body of this article, below.

My big overall question:

Does Dr. Mike believe there are any credible alternative views to motor control than schema theory’s version of information processing?

13:30 - Is Dr. Mike Stating his Understanding as the Final Word?

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Or maybe you’re frustrated with your progress, want to try something new, but are stuck inside a learning environment you don’t control.

Either way, you still have some options. Of course, it’s optimal to run your own club or gym, but you can take ownership of your own learning journey and get started with CLA even if you don’t.

Here’s the 5 best options I know.

Bring your CLA coaching and ecological dynamics knowledge to the next level and upgrade to the premium combat learning newsletter.

It's the best way to support the show, and you'll get access to exclusive articles and recordings on how to practically apply the science of skill acquisition to martial arts training.

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Right now, I'm taking Rob Gray's How We Learn to Move and applying it to martial arts practice design, chapter by chapter.

Other premium articles include:

- How to Manipulate Constraints to Build Deep Skill

- How the Fundamentals Emerge on their Own

- Representative Learning Design for Martial Arts Training

All that and more is available to you when you upgrade to the premium combat learning subscription. It's less than an open mat drop in fee per month!

Subscribe now

Thanks for listening. Before you go, can you do me a big favor? Positive reviews help the show get more listens. If you got value from this episode, please leave us a review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.

See you on the next episode!

This episode was produced by Micah Peacock, including the intro and outro music.

“It’s about looking good, not learning how to fight.”

Now, if you’re a part of the so-called “practical karate” or “practical bunkai” movement, you might think that you are exempt from this statement…but you’re not.

Dan wasn’t just talking about the most traditional of the traditionalists. He was talking about the practical karate people, too.

I haven’t addressed it specifically yet, but I have touched on the practical karate and taekwondo crowd from time to time…

This is an audio essay version of an article I wrote last year:

Bring your CLA coaching and ecological dynamics knowledge to the next level and upgrade to the premium combat learning newsletter.

It's the best way to support the show, and you'll get access to exclusive articles and recordings on how to practically apply the science of skill acquisition to martial arts training.

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Right now, I'm taking Rob Gray's How We Learn to Move and applying it to martial arts practice design, chapter by chapter.

Other premium articles include:

- How to Manipulate Constraints to Build Deep Skill

- How the Fundamentals Emerge on their Own

- and Representative Learning Design for Martial Arts Training

All that and more is available to you when you upgrade to the premium combat learning subscription. It's less than an open mat drop in fee per month.

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This episode was produced by Micah Peacock, including the intro and outro music.

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So whereas all positional sparring can be CLA, the CLA is not simply positional sparring: it can be much more or much less, depending on the necessary scale.

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Right now, I'm taking Rob Gray's How We Learn to Move and applying it to martial arts practice design, chapter by chapter.

Other premium articles include:

- How to Manipulate Constraints to Build Deep Skill

- How the Fundamentals Emerge on their Own

- and Representative Learning Design for Martial Arts Training

All that and more is available to you when you upgrade to the premium combat learning subscription. It's less than an open mat drop in fee per month.

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Thanks for listening. Before you go, can you do me a big favor? Positive reviews help the show get more listens. If you got value from this episode, please leave us a review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.

See you on the next episode!

This episode was produced by Micah Peacock, including the intro and outro music.

In this episode of the SSF podcast, we deviate from the conditioning to talk more about perceptual motor learning and skill in sport.

This was recorded right toward the end of the debate between Big Dan and Greg Souders, so I’m wired up and making pot shots.

Topics covered:

• The Instructional Industrial Complex

• Missing critical information in drills

• CLA and aliveness for skill acquisition

  • The limitations of positional sparring

• How to measure learning gains and transfer of learning

• Focus of attention, task focus, and scaling focuses

• CLA for striking

• Variable practice design and injury prevention

I was really on fire for this interview. I’m more concise and pointed than usual. And I address concepts in detail I haven’t addressed much publicly yet.

Please give it a listen, and support the SSF pod while you’re at it!

This episode explores the vital considerations we need to make about how we manipulate constraints, if smaller is actually better, and what information we’re losing when we scale down too much or …

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