Combat Learning

A New Theory of Striking, Part 1 w/ Emil Fitoussy

Josh Peacock — Thu, 03 Sep 2026 15:51:05 GMT

Emil is back! We catch up on all his exciting academic developments, then we dive into unpacking his ecological theory of striking: leading and countering.

Related to this episode…

My first convo with Emil…

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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.

Boxing Combos are Information-Driven w/ Adam Haniver

Josh Peacock — Fri, 17 Jul 2026 00:21:03 GMT

Effective boxing combos can’t be taught. They emerge to solve striking-specific scoring problems as a function of interaction between opponents.

This is also why mitt work is useless for developing perceptual motor skill. We also discuss how even defense is an active process, like offense. This is why the constraints-led approach is the best way to facilitate rich information-driven practice via representative learning design and aliveness.

Great catching up with coach Adam Haniver from The Box Gathering!

Related to our conversation…

You can also listen to our first episode from way back in 2022 here:

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.

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

How to Map the Constraints-led Approach (CLA) to Taekwondo

Josh Peacock — Wed, 08 Jul 2026 21:42:33 GMT

It seems to me like CLA has broken containment from BJJ and MMA!

I was told anywhere from “this is never happening” to “it’s going to be a huge uphill battle.” (I did not believe it was impossible, but I knew this would be really difficult before I started writing and recording.)

I stumbled across this post in the wild and almost could not believe it:

First, I want to say that I’m delighted to find this in the wild. Absolutely thrilled. In no way is my writing in this post meant to criticize Perform Taekwondo. I applaud them for being one of the first few through the wall.

That said, there are a couple remarks in this slide post I’d like to push the needle on in a constructive way, as well as praise with some hardy agreements!

Everything I write here is to ask constructive questions, get ahead of potential future confusion, and provide a resource for taekwondo coaches interested in exploring ecological learning through the constraints-led approach.

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This article will interact with the Instagram post first, then address the question of how to map CLA to taekwondo.

Is Messy-looking Training a Problem?

From slide 3:

The problem with CLA is that it looks messy and hard to control. Parents often think their child isn't really improving... but it needs to be like this. The rules should be flexible and game-like.

Of course, I wholeheartedly agree with that last sentence! I am refreshed and born anew finally hearing this from a taekwondo creator.

As for the prior statements…

There’s a lot to be said here, but I think this is an oversimplification. There are ways to use alive training and still find improvement, but this problem can be resolved mostly by very good upfront communication with parents and athletes.

It is also solved by keeping sparring separate from the rest of taekwondo training. It’s a terrible idea to try and squeeze sparring, poomsae, self-defense, and everything else into one class block.

That said, I’ve been putting a lot of thought into how to measure improvement in kyorugi (sport TKD sparring) beyond just free sparring. I believe this will come in the form of “mini-games” that focus more on key skills that are consistent leading indicators of sport TKD performance.

This will require a lot more research and testing, but it can be done, and I’m going to help us taekwondo coaches get there.

More to come.

Does Drilling Help Sparring at All?

From slide 4:

While drilling provides structure and the feeling that the child is really progressing, it has its own flaws. With drilling, you see results quickly, but are you really developing what you need? Do you want to be a champion in beautiful technique and target hitting, or in fighting?

This is a great point.

Drilling is easy to control and that looks good to parents and coaches. Getting better at drilling tends to happen fast and in a linear manner—but is this actually improving the skills you need to succeed in sparring?

I believe the answer is no.

Sparring is an open skill, and open skills demand more than what a taekwondoin would call “good technique.” It demands you manage an unstable, ever-changing environment, moment-to-moment.

That is, you have to read an unscripted and uncooperative opponent, make quick movement decisions as actions emerge, and time it all together. When you practice paddle drills or scripted sequences or noodle drills, the authentic distancing, limb movement, and timing elements are erased. Perfect technique cannot fix an inability to read and time your tactics in sparring.

And yet these are the most critical factors in taekwondo sparring success, in my opinion!

Bravo.

Is Drilling Good for Anything?

From slide 5:

So we really can't say it's this or that. Like everything else, they're just tools. I would use drilling to provide some basic input, but focus on CLA since it builds a versatile athlete who can solve problems on their own.

There’s more to unpack here than meets the eye.

First, yes, drilling is good for conditioning: strength and power development (bags, thai pads, barbells, plyometrics, etc.), flexibility/mobility aids (paddles for external height targeting, etc.), and related strength and conditioning functions. Perform Taekwondo is primarily a strength and conditioning profile, so I have a hunch they will agree with this.

Remember that conditioning is separate from skill work. Drills for conditioning generally should not be part of skill sessions, which is what taekwondo sparring classes are.

Second, I want to challenge the author about what he means by basic input. Why is basic input—whatever it is—necessary or additive at all if he agrees it’s not building the skills necessary?

If a student needs more confidence or self-efficacy, for example, this can be built via methods such as task simplification—that is, through skill level-appropriate game design.

And if he’s willing to put up with messy training, what is actually gained by doing sterile drills at the beginning of training when live training starts to gain students so much even from day 1?

I’m of course speaking by experience here. But more importantly, Combat Learning has documented several cases where coaches have successfully raised up striking athletes with zero scripted/cooperative training methods:

Scott Sievewright, kickboxers and MMA fighters
Emil Fitoussy, Thai boxers
Adam Singer, kickboxers and MMA fighters
Adam Haniver, boxers
Pedro Sierra, kickboxers and MMA fighters
Geno Guevara, taekwondoin and kickboxers
Bryan Coston & Seneca Savoie, HEMA swordplay competitors
Zach Smith, sport taekwondo competitors (forthcoming)

And many more than this…and growing.

Mapping CLA to Taekwondo

To map CLA to taekwondo, you have to understand two distinctions:

Skill work vs Conditioning work, and
Closed skills vs Open skills

I have already addressed these in quite a bit of detail elsewhere, but I’ll summarize it here and link to the relevant posts for further reading.

Skill vs Conditioning Work: How Skill Practice Interacts with Sport-specific S&C

In my original Scalable Live Training (SLT) essay, I summarized the difference between skill and conditioning work this way:

In SLT, we believe in a separation of sport-specific training into two buckets that do not mix together: (a) conditioning and (b) skill work.
Conditioning is about improving the body’s base capacity to perform along athletic metrics: strength, explosivity, flexibility, endurance, and expression of power. It includes everything from general strength training to sport-specific cardiovascular and functional strength exercise programs. It is supplemental to skill work in terms of the overall training program.
From an SLT perspective, conditioning includes:
Weight training
Sport-specific kettlebell routines
Mobility drills
Stretching
Pad work
Bag work
Skill work is training in the sport itself. It’s practicing the perceptual and tactical skills necessary to become skilled at the activity itself – targeting, positioning, footwork, blocking, throwing, scoring, etc.
You will notice that pad work is included in conditioning and not skill work. Because you’re using strikes, footwork, and even blocks, it seems like you’re doing skill work. But this is deceptive:
Pad work is not skill work because the information presented in pad work does not truly match the sport being trained. If the information from your opponent’s body is critically important to your own ability to move skillfully, that means pad work is out.
That’s because the shoulders and other key sources of information are moving in ways conducive to holding pads and therefore are mismatched with what moves you should use if it were for the sake of winning a fight.
In addition to producing junk information, nearly all forms of pad work are missing the two most key features of any martial art/combat sport (unscripted and uncooperative) and thus produce minimal transfer of skill learning. We will consider those features in more detail in a later section.
It’s important that the two types of work stay separate because training time is not infinite for most – and neither is energy. There is research that shows that brutal warmups and combined conditioning/skill work sessions can fatigue the brain, impede skill learning, and even potentially lead to greater chance of injury.
In other words, conditioning and skill work are both taxing on the perceptual system and so should not be blended into the same sessions on those grounds. Total dedication should be given to one or the other and never both at the same time.

Closed vs Open Skills: Different Classes for Different Skill Types

The basic premise is that poomsae class is for poomsae training and sparring class is for sparring training, and the two should not be mixed.

In my 5th degree black belt thesis, I summarized the rationale for a skill-based structure this way:

The exploration of current motor learning theory in the context of taekwondo training offers valuable insights into how student learning experiences and athlete development pipelines can be optimized.
Motor skills are classified into closed and open skills. This construct provides a foundation for tailoring training methodologies to specific skill demands.
The distinction between poomsae and kyorugi as separate sports with distinct skill sets underscores the importance of specialized training tracks.
Poomsae, being more of a closed skill, benefits from focused formal exercises and flexibility training; while kyorugi, being an open skill, necessitates live sparring for dynamic decision-making practice.
Implementing sport-specific tracks ensures that training time is dedicated to exercises that directly contribute to skill development in each discipline. The Constraints-led Approach (CLA), specifically, provides taekwondo practitioners with the tools to design more effective training programs and engage in more effective coaching behaviors.

To understand more implications of this program structure, read the entire paper linked above.

You can also check out the article below to learn more about how motor control dictates the best way to train a skill type.

Conclusion

Overall, I understand that Perform Taekwondo is walking a delicate line between radical departure from traditional training methodology and maintaining their authority among masters who are sensitive to change.

I think they do a good job of balancing, but in the process, it leaves weaseling room for taekwondo coaches to reaffirm outmoded thinking about skill rather than challenge themselves to change their thinking. In this article, I endeavored to push the limits and close the space on that wiggle room.

Attention, Knowledge, & Memory: Bridging Constructivism and Ecological Dynamics

Josh Peacock — Fri, 05 Jun 2026 21:39:21 GMT

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 podcast, 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.

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.

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!

Attention, Knowledge, and Memory

Josh Peacock — Tue, 28 Apr 2026 02:04:54 GMT

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 …

Aliveness as a Training Methodology

Josh Peacock — Sun, 22 Feb 2026 21:47:51 GMT

In meditating on Matt Thornton’s 2017 essay, Why Aliveness?, I was smitten with just how much this philosophy is able to encapsulate under one label.

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 one’s movement.

Matt Thornton further developed the concept into timing, energy, and motion, extending a few notes from Lee into a rich philosophy of training.

In boiling down the most important dynamic elements of combat sports, I tried to further refine aliveness into unscripted and uncooperative interaction. I believe this definition is immediately clear about the freeness of action and genuineness of antagonism across combat sports.

My definition is also formulated in such a way that aliveness doesn’t necessarily have to entail maximum intensity in every practice activity; it’s scalable to different training needs and skill levels.

As Thornton writes concerning the scalability of aliveness,

[…] Similar to when I hear some Instructors say “Aliveness is just sparring” – I know they still don’t get it.
…
It’s not about the speed of the movement. It’s about the Alive opponent. Bullshit sped up, is still bullshit.
Anyone whose [sic] ever had a slow roll in BJJ, knows that training Alive, and training hard and or fast, are not necessarily synonymous. Again, it’s timing, energy, and motion.

The unscripted/uncooperative definition also captures Lee’s conception of aliveness, since both the self-determined nature of unscripted movements under the pressure of an antagonist must eventually lead to a totally unique, i.e. authentic quality of movement solutions.

In this way, I don’t think my work to extend aliveness has lost anything from Lee or Thornton. It doesn’t fundamentally change or rebuff their ideas.

Rather, my work continues to build upon their shoulders, they being giants in the philosophy of martial arts training.

But wrapped up in these notions are implicitly necessary overlap with the key ecological principles of the constraints-led approach, such as representative learning design, repetition without repetition, decision-making, and variability.

With this in mind, let’s explore how the major elements of the ecological approach are implied by alive training—

Even, as you will see, how it has become a methodology unto itself.

Representative learning design in Aliveness

Representative learning design (RLD) is about using the most important dynamics of a given sport to make practice more likely to transfer to the competition or performance environment.

A more technical way of defining RLD is that it’s a practice design principle for creating training tasks that mirror the key constraints, information sources, and decision-making demands of actual competition.

All combat sports—and even self-defense—are fundamentally alive in the unscripted and uncooperative sense. It’s for this reason that I have said that aliveness is the floor for representative learning design in combat sports. It’s table stakes.

Now, that doesn’t mean that because an exercise is alive it is perfectly representative. It doesn’t. It just means it’s the first and primary standard of representativeness.

Thus, RLD is encapsulated by aliveness insofar as it is implied by it.

There are more considerations for good representative design, but if you’re training your sport with aliveness, that training will always be some level of representative.

Decision-making in Aliveness

Because players must determine their own movements within the constraints of a truly alive exercise, genuine decision-making is always preserved.

Aliveness demands timing from the energy and motion of its participating athletes. Less appreciated are the necessary decisions that lead to the emergence of all these observable elements.

When you execute a one step routine, everything is scripted from start to finish. Even the timing of when to execute the first movement is relatively fixed. There is no point during a one step where a decision must be made, and thus no adaptations are demanded of the two participants.

When an exercise is alive, however, decisions both conscious and unconscious are demanded of the athlete at every moment.

Where this is no script to follow, and opponents are not cooperating with one another, learners must commit to actions based on emergent, often confusing information. And they must adapt moment-to-moment if those decisions fail to yield their intended goals.

This leads me to an important point with regard to the importance of an ecological approach:

Combat sports decision-making is specialized decision-making. Windows of opportunity open and close as quickly as a punch can be thrown, a head can move.

Big life decisions often give you a runway of days, weeks, and months, but big fight decisions are demanded of you in seconds, a second, less than a second.

You cannot train to make good decisions in a fight with exercises that never ask you to make decisions as quickly or as rapidly as a fight requires.

Repetition without repetition in Aliveness

If a solution to a given practice task is not prescribed, then the player is free to fulfill the task however he can manage.

And without that prescription, each attempt at the task also presents opportunities to fulfill it in different ways—especially as that task is engaged in with different opponents who present unique challenges.

This is the exact spirit behind Bernstein’s repetition without repetition, the motor learning principle that skill acquisition comes from solving the same movement problem in different ways, rather than repeating an identical motion.

In other words, we want to allow (and encourage) learners to solve the same basic problem in different ways.

Aliveness is such that almost every trial you make to fulfill a task will force you to find different ways to solve it. In the context of martial arts, you will also be forced to engage in the same task with different opponents, which adds another layer of repetition without repetition and a need for deep skill adaptability.

Variability in Aliveness

Variable task design involves deliberately manipulating key parameters of a skill during training to improve long-term retention and transfer to new situations. In other sports, these parameters often force, distance, speed, or environmental context.

Unlike constant practice, where learners repeat the same movement, variable practice encourages learners to search for new movement solutions and adapt to changing conditions, making it particularly effective for open skills like combat sports.

Aliveness is unique in that the need to manipulate specific parameters in a practice task dissipate into its raw intrinsic levels of variability. You can attempt the same task 100 times and have 100 qualitatively different experiences.

These variable conditions create adaptable athletes who can better perceive the environmental information they need for skillful action.

But as ecological research continues to show, this movement noise we call variability tends to create safer training environments in addition to superior adaptability in athletes. Variable practice task designs have been shown to lead to fewer injuries, despite how chaotic they look to observers.

Variability in practice tasks allows the body to coordinate how it wants to, condition itself through a manifold of movements and conditions, and through all this dodge overuse and create joints that are more resilient to a variety of unexpected positions.

Live practice tasks are always variable, because they do not follow a script. The same task unfolds differently every time you attempt to complete it.

And if you’re doing the constraints-led approach right, the types of practice tasks will be variable, too, not just the quality of the tasks themselves. This pulls in other learning effects, like interleaving and contextual interference.

Best of Combat Learning 2025 & 2024

Josh Peacock — Sun, 21 Dec 2025 21:18:52 GMT

2024 marked the change from Combat Learning as a website and podcast hosted on WordPress and Anchor FM to hosted on Substack.

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.

Ecological Dynamics of Injury Recovery

Josh Peacock — Wed, 24 Sep 2025 16:11:16 GMT

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.

- How the Fundamentals Emerge on their Own

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You Need More Variability w/ Andre Grandbois

Josh Peacock — Thu, 31 Jul 2025 21:42:30 GMT

You could always use more variability. We discuss game selection variety, injury prevention, differential learning, and aliveness.

Why Details and Drilling Don't Work for Us w/ Andre Grandbois of Grappling Garden

Josh Peacock — Wed, 16 Jul 2025 20:17:57 GMT

It’s not a mystery at all why so many people quit jiu jitsu and martial arts generally, and coach Andre and I dissect why.

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.

- How the Fundamentals Emerge on their Own

Coach Firas Zahabi's Big Dumb Oopsie

Josh Peacock — Mon, 30 Jun 2025 04:07:10 GMT

I didn’t watch the debate, but I know it sucked.

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.

Notes on Skill Games and Kicking Pressure

Josh Peacock — Thu, 19 Jun 2025 00:58:31 GMT

This post is sent from the new Sport TKD section of combat learning, a sub-list within broader email list. If you’re not interested in striking, karate, or taekwondo, you can unsubscribe from the “Sport TKD” section without unsubscribing from the whole combat learning publication.

The Task Complexity Taxonomy

Josh Peacock — Thu, 29 May 2025 00:36:28 GMT

A recurring problem among new CLA coaches is the ambiguity of what constitutes task simplification, and inversely, complexification.

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.

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.

Task-Environment Transformations

Josh Peacock — Mon, 12 May 2025 02:00:18 GMT

Why would an adult walk right over boxes chalked into the sidewalk, whereas a child would hop through, alternating between legs in a specific sequence?

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 …

Is Direct Perception Necessary to Believe for Adopting the Ecological Approach?

Josh Peacock — Sun, 04 May 2025 05:21:28 GMT

When the ecological approach first started gaining steam in the grappling world, it became clear that one’s model of motor control was a real linchpin.

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…

Is there any processing going on during movement?

Josh Peacock — Wed, 16 Apr 2025 14:06:21 GMT

Process as a term has some flexibility to it.

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…

An even more interesting question for Dr. Mike…

Josh Peacock — Wed, 02 Apr 2025 16:45:31 GMT

For cognitivists still skeptical of direct perception on information processing grounds:

Indulge me in a thought experiment.

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Notes on the Cal Jones and Mike Israetel Discussion

Josh Peacock — Wed, 26 Mar 2025 20:26:58 GMT

I want to say first I’m really glad this discussion happened, and it’s on the radar of someone as big as Dr. Mike. Second, I’ve consumed a lot of Dr. Mike’s content and consider myself a fan.

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?

5 Ways to Start Eco Training if You're Not at an Eco Gym

Josh Peacock — Tue, 18 Mar 2025 15:58:01 GMT

Interested in eco/CLA but stuck in a traditional school?

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.

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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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- How the Fundamentals Emerge on their Own

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Why the Practical Karate Movement isn't Improving Karate

Josh Peacock — Mon, 10 Mar 2025 16:16:47 GMT

My friend Daniel Marino made a critical observation about the karate community:

“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:

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- 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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