A person’s beliefs and behavior will always control their results. However, most people don’t see things that way. They have a goal and think they deserve it just because they want it. Believe it or not, hard work is the easy part. Most people aren’t lazy. A lot of people can put in the work in their craft to be somewhat successful.

A big reason why most people quit too soon or stop chasing their desired fitness or business goals is that they do not know what step they are in on their progression from novice to master. It is critical to know where you are in the process to properly assess yourself. Below I’ll outline these phases.

Unconscious Incompetence

This is just like it sounds: we do not know how bad we are. We go to the gym on our first day, and don’t really know how far we are from our fitness goals. Or in a business, we don’t know how bad we stink at it. This is where everyone starts who has ever mastered anything. You cannot avoid it; it’s the beginning.

Conscious Incompetence

This means we now know that we don’t have the necessary skills to be successful at our new endeavor. Our mind is working overtime to learn new skills and mechanics. It could be learning how to run properly, or learning how to run a business that we just started. We now know we are beginners and are putting in an exorbitant amount of time to get good at it. We are still not proficient and are very mechanical because our mind is working the whole time to learn a full new system as we are also doing it physically.

Conscious Competence

Most people quit on their fitness or business goals before they get here. Their fear of failure stops them from even getting through step two. But if we stick with it to here, we will have developed our skill, and gained confidence. We now know enough to do the task, but we do not know enough to do it unconsciously. We have developed the basics through tons of repetition. In the gym, you may now see body composition improve.

Unconscious Competence

We possess a high degree of confidence now. Our muscle memory and mechanics are completely fluid. At this stage, new instruction is minimal. Now you know how to and what to do.

Unconscious Mastery

There are now no mechanical thoughts. This is the zone. We all have been in the zone in something in our lives, whether it be fitness, career, sports, or studying for a tough exam. This is true mastery. You see the highest level of success in this domain.

If you want achieve mastery, first you must be conscious of where you’re at. If you want to progress to the top, the only way to do it is through repetition and practice. It’s taking 1,000 shots on the basketball court every week. It is making 100 phone calls a day, if you’re in sales or own your own business. It is going to the gym consistently for five years and eating right. It is having so much experience that you can operate on an unconscious level and get massive results. Only a true master can operate under intense pressure and have their positive results seem seamless.

The post The Five Levels of Skill Development appeared first on Breaking Muscle.

Whether you are a MovNat practitioner, a mixed martial artist, a grappler, or simply someone who enjoys participating in many activities and wants to improve in all of them, I think my ideas will help you.

Employ a Variety of Skills

My approach comes from my experience in Brazilian jiu jitsu (BJJ), which is a specialist’s art in the sense we are mostly just practicing grappling. But is also a generalist’s art in the sense that we absorb what is useful to us from all grappling styles, particularly when we are talking about the submission grappling aspect of BJJ. We absorb takedowns from wrestling and judo, submissions from pretty much anywhere we can grab them (judo, sambo, catch wrestling, Chin Na), and positioning strategies from wrestling, judo, and other martial arts. We are constantly working to sharpen our skills, add new pieces, subtract other pieces, and shift focus from improving in one area while not neglecting our other skills.

As BJJ practitioners, there are some times when we work on takedown skills and other times when we are focused on sharpening our submissions. Sometimes we shift to focus on a more positional pinning game. Like a jukebox, we constantly shuffle from song to song and genre to genre. So we need some way of organizing this stuff. If we devote all of our time to takedowns, then our ground fighting suffers. If we spend all of our time on the ground, our takedown skills suffer. Mixed martial artists have this problem in a more pronounced way. Not only do they have to develop a variety of grappling skills, but they also have to worry about striking and the complex melange of these skills.

The Spotlight and Maintenance Approach

The first way I approach this problem is by using a “spotlight” and “maintenance” approach. I highlight one skill I want to improve upon, devote a majority of my focus on it, and shift my other skills into maintenance mode. For example, right now I am focused on grappling, so eighty percent of my time is devoted to practicing this skill set while my other skills like climbing, running, jumping, lifting, and carrying occupy twenty percent of my time. This is enough to keep a reasonable level in most of those skills without too much decay.

Spotlight Approach

Pick one skill you want to improve on and spend four to eight weeks sharpening this skill. Try devoting anywhere from sixty to eighty percent of your training time improving in this area. This is the time when I will seek out the expertise of a specialist to help me upgrade my skills and sort through what is relevant and irrelevant to my larger goal of competence in a broad array of skills.

“We are constantly working to sharpen our skills, add new pieces, subtract other pieces, and shift focus from improving in one area while not neglecting our other skills.”

The second part, maintenance, is tricky because you have to stuff a number of different skill sets into twenty to forty percent of your training time. My approach to this follows closely the Brazilian jiu jitsu and mixed martial arts model of using sparring both as an integrative tool and also as a way to maintain a broad array of skills at a reasonable level. I also use an auxiliary strategy (kata) which I learned from the world of traditional martial arts.

Maintenance Strategy #1

I either find an outdoor environment or set up an obstacle course that allows for the use of the multiple skills I want to work on. If I am maintaining my jumping, climbing, and carrying skills, I choose an environment where I can combine these skills and use them together in different ways. In essence, I am using scheduled play time to practice in a free form way.

In this video, you can see me playing lightly with some jumping, climbing, hanging, and crawling. I am both using the skills combined together and I am also keeping things light because I am recovering from knee and shoulder injuries. This method not only keeps the skills intact, but also allows me to use and test my previously injured joints to see how they hold up to skilled activities again.

I keep the play random and light so I can feel the skills and practice different aspects of them. This also helps me get used to randomly integrating them together as they could be used in a real life situation. In real life, climbing is seldom just climbing. It also comes hand in hand with running, jumping, and other skills. This use of multiple skills in a non-choreographed way mirrors light sparring practice in Brazilian jiu jitsu and mixed martial arts.

Maintenance Strategy #2

The kata method. I originally learned this concept in MovNat as a movement combo. It is also used extensively in traditional martial arts. Skills and body mechanics are finely tuned using specific choreographed sequences of movements called “kata” or simply, “forms.” You might repeatedly practice a block, a punch, or a kick in a specific sequence over and over again to develop specific body mechanics, positioning, and timing as well as other qualities. It also allows you to practice multiple skills in a combination, but without having to deal with randomly changing conditions. The purpose is to maintain and refine skills which will later be used in sparring (non-choreographed chaotic conditions).

I use his concept to make short sound bites out of movements, which can be repeated over and over again in various ways. You can do these circuit training style, for time, or at a more relaxed pace for technical practice. In the video below, I demonstrate a quick sequence of jump, crawl, jump, crawl which can be repeated over and over again, kata style, until you accomplish your goals, get tired or bored, or someone calls the cops and you get kicked out.

Improving Multiple Skills Simultaneously

If improving multiple skills simultaneously is an issue you struggle with, try these strategies. Every skill is a little different in how much time is needed to maintain it, so the ratios of focusing heavily on one skill and maintaining the others aren’t hard and fast numbers or rules. I suggest playing around with it to find your personal recipe. Let me know if you have any questions or feedback!

More on skill development:

• The 4 Stages of Skill Acquisition
• Strength and Skill: How to Become the Ultimate Athlete
• Do Similar Exercises and Drills Transfer to Specific Sport Skills?
• New on Breaking Muscle Today

The post Skill Juggling: How the Jack of All Trades Improves… All Trades appeared first on Breaking Muscle.

The volunteer subjects were nine male track and field athletes (four sprinters, three decathletes, one long jumper, and one triple jumper). Their averages were 24.9 years of age, 11.35 seconds in the 100 meters, and 11.8 years of experience in their events.

When the exercises were compared to the sprint block start over ten meters – in particular the force imparted on the blocks – these were the findings:

• In most exercises, the muscle activation in the gluteus maximus was significantly greater than the sprint block start.
• During the countermovement jumps and one-half squats (independent of load), ground reaction forces were greater.
• The angular velocity of the knee joint was significantly greater during the countermovement jumps than during the sprint block start.

Here’s where it becomes interesting and reveals why so many attempt to replicate specific sport skills with resisted or unabated exercises:

• In general, the kinematic values produced during countermovement jumps and sled pulling were more similar to values of the sprint block start.
• The greatest kinetic correlation was found between the time of the sprint block start over ten meters and the launch velocity during the bodyweight-only countermovement jump.
• The researchers concluded sled pulling and countermovement jumps can be effective training modes when training to improve the sprint block start due to similar (but not exact) velocity and movement specificity. Therefore, they rationalized a positive transfer could lead to improved ability in the sprint block start from those exercises.

It’s time to further dissect the results of this and offer reasonable applications. I’ve mentioned it before, but upon reviewing the proven facts on motor learning in general, specificity of skill execution, and transfer of skills, it comes down to this:

• Motor learning – The basic principles of skill development. Know them.
• Specificity of skill execution – Be exact, be precise, and never accept “almost.”
• Transfer of skills – Ask yourself, does performing similar activities better other activities?

The study in question served up some very practical take-home points:

The more similar (but not exact) kinetic and kinematic expressions, the better the potential transfer. Potential is the key word here. Is it worth the time performing “almost” activities knowing there is some gray-area to those endeavors as compared to time spent on exact replication of needed skills, coupled with general muscle strengthening exercises that maximally target a greater amount of muscle tissue to fortify muscle quality?

If there is the option to perform guaranteed safe and result-producing general strength training and conditioning exercises combined with exact skill practice or perform less-effective and potentially dangerous strength training and conditioning exercises also combined with practice on exact skill practice, which would be more logical?

The amount of time spent performing the less-than-100% specific but seemingly productive gray-area exercises should be questioned as compared to the goal of 100% exact specificity.

Remember, muscle strength (and concomitant power and endurance) should be developed generally so as not to interfere with specific sport-skill development. In separate sport-skill training sessions, aim for exactness and competition-dependent needs. Replicate what you’ll be required to do when it counts.

References:

1. Okkonen, O and K. Hakkinen, “Biomechanical Comparison Between Sprint Start, Sled Pulling, and Selected Squat-type Exercises,” Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research 27 (10): 2662–2673, 2013.

2. Rushall, B.S., and F.S. Pyke, Training for Sports and Fitness (Melbourne, Australia: Macmillan of Australia, 1991).

3. Schmidt, Richard A., Motor Learning and Performance: From Principles to Practice (Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics, 1991), 222.

4. DeBoer, R.W., G.J. Ettema, B.G. Faessen, B.G., H. Krekels, H. Hollander, G. De Groot, & G.I. Van Ingen Schenau, G.I., “Specific Characteristics of Speed Skating: Implications for Summer Training,”  Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise (19): 504-510, 1987.

5. Motor Control and Learning: The Basics of Skilled Instrumental Performance, accessed October 10, 2013.

Photos courtesy of Shutterstock.

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