TAKING NOTE: BBA podcast #15 - Shawn Myszka
Hey everyone. This is a new series of posts that I am going to call “taking note”. Essentially, I listen to a lot of podcasts and sometimes I take notes on what I learn from them. What generally happens is they get lost in my 15,000+ word (currently) file and I only refer back to them if I think about that again. Instead I want to make these notes public on here for three reasons. So that I have one place to keep them, so that I can share what I learn and so that I learn again from the process of transforming my broken notes into an actual post.
I hope that makes sense, essentially, more posts about stuff that I think is important has no downside. I will also mention that this is only my interpretation of other peoples ideas. I make it clear that this is purely my interpretation of what I find interesting from these podcasts/learning materials.
Also, finally, anything I “take note” on and post here will be free content and I will link to it. I’m not exposing others paid content because that would be bad ://
Without further stalling, let’s get into it.
Shawn Myszka is known as the “Movement Miyagi” which first off is just cool but also points out where his point of expertise is. I was recommended this podcast by a supervisor from my placement and I think it shows some interesting views which I will discuss here.
LINK TO PODCAST: https://www.building-better-athlete.com/podcast/episode-15-shawn-myszka-movement-mastery
“Sport is a problem solving activity where movement is used to find the necessary solutions”
I like this quote and how Shawn describe his thought process because it puts into place the role of the S & C/high performance/movement coach for an athlete. You need to be able to help them move better so that they can meet the desired goal of the sport. It is all well and good to help an athlete reach a 2.2x bodyweight squat, however if they can’t effectively react and respond to the ever-changing environment of their sport, this is irrelevant.
This is not to say that we shouldn’t train in the weight room because this also has great benefits which have been shown time and time again. All he is saying is that we need to build athletes that are more than just strong.
What Shawn describes is building athletes who are adaptable, flexible, authentic and can move efficiently and effectively. These athletes should always be masterful at their craft in addition to this. He suggests that we should aim to achieve this using a movement centred approach. This means that athletes are made to solve problems using movement. Consider how they’re moving and why they’re moving that way. Once we have considered this, we can then work to adjust how they move to make it move towards to ideal movment to achieve their goal. To do this, we first need to understand “Biodynamic structure”
Biodynamic structure
This refers to the interaction of three components to movement. That is:
Behaviours: Attention control, sensory and perceptual ability. How well you can direct you attention so that you can pick up on the different cues around you.
Brain: Intention control. How you react to a stimulus and your cognitive decision making.
Biomechanics: The actual motor output. Authentic movers have individuality rather than just working towards an ideal.
I think the key here is that the athlete needs to be able to pick up and process different cues from the environment however more importantly they then need to be able to move authentically to respond to the open chaotic environment of sport. There will always be a level of inter-athlete variability and even for each athlete no two situations in game are going to be the exact same and therefore, we need to teach the athlete how to self-organise rather than how to achieve the “perfect” movement.
Now, how might we apply this?
How do we use this in training?
This approach should be considered when applying technique drills as we need to understand that in sport the environment changes each rep whereas in comparison to most training sessions there is almost no variability.
The thing Shawn emphasises that we should consider is that “drills are not skills”. Essentially, while many of these drills can be effective in teaching some movement, by doing these consistently and repeatedly, the skill we are improving is simply the athletes to perform that drill. This is the principle of specificity. If all you do are predictable change of direction drills, then all that your athletes are going to be able to do is change direction under that environment.
Going back to the biodynamical model, I interpret this as by doing these drill repeatedly, we may be teaching the biomechanics to reach target successfully, however the attention (behaviours) and intention (brain) is not being trained in a way that will translate to sport. Therefore, if we use these tools we need to then progress them towards replicating the sport.
He uses agility and change of direction (COD) as an example for this. He states that a predictable environment to teach mechanics will not transfer well to a game environment. Instead a more messy and chaotic environment should be used to teach athletes to be comfortable being uncomfortable. We should aim for biomechanical execution rather than motor refinement.
When choosing how to apply this chaotic environment we should again consider how well it applies to their sport. The concept he uses to explain this is perception-action coupling.
Perception-action Coupling
Starts with perception (information), if this is non-representative, then the movement can never really get linked in the same way as if there is a link to the movement. We want to mimic the situations/task in game.
For example, would reacting to lights on a wall or another player represent the information in sport better? Obviously it would be another player. Using lights to train agility isn’t very useful, because the athlete learns to react to a series of lights, whereas in game there are now lights showing you which direction to move to get the ball.
Rather than just moving closer to the sport, he also suggests that we can add in secondary tasks while the athlete is reacting to another stimulus or completing a primary task. This prepares the athlete for the cognitive load of making decisions and listening to team mates and coaches in game. If an athlete can move while counting backwards, or solving a puzzle as a game for a drill, than they can probably figure out a play call as they move.
Beyond this Shawn also recommends the use of a “rep without rep” model. Essentially, the stimulus changes at every repetition. This leads to the athlete learning to constantly optimising/perfecting the means of a solution. You should aim to change different environmental of individual factors. For agility these might include:
- Angle of the obstacle
- Distance
- Angle of COD
- Amount of Stimuli
- Changing intention/goal
By changing these even in a minor way, you can affect how the athlete needs to move to achieve the goal.
But then where is there space for rehearsal of “good” movement?
Shawn explains that there is a sliding scale as to how much rehearsal/random practice he will include in training based on the time of year, the athletes ability and their needs.
For example, with all of his athletes in the offseason, he will reduce the random chaotic environment because then they have time to just work on technique, compared to in season where they need their training to transfer to better performance game to game.
Also, with novice athletes there will be a larger need for learning how to execute movements before moving into the random environment. This is because often these athletes still need to gain control of their body and this rehearsal is a good tool to achieve this. They should have more time to work on how to position themselves to execute movement, and then have a chance to apply this in an environment that better replicates their sport.
Now, all of this is good, but at the end of the day, what is being described here is that the best way to teach movement most of the year for successful performance in sport is to play the sport. So what would our role as strength/movement coaches be.
How do we differentiate as a strength/movement coach?
To answer this, we need to look at what sport specific practice looks like compared to athletic development, strength and movement training.
In a full team group environment, there are limited opportunities to analyse exactly how an athletes movement could have been improved to achieve their goal better. We can however break down movement and ask questions such as “what did you feel” and “what would be a better way to produce that outcome/organise that solution”. This not only gives us a chance to work on how the athlete can move better, but also give them the chance to try and figure it out themselves. If they can do this they are much more likely to understand why that movement is important and how to execute it in the future. They embody the movement solution at a deeper level.
This can be done both with rehearsal and more open chaotic drills in training. We can also structure these drills to work on the specific weaknesses of our athletes so that we can give more feedback where they need it most.
Conclusion
I think this podcast was good because for me it kind of showed me some perspective to not get too caught up in trying to teach the exact perfect landing or cut. Instead, we should try and teach these mechanics and then see how the athlete organises the movement themselves, work with that variability and then go from there.
In the podcast he also touches on some other topics. One key takeaway I had other that what I spoke about above was how he said that we should try to learn from those in other fields. Seeing how different businesses communicate/work is important and I think it’s an interesting idea to go to other industries to learn that.
So that’s all for this breakdown. I enjoyed writing this and expanding on my own notes. I hope you got something out of it as well. Thanks for reading.