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On this episode, I sat down with Dr. Jacob Weiss of Handeyebody to discuss many great topics. The conversation starts by featuring the idea of approaching things with a beginners mindset. A beginner expects to  encounter difficulties  along the way,  this may mean encountering failure or results that differ from our expectations. The most important thing is making sure that you are open to new experiences and willing to try different methods and avenues to arrive at a given skill set. This blends nicely to one of the main tenets of the conversation the role of creativity and how creativity is an important part of building dynamic skill sets and rich experiences. As you become more accustom to inhabiting the beginners mindset you can begin to apply the beginners mindset to larger or more important skills and begin to try and experiment with different possibilities.

Weighing  the role of variance and predictability within skill development is an important consideration, how we layer these concepts into training may be a major determinant of learning and skill acquisition. I like to look at all possible options and think about when each may be plausible or optimal to utilize. We discuss the idea of linear skill development where drills can provide a certain level of mastery before building onto other levels of dynamic display or difficulty. We also discuss options that may allow for exploration and variance and the stacking or multi sensory experience to better challenge the athlete. An important consideration that we may benefit from pondering is the idea of chasing mastery and how this may actually paint a person into a corner. If you only have two sides of the coin, right or wrong, you’re most likely missing out on a lot of the experience. If we frame everything as either inherently bad or less than optimal or inherently good and sought after, we may try to protect and be unwilling to take risk, explore, and be creative. If you never deviate from what we deem to be the right solution, how will you respond when in a chaotic, dynamic, or fluid environment?

Dr. Weiss shares how we can naturally stack and take away different elements to lead to higher levels of cognitive strain or make things more strenuous from a coordinative perspective. We can add in different physical elements, cognitive elements, visual elements, or rhythm based elements. We could potentially build and stack all of these things to help provide more strain or we could lessen the noise to make a focal point concise and easily discernable. Novelty is very important to keep the brain engaged, all of the options discussed above can provide countless options for variance of a simple drill. Many of the things that I latch onto within life and in training center heavily around contrast and one of our last talking points providing tempo ties well to the idea of contrast, rhythm and coordination. Most preparatory tempos are accelerated and concentrically biased only focusing on the fast and missing the full sensory experience. Dr. Weiss shares how slowing down may allow for you to feel and also take the time to learn in between experiences. I don't know if this episode discussed training or life, I think perhaps a little of both!

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