primal mke

I finally snagged him! After months of pestering, Professor Rob Gray joined me to chat and answer some of my questions on skill development in martial arts.

Rob is a giant in the skill acquisition space, and his voice has become all too familiar to me after spending much of my last few years working through his huge catalogue of podcasts of his show 'The Perception Action Podcast" .

Rob is an Associate Professor of Human Systems Engineering at Arizona State University and recently published and released his book MOVE .

While Rob's podcast is very technical and academic, he has delivered in his book a wonderfully concise and digestible summary of how we learn and acquire movement skills.

Rob's outreach and coach educational resources have profoundly shaped and influenced my perspectives and understanding of skill acquisition which spills over into all aspects of my life.

Life is movement.... Why not be better at it!

In a rush to make the most out of the opportunity I tried to squeeze a lot in this 60 min slot. So this episode moves quick and covers a lot. But he's been busy on the podcast tour these last months. So if you are hungry for more. Follow him on twitter @shakeywaits or search for him on your podcast directory.

 




 

Coach Leigh Remedios is the owner and head coach of VT Jiu-Jitsu in England UK. 

He is a life long martial artist, former professional fighter  and UFC vet, and a recipient of 4 different black belts. 

My first contact and introduction to Leigh was an exchange over a post I'd made on a BJJ FB group about shrimping and bear crawling in jiu-jitsu practice being a waste of time.

What started off as a terse back and forth led to a more substantive exchange, where Leigh was receptive to some articles and resources I sent him. 

A couple of months later we hopped on the zoom to chat about training. This chat is episode #6 and was a fun discussion, one in which we found much more similarities in our training approaches than differences. 

Leigh, as apparent is a very accomplished coach and competitor and decades later is clearly still in love with martial arts and looking to learn and improve. So a great guest and a an enjoyable chat was had.

Leigh can be found on FB, and at his gym's webpage www.vtjj.co.uk 

What was intended as a quick test conversation for a future Primal MMA podcast, turned into a fun and broad discussion of training for MMA and Sam's recent foray into the ecological non-linear space. (So we decided to upload it)

Sam is a coach at Ronin Fitness in Eau Claire Wisconsin and has been rapidly gravitating towards the ecological and constraint led approach to martial arts training, in this three part episode we discuss the non-linear vs more traditional linear training approach. 

BE ADVISED LOTS OF BAD LANGUAGE!

In this 8th episode I talk with "Sport England's" , Stu Armstrong.

Stu is a educator, talent developer, forward thinking coaching activist and proponent of a non-traditional ecological dynamics approach to learning sport.

With over 150 episodes of his own coaching podcast (The Talent Equation), Stu has collaborated with and interviewed some of the most successful coaches and trainers across a wide range of sports.

With over 20 years of coaching experience, Stu's personal journey and coaching career has been refined by his persistent critical evaluation of coaching methods and continual self improvement.  

In this episode, we discuss the Ecological Dynamics (Non-Linear) approach to coaching. Stu does what he does best. He unpacks and demystifies academic jargon and theoretical concepts and delivers them as easy to understand practical applications for coaches..

Coach Armstrong can be reached at https://twitter.com/stu_arm and his wonderfully informative podcast at https://www.thetalentequation.co.uk/. I very am thankful for his time and contribution to the Primal MMA coaching podcast.

In this 6th episode I talk with founder and creator of "Train Ugly'' and ''The Learner Lab'', Trevor Ragan.

Trevor, is an educator, coach and practice design consultant across several sports, working including, basketball, baseball and rugby.

For the last decade, Trevor has been at the forefront of a mission to optimize coaching, learning and training philosophies.

In this discussion we explore the principles of randomizing and adding variability to practice and how it can be used to design more effective and authentic training environments.

Trevor's body of work is accessible at https://thelearnerlab.com/trevor-ragan/ and his podcast The Learner Lab'' https://thelearnerlab.com/podcast/ is a wonderful and valuable resource for anyone who is interested in optimizing their own learning processes.

In this fourth episode, I talk with Jeff 'Jackie' Chan. Jeff is the creator of the hugely popular MMA Shredded YouTube channel.  https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCt1ZR07apYANZ3MmlbipIXg and a professional fighter currently signed to ONE FC.

Jeff's training videos and tutorials differ from most typical coaching videos in that he demonstrates the skills in live and authentic situations. 

In the podcast we discuss the evolution of MMA Shredded and Jeff's training history. We also discuss the importance of sparring, authentic training methods and balancing the sparring volume with intensity to mitigate risk.

Jeff has traveled the world training at some of the best MMA gyms. He talks about his experiences and how his own training has evolved over time.

We also talk about the differences between training for skill and training for technique and finding the balance between both to optimize the practice experience.

I have written about Jeff and his training methods before and how I think they epitomize many of the effective principles of learning and development which science supports. https://www.primalmke.com/post/youtube-coaching-why-i-m-jeff-chan-s-fan-boy 
Jeff was fantastic guest to have on the Podcast so early. Enjoy.