#18 - Making podcast listening work better in your life (Podcast listening series part 3/3)

[@larrydecript14]

Hey Alex! I have 3 related questions: 1. Do you also have when you master a skill in an exercise, but when you go play a game it feels like you learned nothing and it doesn't transfer? 2. When you play and practice beach volleyball, sometimes (often) I practice with beginner-ish or intermediates, and they often mess things up. Receiving, setting, and spiking. It feels demoralizing, however I don't know if that's because I suck too, or they are dragging me down. When I play against more advanced players things are smoother... 3. Do you have "fall backs" when learning a skill? Sometimes I master a skill like jump serve or receiving and play good with it, only to find myself doing stupid/silly mess ups weeks later

[@LearnBeachVolleyballFast]

Hey! Thanks for the questions, important ones indeed! 1. So, I recognize this "effect" for sure, but have also studied and experimented extensively on how to overcome it. This "effect" is basically the reason for why many of the actual motor learning scientists have wrongly (according to me) concluded that drills are a waste of time because the skills "don't transfer" from drills to game. They do transfer if one does things "right", but most people don't, and this process seems to come to people intuitively/naturally very seldom. So with that said, whenever this "effect" of non-transfer happens to me, I have a long checklist of reasons why. I just mentally go through that checklist and find one or more reasons for the transfer not happening, and then I know what to do. Then I go do those things, and the skill ends up transfering to the game. So the whole process above that I described is actually one of the main things I want to "teach the world" through this project, and a part ofthe reasons of "learn fast" being a part of the project name. Unfortunately, it seems like that for me to explain the "checklist of possible pitfalls" and just enough background theory behind them for people to make it work in their own lives, takes about 2 hours. Which isn't too bad considering this is something that apparently even the best motor learning scientists in the world haven't figured out, but it's still 2 hours.. So I decided this will become one of my first online courses (working name is "How to become a superlearner"-course but this conversation makes me wonder if I should change it to "How to make skills transfer from drills to games"-course or maybe make some kind of hybrid..) which will be available for purchase as a standalone, but will also be added as a free bonus with all the skill based courses I will create (so if one buys for example the serve receive course, they will get the "learner" course for free also.) I hope this makes sense. I have actually already recorded the main 2hour lesson of this course, which some people have gotten access to. The final course will have a few lessons as addons also (going even more in depth into certain situations), probably in podcast form. Let me know if you'd want access to this, we might be able to figure something out even if its not launched yet. 2. This one is interesting. I do have a hypothesis. So for one, peoples attacking tends often to go out the window when they play with "bad" players, simply because the sets are so bad. Good attackers recognize this and stop trying to attack "fully" and adapt to a way of attacking that works also with bad setting, while some people don't fully realize how bad the setting is and start doing attacking mistakes. Anyway, I think it goes even beyond that. So lower level players tend to have an "unrelaxed" or "stressful" or "non-confident" or "unpredictable" way of performing basically all of their skills. I think this leads to two things - one you don't really know what you can expect from them which makes you have to adapt your strategies to something that is actually not optimal if you played with a higher level player (similar to the bad setting example above), and secondly I also think that their "nervous and unpredictable" energy "transmits" to you in some way. Whether it's mirror neurons copying their body language which leads to nervousness in yourself, or some other mechanism I don't know for sure, but I do know that the moods of human beings influence the moods of other human beings close by. And I think this kind of "low confidence performance" that comes from unreliable skills from lower level players does transmit somehow in a similar way. On the other hand if you play with confident high level people with smooth and calculated body movements, you will both consciously and subvonsciously start picking up that, which will help you. Your experience is not uncommon at all, and I believe a big part of the reason that beach volleyball tends to become quite "exclusive" when it comes to level separation. Does that bring any insight to your experience? 3. "Fall backs" can happen yes, but I think they happen when so called "complete understanding" of the skill hasn't taken place yet.. Let me explain: Let's say for a skill to happen well, there are 5 "requirements". Let's take handsetting as an example and say the "requirements" are: "Force transfer from ground to ball", "hand position above head", "even release", "confidence", and "visualization of outcome goal". (NOTE I don't believe this is a complete list of requirements for successful handsetting and some of those requirements can be argued against and don't apply all of the time, but it will work as an OK list for now for illustrating my point.) Anyway, so let's say you happen to have practiced and mastered 4 of the 5 "requirements", all except "even release." One day, you might be lucky and by chance have an "even release" in your handsets, and all is good. However, another day, for whatever reason (could even be something as silly as that you are stiff in one shoulder because of how you slept), your even release is just not there. If you at this point are not aware of that "even release" is a "requirement" for good handsetting, it doesn't matter how much you focus and do right on the other 4 requirements, if you don't have the 5th, the handset won't be good. You might be lucky the next day you play again and your even release being there "naturally" somehow, but until you have control of all the requirements, chances are your performance will be shaky. "The unknown unknowns, the stuff you don't even know you don't know, is the stuff that will cause you greattrouble in life" is something I learned from a great online course I took haha.. And this is a great example of that. If one of the requirements for a skill is not automated in your body already, AND you are not aware of how to fix it, performance will be unreliable. Kind of like if someone who knew how to drive a car but didn't understand that cars need to be filled up with gas. At times they might be lucky and have a filled up car and drive super well, other times the car won't run at all and they have no idea why. So in the end, yes I sometimes have "bad days" within a skill. But usually I end up realizing that there are parts ofthat skill that I hadn't figured out yet, and when I do, the skill becomes "more robust" every time this happens. It's very similar to the "pitfalls" that will make skills not transfer from drills to games, one just has to have awareness of allthe things that can go wrong so that course correction is possible whenever it happens. It's possible there are other reasons for "dips" within certain skills, but I think this is probably the main one! :) I hope all of this brings some clarity and that I didn't ramble too much! :)

[@larrydecript14]

@@LearnBeachVolleyballFast Wow that definitely brought me more clarification than I even anticipated! The concept of the "unknown unknown" as you just described it then also sounds similar to what you said as the "right way" to practice exercises so that they transfer to games, it seems like then there also are just a lack factors considered that make it transfer. Regarding that bad players, now I see. For me I will focus on better players because even if I can adapt my attack to a bad set I feel its opportunity costing me from learning proper attack from a decent setter. But I think overall you really have thought a lot about this haha! Which is impressive, maybe you should be a high level coach. Regarding the 2 hour video, I would be interested now but also can wait to when your course comes out, it doesnt matter to me.

[@LearnBeachVolleyballFast]

@@larrydecript14 Haha yes, actually writing that out brought clarity to myself also, I already knew what I wrote of course but I articulated it in a way that made it even more clear for myself also! 😅 But yes, basically same concept on both "how to learn" as well as "how to perform a technique", the unknown unknown is the enemy. Once one knows all the pitfalls and how to overcome them, true mastery begins. Regarding being a high level coach, my goal is 100% to be or become the best person in the world at this. However, so far I have enjoyed teaching players around the intermediate level (basically beginners all the way to low advanced) most because they are on average much more coachable than advanced players (explaining this in case you with "high level coach" mean coaching "high level" players!) Around intermediate level is also where the big masses of players find themselves and there is strength in numbers when trying to make a living! 😅 Regardless, I am far from closed off to coaching advanced players if they are "coachable" already from the start, or I get an opportunity to make them coachable first.. Many are "uncoachable" without them realizing it themselves. Regarding the 2 hour video, it can be accessed! Long story short, beginning of covid I set up an "emergency Patreon" because I ended up in a really bad situation financially because of restrictions. Anyway, what I promised was that any money people would donate I'd accept as "credits" in the future when I launch my courses, so it works as a prepayment of sorts. Now I haven't mentioned or marketed that Patreon in any way in a long time, but the offer is still technically available.. So for anyone who joins they also get access to a Facebook group where the video is posted. I think the lowest tier is $5 per month so by joining that and cancelling before the monthly payment renews, you'll get it for $5, and be able to use that $5 as partial payment in the future when I launch the courses. Hope that makes sense and isn't too confusing. Remember to ask to join the Facebook group if you end up doing this. Otherwise of course you can just wait until I get around to launching the courses! :) In that case, the Patreon page can be found here: www.patreon.com/learnbeachvolleyballfast

[@LearnBeachVolleyballFast]

@@zsombornagy3935 Hey! Check out the reply I wrote for larrydecript14 just above, specifically the last half of the reply, all the details are there! :)