High Velocity Learning

from The Talent Code

Recently I’ve been talking with a few master coaches about learning velocity — specifically, asking them for tools that will help people locate the “sweet spot” where learning velocity increases. And that spot is pretty sweet. Research shows that changes in practice strategy and attention can improve learning velocity by as much as tenfold.

So here’s the result: five questions to determine whether you are in the zone or not.

1. Can you describe the move you’re trying to learn in five seconds or less?

2. Do you have a precise, HD-quality mental image of yourself performing the desired skill ?

3. Are you making — and fixing — mistakes?

4. Are you varying the speed of the action — slow, super-slow, and fast?

5. Are you zooming in and out, isolating your attention on a small part, then seeing how it fits in the larger picture?

If you can answer “yes” to all five of these questions — as Apolo Ohno does so vividly in this video — then the coaching consensus is that your speedometer is pegged. Congratulations: you are learning at peak velocity.

In essence, the questions revolve around three simple acts: 1) isolating an action; 2) pushing yourself out of your comfort zone, firing and fixing your circuitry; 3) combining individual actions into a fluent performance. And it’s important to note that while athletics is the most obvious application here, these methods apply to music, math, business, social skills — even writing. After all, when it comes to learning skills, neurons are neurons (well, pretty much).

It’s also interesting to note what questions are not on the test. There’s nothing about long-term goals, for instance. Perhaps that’s because when it comes to motivation, long-term goals are essential — but in training they tend to distract from the matter at hand: putting your entire attention toward the act of building fast, fluent circuitry. Also absent from this quiz: any talk of your present level of ability — which is equally immaterial to the process.

With his zone-friendly practice habits, is it any wonder that Ohno performed so well in Dancing With the Stars? And judging by his performance in Vancouver, he’s still firmly in the sweet spot.

And speaking of the sweet spot, I’d like to remind you of the story of Michael Reddick, a regular guy who is attempting to become a professional billiards player. Check out Reddick’s remarkable progress here.

Feb 27 - Enter the Clinch

★ Enter the Clinch
★ keep your chin down!!!
★ try a 1, 2, hook, but pull the arm down with the hook
★ step in and grab with the right

Feb 23 - Electric Head Pt. 1 (The Agony)

As a corollary to the Warhead

★ light kick, keep the right hand in because it's a fake
★ swing the leg back and hit with the right cross
★ hook
★ cross
★ step left kick ......Welcome to the Planet MotherF★cker

Feb 23 - the U (more slips and dips)

★ Slip the Left Jab
★ bend the knees
★ move down to the right so the punch slips just over your forehead
★ peak behind the left glove
★ come over top with a cross

★ Slip the Right Cross
★ opposite of slipping the left jab

★ The U
★ to avoid hooks
★ straight down and hook over to the right

Feb 16 - Sweep

★Catching – catch with the thumb up
★Try to step back quickly


★ Receiving Front Push Kick
★Catch with jab hand
★ Pull to the side, and send

★1. hit with cross
★2. kick to the legs
★3. pull back and balance, then hit with a hard kick
★4. jump hook

Overhand swipe
Send
★ 1. jump hook
★ 2. kick to the legs

Nick Diaz pitter patter (mod)

★ the first few shots land light and fast
★ the last shot of the combo load up

Feb 14 - Response

★ Block and Incoming High Kick Then

★ return underneath with a kick
★ follow up with hands

★ if the opponent misses with a swing kick and you pounce watch for the horse kick
★ control the center of the ring

High Velocity Learning

Original link here



A couple weeks from now, when Shaun White wins his medals at the Vancouver Olympics, you’ll want to remember this video. Because here we get a vivid picture of what’s really beneath his unworldly skills — and it’s not merely gallons of Red Bull. Rather, it’s White’s highly organized method of high-velocity learning — a deep-practice technique that lets him accomplish, as he calculates here, “a couple years of riding in one day.”

So courtesy of Professor White, here are a few lessons that might apply to the art of learning and teaching fast, fluent, complex actions — like playing a new song, trading stocks, making a sales pitch, or (a bit closer to home for me) coaching Little Leaguers.

* Lesson 1: Start out with the complete move in your head. As White says, it should play like a movie in your mind. Song, sales pitch, soccer trick, whatever — it should be vivid and in HD.

* Lesson 2: Isolate and compress the key elements. The foam pit is vital, because it allows White to isolate on the moves of the trick itself and not worry about the danger. It allows him the ultimate advantage: to operate in the sweet spot on the edge of his ability; fire circuits, make mistakes, fix them, and fire again (and again, and again) in perfect safety. Danger — whether it’s an icy half-pipe or a live audience — is added last.

* Lesson 3: Work in a stepwise manner, a little bit farther each time, zooming in and out between the whole trick and its elements. Watch how White does part of the trick on the wall, then the whole thing into the pit, then goes back to the wall, then puts it all together. This back-and-forth isn’t random. White is systematically isolating the move’s key elements, then linking them like so many Legos into one fluent circuit. All fluidity is made of Legos in disguise.

The Slip

Practice making the alphabet, peak behind your eye, and bounce from the legs