"The coaching culture is a Viper's nest!" - a conversation with Stuart Morgan 2 - The Talent Equation Podcast

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hi everyone, Stewart here before we get into today's podcast,
I wonder if I can ask you to do me
a favor. I'm hoping that I can get the podcast
to grow to a wider audience. But further it goes,
the more people that it can impact. I often get
letters of messages on social media from many of the
listeners who often talk to me about the impact it's
had on them and the people that they work with.
Sometimes that impact goes as far as family members and

(00:23):
relationships that you hold. I'm hoping that I can get
that message out call wider audience.

Speaker 2 (00:27):
Now.

Speaker 1 (00:27):
Obviously, the more people that listen, the more impact the
show can have, but also the more people that subscribe
and download, then that helps me to invest in the
show and put out more content. As you know, my
podcasting of late's been a little bit sporadic, say the least,
and that's partly due to the fact that I've just
been struggling with capacity. Now I'm hoping to be able
to enlist some help so that I can improve the
quality and improve the amount of podcasts I put out there.

(00:49):
But I can only do that with your help. To
please share it far and wide, you know, use social
media if you want to use your networks through WhatsApp
or other messaging channels that you use, or even if
you're face to pay with people, conferences, seminars, those sorts
of places, let them know about it, encourage them to
sign up and listen. Now, I've got loads of ideas
for a new ways to take the show. I want
to bring on new co hosts other than the world

(01:10):
famous Flow the Dog. I want to do some live
streamed episodes that people can interact with and do Q
and as live Q and a's, and I'm also thinking
about doing live podcasts from conferences as well as bringing
on some big name guests. But I can only do
that with your support. Every single subscription is a massive benefit. Now,
if you want to go a bit further than that,
then there is a Patreon page, and if you go

(01:30):
to the Patreon page, there's opportunities for you to buy
me the equivalent of a cup of coffee. If you're
are to do then that's amazing and that's massively supportive,
but it's not essential. The main thing is if you
could just take the time to share it on your
social media channels or share the episode with somebody that
you know and if you find some value in it,
then pass it on to others and pay it forward.
And if you can do that, I'd be enormously grateful.

(01:53):
Thanks in advance via support.

Speaker 3 (01:56):
Welcome to the Townent Equation Podcast. If you are passionate
about helping young people to leash their potential and want
to find ways to do that better, then you've come
to the right place. The Talent Equation podcast seeks to
answer the important questions facing parents, coaches, and talent developers

(02:17):
as they try to help young people become the best
they can be. This is a series of unscripted, unpolished
conversations between people at the razor's edge of the talent
community who are prepared to share their knowledge, experiences and
challenges in an effort to help others get better faster. Listen, reflect,

(02:38):
and don't forget to join the discussion at the Talent
Equation dot co dot UK.

Speaker 1 (02:44):
Enjoy the show. Biden making an overdue and welcome to
the show.

Speaker 2 (03:01):
I'd love to know. I mean I struggled now to.

Speaker 1 (03:03):
Get through the back catalog to work out when people
came on, because I seemed to think that that you
were a very one of the earlier, earlier entrance into
the into my podcasting journey. Anyway, Stuart Morgan, welcome back.

Speaker 4 (03:16):
Thank you, Stu. I yeah, I think I was. I
think it was very much like I kind of quite
liked it because you're out walking at some point and
you were like, you know, recording at the same time,
and it was like quite fluid in how things were going,
how things.

Speaker 1 (03:33):
Have been they But anyway, it's good to have you back.
And we've been having a bit of interaction on LinkedIn
and talking to each other, and ran saying I've been
listening to you on your brilliant podcast or Practice Thinker
with Pete Arnot and Ian Renshaw, which, as I said
to you just before we started recordings, prompts me to

(03:54):
have loads of ideas which I immediately want to get
in touch with you about, say yes, we need to
do this, and we need to do that. And you've
been busy doing lots of other bits and pieces. You've
got various diferent things. So first and foremost, because people
may not have gone through the entire Black Catalog, I
wonder if you wouldn't mind reintroducing yourself to the audience
and catching it on what you're doing.

Speaker 4 (04:16):
Yeah, sure, So my name's Stuart Morgan. I work in
golf and I've kind of like moved into different roles
in golf. That kind of started out work for David
Ledbeer for many years. I'm a PJ member of Great
Britain and Ireland and but kind of like branched off

(04:39):
into just a level of interest I think into like
how we practice and how we train, because I've always
felt that even when I was playing, you know, trying
to compete, that it was this we weren't like tapping
into this enough. And that's take me on an amazing

(05:00):
in journey. Lived in America for a few years, been
to the last two Rider Cup players, working in this space,
doing a professional doctorate at the University of Limerick where
we're going to interview golfers and about their practice and whatnot.

(05:22):
And this is very much about just curiosity for me
rather than trying to ultimately help apply you know, all
this stuff. And yeah, so I that's kind of where
I am. I work for Swiss Golf part time and

(05:42):
have private clients working professionally, so I work at that
you know, performance end of the sport and just trying
to do the best and trying to dig into the
weeds and trying to help players as much as possible.

Speaker 1 (05:58):
To be quite honest, amazing, you've actually jogged my memory.
I remember when at the podcast we did actually with
one of your young athletes. Seem to remember they've been
on this developmental journey. It was a female golfer, if
I if I remember correctly with them, Emily, it might have.

Speaker 2 (06:17):
Been a father. He came on, Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 4 (06:19):
Yeah, it was Calvin. Yeah yeah yeah, but.

Speaker 1 (06:23):
So do I do I if you're at University of Limericks,
that mean that you're rubbing shoulders with the amazing Phil Carney.

Speaker 4 (06:31):
Yes. So I'm very very lucky that Phil is one
of my supervisors, and also my primary supervisor is a
guy called John Kylie in the Skill Act space. People
may not be so familiar with him, but he is
an absolute legendary critical thinker. He challenged the physical elements

(06:58):
like periodization, a whole new level. He says to me, goes,
I never wanted to do that, but I don't know.
I think he has this innate feeling that something is
wrong or something not wrong, but just like not serving
the athlete the best way possible and it took him

(07:24):
some time to dive deep and and yeah, so I mean,
I'm so fortunate to have those two guys from prompting
and probing and like guiding me through this kind of process,
and I have no doubt that come out the end
of it, we're going to have something pretty cool. I think.

Speaker 2 (07:46):
We've got a lot to rip about.

Speaker 1 (07:48):
But just while we're on the subject end of your pros, Doc,
tell me a little bit more about what you're studying
and anything that you've learned so far.

Speaker 2 (07:59):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (07:59):
So the idea was around was obviously around practice, right,
but through you know, chatting and as you go through
this whole process, this critical thinking element.

Speaker 2 (08:12):
It's like.

Speaker 4 (08:14):
I was at this like weird sensation of like, okay,
well I give something to a player and they practice
it for a week or ten days or two weeks,
and then after that time they go completely back to
what they were always doing, and I'm like going, what's
this about? To be honest, So, it wasn't until I

(08:35):
got chatted to John that we started to look at
the beliefs of the athlete. And then Phil came on board.
So now we're starting to like couple the beliefs and
the skill acquisition and all these kind of elements together
and really just start to ask players golfers, what are

(08:59):
you doing around certain situations? How are you training it?
Why why do you believe in this? And just trying
to kind of understand like what they're kind of thinking
is around a number of things. And the belief element,

(09:20):
to me is like a real interesting one because we like,
I mean, the episode you did with Phil was unbelievably good,
Like it was so and I know that because from
speaking to him and whatnot, and I know how articulate
he is and how well ready is and so on
and so forth. But it is what it is, right,

(09:41):
It's like, well, you know, it's not just like why
do you believe this? Why do you do this?

Speaker 2 (09:48):
I don't know?

Speaker 4 (09:49):
Okay, my coach told me to do it. Okay, have
you challenged your coaches beliefs? No, I've never I've never
been down that road. All right, where does his beliefs
come from? So when we have that, we create this
that path dependency, right, and if we don't challenge these

(10:12):
things along the way, and I feel like I get
like sucked into this. I don't think I think there's
certain coaches and whatnot. They're happy just to go along
with whatever it is. But I'm not that kind of
human being, and I don't want to be that human that.
I just want to improve the way things that players

(10:34):
do things in golf in golf context, and that comes
down to beliefs and we we get And the biggest
form of a belief SAPPA right now is social media
because there's so much bullshit on there that people that

(10:56):
what we so call like influential others. Right, So if
you look at Ali Crumb's research at Stanford right to
do with like it's like a follow on, it's like
a more deeper dive into some of like Carol d
X stuff, But it's more about mindset but linked to beliefs,
to how we can how we form beliefs, and how
we can challenge beliefs because that's the biggest part of it.

(11:21):
And we have multiple things that happen within this. We
have culture where where we grew up, what we did,
how we did it. What our developer is like is
there was a golfer like what our coaching, what's our
surroundings like social media, influential others which kind of like
ties in and the biggest one which nobody seems to

(11:44):
think about, is we have a conscious choice. So when
I look at the belief system of somebody like Cameron McAvoy,
it was the fifty meter sprint Olympic champion. If people
want to look into that, he took a conscious choice
to turn around and go this training of what I'm

(12:07):
doing right now isn't working. He's doing training like he's
a three thousand meter swimmer and he's a fifty meter
sprint trainer or swimmer. So that that's what I'm trying

(12:27):
to do to you, really is trying. I'm trying to
get players right in golf terms, to start to go
and think, is there something more efficient than what I'm doing.
It doesn't need to be right, it's not. It's not
about right or wrong, it's is it more efficient?

Speaker 2 (12:52):
I'm effective?

Speaker 4 (12:53):
Yeah one hundred percent?

Speaker 1 (12:56):
Yeah yeah, uh out. Look, so many jumpop questions. But
he's going back to that podcast that him was still
it just made me think, like it that must be
like what it's like to have a like a tutorial
session with him, because I felt like he contacted me
with this kind of question about this notion of coaches

(13:17):
having a bundle of beliefs, which is clearly like where
you guys are going, and then it felt to me
like he was we were just sort of thinking aloud together,
and it was like one of the most enjoyable podcasts
I've done for ages, like because it wasn't We were
just literally just barking ideas and I'm prompting an idea
and hear me he's prompting an idea in me, and
then we're sort of going off in these different directions,
and I just thought it was absolutely fascinating to just

(13:38):
spend that kind of like thinking time with somebody, you know,
almost like thinking aloud together. And if that's what it's
like to have him as a PAD supervisor, then that
is just brilliant.

Speaker 2 (13:46):
Right.

Speaker 4 (13:47):
But I think, like Stuart in God's Honest Truth, I think,
if me and you get really into it, based on
our personalities, we could be absolutely going on a tiera
And I think, and I think sometime that when you listen,
I love that contant he says a sense making, you know,

(14:08):
chat and I and I thought that, And there's so
many things he talked about in there that he's spoken
to me, and he's like he's guided me towards like
reading and so on and so forth. You know, even
going back into like the Skill Act stuff, like going
back to the military stuff right into what with like
Richard Schmid that he did for the military. You know,

(14:29):
it's it's when you dive back into that, it's like,
oh my god, I'm seeing where all this stuff has
come from. But weird does it stop? Right? And the
thing is with Richard Smith. If we don't have skill
acquisition without Richard Schmidt and Carnuel, to be honest, like

(14:53):
I think that we have to look at it, and
people go, oh, yeah, we can't. Well yeah, but that
was his paper like originally like schema theory paper. I
think Chris cal Murray like mentioned it in one of
your podcasts. It's like, well, yeah, but that's a starting point, right.
If we go back to that right now and we
read it, it's like, yeah, I'm not sure about that,

(15:14):
to be quite honest, And he even said that himself.
But that's what it's about, isn't it. That's it. That's
what evolution is about. And that's what I think. It's
not right or wrong. It's like even in practice in golf,
right and I look at it and I go, well,
if I look back at like when I was playing

(15:36):
around the Fouler era and so on and so forth,
Like if I did if I had like five hundred
balls and I just hit them with a seven iron,
which I was told to do, I'm probably going to
improve something. But is that really what we want what
we need to be doing. Is there is there a

(15:57):
higher level that we can go efficiency, effectiveness and what
not to help these skills kind of transfer. And I
think that's really where I'm at at this moment in time,
to be honest.

Speaker 2 (16:13):
Yeah, yeah, I mean I love that.

Speaker 1 (16:16):
Actually, it's like, you know, there's almost like a Founding
Father's type of thing. But yeah, like the ideas that
the Founding Fathers had, like they don't stand up now.

Speaker 2 (16:26):
Right, No, the things move on and we build upon
them and then.

Speaker 1 (16:31):
We take them into different spaces and we go in
different directions. And yeah, I really like that idea. Actually
I've written that down. We don't have skill O position
without Richard spitting Carl Newall.

Speaker 4 (16:41):
Yeah, and it's like the you know when we look
at you know, I really loved that paper. I think
Rob Gray talked about it with the police recently and
there was this linear notion of like learning, which I
think golf is very very synonymous of. You know, it's

(17:02):
like we do this, we do this, we do this,
we do this, and it you know, however the timeframe
was or whatever it was, you know, it produced like
I think it was like a nineteen point five percent
increase in in like adaptation and being able.

Speaker 2 (17:23):
To like.

Speaker 4 (17:25):
Improve like not in novel situations and whatnot. Which actually,
if you look back to I think it's a paper
in like twenty twenty called from Rahmen, transfer of skill
has always been between sort of fifteen and thirty percent
of like transfer from where we start to where we're

(17:45):
going to the last thirty years thirty plus years. So
what that does to me? That fits in within the mean, right,
But then I see the non linear training and that
goes up to like forty percent, And now I'm looking
at going, ah, that's more efficient or I'm more effective

(18:06):
and more you know, like do we need to be
going more in that road rather than rather than going
back to that to that linear model. But the interesting
thing what I found was in that paper, like like
going into it, the people they asked and said, what
training did you prefer? And most of them said the

(18:29):
linear form of training. But but the thing is this
was before they knew the results.

Speaker 1 (18:39):
Really yeah, well so they like instinctively felt that the
linear form was better.

Speaker 2 (18:45):
Yes.

Speaker 1 (18:46):
Wow, that's interesting.

Speaker 4 (18:49):
Because it fits with that sort of like I remember that.

Speaker 1 (18:53):
Yes, no, I remember that conclusion. Yes, you're right.

Speaker 4 (18:55):
But it's like it's almost like it's like controlled, isn't it.
It's like I feel like, I mean, can control any
form of like chaos or whatnot, and that's what happens
in golf anything. Like they just don't like it, Like
if you if you went into golf world and when right,
we're going to go full on differential learning and here
they're going to be going whoa, hang on a minute,

(19:15):
like what's this about it? Until you give them results?

Speaker 2 (19:21):
Mmmm? Now yeah. I mean I hadn't quite.

Speaker 1 (19:30):
I listened to that, and I hadn't quite sort of
twigged that sort of slight nuance, which is this idea
that you know, this sort of intuition that people have
that where do you think that comes from? I mean
you may know, you may know, but like, is that
just because of that's sort of what people what's normalized?
And therefore if you learn in a way that's not

(19:52):
that's that's not in the normal way of learning, which is,
you know, the linear tradition is extremely culturally resilient.

Speaker 2 (20:01):
Right.

Speaker 1 (20:02):
It's everywhere you go you will see linear learning models.
You know, whether it's in coach education, whether it's in
workplace learning, and you know the training things that people get,
whether you know, whether you're go any any walk of life,
you will see linear learning models, right because they're well,
actually because they're actually efficient in the sense that they

(20:26):
But when you were talking about efficiency, you see you prompted.
There's a famous quote by a famous management consultant called
Peter Drucker who said, I'll probably bookder it now, but
he says, efficiency is doing things right. Sorry, yeah, Effectiveness
is doing the right thing. Might have that the wrong
way around, but and the point being is that you

(20:49):
can do things right really efficiently, but it isn't necessarily
that effective.

Speaker 4 (20:57):
That's that's a beautiful thing actually, because I think I
do think that Frederick Wimslow Taylor has a lot to
answer for, to be honest, I think when we look
when we look back at this like and I don't
know how it's somewhat it's all connected, but it is connected.

(21:22):
It's I mean, it's unbelievable, right, I'm from a but
but the lovely thing is like, there's a there's a
Lady's a lovely lady like Mito Steroni, right, who is
a neuroscientist and she's a medical doctor as well. And
she said in her book called hyper Efficient, she says

(21:49):
it comes from a linear, continuous assembly line, emphasizing quantity
over quality. And in this approach, you limit the highs
and lows, but you limit the genius at the same time.

Speaker 2 (22:12):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (22:14):
Yeah, And I thought that was just beautiful how she
kind of wrote that, And I was like, oh, that
really hit me because we can create this very linear
sort of like line people up do the same thing,
you know, this one, and we keep them within these parameters.

Speaker 2 (22:34):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (22:35):
But the amount of times I've heard Stu like through
my years of like oh, yeah, I can't deal with him,
you know, I can't deal with her. She's completely out
of the box. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (22:49):
Now, this point about the highs and lows, right, So
I've been winding on about this for quite a while. Again,
this notion of the reduction the reductionist approach that you know,
the kind of the the shadow of tailorism. Yeah still

(23:09):
still you know, is still cast across. So coach education
is a very example of an efficient model. You know,
if you're getting you're getting the maximum information in the
minimum amount of time, and you're calling that education and
and and what you do is you you create this

(23:30):
sort of artificial notion of not in all cases, by
the way, but you get this artificial notion of learning
an assessment in order to verify that the this sort
of hyper efficient learning model has had some kind of effect.
And the problem is that people have got agree that

(23:51):
their intuitions are that that's not particularly useful and uh,
and that's borne out largely by their experience is in coaching.
But this is true by the way of talent pathways.
So talent pathways have become they create a normalized approach
which reduces highs and lows, minimizes the you know, everyone

(24:15):
talks about this notion of talent development being a rocky road. Well, actually,
most talent pathways have sought to reduce the the you know,
the the sort of challenges and the and then the
recoveries and the challenges and the recoveries. They've deliberately tried
to reduce those to.

Speaker 2 (24:32):
Minimize the impact on the athlete.

Speaker 1 (24:35):
And yet the highs and lows are actually where some
of the deepest learning comes from. And actually the more
organic and the less linear your talent pathway is, the
more those natural sort of perturbations, if you like they,

(24:56):
they happen organically. So if you then wrap the right
support around that individual by having the sort of guide
by the side who can help to sort of mitigate
the impact a little bit, it doesn't mean it doesn't happen.
It just means that the impact is mitigated. That can
be hugely transformative. But because we've basically we've got this

(25:19):
coach education model, which basically says that all coaches are
going to be trained in a very very similar linear way,
and therefore, to a certain extent, there's almost a bit
of kind of group think around the way coaching takes place.
You then have talent pathways which are mapped against the
coach's ability to be able to work with So you've
basically now got hyper industrialized coach education, hyper industrialized talent development,

(25:43):
and surprise, surprise, what you produce is mediocrity.

Speaker 4 (25:48):
Yeah, And I think what comes out of that is,
you know, I don't. I don't necessarily think it's the
I think the coach is gets influenced by X, right.
But I think that there's certain coaches that will turn
around and will have an experience like I had, like

(26:09):
you had, Like I'm going, this can't be it. You know,
there must be something kind of like a little bit different,
you know, within this and then start to go on
that on that journey. And the thing is, like I said,
is I I remember asking a player. I was like, oh,
if you if you need to go and like change
your or improve your technique, right and you're working on something,

(26:32):
what's your what what would be your process of that?
Because I just go in a field, right and get
one club and just like drill it out like thousands.
And I was like, okay, he is that wrong? So no,
it's not wrong, you know, I said, But what I'm
interesting is where's that come from? And he went on,
I comes from my coach. I said, okay, where's that

(26:54):
come from? Your coach? And he went, I he's a
big Hogan fan. I said, but if we buy deep
take a dive into Hogan, then that's not really what
he did. You know, he hit a lot of balls,
but it was very you know, very deliberate in what
he was doing, and you know, he was trying to eradicate,
you know, a hook. Ultimately, I was like, okay, and

(27:16):
he went, so is there an alternative? I said, well, yeah,
there's many, many alternatives, you know, but it just depends
on are you ready to go for those alternatives because
you've been so drilled to think of this and if
I take you too much to this high end here,

(27:37):
potentially it might just be too far for you. So
where are you willing to go? And I'll and I
provide them with some different alternatives and some different like
viewpoints and whatnot, and some different ideas. And then one
of the simple things is most of the stuff that

(27:59):
gets happening of that players do is very very blocked
within skill mhm.

Speaker 2 (28:07):
Right.

Speaker 4 (28:08):
So if I then turn around to them and go, okay,
you know where where's this? Why you know why you've
done August? Come from here? It's come from here? Okay, great,
all right, but do you know that you're kind of
missing this area here that that helps you transfer? So
can we just go like a bit more between skill
here and add a little bit more challenge for this

(28:31):
and they're like, hm, I'm really thought about that. Mm hmm, Okay,
why haven't you thought about that? Because I didn't know
about it?

Speaker 1 (28:43):
You maybe think of something I'm going to It's going
to be a digression, but hey, that's the nature of
the beast, right, But you know this notion of this
blocked before we before we go on this digression, let
me make sure I may make it, make a notice
of what I want to ask you about this notion of.

Speaker 2 (29:00):
Blackness and Hogan and.

Speaker 1 (29:04):
Like, there is a very very pervasive idea, not just
in golf, I think in.

Speaker 2 (29:07):
Lots of sports, by the way.

Speaker 1 (29:08):
And actually you talk about Cameron macavoy, right, love that,
by the way.

Speaker 2 (29:12):
I love listening to that story.

Speaker 1 (29:15):
But so the dominant paradigm and dreamily cultural resilient idea
within swimming and aquatics is volume equal performance in anything, right,
whether it's endurance, whether it's.

Speaker 2 (29:36):
Just So this is why.

Speaker 1 (29:40):
The world of swimming to young people that getting up
at five o'clock and getting in. So my son, right
is a lifeguard. Right, He's never been performing similar of
any kind, but he's a lifeguard trained the lifeguard. I
got up this morning at five am to take him
to the pool so that he could be the lifeguard
to watch the lane. Twommen, right, And this is the

(30:02):
club stuff. So these are kids who arrived there in
their dry robes with their floats and everything else, and
I think to them, so, oh my god, what kind
of life is this? And they just do and being
generalizing obviously, but in the main, if you were to
go to that session, you would see volume, length, laps
and the rationale that the coaches us is You've got
to get the miles into your arms and legs, right,

(30:25):
And so Macca work comes along and goes, well, actually,
that's actually not really working for me, has never really
worked for me. I'm going to try something different and
good on him, right, But like you say, how many
so most sports are actually out there going right, we
need to increase our talent pool, we need to do
better stuff within that space. But what they end up

(30:46):
doing is is basically like they burn out.

Speaker 2 (30:49):
Most Most kids just say, actually, I just.

Speaker 1 (30:51):
Can't be doing with this anymore. I'm going to do
something else. And then so they they naturally limit their
talent pool by offering the perpetuating this basically model with
very little scientific validity. And I'll be honest with you.
I've spoken with the people within the governing organization around why.

Speaker 2 (31:14):
Do you do this? Like even at the early.

Speaker 1 (31:17):
Stages of learned to swim.

Speaker 2 (31:19):
Why do you do this? And there is no good
answer coming back.

Speaker 4 (31:25):
It's amazing that because it's just again that's part of
the Pennsy is absolutely purest form. It's what we've always done.
This is how we do it. And I like, I
can completely Like I was a two time national breastroke champion,

(31:45):
you know, and I was one of those guys getting
up at five o'clock in the morning going to before school,
you know, going training and whatnot. But it was like,
I've swim ae hundred meters, you know, but I'm doing
like eighty lengths before going to my side as class,
you know, in the morning. And You're like, and when
I look back at it and go, what's the point
in that? And That's what I'm trying to get across

(32:08):
is to go, who's the gatekeeper here?

Speaker 2 (32:13):
Right?

Speaker 4 (32:14):
So players, golfers, right, athletes start to think and go
is this serving me? And I know that's a big question,
but I think if they sat down and the reason
I'm saying this to you is by when I when
I interview them, they start to get it right, they

(32:39):
start to like, but we need to encourage that when
I'm not interviewing them.

Speaker 1 (32:45):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, you said that to me before we
started recording, that actually your questions are changing them, changing
their outlook and their perspective on what they've been doing
as an athlete.

Speaker 4 (32:59):
Yeah, because no, he's asked them those questions before, or no,
they haven't thought about these things. And that's the beauty
of you know, again, the help of John and the
help of like Phil where they go, is that enough
of a question, Like, what's the probe of that? What's
the prompt to that? Are you getting enough out of it?

(33:21):
And what you're actually finding is I'm as I'm going
through it is you start to like set them off
and they're away right they start to go, oh, hang
on a minute, mhm. This is this is not I
haven't thought about this before. What I'm doing might not
be right here m M. And and for me it's

(33:43):
like that's a good thing, right, but why is this
not happening?

Speaker 1 (33:50):
M It's interesting for me because you know, as you know,
I'm very interested in ethics, and we talked about ethics
earlier on, because there's a research there's a lot of
ethics you have to go through in order to be
able to do this kind of stuff because there are
ethical implications. But it's likes me that one of the
things that you're uncovering is that these athletes have a

(34:11):
serious lack of agency. You know, there's the very little
choice architecture for them. They're they're just essentially passive recipients
of information from others who are deemed to be more knowledgeable,
who are then saying, my, my views and beliefs and
opinions suggest you should do this.

Speaker 2 (34:34):
And then obviously if.

Speaker 1 (34:35):
You were to probe those beliefs or ideas and say,
well why do you why do you hold those ideas
as being valuable for this individual? Again, you know, you
don't always get some of you don't always get the
best responses, and in actually many cases you get very
defensive responses when you ask people some of those questions.

Speaker 4 (34:55):
And the and the sick world of this m have
high performance board is I've had people and coaches reach
out to me and said, if you keep doing what
you're doing, you will never be integrated in teams.

Speaker 1 (35:11):
You mean, like multidisciplinary teams within around players and stuff.

Speaker 4 (35:16):
Yeah hm wow.

Speaker 1 (35:20):
Well, because you'll be ostracized by the practitioners within it
who don't like the fact that they're having their methods
questions about their methods.

Speaker 2 (35:26):
Correct. Ye, what's kind of worlds.

Speaker 1 (35:30):
That you're essentially taking a role as, say, you know,
because obviously in your you've got like a performance director
role at this golf right, So part of your job
actually is to sort of protect some of these athletes
and to give them the information to help them make
give in for choices about the kinds of things that
they want to do within their training. So as a

(35:50):
performance director type of role, that's a responsibility because your
responsibility is to the athletes and in some respects protect
them from you know, I'm not necessarily saying these people
are wilfully unscrupulous factors. They're probably actually unaware of the
fact that they have limitations in their knowledge that that
does need to be filled in order for them to
be able to answer these questions. But their response is

(36:11):
to say, you're essentially potentially threatening my livelihood or my
status and or my worldview or my sense of identity,
and so I'm going to reject you, and I'm gonna
I'm going to make sure I work with a load
of other people to ensure that you're ostracized from this community.

Speaker 4 (36:25):
One hundred percent.

Speaker 1 (36:26):
Yeah, Jesus, that's that's like, that's like that that is sick.

Speaker 4 (36:31):
That's sick in it. Like that is absolutely sick because that,
to me doesn't put the And it's the same when
it comes to like like practice and how people train
and whatnot. You know, it's the same. It's exactly the
same situation. You know. It's like if you don't confide
like this, I call it the massia hierarchy, right, if

(36:51):
you don't confide with how I see the world, then
you're not getting into this team.

Speaker 2 (37:01):
Yeah, you know what.

Speaker 1 (37:03):
And that's actually that sort of thing was So you
may have heard that there was a following the athlete
a gymnastics scandal, there was a whole me too movement
in gymnastics where lots of three hundred four hundred athletes
in in gymnastics, ranging in ages, you know, came forward

(37:25):
saying we've experienced similar thing, not the same, but similar things,
which uncovered a pretty rotten culture within.

Speaker 2 (37:33):
The sport.

Speaker 1 (37:36):
Right from the top, you know, where you had the
leadership of the sports actually you know, actively ignoring you know,
genuine cases of mistreatment, abuse, et cetera, et cetera, largely
because it was a very cozy world. People were married
to each other, and you know, it's a pretty toxic thing.
So when you read the review that was done by
that you know, expensive review, three hundred and eleven pages,

(37:58):
you know, you go through it and you're like, oh
my god, you know, and you're just like you're closing
your eyes because some of the some of the things
that come out when you look at that, that was
pretty much the same, like Matthew is something about this
cultural a murder right where the athlete has absolutely no voice,
right and actually, yeah, and if they don't conform right,

(38:19):
and they don't toe the line, and they don't stood
up and put up, you know, and they if they
speak out, that's a troublemaker. Got my eye on you, right,
You're not going to be going anywhere. And that then
becomes a self perpetuating thing where other athletes are like
almost using that against other athletes to ensure that the

(38:39):
other athletes don't don't progress. But just a horrible viper's
nest of a world.

Speaker 4 (38:48):
And that's why I'm trying to go look at it
and going, well, I'm trying to always trying to encourage
the player to think and make their decisions right. And
then so for example, like when I when I do
these interviews, right, and I go and we have a
practice map, right, So let's say we have all this

(39:08):
stuff and I have all this data right from interviewing them,
and they turn around and they and this is again hypothetical,
this doesn't happen, and go, oh, yeah, I would like
my coaching team to know more about X, Y and Z.

Speaker 2 (39:23):
Right.

Speaker 4 (39:27):
That's player, that's the player having this right. So it's
then about not the player adapting to the world that's
invited around them. Then it's about the coach adapting and
that and I that's how I see it, you know,
and how I would like it to be. I don't

(39:48):
want the coach forcing things onto the player. I want
the player to be able to think about this isn't
serving me right now?

Speaker 1 (39:59):
Yeah, And I your point about this. So this co adaptation,
I think is a central feature of And I obviously
would say this because I am you know, hugely influenced
and driven by the ecological approach. But the ecological approach

(40:20):
has central to it the notion that we are designing environment.
We have environment designers, not information givers necessarily. I'm not
saying we don't give information, just say, generally speaking, with
a designing environments where athletes are going to adapt, and
then we co adapt with them as they respond to

(40:42):
those environments. And it's done with and it's done through
co design, you know. And so athlete agency is almost
baked into the ecological approach.

Speaker 2 (40:55):
It doesn't work.

Speaker 1 (40:56):
If you don't do it that way, and so and
so that's one of the reasons I've actually become such
an advocate, right, is because I see so much promise
in an ecological approach as at almost like a foundational
basis through which we see athlete coke learning.

Speaker 2 (41:14):
And this notion of coadaptation is central. Right.

Speaker 1 (41:19):
So I can't do my seconds well if I don't
respond to what the things that the athletes are telling me,
explicitly or implicitly, I can't really I can't redesign environments
for them if I don't tune in or attune to

(41:39):
how they're responding. And so you have to have that
notion of uh, you know, information flow being back and forward.
And I do sometimes feel like that, you know, when
practitioner walls themselves off from the athletes that they like,
I am the Noah and you are the receivers, that

(42:02):
sort of power dynamics becomes really problematic.

Speaker 4 (42:05):
It's horrible. Yeah, and I think that this is what
I like when I put my proposal into doing my
doctorate and whatnot, you know, with regards to So, the
idea is we're going to interview ten ladies and ten
male professional golfers. And the idea was around it to

(42:27):
start with and go, well, we need to hear their
perspective on things, what they believe in, where that beliefs
have come from, and how we can help them kind
of like move forward. And the idea around that was
giving them the power, not the coach. Right, So if
they turn around and said, oh, I feel like my

(42:50):
you know, my coach in this area doesn't do this
street very well. He just has me on a mat,
you know, hitting pitch shots to like fifty meters, trying
to get the lawn jangle exactly how we want to
do it. And you go, okay, well, is that really
where golf is and what's going to kind of like
serve you to to improve you. No, okay, well, the

(43:12):
coach needs to get on board with this. The coach
needs to be adaptable to get on board with this.
And then you know, the potentially this is going to go.
You know, whoever like listens to this, they'll go, right,
they'll turn around and go, don't get don't let him
interview you.

Speaker 2 (43:31):
Right.

Speaker 4 (43:31):
And again that might be the case, right, that might
be a whole you know again the mafia telling me
you cannot do this, but I'll find a way, right,
and we'll find a way of doing it. Yeah, And
we'll find a way of getting through it. And we're
trying to find a way of you know, and again
it's just about the athletes. Is the athlete getting the

(43:54):
right information or the or the most efficient effective information
apply to their sport. And when we talk about things
like when we've spoken about this, where somebody comes in
for like, you know, three hours and they go, oh,
I'm going to check your technique and then I'm going
to do a little bit of skill stuff and then

(44:15):
we're going to check a game in there at the end. Well,
what the what the fuck is that about? Well, what's
the technique about you know, technique about what. And I've
been in worlds, right, I've been in like in teams
where I've gone, Okay, well you want to do this,

(44:36):
you want to do this, and you want to do this,
and they went yes, okay, and you're doing them in
isolated segment segments right now, yes, okay. Can we find
a way of putting them all together? We did?

Speaker 2 (44:56):
Right?

Speaker 4 (44:57):
This player went through it? How did you find that
more and but so much so much more real to
what I'm like going to experience and whatnot? Okay, coach,
how do you find that looks so much better? Okay, brilliant?
I get ousted out of the team. What does the
coach go back and do? Go straight back to his

(45:19):
old one two three?

Speaker 2 (45:28):
He's a crazy in it, absolutely crazy.

Speaker 1 (45:36):
And one thing I was going to ask you about
I just made a note earlier on just to digress slightly,
so you will know a guy called Scott force.

Speaker 2 (45:45):
It Yeah, yeah, So obviously, for.

Speaker 1 (45:50):
A period of time was a extremely vociferous and forceful
individual on Twitter calling lots of people out for basically,
you know, talking a load of rubbish. He's obviously developed
a sort of strategic tactical approach to playing the game
of golf, cause it decade. I've explored the explored decade

(46:15):
and you know, kind of tried to work with it
and used quite a bit of it. It's a lot
in it that's actually quite interesting, and there's a lot
of kind of sort of good ideas I think in there.
But there's one thing he I was listening to, and
you know, he's got loads and loads of these sort
of videos that he's produced as part of the decade thing,
and one of the things he talked about quite a bit,
and this is where I think he kind of just
overstepped and he sort of got out of his lane

(46:35):
a little bit. Was he talked a lot about basically
just doing block repetition as a mechanism to basically hit driver.
So it's like, you know, you need one stock shot,
you know, you need to shake the ball one way
generally speaking, needs to be a cut, and you just
need to hit loads on loads and loads of.

Speaker 2 (46:49):
Them, right.

Speaker 1 (46:51):
And he then talked about how he was on a podcast,
So we used to be on a podcast with Mark
Crossfield lou Stagner called the Hacket Out Got Hacket Out Podcast,
which I really love. Yeah, Yeah, so he's got a
new guy called Greg Chalmers on there now and it's great.
It's great though. They did a really good job on it.
But Scott was on it for a while and he

(47:14):
was on a podcast and he was with and Rob
Brave featured on it quite early done. All he does
he does because Rob Gret is when Rob brought out
the first of his books. So he was on the
show and he was talking about like different approaches to
practice and like differential learning and all these different ideas
and uh, and Scott qued him out on this podcast
and basically said it was a load of rubbish. And
I was I've for a long time been thinking about

(47:35):
this right and thinking about Richard out Scott. So I
think he's got a lot to offer, but he's just
he's transgressed and he's got out of his lane and
he's in danger of potentially sort of I want to
say to him, Look, you know, you're in real danger
of losing your credibility because you're talking about something you
don't really know anything about.

Speaker 4 (47:53):
I've had that same conversation with him.

Speaker 1 (47:56):
Ah, Okay, I wondered if you had. That's why I
wanted to ask it because I thought you might.

Speaker 4 (47:59):
Have the because he he sent me a video once
of him like training, and he was like, oh, this
is this is my like whatever, like block practice session.
I said, but that's not block practice, So like where
do you go from there? Like what is it? And
he just didn't know.

Speaker 2 (48:16):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (48:18):
And the other thing is he I think he was
a decent player, right, not a very good player, but
a decent player. And he qualified recently for the US Seniors.
I think that's right.

Speaker 2 (48:39):
Yeah, that's right, okay.

Speaker 4 (48:41):
And he did a video on the Thursday of tournament
play and he was like, oh, wow, this is unbelievable.
Like I spent the last two days like it was blowing.
I tried to like hit it low and whatnot. And
now all of a sudden, like tournament day turns around
and it it's it's absolutely perfect, and now I need

(49:02):
to work it out, like how to hit it high
again and whatnot. And I'm like, going, hang on a minute,
why why are you doing stuff like that at that
moment in time. Surely if you're a competitive golfer, surely
you should be have the ability to adapt to whatever
comes your way.

Speaker 2 (49:21):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (49:25):
So again, it's very much like a linear viewpoint of like,
well and he doesn't know what he's talking about.

Speaker 2 (49:34):
Well, no, it's interesting.

Speaker 1 (49:35):
So basically he's got And I think this is where
the reason I brought this up was because I think
this is where a lot of people are.

Speaker 2 (49:41):
Right.

Speaker 1 (49:41):
So talking about the coach who goes back to the
traditional method, right, so got background as a kind of engineer,
stroke economist, poker player. Right means that one of the
things he tries to do is using things like statistics
and numbers is essentially reduced variability. So actually decades based
pretty much on this idea of like, use map to

(50:04):
a certain extent and use under an understanding, for example,
of Disverson pattern. You know, stop thinking that you know
you will always hit it straight, know that you have
everybody Because humans are fallible, likely to have some range
of dispersion in their shop and actually play within that dispersion.
So choose targets that are within these ideas of dispersion,

(50:29):
so essentially understand human error and make strategic decisions that
take those elements into account and therefore reduce the wild
there or reduce the impact of the wild variability that
not having any of these ideas comes in.

Speaker 2 (50:46):
So it's a.

Speaker 1 (50:46):
It's it's thought of a reductivist idea in some senses,
But strangely, he when it comes to things like practice,
if you look at any of his practice activities, they've
actually got variability built in. If you look at his
putting out activities that he does with people like Cameron Chan,
he actually is talking about paste putting, but he's creating

(51:07):
loads of randomness, like you know, at different different distances
and recalibrations and all of these sorts of things.

Speaker 2 (51:14):
And his athletes have.

Speaker 1 (51:15):
Actually taken some of his games and made them better
by actually adding in layers of difficulty, which is great, right,
And I want to sort of say to him, Weirdly, right,
you're articulating this idea of like a sort of a
super metronomic idea around how you're going to hit your driver,
But yet when you're actually using your practice games, you're
actually creating variability. And I think it's partly because he

(51:36):
has two conflicting ideas that he can't quite he can't
quite square. One is economics efficiencies reduce variability.

Speaker 2 (51:46):
The other one is.

Speaker 1 (51:47):
Explore how you can operate within the dynamics of loads
of certain elements of variability and I just would love
to sort of sort of explain that and go, actually,
you know what on the right lines and decade could
be brilliant if you actually read if you're going to
turn around the telescope and look at it in a
different way.

Speaker 4 (52:07):
But it also goes back to you know what meters
Troni says is that you can, you know, you can
reduce things to its, but you're never going to get greatness.

Speaker 2 (52:17):
Out of that.

Speaker 4 (52:18):
So if you with Scott, right, he's looking at it
and going, I was a good player, but I was
never a PGA tour player, right, So he's trying to
reduce that to the point of going, well, I need
to I should be like fitting within this this you
know barrier ultimately, but that never can never served him right,

(52:39):
And ultimately I think it's like it's like this, it's
a flawed like myst like if you look at like
all a silver like who talks about like anti fragility, right,
anti fragility doesn't come from you know, hit him doing
one thing the same way all the time. If anything

(53:02):
in our logic that makes us go oh yeah, that
must be like anti fragile, but it makes us more fragile.

Speaker 1 (53:09):
Yeah, Well your example earlier was perfect. I've spent aging
in low board light to make it so I can
deal with wind. Oh that's kin. Now what do I do?

Speaker 2 (53:21):
Yeah, exactly, the Holy Plan's got to go out the window.

Speaker 4 (53:24):
No, one hundred percent where it actually should be about. Okay,
I'm ready for whatever comes. Yeah, And in this situation today,
I need this, And in this situation today, I need this,
And in this situation today, I need this. And that

(53:46):
to me is like that to me is anti fragile, right,
fragile fragility to me is going, oh my god, I'm
playing this whole golf course today, I do not have
this shot.

Speaker 2 (54:00):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (54:00):
If your practice environment is both stable and your practice
intent is sooth is bathed around establishing stability, you will
you will always struggle when things are unstable, which they
always are. You made reminded me of back in the day,
you know, when I used to work at at England Golf,

(54:23):
when when we sort of first came across each other,
there was this famous fame situation where England came like
fourteenth in the European Boys Championships, which was like really
bad result, Like you know, fourth is a bad result
for England and and we we we came fourteenth and

(54:45):
Norway won it, right, And so England you know, famously
had something like two thousand golf courses ninety thousand junior players,
and Norway had about you know, twenty five golf courses
at the time and about you know, four hundred junior players.
And yet they won and we didn't. Right, So we've
got all our resources and everything else, and we and
like one of the reasons why I was in Czechoslovakia

(55:06):
apparently the weather was awful, right, and the players all
came back saying, could not play in my waterproofs. And
when we did, when we did an after an after
action review on this, we said, well, why didn't you
know that? And when we'd never warned them before? Why
because they were training undercover in the perfect lovely warm range.

Speaker 4 (55:28):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (55:29):
And when I did a report on this and suggested
that's something that we should address, the then secretary, because
it was the secretary of the English Golf Union said,
we've been the envy of European golf for the.

Speaker 2 (55:41):
Last thirty years.

Speaker 1 (55:42):
We're not going to be changing things now.

Speaker 2 (55:45):
Okay, done, well done, yeah, well done.

Speaker 1 (55:52):
But this is an idea of culturally resilient belief, you know.
And by the way, this is this is someone who'd
you know, spent a lot of time generating the revenue
to build these beautiful practice facilities that were the envy
of the country.

Speaker 2 (56:06):
And you know they're wrong, but you use any the
best facilities.

Speaker 1 (56:12):
In the world used wrongly are no good to anybody. Likewise,
if the worst facilities in the world used well can
be absolutely brilliant, which is like Daniel Coyle's notion of
the talent hotbed. Very often actually pretty pretty poor facilities
can be used because of the resourcefulness really help with
talent development.

Speaker 4 (56:31):
Yeah, yeah, And I think that's that's part of the
whole the big picture, isn't it. Like it's just it's
like thinking about these areas and going, how am I
using what I'm using, you know, rather than just going
again it ties into those those things of like like

(56:54):
one of my biggest, one of my biggest pet peeves
in golf is and and it tells us how the
world is.

Speaker 2 (57:00):
Right.

Speaker 4 (57:00):
So if if I see somebody a coach turn up
on a Tuesday Wednesday of a tournament, right and they
do some work with that player and whatnot, and then
let's say Wednesday night or whenever the coach is gone right,
putting coach short coach, there's no coach in sight. It's
changing a little bit now, it's getting a little bit better.

(57:22):
But what that tells me, Stu, is that the viewpoint
is if I plug this in, it's going to fire.
And it just doesn't. Yeah, it just doesn't. So it's
like it's like looking at that technique of like ball

(57:44):
above feet downhill. Lie, you know this this certain and
when you're watching players and I found this as well.
It's a patience world, right, So you watch and you
watch and you watch, God, oh this is going and great,
it's going great, brilliant. I like that. I like that
I saw this situation that was fantastic. That was fantastic,

(58:08):
And then you see all of a sudden something shows
up and you go, oh, hang on a minute, what
was that about? And then you see again on whole
sixteen that same thing like shows up again and you go, oh,
hang on a minute, what's going on here? And you
kind of like just take a note of it and whatnot,
and just you know, a lot of good things happened,

(58:29):
but something like showed up there. You just don't see
that anywhere else unless you're watching them compete. Yeah, so
in the in the and again this goes back to
the player, right, the golfer, if I have and I'm
employing or I'm percentagizing, if that even if that's even

(58:51):
a word, right, my performance team, right, I want them
to watch me play. Yeah, I want them to watch
me under fire and see what's happening. And it might
not be every week, right, but it might be Okay,
this week, I'm gonna we're gonna do prep next week

(59:14):
or two weeks down the road, we're going to do
tournament watching and we're going to see what's happening. But
it shows that if people are not doing that, their
belief system will be No. No, it's a motor program.
It needs to actually we wired it in enough. On
Tuesday and Wednesday, it's just going to fire.

Speaker 1 (59:42):
I'm it's interesting that I am this notion of watching play.
I mean, yeah, it's kind of crazy, isn't it. Because
it's one of those spots where very very often the
individual who is deemed to be the coach as in
uh that they very rarely or in a lot of

(01:00:02):
cases when are very rarely there with the athletes in
the performance environment under the pressure and stresses of competition,
of competition, and are then not very able I don't think,
to be able to respond. So this is where the
notion of a coach in this board particularly is actually

(01:00:22):
they're not there. I call a technical instructor, So their
role is sort of relegated to someone who understands things
about technique, so that when the player says this thing
has occurred, they're the person with the so called technical fix, which,
let's face it, in the world of skill acquisition and transfer,

(01:00:44):
is rarely anything but a band aid. But that's actually
maybe is that really? Sometimes what the player is after,
I just need you to give me the band aid
to get me through the next day or the next hour,
or the next however.

Speaker 4 (01:00:57):
Long at a tournament, I think it is, is yeah,
but they're not after the tournament.

Speaker 2 (01:01:04):
Right yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah.

Speaker 4 (01:01:08):
So so it's like for me, it's more along the
lines of you definitely need some of that on, but
you need you know, you need Okay, we're like where
the hell are we going with this? As well? Like
what like what are we what are we trying to do?
Like what you know, I saw you hit this particular shot.

(01:01:29):
What's going through your head? They're like, what are you what?
What are you figuring out in that situation? Like if
you're trying to rely on on the player always feeding
back to you on that m hm. I mean, it's
just like it's just not going to happen.

Speaker 2 (01:01:48):
You know. M HM. Had a really interesting experience recently where.

Speaker 1 (01:01:54):
I've been playing very well all year and like taking
my game really seriously as one as I can, you know,
by in decade and all that stuff, and I'm doing
that well and and then I I went out of
pain and played the first day and again wasn't that good.
And the second day we played this really really tight,

(01:02:17):
difficult like you often get, you know, Spanish courses up
in the hill outside the mountains, right, and you know
there's there's one particular whole I'll never forget it where
you know, it's a part four and I hit eight
iron a tire because it And but weirdly, through the
course of that round playing on this course that was

(01:02:38):
super tight, started to play really well. And it was
partly because I was playing on this really super tight
course and it really demanded of me particular level of precision,
and what I found myself doing, and I don't know
whether it was the course or I don't know whether
it was sort of a conscious act, but what I
found myself doing was becoming much much more.

Speaker 2 (01:03:00):
Sort of deliberate about.

Speaker 1 (01:03:02):
My set up a little bit, feeling a sense of
much much more control of the club base. I felt
like I had to once I was gripping firmer, but
I felt like I had to create a much more
almost like a much more stable and intentional kind of
pre shot the men. And then in my back swing

(01:03:23):
I was much much much more sort of slow and
low right, So I felt like I was being a
bit more kind of deliberate into into my backswing and
making it a little more not controlled as such, but
just felt like it was. And I've then come to
realize that none of those things existed before. Everything was
kind of a bit floppy, and so surprised surprise, the

(01:03:44):
dots were a bit floppy, right, And I've kept that
for about six weeks, that same thing, and my handicaps
come down to doot since then, all because I've got
up in the morning on a quite early tea time,
having had probably a little bit too much wine the
night be for but still got up to play, played
on a really tight golf course that demanded something of me,

(01:04:05):
and then I had an epiphany and I learned something,
and for me, I felt like like I've been wanting
to talk to somebody in golf for about this for
a while because I felt like that's a really good
example actually of how an environment created an adaptation that's
then helped me in terms of then going to play
on other courses.

Speaker 4 (01:04:23):
But I think it comes that back down to like
in golf, like first principles, it is like you know,
club face and path right, Like we get so bent
out of shape about what's your right elbow doing what?
And if we and if we look at like end
directed learning right and I'm reaching for something, nobody gives
a fuck about what your elbow's doing and your biceper's doing.

(01:04:45):
You know, it's like, okay, how close And if you
look at watch a kid do it, they'll miss it.
On the left, they'll miss it, on the right, they'll
miss it. And that's how it works stud like it's
it's really just a like, okay, I need to have
a level of control role. But nobody talks about this right,
nobody talks enough about subface there, path there. How good

(01:05:07):
can we do that? Right? They're always talking about and
we see this on social media, and we see this
on like just people like breaking the swing down into
like these segments. That's not it's not fundamentally good to
do that, right. It might look good for social media
and followers and stuff like that. But if we look

(01:05:29):
back even to the sixties, right, and we look at golf,
if somebody's going down the viewpoint of going, do you
know what, I'm much more down this information process inside
of things, and I'm much more you know, motor program based.
If we look at a discrete skill, a discrete skill

(01:05:50):
has a clear starting point as a clear ending point,
and it happens really quick. Yeah, a golf swing apart
a chip, okay, brilliant. Back into the sixties and then
into eighties, Richard Schmidt and his predecessors realized, if you

(01:06:13):
break that and you segment that, it's gonna have a
very very low transfer rate. But what do we freaking
see on social media, people who are influential others right,
breaking freaking the golf swing movement down into You need

(01:06:34):
to do this, You need to stop halfway down and
do this. It's absolute bullshit.

Speaker 2 (01:06:42):
You know what.

Speaker 1 (01:06:43):
You've also reminded me of something I went down the
YouTube rabbit hole. It serves me right, serves me right right,
And I've stopped doing that. And I've also got a
net and a launch monitor in the garden. And then
do you know what that made me do? Start kating speed?
And of course, like that's that's the you know, I'm
fifty years old. What am I trying to do?

Speaker 2 (01:07:04):
You know?

Speaker 1 (01:07:05):
But the thing is is that you know I did,
I did some of that chasing the speed, right, But
the launch monitor helps me a little bit because I
can't practice all the time. So at least I get
an outcome and I've got some data.

Speaker 4 (01:07:14):
Yeah, I want to do you think that's brilliant. I
think an outcome is brilliant. Like what's your face doing?
Where is your strike point? What's the path doing? Yeah,
that's that's kind of all we're kind of needing, right, Yeah,
and then we kind of self organize around that to go, okay, well,
how can I get to face more there and start
over there a little bit more? And that's why I

(01:07:36):
loved about again going back to one of your pre
like crys Hill Murray talking about you know, reductionism right
of this and there's no place for that stew like
in any form of like a viewpoint of how you
look at the world of like learning, Like what like
why are we breaking stuff down into into these fragments?

(01:08:01):
I just don't understand it.

Speaker 1 (01:08:03):
Again, Right, So reductionism exists everywhere, right, and and it's
it's pervasive, right, It's like people don't even realize how
influenced by the notions of reductionism they are. They don't
realize it. And they also don't realize how the information
processing narrative of human advancement or human motor control or

(01:08:25):
whatever it is is pervasive and exist, you know, to
the point where like I get frustrated because you know,
the if you're if you are an ecological practitioner or
an ecological advocate and you advocate for it, you get
a criticism by those who are more cognitively inclined or
information protesting based that you need to prove your assertion,

(01:08:47):
like theirs are just uncritically accepted, like they're just But
but science advances, right, so different ideas come into play.
We we we explore those ideas and we we then
make advancements. We might say, actually there's limitations for the
ecological approach, which means we have to go down a
different direction. But but we have to explore those with

(01:09:11):
with real, you know, kind of vigor. Otherwise we never
really properly explore them. And I think as a practitioner
as well, you know, I've I've become you know, kind
of theoretically informed let's say, uh, you know, kind of
evidence inform and so I'm thinking, right, well, I need
to really give this a good go. Yeah, if I
if I if I keep if I keep hold of

(01:09:31):
some old ideas, then I won't really be properly advancing
my practice. I'll just be like, maybe I will, but
it'd be very slow, and I might not have some
of the epiphanies that I would otherwise have if I
took a more sort of you know, I'm not saying
I'm gonna I'm not saying I'm like just wholeheartedly going right,

(01:09:52):
I'm really into this now, So all you lot you've
got to come, You've got to come with me, whether
you like it or not.

Speaker 4 (01:09:57):
I'm not going to do that, right, but maybe it's
about also let's say I go and have a putting lesson, right,
and I and I pitch up and somebody goes, right,
we're gonna come into my studio and we're going to
check your technique to start with, and we're gonna look

(01:10:20):
at your face, aim and stuff like that. There's no
contact for this is just on a straight putt, and
we look and we wire you up and we do
all this all right. Now, we're going to go and
set you a skill of like maybe we're gonna have
some reading into that, and you know, you know, but
it's still a ten to fifteen foot put right, it's
still in the studio, all right. Now, we're going to

(01:10:40):
go outside and we're going to put you into a
nine hole putting task right again, and we're gonna see
how you do on that. Right, All right? Great? What
the hell is all that is?

Speaker 2 (01:10:53):
That?

Speaker 4 (01:10:53):
Is that just easy for the coach? I think it
is personally.

Speaker 1 (01:11:01):
Also it's what's expected from the people perhaps.

Speaker 2 (01:11:05):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (01:11:05):
Yeah, that's a good point. That's a really good point.
Rather than going right, we're going straight into the fire
over here, we're going straight out onto the golf course
or straight on to the patt and green. We are
going deep into this right now, and I'm going to
watch what you're doing under these levels of you know,
you're gonna put one hundred bucks on the line, and
we're going to see how you do in this situation.
Somebody turns up and goes, holy shit, I wasn't expecting this.

Speaker 2 (01:11:29):
Yeah. Yeah, And then then and then they feel always
a bit weird. I'm not sure about that.

Speaker 1 (01:11:33):
I'm not they're the people paying. Goes back to your
point about the police study. You know, these people intuitively think, you.

Speaker 2 (01:11:40):
Know, they go, I'm not sure about that. I didn't
really like it.

Speaker 1 (01:11:43):
I much prefer the safety and comfort of the linear
approach until you go but look.

Speaker 2 (01:11:47):
At your result. Oh christ all right, I get it.
But you might not.

Speaker 1 (01:11:52):
In a setonal scenario where someone's paying for a service,
you might not get that opportunity. Again, you should know
either way that that someone like Kendall McQuaid, for example,
who who I would argue is massively ecologically informed, whether
he espouses the.

Speaker 2 (01:12:05):
Theory or not.

Speaker 1 (01:12:06):
He's been a practitioner, you know, influenced by Shoemaker on
this idea of more a more naturalistic approach to learning. Right,
So that's his basis, right, which is where I think
the ecological approach stems from. And he used to when
I watched him do this, by the way, watching him work,
he'd spend a good half hour talking to people, you know,
almost doing a micro lecture on skill acquisition to contextualize

(01:12:30):
the approach he was now going to utilize and to
get their assent. It's interesting to do that.

Speaker 4 (01:12:36):
So John, like my supervisor, he says, you need to
farm out a little bit of education as well, because
you need to, you know, and he's worked in you know,
two Rugby World Cups, Olympics and whatnot. You need to
get a little bit of education in there to be
able to kind of guide and like shape and see
where they're at ultimately. But you also get that principle

(01:12:58):
of yeah, like I remember, like speaking to I did
a presentation in Germany and Andreas KLi right, who's in Denmark,
he pulled me across after and he said, just thatt
an interest, Why do people not go play first and

(01:13:18):
then see what happens and then we work back from that?
And I said, well, Joan Vickers talks a little bit
about that. To be honest, that hard first and then
we work we work backwards he goes, why do we
not do that in golf? I said, because it's comfortable
doing it the other way.

Speaker 2 (01:13:34):
Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:13:36):
I remember talking to a coach after Hank Haney's stepping
on at the European Teacht and Coaching Conference in Munich.
What a what a weekend was? Anyway, I remember watching
talking about, you know, the model that because Haney had
this hidden he was basically like a human signatine. He
kept moving this fifteen year old into position, and the

(01:13:57):
fifteen year old couldn't keep holding the position because he had.

Speaker 4 (01:14:00):
I remember that.

Speaker 2 (01:14:02):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:14:03):
Yeah, we might have talked about it over a beer.
I've forgotten about it, but anyway, I thought he was
a coach about it. Oh, wasn't Haney brilly, wasn't Hainey
brilliant or so technically technical insight? I'm like, yeah, but
you don't notice how the kid couldn't actually do what
he was acting to do without him being moved into position.
Oh yeah, but you really knew what he was talking about.
I was like, oh, I'm on a second. This is
before I knew anything about ecological approach. By the way
you'd to get acquisition just felt intuitively wrong to me,

(01:14:25):
and then and then I was talking about that very
notion of play first, Like I said, you know, why
don't we why don't we do that with kids like
that work out like you know, start them on the
putting green and getting some success to begin with, and
then work backwards chipping and then pitching and then extending
it backwards, and you know, because they learned the game,
you know, which again reminds me by the way of
meeting Rudy durand Tiger Woods's coach when Tiger Woods was little.

(01:14:46):
I might have told this story before, you might have
heard it before, but you know, deliberately went up to
him and said, how much time did you spend on
the course with Tiger because they had eighteen oh part three?
How much this is when Tiger was like five, how
much time you spend on the course? How much time
of the range? Had eighty five percent of the time
was on the course and the only time he went
on the range is when we found something out on
the course that we needed to go on the range
to work throughout.

Speaker 4 (01:15:09):
But the beauty of that, when you see the video, right,
and I've spoken to Rudy about this, is that you
watch him and you know, when you talk about these
things called you know, intrinsic dynamics, right of like somebody
has stable states in space right with what and it's
it's like you're looking at Scotti Scheffler WITHDS the top

(01:15:29):
of the back swing, Victor Hovland whatnot. He's try and
change that, right, You're you're literally like, yeah, you're banging
your head against the wall and you're going to ruin them, right.
But they all have this ability that with their coordinative structures,
so their coordination be able to get that club coming
down somewhere with a low variability into delivery to what

(01:15:54):
they need to do with their with their outcome. But
people get so caught up in this inciple of like
what it needs to do up there, what they need
to do there, what they need to do this. And
this is my biggest critique of like the you know,
the P system, because it's just yeah, unless it's like
the individuallyes to that, to that person, it's completely ridiculous.

Speaker 2 (01:16:19):
M Yeah, I certainly agree with you.

Speaker 1 (01:16:24):
Yeah, I mean we we we could go on. The
interesting thing for me though, just going back to this
point about because I don't want this to be a
well it has been so you know, but I want
to make something clear here, which is not to say
I'm not coming on this podcast with you necessarily criticizing
the coaches, right because in my opinion, I think they're

(01:16:50):
victims of inadequate educational systems and some dominant cultural narratives
that are very hard to break, and cultural expectation among
those who would help them to make a living, and
it's very difficult to break that sort of stuff, right,

(01:17:10):
And I understand all of that, right, So I'm not
blaming them, you know, I'm not blaming the the individuals themselves.
This is actually a call to action for those involved
in the learning of athletes or the learning of coach
to rethink the paradigms that they just sort of accept

(01:17:34):
as sort of norm.

Speaker 4 (01:17:37):
And that's the beauty of it. It's like, like why
we called it practice thinkers to start with. It was
like it was very much about like we're not trying
to tell everybody you need to do it this way.
We're just trying to get them to like think, you know,
and go, is this stirding me right now? Or is
this something different? Can I do something different to help

(01:17:58):
my players and whatnot? And when we did the course,
you know, and the coach's course, and we're actually doing
a player's course as well, which is again my passion
to be quite honest, because I want players to look
and to think and go do I need to is this?

(01:18:18):
Does this feel right to me right now?

Speaker 2 (01:18:20):
Is this like?

Speaker 4 (01:18:21):
How I can I get more out of what I'm doing?
You know? And it's like anything like if somebody would
have when I work for Lead Better, somebody would have
critiqued me, I'd have got so pissed off, right, because
everything was about that model right of how everybody needed
to swing. You need to hinde ninety degrees, pivot, transition

(01:18:42):
and deliver right. And that's fine, right. But the thing
about it is I never took offense by somebody going yeah,
that's that's that can't work. I try to move on
from it and try to understand. And I think that's
the biggest things to you is that we're anytime where
you know, we're talking to coaches and we're talking to

(01:19:03):
players any time that they feel awkward. And I do
this when I do presentations as well. Is when I
when I say something and go how are you feeling
about this? Anytime they feel awkward. It's probably challenging their
belief system. Yeah yeah, and then we can start to

(01:19:26):
so it's not a case of going, Okay, I feel
awkward if I'm going to hit back on this, that's
my ego.

Speaker 2 (01:19:36):
M yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 4 (01:19:41):
Can I look at it pragmatically, go holy shit, this
makes me feel a little bit uncomfortable, but I want
to explore this a little bit more.

Speaker 2 (01:19:50):
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:19:53):
You reminded me of when Richard were pushed back on
me when I was expounding all my hypoluting notions of
actively reduction this talent development system and coke Coke development
system working in Rugby and he kent me really hard
on it, or put back, not hard, just you know,
in the in the softest way that rich Littleworth does,
but just made it really clear that you know.

Speaker 2 (01:20:16):
He does, he does, you know.

Speaker 1 (01:20:18):
But it's also it's like it's like being I don't
have to I guess it's like being like punched in
the face by a giant marshmellow, like it really still
hurts you, sort of thing, Well you.

Speaker 2 (01:20:30):
Come away right, you're really bruised, but you don't know.

Speaker 1 (01:20:32):
How you were bruised. And he uh yeah, but he
did right, and that was like and I went away.
It is like you know, proper you know, got all
you know, like bent out of shape and went And
then then I then went through a process of you know,
like massive reappraisal and like, well, christ, I clearly don't
know anything about anything. And then now I'm you know,

(01:20:53):
and then you start learning stuff and you go, wow,
now I'm on a this for path. So I'm enormously
is that that.

Speaker 4 (01:20:58):
I love that state for me. But when when somebody
like flattens me with something, I go, oh my god,
and I you know, like Ed like Colin sometimes just
like completely flattens me with something or you know, Ian
Renshaw whatnot, and you go, all right, I need to
go and like to take a deep a bit of

(01:21:18):
a deeper dive into this and start to like understand
this like a little bit more. But there are certain
people in the world that look at it so much
of a threat about there, who they are, what they're
expected of them, whatnot. Like we asked her, there was
a coach who want to do our course right and

(01:21:39):
we said, okay, yeah, no problem, just can you promote it?
And he goes, oh, yeah, I forgot about it. But
can I still do it? I'm like, no, you can't
do it. You know, this is somewhat somewhat levels of
entitlement that goes along as well, that people don't want
to look at themselves in the mirror, and it's a

(01:21:59):
whole horrible face to look at sometimes, Like I look
at myself and go bucking all, like what. But but
that's how we grow, and that's how we consciously and
ethically move forward, and that's how golf potentially needs to be.
Golf needs to be more rigorous. Teaching aids need to

(01:22:22):
be more rigorous. People shouldn't be able to bring out
a teaching aid just for the sake of showing a
fucking world number ten using something and sell millions of
dollars worth of a teacher. That's bullshit.

Speaker 2 (01:22:34):
Yeah, yeah, it's wrong.

Speaker 1 (01:22:37):
You know, the uncritical acceptance of God needs to change.

Speaker 4 (01:22:42):
It's just it's just flat out wrong. And I think
that got it. Like in some instances of golf, like
in the like what Sashow is doing I think is brilliant, right,
He's bringing much more like rigor and science into certain things.
And I know the guys that ping are doing that
as well. But in the world of skill acquisition. We
need to Golf needs to get on board with this.

(01:23:04):
It needs to do a better job of going Is
that good? Or is that or is there better? You
know why you're using a teaching aid that lodges into
your shoulder and then you have to pivot? Yeah, but
what the what's that for? You know? Is that going
to help be transfer or is it just going to

(01:23:26):
make you lodge something into your shoulder and make you.

Speaker 2 (01:23:27):
Pivot and listen? Look, we could go on.

Speaker 1 (01:23:36):
I'm just about to get locked out of this building,
so I'm going to have to dive off.

Speaker 4 (01:23:40):
Thank you so much for your time as always.

Speaker 1 (01:23:43):
Oh no, no, no, no, I'm glad you glad we could.
I know I had to shift this around a bit,
so I appreciate your patience with me. But I loved it.
Great conversation. Up. Keep doing what you're doing with with
Peter and Ee and loving it. You know, I love that.
That is a you know, you give me those moments
of reappraisal, the conversations you guys are having. I'm like,

(01:24:03):
oh no, yeah, there's there's something else I haven't thought
about that. I kind of a bit like you. I
like being in that slightly unstable state of not knowing.
You know, I have enough enough certainty about sort of
the course of action, but I know there's still so
much more to learn and more to know. Yeah uh,
and so I really appreciate.

Speaker 4 (01:24:23):
I think more podcasts going down the road need to
be like this will hopefully players listen to, you know,
and we need to look at it as athletes listening
to podcasts rather than you know, coaches, because ultimately sometimes
we're feeding the bias to coaches. Right with every podcast,
we need to be able to get into players or

(01:24:44):
athletes and go and challenge what they're thinking about, you know.
And that's that's what I'm going to be sending out.
I'm going to This is one for the players, not
just not necessarily coaches.

Speaker 1 (01:24:55):
And for young young people as well, parents who essentially
are part of the Yeah exactly, They're an extension of
the And one of the podcasts had a really good
idea that somebody threw at me, Tom Hartley, which is
this idea of the parents being the multi disciplinary team
around the athlete. When when you talking about a kid
in the community context, you don't have pikes and visios.

(01:25:17):
You just got a parent who's responsible putting the tea
on the table? Right, they're the multi disciplinary team.

Speaker 4 (01:25:24):
Do you know what I would love to do, stew right,
if we can get if we can get it across
and I'd have to get a player to be okay
with this, but to do a live session of going
through the practice map right of what we do, like
what I'm trying to do with from an academic standpoint,
and actually like the applying of practice and see how

(01:25:48):
that kind of works. Takes about like an hour hour
and a half. If the players willing to do that,
I'm certain other players will learn from this.

Speaker 1 (01:25:57):
Happily come and film that I've got the kit, let's
make it happen. There's several reasons I'll happily come out
to where you're based in Austria, particularly you move into
the winter.

Speaker 4 (01:26:11):
Yeah, do you know what we have a we have
a ski slope like thirty minutes from us, which is
a privately owned ski slope and it's like we can
drive there and whatnot and we go up there. You
don't have to play the extortional like lift fees and
stuff like that, and that's why it's nice.

Speaker 2 (01:26:29):
You know there you go do all right.

Speaker 1 (01:26:35):
Where's the best place for people to get in touch
with you if they want to ask questions or get clarity.

Speaker 4 (01:26:40):
Probably on Instagram, like Stuart m coaching, it's probably the best.
It's the same on on x SO. I still call
it Twitter some days, but yeah, you can fire away
or if they want to just send me an email.
It's also good at Stuart at iceberg golf dot com.

Speaker 2 (01:26:59):
Mate.

Speaker 1 (01:26:59):
Been great feature again, thanks a lot. Thanks ranking along
with me.

Speaker 2 (01:27:03):
Yeah, yeah, perfect.

Speaker 3 (01:27:10):
Thanks for listening to the Talent Equation podcast. If you
like the show, then please consider supporting it by leaving
a review on your favorite podcast player, telling your friends
about it, or even becoming a hero and show your
appreciation by becoming a patron. Just head over to the
Talent Equation dot co dot uk and click on the
becoming a Patron button at the top of the page.

All Episodes

"The coaching culture is a Viper's nest!" - a conversation with Stuart Morgan 2

Episode Transcript

Popular Podcasts

CrimeLess: Hillbilly Heist

Crime Junkie

Stuff You Should Know

.css-15opob5{left:0;position:absolute;top:0.8rem;} All Episodes

.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}"The coaching culture is a Viper's nest!" - a conversation with Stuart Morgan 2