ATTUNED | ADAPTABLE | DEXTEROUS
Blog
At the Edge of the Turquoise Water
The wind was lightly blowing through the palms, and the waves were gently breaking on the white shoreline as I sat with the smooth sand beneath my feet. The gentle sea breeze blowing in the salty, yet fresh ocean air was complemented by the vibrant turquoise water...
Using an Ecological Approach to Understand Formula One Racing
Like many other Netflix subscribers in recent years, I have become enamored with Formula One (F1) international racing, through the TV series, Drive to Survive. Truth is, being in a car capable of going fast has always been in my blood. From owning a 1969 Ford Mustang...
How It All Began
Three years ago, Shawn and I got together for a ‘short’ three-and-a-half-hour chat where we discussed all things movement. In our conversation, we discussed learning, practice design, and everything that we wished we would have known and had access to as younger...
Wayfinding and Co-Design
Over the course of my career I have both taken part in and observed a great deal of youth training sessions. As I reflect on that time spent, there is one prevalent theme that bubbles up. We (coaches/teachers/parents) don’t trust youth athletes enough with their...
Functional, Not Fundamental
If you were to ask a coach where they start when they begin coaching their young athletes, I’m positive the word ‘fundamentals’ would pop up somewhere in their answer. As most of us understand, fundamentals are thought to be the foundation in skill development and are...
A Functional Fit: Get in Where (& How) You Fit in
If you hear myself, or any of my colleagues at Emergence, speak about athletes solving movement problems in sport, it’s likely that at some point you will hear us discuss a dexterous athlete “finding a functional (or behavioral) fit to the movement problem.” For me,...
Action Capabilities, Effectivities & Intrinsic Dynamics…Oh My!
A number of days ago, my buddy, and a good friend of Emergence, Stuart McMillan, of ALTIS (website HERE) tagged myself, along with a number of other ecological approach advocates in a Twitter thread, asking a question which I feel is very important. Though there are...
Is That Really Ecologically Driven?
Over the beginning of 2022, it seems as though there have been a plethora of activities being shared across social media circles, which are purporting the use of an ecological approach through constraints, to enhance coordination, self-organization, and...
There Is Harm in Focusing on the Parts
There is not a week that goes by where I don’t have someone, within the sport coaching or movement skill acquisition space, make the claim to me that not only does the breaking of a movement down to its component parts serve as a path towards “cleaning up irregular,...