BTG 75 - 4 Phases of Learning

Hey guys, what's going on? Welcome to another episode of Breaking the Guard. No news today. We're just going to go right into a topic of conversation here, which is something I call the four phases of learning. Oftenimes people ask me, "How can I pick up things faster? I've been trying to work on a new technique or a new movement pattern skill set and I struggle to really get it into my game. And the way I like to teach people is to understand what I consider the four phases of learning. And I'll run it down real quick and then break it down into the steps. The first phase is observation. The second phase is practice. Third phase is drilling. The fourth phase is live implementation. Right? So if you study these cycles, you'll see that every class you've ever done works through that. For example, the first phase of observation, you need to see something to be able to learn about it, right? And that you have to be able to perceive it in some shape or form. When you're doing a class, your instructor shows a technique to you, right? This is your process of observation where you get to look at it from a outside view and see it from all sides and try to get a concept in your mind and internalize it of what this technique, this procedure movement is. The second phase of practice is now after observing it, you're going to try to recreate the technique yourself or the movement or the pattern or whatever it may be, right? So, you know, after coach shows everybody the technique, now you go with your partner and you start doing it. But the practice is clumsy, right? You have to think your way through it quite a bit, especially in the beginning where you have no idea or no real concept of how the move works, right? Because we have to go into like an imitation uh process where we trying to replicate what we saw and then along the way we develop some understanding of how the move works. So then it becomes a little more organic, a little more natural. And the idea behind practice is to try to create the best model in your mind of the technique of the movement as possible. The third phase is drilling. Now, drilling is where you're going to execute whatever understanding of the technique that you have to 100% of your ability. So, drilling is not something that's done casually. Drilling is intense. Right? If you think of wrestlers drilling takedowns, they're just going back and forth blasting each other full blast, right? It's not like I you can't you can have a conversation while practicing a technique. You can't have a conversation about drilling a technique, right? That is the difference. A lot of people say they drill, but they actually practice, right? Drilling is very intense, is very difficult. And the goal here of drilling is to try to, like I said, implement the technique to the best of your ability. Right? So, you're going to build speed, you're going to build power, stamina, and hopefully some fluidity and timing as well. Drilling doesn't have to be robotic. I talked about drilling in a in a previous episode, so I'm not going to go into it again, but understand that drilling isn't just like, okay, I'm going to do the same move over and over with the opponent not doing anything at all. That is a type of drilling, but that's like a lower level form. Like, there's lots of ways to drill, right? The fourth phase is live, right? And this is where now you're going to actually execute the technique on a real opponent. Right? So, we're now out of the lab into a real uh simulation, if you will, and we're going to try to execute this technique. And what the live is going to provide you with is feedback. Because as you do the technique against a real opponent, you're going to feel like some things work, some things don't work, and you're going to be able to then plug this back in. So these four phases of learning are like a loop. They're not just in a straight line. It's going to be repeated because from the live, we're going to go back into observation because we're going to observe in our memory or if we had someone filming like I've advised before of tape of what happened during the live session. We can say, well, you know, I tried to do the arm drag but uh I couldn't get any pull on him. And then if I look at the video, oh, you know, instead of pulling from the armpit, I was pulling from the elbow. So, it was easy for him to escape the elbow. Uh, so I need to actually adjust my grip from going from a elbow grip to armpit grip so I can really get a good roll on that on that drag. Right? So that would be an observation of your memory or video or whatnot. Right? And then we would have to practice the mistake out. Right? So then we would go with a partner, make the adjustments to our grip and then we would drill the new iteration and the new understanding of our technique. And then once again we go into live and we do it again. And this time hopefully we get better results. But whatever results we get, we observe them and then we go back in. So this process of learning is not uh a finite cycle. It's infinite, right? We keep going through it because we're going to keep getting better at it over time. So this to me is something that I've applied a lot in my training. And now the question you might say is, well, how much time do I dedicate to each phase? My opinion is that the drilling phase is where most of the time is going to be spent. If you're a serious competitor and you're trying to get lots of gains on your technique, it's drilling where you're going to make the most improvements of your technical ability. Right? The live is gonna be where you get the most feedback from what you're doing. So, a lot of people, they learn a technique quick, they they have it good enough where it works sometimes, and then they just spar spar spar spar spar spar. If you're just sparring without ever studying what you're doing or drilling new understandings of the technique, it's going to be very difficult, not impossible, but very difficult to make big improvements. Right. The the biggest improvements, [snorts] you know, that I've seen from people and from my personal experience will happen while you're drilling. You in the sparring, you'll have a Eureka moment where you're like, "Oh crap, I've been doing this wrong and now I understand it." And then you fix the mistake, right? Because you observed the mistake, then you practiced it out, and then you drilled it. So now you have a new level of understanding. And then when you spar again, then you'll see, oh, you know what? it. I I did good right now. I was able to hit the technique much smoother. Uh no friction. So most of your time investment is going to be in the drilling. Right? The drilling also happens to be the safest environment for training because we have controls, right? We know all the things are going to happen, right? It's a it's a scripted or at least semi-scripted uh process. The sparring, the live is the most dangerous. There's randomness. I don't control my opponent. They can do anything they want. So, he zigzag, there goes my knee or there goes my elbow, whatnot, right? So, it makes sense that the drilling should be where most time spent, especially if you're a serious competitor, because you're always trying to uh be careful of injuring yourself. And in drilling, you're a much much much less likelihood of hurting yourself. I can't think of an occasion where I hurt myself drilling. I can think of many occasions I've hurt myself sparring. Right? So, um, we want to try to avoid using sparring as the main tool, right? Sparring is a very important tool. Without sparring, the this learning cycle doesn't work, right? Because there's no feedback. So we just observed something, we practiced and we drilled it and that was it. So we might think, well, we we're already we and this is how a traditional martial artist who doesn't spar uh like I started out as might think I know something. when the first martial arts I practiced was Jundo and the particular place I went to didn't make sparring mandatory and it was like a special class and for whatever reason my brother and I never went to that class uh and it wasn't like something that was pushed and we were promoted from phase one to phase two uh in Gondo without ever sparring which looking back seems kind of crazy right uh that would be like getting your blue belt without rolling, right? It it doesn't make sense. So, but in our case, I was maybe 14, 15, and my brother and I thought we were badasses because we were training like five days a week. We had mats in our garage. We would spar with our friends. Um, but they didn't know what they were doing. So, it was not really sparring. We're just like playing with them, you know. And uh we learned I I learned pretty early that there was something wrong because I I had an older cousin uh that was into kendo, you know, the sword fighting. And I was doing a lot of kali in jigundo, which is, you know, like you would disarm weapons and whatnot. And he had challenged me to like a little sparring match. And I remember I kept trying to do these weapon disarms and I kept getting whacked in the head. I'm like, man, this ki stuff's not working for me, right? Well, the reason why probably is because I never even tried doing it against a real opponent. So, I never had the experience of getting whacked in the head when I missed, right? And uh it it creates a big um moment. I was disillusioned, right? Like I'm like, man, like everything I was doing doesn't really work, right? It's because I never sparred, right? I never had real feedback. That was the first feedback I had. And I already had this idea. I knew what I was doing, right? because I've been training for like a year, which is nothing. But as a kid, you thought, "Oh, that was a lot of time." So, without the sparring, you have no feedback. You're not going to really know anything. You think you know something, but you don't, right? You You only know something once you try it in a real situation and get real feedback. So, I'm not dismissing sparring is super important, but it is not the main component of your training. It's the feedback component. I believe the skill is developed in the drilling, right? You prove your skill in sparring. Much like when we compete, we're trying to prove our abilities, our training methods, in competition, but they're developed in training, right? Well, in training, the skill is developed in drilling and it's proved in the sparring. Okay? So, that's my opinion. You know, I have friends that disagree, right, that they think that you should do everything in live and you're going to learn faster. I don't think that's the case. Uh I think that the history of all the champions coming up show the contrary, which is the people who drill a lot are the guys who end up winning. And I think that's not a coincidence because the people who drill a lot also have a lot of determination and a lot of drive because drilling is not fun. If you're drilling and you're having a lot of fun, you're doing something wrong. [laughter] Because drilling, you might feel satisfied after a long drilling session, but it's not fun. Shooting double legs for 30 minutes straight is brutal, right? It's a grind. Uh but it's what separates uh the boys from the men, right? It's it it it shows that you have commitment, that you're willing to sacrifice your your time and your body and your energy into doing something that you know is going to be grinding, right? And there's no payoff at the end of it. You're going to get the payoff once you start competing or or once you do the sparring, but the time that you invest in the drilling is just going to be uh it's going to be hard, right? So, if you're into doing everything just for fun, yeah, it's easy to say, well, the drilling is not fun. I don't want to do that. I want to do the thing that's fun, right? So, um the people who have a lot more conviction are going to be the ones who are drilling. And those people with more conviction are obviously going to be the ones that end up winning titles because they have more willpower. They're they're going to be able to endure the tough circumstances to win. Whereas the people who just want to do things that are fun and easy are not going to be able to sustain their output once they face a guy who's a lot more determined. So that's been my observations at least. You guys can let me know what you think. But again, these are what I consider the four phases of learning, right? And just to repeat them, we have observation, practice, drilling, live. They do you start them in that order, right? And if you want to try to optimize how you use this, when you study something, obviously you're observing it. When a coach is teaching you, you're observing it. A friend is showing you something. When you're looking through your memory, you're observing it. But if you want to take this to a higher level, I would recommend, as I've done in the past, film your sparring, right? Get a camera, put it off to the side. You can buy a tripod for 30 bucks on Amazon and just put it there with your camera, start filming, and after training, observe your your sparring sessions. And you know, you might think, oh, you know, it's like 30 minutes of sparring. Well, put it in double speed, right? You could really easily fast forward to moments where things happen and then stop at those moments and study that particular sequence. uh because your your memory is not infallible, right? Like I know this like a lot of things I remembered I remembered wrong, right? Um so being able to study tape is going to be invaluable particularly for the observation phase because you're going to be able to observe things that maybe your memory noticed but you're going to be able to observe things that you didn't notice because you possibly couldn't. Maybe it happened outside your periphery, right? or you weren't able to to put your attention on that. So, studying tape is going to make your observation phase much more valuable. And of course, practice. You want to make sure you practice with a good partner that can help u brainstorm with you a bit because sometimes you might observe something where you're not sure. You know there's something wrong, but you're not sure the best way to fix it. And this practice phase to me is a phase where you might even do a little flow roll thing where like we might just move around a little bit. We're not taking it seriously and we're just trying to see like oh different angles of attacking. So you're experimenting, right? So I would still consider this like a practice type phase where we're not going against 100% resisting opponents. We're like flow rolling. I would consider that practice. we're we're trying to find um a new way of doing something. It's kind of a mix of the sparring because we're also using feedback to try to uh figure out what's going on. So, it's a little of a murky area, but nonetheless, valuable thing that you could put in there, particularly on an area where you're not sure of how to improve, you know something's wrong, but you're not sure the right solution to it. a flow roll there could definitely help you out where the the purpose of a flow roll is to learn. So neither side's trying to quote unquote win as much as try to see if there's some merit to what you're doing. And remember, because just because you did something in a flow rule doesn't necessarily mean it actually works. That's why I'm I'm hesitant to put it in the sparring category, right? or the live category because you could do something on a floor roll that makes sense, but then when you actually try to do a sparring, it makes no sense at all. Right? So, it's kind of like a [snorts] hybrid of uh practice and uh and sparring, but I would still lump it in to the practice side of things. So, that's another thing as far as getting the most of your obser observation and your and your practice, right? So, observation, film yourself, right? uh practice, have a good partner, be willing to experiment a little bit. Uh try to look at things at all angles. Drilling, uh I've done things on drilling, so I'm not going to go too heavy in it, but remember the main thing I would say is 100%. If you can have a conversation or you can chitchat while you're you're drilling, you're not drilling. You're still practicing. Drilling is 100% execution. Uh, it's intense. I would say you could do it by rep counts, although depending the thing with the rep counts is that if you're too focused on hitting a certain amount of reps, you might start rushing yourself uh just to get them done, which is going to lead to poor reps. Whereas, if you did it by a time, it doesn't matter if you're doing them fast or you're doing them slow, you're still going to be there for the same amount of time. So, I I guess it depends on what motivates you more because I could see people getting doing drills very slowly just so they're not working as much. They're stretching out their workload. Um, so there's a lot of ways people could slack, right? But if you're drilling, you shouldn't be there to be a slacker. You should be there to work. I would just say make sure that you do everything to 100%, which means 100% power, speed, and technique. Technique being the most important. If you're doing something very fast and powerful but sloppy, you're wasting your time and you could be training yourself negatively because you're showing yourself a bad model of doing the technique. The most important thing about the drilling is perfect execution as close to it as possible. All right? So, if you're not able to do the technique very fast without messing up the form, focus on doing it with perfect form and then speed it up over time so that you get better at doing it and getting smoother and smoother, right? We want a very effective technique that's clean, that is very powerful and very quick, but it has to have perfect technique. And finally, the sparring. Like I said, film your sparring so you can use it for the observation. But when you spar, try to hit your techniques. Uh, the more you could do them, the better, right? Normally, the problem with mastering a technique and getting feedback from it is that if you pick a technique that's very difficult to do, let's say like a flying triangle choke, you're only going to get a limited amount of exposures to doing that technique, right? Like you're not going to have like a hundred situations to do a flying triangle in a round. Maybe not even two, right? You could probably get one at least if you force it in the beginning for the standup clinch, but once the action hits the ground or or once you've done it a couple times, your partner's going to be wise to it and not give you that look. So, this is why I tend not to work on flashing moves a lot because you're going to have a very limited amount of opportunities to actually get feedback from them. That's why I'm a big fan of the kimora because I can hit the kima everywhere. So, I have pretty much near infinite opportunities to hit a kimora anytime during a match, right? Um, but if you are working on something that's a little harder to do, you're going to have to try to put yourself in that situation to get as many uh repetitions. And one of the ways that you can get more opportunities to do a move live is to do situational drills. Or let's say you say, "Okay, you know what? We're going to start from a head and side single leg." Well, now he's already got one leg. I just have to be able to jump over the other leg and I can get like a flying triangle. So, I can force a situation or like do a situational drill, which is a is part live, part scripted, but I'm going to get more opportunities to go for this move and then get some real feedback versus just starting from neutral where it might be very difficult to get into like a very um niche position for the move that you're working on, right? So hopefully that breakdown of the four phases of learning makes sense and you can apply it in into your training to get better results.