Taylor Reed on Coach Your Brains Out Podcast: Skill Acquisition and Climbing

I joined John Mayer, head beach volleyball coach at Loyola Marymount University, on his Coach Your Brains Out podcast. The podcast is designed to dig into the specifics of coaching, and as a novice climber himself, John was interested in learning from a coach outside his chosen sport—volleyball. The topics we discussed are below. Skip past the podcast to get a short recap of each topic.

• Ecological dynamics and my evolution of coaching
• Skill periodization and manipulating challenge
• Affordances and exploration
• Movement efficiency and variability
• Implicit vs. explicit learning and coaching communication
• Psychological pressure, autonomy, and challenge points

• Ecological dynamics and the evolution of coaching: Helping athletes explore movement solutions that fit their bodies, abilities, and the climbing environment, while considering when more explicit or prescriptive coaching may be useful.
• Skill periodization and manipulating challenge: Developing skills over time by adjusting the complexity, stability, and representativeness dials (rather than just the difficulty dial) and stages of skill development (coordination –> variability –> performance optimization).
• Affordances and exploration: Helping climbers perceive opportunities for action in the environment and using tasks, constraints, and exploration to develop their ability to find movement solutions.
• Movement efficiency and variability: Exploring different ways to become more efficient—from revisiting climbs and refining movement across attempts to manipulating constraints, varying movement solutions, and chaining sequences more fluidly.
• Implicit vs. explicit learning and coaching communication: Balancing instruction, feedback, and cueing with opportunities for athletes to discover solutions themselves—particularly to manage cognitive load and reduce the potential for reinvestment under pressure.
• Psychological pressure, autonomy, and challenge points: Using athlete choice, gradual exposure, breathing, visualization, self-talk, and adjustments to the challenge point to help athletes work through fear and pressure.