Today’s episode features Feldenkrais practitioner and human movement specialist, Edward Yu. Edward is a former triathlete, current martial arts enthusiast, and perennial student of Masters Li Xueyi and Ge Guoliang in the art of Bagua. Edward has worked with members of the US Olympic Track Team as well as those in the Portuguese National Ballet. Edward is also the author of “Slowing Down to Run Faster” the impetus of which came years after Edward quit running and discovered that conventional approaches to training are not always effective in turning people into better athletes. Edward’s interest in how people learn and process information has led him to mix the disparate fields of sports, martial arts, dance, psychology, cognitive science, information theory, and political economy into both his teaching and writing.
Learning about human movement and the acquisition of technique in sport skill has been an incredible, yet humbling journey for me. After hearing cue after cue from coaches that never worked, I was always looking into how we actually process and acquire skills as human beings. Two areas that I’ve dipped my toe into that I feel are vastly under-appreciated in sports performance are the martial arts, and then the world of movement through sensory awareness (such as the Feldenkrais method).
Today’s podcast is all about exploring human movement and sport technique from a wider lens. On the show, Edward and I cover many aspects that are particularly human when working on sport skills, such as over-trying, self-sabotage and motivational factors. Edwards also gets into his ideas on our sensory and motor development has humans, how our skills as adults hinge on things we need to learn as children, and how understanding that can lead us into new territory when it comes to guiding athletes to their optimal technique.
Today’s episode is brought to you by SimpliFaster, supplier of high-end athletic development tools, such as the Freelap timing system, kBox, Sprint 1080, and more.
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Timestamps and Main Points
6:25 Why people lose the joy of running and turn the action into a shuffle 13:25 The roots of “too much effort” in training and competition and how to combat it 21:55 How adult human beings self-sabotage their movements versus the purity of movements in children 34:40 How to look at motivation in context of our own movement practice, as well as learning to be easier on ourselves 43:10 How to improve one’s technique by learning to “slow down to run faster” 55:55 Ideas on exercises that can foster better learning in regards to running 1:08.25 How to use the slowing down method to gain awareness of the feet in running“If you don’t feel powerful (running), you aren’t going to enjoy it very much”
“We have a culture that’s really heavy handed with using will power and discipline and pushing to try and get results”
“I think if we look at the individual without looking at culture, and political economy, we are missing a lot. You have to look at both together”
“The self-sabotage in our culture has a lot to do with habits. If you just removed (the chair (from our culture) you gain a lot of advantages”
“If something is not learned in childhood, it is going to affect all more advanced/directed movement in the future. If we don’t go back and try to learn those fundaments, they will not be as efficient as they could be in the future”
“The potential for learning is not as vast (in animals versus for humans)”
“To learn to fun faster, you need to know what it means to learn”
“The way we are often coached is to try to imitate the ideal, but you can’t imitate what you don’t know in your own body”
“The fundaments for learning appear from the time we exit the womb, to the time we are 6,7,8, and a lot of that happens on the ground. It is very powerful to go on the ground, and explore movement in many different configurations and various constraints on the ground”
“You are always trying to introduce novelty and patterns in the mind”
“The nervous system can only handle so much novelty at one moment”
“You can reduce the noise by slowing down dramatically. Slowing down does that, getting on the floor does that even more”
“I do that with runners, you test something on the floor, and then you use some of those cues to play with while you are running”
“You can really only pay attention fully to one thing at a time”
“One way (to have more awareness of your feet) is to use your hands to feel the metatarsals”
About Edward Yu
Edward Yu is a former triathlete, current martial arts enthusiast, and perennial student of Masters Li Xueyi and Ge Guoliang in the art of Bagua, a.k.a. Baguazhang. Along with studying Bagua and Taichi, he has sampled enough boxing, kickboxing, and judo to know that sometimes it’s better to run for your life. Edward’s interest in how people learn and process information has led him to mix the disparate fields of sports, martial arts, dance, psychology, cognitive science, information theory, and political economy into both his teaching and writing. Edward has worked with members of the US Olympic Track Team as well as those in the Portuguese National Ballet (Companhia Nacional do Bailado).
Edward is the author of “Slowing Down to Run Faster” the impetus of which came years after Edward quit running and discovered that conventional approaches to training are not always effective in turning people into better athletes (even if they are often effective in making them discouraged and neurotic). In his free time, Edward likes to roll on the floor, walk in circles, and stare into space.
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