A long time ago I recall watching this Ted talk on how endurance athletes train.

The speaker went on about how in his studies he found the high-level endurance athletes spent majority of their time training in zone 2.

Now on one particular day after working, the speaker himself went for a run. On the trail he bumped into an athlete he studied and noticed that they walked up the hills.

He asked them why and they responded with something along the the lines of, “I don’t want to burn myself out, so I walk up the hills that are extra steep, and run up the minor ones.”

And by minor ones the runner was referring to what we would normally call bumps in the road.

Not only do the top athletes have most of their sessions in the moderate to hard range, they would make sure to avoid even 30-40 second spikes into the intense range level during a workout.

They understand that even if they are pushing hard for only 30 seconds, it has lasting effects…

You see, I think we look at skill development wrong.

Today it’s seen as a challenge…a series of rungs on a ladder…a mountain to climb.

And as you progress you are to leave behind the tasks and actions of the previous levels.

I think this is wrong.

This framing is what keeps the majority from starting and the others from progressing.

The reason it’s hard for you to achieve your goals is because you make long plans that have the holy grail atop a giant mountain causing your mind to fixate on the mountain instead of the path.

With two eyes on the mountain, what are you going to use to guide you along the path?

You’re going to unnecessarily trip on sticks, bump into trees, and stumble down hills.

And how are you going to see where to place your hands and feet when you have to climb a wall you can’t go around?

I realize that every skill I have ever gotten really good at, I got good at fast, and I didn’t do it by creating a series of levels to climb. I kind of did the exact opposite to be honest.

I was thinking about this the other day and wanted to give to you, my philosophy of skill acquisition and mastery.

The Philosophy

Like most things in life my approach to learning anything is open ended and leisurely.

I try to shed my pre-judgements and see it as a new world to explore rather than a one way road up a mountain.

I try to have an empty cup-as they say.

I see mastery like a giant garden.

At the center the fountain represents mastery, but before gunning it straight to the fountain, I like to walk around side paths, explore, and get ‘lost’.

Then I turn my sights to the fountain.

Greasing the Gears

If you have ever had your head buried in the exercise world you have likely heard of the concept of greasing the gears.

Greasing the gears is a concept used to get good at any particular movement fast.

It prioritizes consistency over intensity.

The concept of greasing the gears is simple:

Do what you want to be good at in small focused bouts often.

I first heard of it when I wanted to improve my pull-ups.

I set up a pull-up in my door way and anytime I passed by it, I would do 4-6 pull-ups.

Within a week I could rep out 20 no problem.

Within a month, 35.

I know what you’re thinking:

This is easy for a basic skill that involves one movement or has little moving parts like pull-ups, but what about more complex skills and ones that don’t involve athletics?

Well in short, it works the same.

First you need to understand these 2 types of actions:

Foundational Actions:

The first type of action you need to understand are the foundational ones.

These are the principle movements, the basics, or another way to think about them are as the minimum viable actions that are easy for you to do-right now.

So you can understand how this works in a complex skill with more possibilities and moving parts, I’ll use the example of bouldering as most everyone can understand it.

Let’s say at your local rock-climbing gym there are 20 possible climbs all ranked at levels ranging from v1 (easiest) to v8 (hardest).

At your current level you can do all the climbs up to v3 except a few particular v3s that have special movements.

The foundational actions in this case would, be all the climbs you can do with a special focus on the ‘easy’ v3s and the harder v2s.

Now you may be thinking, how is this not hypocritical to the opening point that, I am against the idea of leaving behind actions from previous levels.

The thing is, there are basic actions that you don’t have to do once you surpass them as they’re encapsulated by other actions in the progressing levels.

However there is an action threshold, that no matter what level you are at you shouldn’t ignore.

Using the pull-up example:

If you can do 10 bodyweight pull-ups you can ignore the basic action of eccentric pull-ups.

On the flipside, if you can do 10 weighted pull-ups you should still never ignore bodyweight pull-ups as they lay beyond the threshold of what should be ignored.

Novel Actions:

Novel actions are the actions that are apart of the next ‘level’.

The actions you have yet to try or have tried and failed at.

It’s important to note that although every action beyond your current level is considered a Novel Action, you should only be looking a few steps in front of you.

Going back to the rock-climbing example, these are the v3s you can’t do and the v4s.

The Unconventional Approach

Sessions:

Now that you know the 2 types of actions, you can understand the unconventional approach to skill development.

In short:

Spend majority of your time perfecting the foundational actions.

In more specific terms:

Spend about 80% of each session (and total time) on the foundational actions, spend the other 20% of the time on novel actions.

The percentages can and should slightly vary depending on how you feel.

The other thing to take into account is to split up the novel actions with foundational ones.

Novel actions are taxing on both the mind and body.

Doing them less and splitting them up with foundational actions allows you to have proper rest so you can focus when performing the novel actions.

To illustrate both points…

I’ll use rock-climbing once again:

Let’s say you’re going in for your session to do a total of 10 climbs.

Your first 2 climbs will be foundational actions consisting of the harder v2s and the v3s you can do.

Your next climb will be a novel action such as a v3 you can’t do, a v4, or even a v5.

Despite not knowing if you’re able to complete the novel action, try as if you can. If you give it your best shot you may surprise yourself, and even if you fail you’ll still learn much.

Here is where variability depending on how you feel comes in:

If you are feeling good, then try the same climb or try a different one that is still considered a novel action.

If you are feeling okay, then return to a foundational action. Until climb 6 or 7 at which point you should try a novel action again.

If you are feeling bad, then either stick to foundational actions the whole session or throw one novel action in mid-session.

See below to understand possible session variability:

Across Sessions:

Over the total time you spend developing the skill, the ratio of time spent between foundational actions and novel actions should come to roughly 80:20.

Naturally however you will notice that your sessions tend to organize themselves in a specific manner:

For sake of example lets assume you only spend a total of 10 practice sessions on a skill.

What you’ll likely notice-assuming you’re completely new-is the first 1-3 session will be completely novel actions, and as you progress these novel actions will end up being your foundational actions.

Sessions 4-8 will be where you see the most progress. Here you will still spend a good portion of your session on novel movements. However, these novel actions are starting to be beyond the threshold I spoke of earlier.

Then you move onto sessions 9 and 10. These sessions will likely be more chilled out. You may only pursue 1 or 2 novel actions per session and you’ll spend most of your time perfecting the foundational actions, solidifying and broadening your base.

Why this Works

I wrote this thinking about my personal experience.

But, there is a quote by Bruce Lee that entails this philosophy quite well:

To visualize it:

Think of a road with bumps.

The total length of the road is the skill.

The foundational movements are smaller bumps, but take up a longer portion of the road.

The novel actions are bigger bumps, but take up a shorter length of the road.

Each time you practice, you’re taking a roller compactor to the road.

The more road that is smoothed out, the closer you are to mastery:

As I’ve worked through the letter I recall two more examples of other more successful people using this approach:

Endurance athlete champions-who I spoke of in the intro.

And high level wrestlers and fighters-who require a great understanding and development of technical skills.

Professionals Fighters:

For this example I want you to look at this short clip of Firas Zahabi, the man behind GSP:

If you watch the whole podcast you will see he spoke of the Russian vs American wrestling philosophies.

The Russians would win majority of the matches yet spend most their time training at a less intense pace.

The Americans on the other hand would go hard majority of their time.

Important Notice

I don’t want you to read this and think you should never have a session in which you train super intensely.

There are times where you’ll have to push beyond your current limits to break through a plateau and for enjoyment of the learning process.

What I am simply saying is:

Consistency outpaces intensity.

Get as many reps in as possible, build your foundation, then come in every once in a while and have a session that makes you want to bang your head against a wall.

Now before leaving you today, I want to give you a science backed protocol to follow that will upgrade your practice sessions and allow you to progress faster:

The Science Backed Protocol

There are 3 parts:

1. Replay

2. Adrenaline

3. Rest

Replay:

After your session, close your eyes for 5 minutes and let your mind do what it wants.

Subconsciously your brain will replay your practice session backwards.

Though it’s not known 100% why it does this, there is an idea that it allows you to better understand and solidify what just happened by looking at it from a different perspective.

Adrenaline:

The next step is to spike your adrenaline.

Adrenaline helps you remember the events leading up to adrenaline spike.

The evolutionary purpose behind this is:

Imagine seeing signs leading up to a bear encounter such as scratch marks on bark and broken branches, then turning a corner, seeing a bear, and having to run for your life (or faster than the person you’re with).

Your adrenaline spikes when you see the bear, but the important things to remember to avoid this from happening again are the signs you saw beforehand.

Now I don’t expect you to go out looking for a bear.

Rather try a cold shower, high paced breathwork like Wim Hof breathing or fire breath.

A cup of coffee works well for those who get an energy boost but not the jitters.

Rest:

Finally you have to let your brain and body rest, so they can build pathways that make the work you put in second nature.

If you did the session before bedtime, then go to sleep.

Otherwise take a nap or follow along to a guided non-sleep-deep-rest.

This protocol isn’t necessary.

I’m sure you have learned a skill before without using this 3 step plan.

But if you have the time, I highly recommend employing this to improve the quality of each practice session.

Wrapping things up

I think pushing yourself to your max 100% of the time does more harm than good.

Yes, push yourself to progress, but don’t kill yourself in the process.

Over doing it will lead to you back tracking.

Be leisure, be relaxed, think of it as an exploration of the skill.

It’s makes it more enjoyable and keeps you from having one eye stuck on the far away mountain, while traversing the path leading up to it.

In the end this is what has worked for me in everything from taekwondo, to rock-climbing, to guitar, and so on.

There was of course the pre-requisite that I had to show up and practice.

The most optimized plan in the world doesn’t matter if you don’t show up.

Thank you for reading!

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Until next time…

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