Today's podcast is with Tyler Yearby. Tyler is the co-founder and director of education at Emergence, a leading company in sport movement and skill development education. He is a Former NCAA strength coach who has delivered over 200 domestic & international continuing education courses, workshops, and conference presentations in 12 countries. Tyler has worked with a wide range of athletes, from youth to professional, and is currently pursuing his doctorate in sport and exercise at the University of Gloucestershire (UK).

Sport (and the subset of physical training) is defined by how we build and adapt skills over time. Ultimately, both the joy of movement and its eventual mastery are rooted in motor learning and skill acquisition. The sign of coaching where these elements are applied effectively is not just "using textbook principles" but, more so, a total feeling of aliveness and joy in the process of mastery. This is where learning and skill acquisition transcends being something learned in a classroom and is a regular, interactive experience on the part of the coach and athlete.

For today's podcast, Tyler goes into important topics that cross the worlds of motor learning and coaching in general. He discusses his take on learning "the fundamentals" for athletes, the significance of "prompts" over traditional "commands" during training sessions, and explores these ideas for both the weight room and sports skills alike. Tyler also delves into the concept of self-organization, examining when it's beneficial and when it could hinder performance. This fantastic conversation has implications for both strength and skill coaches or anyone who wants to understand movement and skill building on a deeper level.

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Timestamps and Main Points

3:15 – Some recent developments with Tyler in his trajectory into the motor learning and skill development aspects of athletic performance

4:37 – The “donor sport” viability of “rough-housing,” free play type activities, such as tackle-basketball

9:40 – How Tyler has learned about learning and skill development from being a father

13:59 – Tyler’s take on the “fundamentals” and what that actually means in movement mechanics and training

20:10 – Prompts and open-ended questions versus commands in a coaching and learning situation

35:29 – Exploring squat and jump-based movements, considering the principle of a base of support

39:17 – How do we know if an athlete’s self-organization strategies continue to help them or if they may be stagnating/using detrimental self-organization and need another form of coaching intervention?

52:25 – Tyler’s doctorate work and the perceived impact and value of education of ecological dynamics in coaching

Tyler Yearby Quotes

“A lot of times a game is co-created with (kids), and it is designed for them to fall in love with movement”

“I’ve learned to be more patient (of a coach) as a father”

“(On the level of teaching the 'fundamentals' to athletes) I want them to create a functional fit with an environment, which means starting from a point where they can orient their degrees of freedom, what their thoughts are, and what they are intending to do in a situation”