The Adaptable Athlete Podcast

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This episode is a different format from our usual show. It's Ian Renshaw's acceptance speech for the Emergence Lifetime Achievement Award in Movement and Skill Acquisition, recorded live and shared here in full.

Ian is an Adjunct Associate Professor at Queensland University of Technology and one of the most respected names in the constraint-led approach. He has spent over 30 years teaching and researching across England, New Zealand, and Australia, co-edited books with Keith Davids, and co-founded The Constraints Collective.

In his own words, he walks through:

• Backyard football and cricket, and how unstructured play shaped his coaching
• Why drills built in isolation don't transfer to the game
• The move from information processing to ecological psychology
• A homemade experiment with a fake umpire on a cricket pitch
• Meeting Keith Davids and the research years at QUT
• Coaching his own son to a professional cricket career

If you coach or work in skill acquisition, this is a direct look at how a pioneer in the field built his career.

Resources:

• The Constraints Collective
• Emergence
• Certified Skill Acquisition Specialist (CSAS)
• 2026 Skill Acquisition Retreat, November 6 in Chandler, AZ

Credits: Song- "Starstruck" by Freebeats.io

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Is speed a capacity, or a skill? Most coaching treats them as the same thing, and that's where the gap starts.

• Speed as a capacity, not an outcome: why a stopwatch measures something real, but not the thing that actually shows up in a game
• Speed through the constraints triangle: task, environment, and individual, why the same physical capacity looks completely different depending on the sport, the surface, and the athlete standing in front of you
• Speed as problem-solving: why raw speed without perception is an incomplete tool, and why some of the fastest testers never make it in their sport

A short, direct episode on a topic almost every coach thinks they already understand.

Join us this November in Chandler, Arizona for the Skill Acquisition Retreat, and stay the next day for CSAS testing, the Certified Skill Acquisition Specialist certification.

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Podcast website: theadaptableathlete.com

 Emergence: emergentmvmt.com

Follow along: @thecoachjav on Instagram

Credits: Song- "Starstruck" by Freebeats.io

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What if skill isn't something an athlete has, but something a moment gives them?

This episode pulls together three conversations that each answer a piece of that question, more directly than any single guest could get to on their own.

• What skill actually is: Duarte Araújo defines skill as potential, not possession, using an example from Neil Armstrong's first steps on the moon to show how the same person moves completely differently depending on their circumstances
• The mechanism underneath it: Alan Dunton breaks down metastability, the concept explaining why staying adaptable between states, rather than locked into one ideal pattern, is what makes skill possible in the first place
• What it looks like in practice: Garrett Baker, skill acquisition specialist with the New York Mets, explains why he trains pitchers with more variability before working toward stability, the reverse of what most coaching assumes

Definition, mechanism, application. Three different sports, three different guests, one throughline.

This one's for coaches and practitioners who've felt the tension between what "good technique" is supposed to look like and what actually holds up under real competitive pressure.

Guests referenced in this episode:

• Duarte Araújo — full conversation in Ep 113, Why Athletes Don't "Acquire" Skill, They Adapt It
• Alan Dunton — full conversation in Ep 112, What Is Metastability, Making Theory Practical
• Garrett Baker, skill acquisition specialist, New York Mets — full conversation in Ep 109, Breaking Free from Perfect Mechanics

Join us this November in Chandler, Arizona for the Skill Acquisition Retreat. Garrett Baker, featured in today's episode, will be one of the practitioners on site the next day for CSAS testing, the Certified Skill Acquisition Specialist certification.

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Credits: Song- "Starstruck" by Freebeats.io

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What happens when a strength coach spends nine years unlearning everything she was taught about "correct" technique?

Molly Binetti is the Women's Basketball Sports Performance coach at the University of South Carolina, where she's built a program around a really high player availability rate and a training philosophy that runs counter to how most strength coaches are taught to operate. She brings a variability-driven, athlete-centered approach to a field that still leans heavily on uniform technique and control, and the conversation goes deep on movement, motivation, and the limits of data.

Topics covered:

• Why "pretty" isn't the goal — the case against cookie cutter technique cues and what actually happens when athletes are allowed to move differently
• Rebuilding her coaching philosophy — what changed after her first year at South Carolina and why the dictator coaching model didn't work
• Self-determination theory — the three psychological needs behind real athlete buy-in, and why most coaching problems are human, not technical
• Variability as injury prevention — how training in a wider range of positions plays into her program's track record on player health
• A contrarian take on tech — why she's skeptical of force plates, GPS, and the broader data obsession in strength and conditioning

If you coach in a setting where "the way we've always done it" gets treated as fact, this conversation is worth your time.

Find Molly on Instagram @mbinetti22.

Don't forget to join us in Arizona for the Skill Acquisition Retreat!

If you want to go deeper on skill acquisition, check out the Certified Skill Acquisition Specialist certification over at emergentmvmt.com.

Free Modern Coach's Checklist

Credits: Song- "Starstruck" by Freebeats.io

Let's Chat!

 Twitter: @thecoachjav

 IG: @thecoachjav

Credits: Song- "Starstruck" by Freebeats.io

Let's Chat!
Twitter: @thecoachjav
IG: @thecoachjav

Send us Fan Mail

What does it actually mean to train a boxer to be adaptable when the most representative practice, hard sparring, also causes permanent damage?

Adam Haniver is a boxing coach and England Boxing DISE program lead who's spent years working through exactly that tension. He brings an ecological dynamics lens to a sport that has historically treated tradition as gospel, and the conversation goes deep on skill acquisition, affordances, and what most boxing training gets fundamentally wrong.

Topics covered:

• "Anything but the thing" — why most boxing training is unopposed, decomposed, and doesn't transfer to competition
• Perceive to act AND act to perceive — how the best boxers generate opportunities rather than wait for them
• The GAP framework (Great, Average, Poor) as a tool for athlete-directed intention before sparring
• Teaching boxers to punch versus teaching them to land — why these are two completely different things
• Naseem Hamed and Brendan Ingle as examples of what freedom in movement actually produces
• Play sparring, head trauma, and how to build representativeness without increasing injury risk

If you coach in any combat or contact sport and you're thinking through how to square representative practice with athlete safety, this conversation is worth your time.

Find Adam at www.theboxgathering.com and on the Box Gathering Podcast on all platforms. England Boxing DISE program: @dice_boxing_brighton on socials.

Don't forget to join us in Arizona for the Skill Acquisition Retreat!

If you want to go deeper on skill acquisition, check out the Certified Skill Acquisition Specialist certification over at emergentmvmt.com.

Free Modern Coach's Checklist

Credits: Song- "Starstruck" by Freebeats.io

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Nine years in, and the "room" for SMSC keeps getting smarter every year. This one landed three genuinely different debates, a set of award winners worth knowing, and a founder's-eye view of what the conference has become.

Coach Jav starts us off with some quick takeaways from a busy month of June traveling across the country, presenting at various conferences and events, before turning to his main reflection on SMSC 2026. Then Shawn Myszka, founder of the Sport Movement Skill Conference, gives his own take on this year's event and what's ahead for 2027.

• Altis and the NHL: Where capacities fit in athlete development, and what a full day with 30-plus NHL and AHL coaches revealed about translating skill acquisition into a pro environment
• Questioning industry claims: Why the industry needs to audit ideas it treats as settled, using the SMSC debate stage as the case study
• SMSC 2026 debates: What came out of this year's public debates, where they landed, and where they didn't
• Award winners: This year's Lifetime Achievement, Researcher of the Year, and Practitioner of the Year recipients
• The challenge point: This year's conference theme, and what it actually means to get pushed to the edge and stay there
• Shawn Myszka's reflection: Nine years in, what's changed, and a first look at where SMSC is headed for 2027

For coaches and practitioners trying to figure out where skill acquisition actually fits inside a performance organization, not just in theory.

🎟 The next CSAS testing is November 7 in Chandler, Arizona. Learn more and apply.

Shawn Myszka | Instagram | Twitter

Resources

The Adaptable Athlete

Coach Jav on Instagram

Emergence

Free Modern Coach's Checklist

Let's Chat! Twitter: @thecoachjav IG: @thecoachjav

Credits: Song- "Starstruck" by Freebeats.io

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IG: @thecoachjav

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You can't talk a fighter into confidence. And if you've been trying, Andy Grahn has been quietly building it the right way for 30 years.

Andy Grahn is a martial arts coach at The Academy MN in Minneapolis, a co-author of the 2024 ecological dynamics MMA paper in Sports Coaching Review, and one of a small group of combat sports coaches actively applying motor learning science to what happens on the mat. This conversation covers how he got there and what it actually looks like in practice.

• Competence before confidence: Why telling athletes to "just be more confident" doesn't work, and what the ecological approach says about how confidence actually develops
• Alive training in combat sports: What representative practice looks like in an MMA gym, how Andy navigates the line between safety and specificity, and why sparring is still the anchor
• The partner probability paradox: How to design practice when you don't have the right training partner, and what constraints-led coaching looks like when the pairing isn't ideal
• JKD to ecological dynamics: The philosophical thread connecting Bruce Lee's framework to Gibson's ecological psychology, and how Andy's background primed him for the shift
• Writing the paper: What it was like to co-author peer-reviewed research as a practitioner alongside Keith Davids and the rest of the team

For coaches in any sport trying to build real skill, not just clean-looking technique.

🎟 Listeners of the podcast receive 10% off the Sport Movement Skill Conference (June 5–6 in St. Paul, Minnesota) using code JAVI26 at registration.

Andy Grahn | The Academy MN

The Academy MN

Instagram

Facebook

Applying an Ecological Dynamics Approach to Mixed Martial Arts

Resources

The Adaptable Athlete

Coach Jav on Instagram

Emergence

Free Modern Coach's Checklist

Credits: Song- "Starstruck" by Freebeats.io

Let's Chat!
Twitter: @thecoachjav
IG: @thecoachjav

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The best pass rusher in NFL history didn't break the sack record because he's fast. He broke it while being double or triple-teamed on more than half his snaps.

Shawn Myszka returns for the annual Mover of the Year episode. This year's pick: Myles Garrett of the Cleveland Browns. But this conversation isn't about stats. It's about what Garrett's movement actually tells us about dexterity, practice design, and how athletes solve problems under pressure.

• Dexterity vs. athleticism: Why raw physical tools don't explain Garrett's dominance, and what Bernstein's framework reveals about how he actually moves
• Abundance precedes adaptability: How having a wide range of movement strategies, not one elite technique, is what separates Garrett from every other pass rusher
• Perceiving to and through: How elite performers take in multiple information sources simultaneously, with examples from football, basketball, and combat sports
• Adversity as a teacher: What Barry Sanders and Adrian Peterson tell us about how constraint-rich environments shape movement skill over time
• What Movement Miyagi would do: Three specific practice design ideas for developing Garrett's perceptual and movement capabilities even further

For coaches working at any level, in any sport.

Listeners of the podcast can receive 10% off the upcoming Sport Movement Skill Conference (June 5–6 in St. Paul, Minnesota) using the code Javi26 when registering.

Shawn Myszka | Movement Miyagi

Football Beyond the Stats Blog

2025 Mover of the Year: Myles Garrett

Enhancing Skill in American Football

X | Instagram

Resources

The Adaptable Athlete

Emergence

Free Modern Coach's Checklist 

Credits: Song- "Starstruck" by Freebeats.io

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Twitter: @thecoachjav
IG: @thecoachjav

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NBA shooting coach Dave Love has spent over 15 years working at the highest level of basketball, with the Phoenix Suns, Cleveland Cavaliers, Orlando Magic, Dallas Mavericks, and currently an Eastern Conference team. He's also one of the few practitioners at that level actively contributing to peer-reviewed research.

In this episode, Dave and Coach Jav dig into why the pursuit of a repeatable, perfect shot is the wrong goal entirely and what coaches should be focused on instead. They break down the sandbox analogy, the PoST framework, how to design practice that actually reflects the game, and how to meet athletes where they are when introducing evidence-based methods.

If you coach shooting at any level, this one is worth your time.

Topics covered:

• No two shots are the same — and why chasing a repeatable shot is the wrong goal
• The sandbox analogy — how Dave thinks about functional movement solutions and what it means to be in or out of the sandbox
• Positive and negative power — his framework for identifying what's actually causing a player to miss
• The PoST framework — how to periodize skill training the way you would strength or conditioning
• Practice design and the challenge point — using defenders with intention and building variability into every session
• Meeting athletes where they are — how to introduce ecological principles to players attached to traditional methods

Listeners of the podcast can receive 10% off the upcoming Sport Movement Skill Conference (June 5–6 in St. Paul, Minnesota) using the code Javi26 when registering.

Links:

• Dave's platform and newsletter
• Research paper: "Skill Adaptation in Basketball Coaching" International Journal of Sports Science & Coaching, 2025
• Sport Movement Skill Conference (use code JAVI26 for 10% off)
• Dave on X
• Dave on instagram
• Podcast website
• Emergence

Credits: Song- "Starstruck" by Freebeats.io

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Use Code: Javi26 for 10% off of your SMSC registration 🎟️

In this "Ask Emergence" episode, Coach Jav answers three questions from coaches about skill acquisition, constraints, and practice design.

The conversation starts with a foundational question: What is skill?

 Too often skill is viewed as repetition or the ability to reproduce the same movement over and over. But in sport, athletes must adapt to constantly changing problems. Coach Jav shares his current definition of skill and why adaptability is central to performance.

The episode then explores how coaches can use constraints to shape movement and guide athletes toward effective solutions without prescribing every action.

Finally, Coach Jav discusses how to think about complexity in training environments, why he prefers that term over “chaos,” and how coaches can scale the level of complexity to better prepare athletes for competition.

Listeners of the podcast can receive 10% off the upcoming Sport Movement Skill Conference (June 5–6 in St. Paul, Minnesota) using the code Javi26 when registering.

In This Episode

• A modern definition of skill and why repetition alone is not enough
• How constraints guide movement and decision making in sport
• How to scale complexity in training environments to better prepare athletes for competition

Episode Resources

• Sport Movement Skill Conference
• Emergence Website
• Check out The Modern Coach’s Planner
• SMSC preview episode with Sean Myszka
• The Adaptable Athlete Podcast
• Check out the pod on YouTube

Credits: Song- "Starstruck" by Freebeats.io

Let's Chat!
Twitter: @thecoachjav
IG: @thecoachjav