The Science of Learning to Move with Dr. Rob Gray

In this weeks episode of The Evidence Based Pole Podcast, we are joined by Rob Gray, Associate Professor of Human Systems Engineering at Arizona State University. We dive into interesting topics such as: Major findings from motor learning/skill and feedback acquisition and how to apply them in your day-to-day practice, and Why just repeating a movement is NOT the best way to learn. 

We explore how we must evolve our movement to account for changing environments so we have skills that are applicable in many faucets of performance and practice. We go into the idea of kindness to ourselves and find internal motivation for movement and change for our bodies longevity and safety. 

Link to podcast: https://perceptionaction.com/episode-list-2/

Link to website: https://perceptionaction.com/

Book "How we learn to move": https://perceptionaction.com/book/

Slink Through Strength Email Sign Up:  ⁠http://eepurl.com/iimjnX⁠

Join pole instructor & personal trainer Rosy Boa as she chats with experts about the evidence-based practices you can introduce to your pole journey to improve your pole journey and feel better. The Evidence-Based Pole Podcast aims to help pole dancers feel better on and off the pole by talking with experts and diving into relevant scientific research to find evidence-based insights we can apply to our pole journeys. It’s a production of Slink Through Strength, the inclusive, evidence-based online pole studio, which can be found online at slinkthroughstrength.com.

Edited by: Simone Rossette 

Simone.rossette77@gmail.com

Transcript:

00:00 thanks so much for joining today poll dancer this podcast is a production of slink through strength the inclusive

00:07 evidence-based online pole studio so if you're looking for a place to train either off pole conditioning and

00:13 flexibility or learning poll tricks and refining your pole movement uh you can find us online at slink through

00:19 strength.com welcome uh to an episode that I'm very

00:24 excited about uh I'm joined today by Dr Rob gray uh who is no associate

00:30 professor at Arizona State University if you're wondering what ASU is um for those of you who are watching the video version uh who uh Works in perception

00:39 and action which uh is also you might be able to tell from the name of his

00:45 podcast which is the perception and action podcast is it is it an ampersand or Dash and yeah it's Ampersand is it's

00:53 a bit of controversial but whether you what you put in between them yeah well

00:58 and I'll I'll link that down in the show notes if you want to want to go take a listen um but do you want to talk a

01:04 little bit about what it is you research um just sort of like the field because I

01:10 think a lot of people have probably not run across motor learning as a field before um or have only like heard the

01:15 term and been like people study that surprise yes um and then we'll we'll dig

01:20 down in a little bit about how specifically this might be relevant to poll answers yeah so my my area is yeah as

01:28 you said motor learning sometimes called skill acquisition is understanding how

01:33 we learn or acquire kind of skills that involve some movement component so not

01:39 not how we learn to read or how we learn math how we learn to ride a bike run play tennis dance um so understanding

01:47 what are the best ways to achieve that in terms of what how we practice what kind of feedback we get what we tell an

01:54 athlete um so kind of studying all those factors so I've been doing the research on that for years and since then I I

02:01 apply I work in a lot I work mainly in baseball now but I also work with martial arts fencing some Olympic sports

02:08 so it's kind of people have recognized there's kind of a science to this and there's ways we can get more out of the

02:14 trying what we're trying to do is get more out of the practice time make it more efficient um and rather than kind

02:21 of us wasting a lot of practice yeah oh and I think as someone who has like a

02:28 little bit more of a dance background I know many of my listeners do as well um when I was learning in grad school I

02:33 took some motor learning courses and I was really surprised because what the

02:38 research suggests is an efficient use of time is very different from what the

02:43 tradition particularly of dance um tends to gravitate towards um so do you want

02:50 to talk a little bit about sort of the major major findings of motor learning in particular ones that may not be super

02:55 intuitive to people yeah so the the kind of the the like to contrast kind the traditional

03:01 way and we're still taught in a lot of sports is is the idea of that there's

03:06 one correct way to do things one correct technique uh you know whether it's swinging the golf club or a dance and

03:14 the way we best way we learn that is through repetition we keep trying to do it over and over Coach corrects us and

03:20 gives it we make any errors and we're really starting to move away from that

03:26 as a field to allow for much more individual let people do add their own

03:33 individual into it um giving instead of a coach being an instructor that tells

03:38 the athlete everything to do we letting the practice environment do the talking for us morly giving people more U

03:45 opportunity to be creative adaptable things like that so that's kind of where where it's moving for sure yeah

03:52 definitely um and thinking about you know what sorts of feedback you know as

03:60 a learner you might get so if there's not like one right way to do things and like we're trying to like shove everybody into the exact same cookie

04:06 cutter um you know thinking about how do you know if you're being successful

04:12 someone's not telling you and some things I think are a little bit easier to measure right so like in baseball you

04:17 want the ball to go really far I'm not a big baseball person but I'm pretty sure that's important um whereas in things like

04:24 maybe martial arts or dance um the the target might be a little bit less easy

04:30 right cuz like maybe you want to dance really maybe you want to jump really high for example maybe you want to you

04:35 know climb the pole but like is it are you being successful if you climb really fast are you being successful if you climb it with like a certain quality of

04:42 movement um so do you want to talk a little bit about how feedback systems play into this right because if some if

04:48 someone's not telling you like this is right this is wrong how do you know if you don't have like an easy thing to measure yeah yeah dance and you know

04:56 things like gymnastics are a bit more challenging I think because right there is a form component to it

05:02 like in baseball you can do if you swing with one hand two hands as long as you hit it hard it doesn't matter whereas in

05:08 gymnastics and dance it does matter right there's a certain form you want to have um so we try to you know in

05:15 feedback one of the basic principles we've that's though you mentioned non-intuitive we tend to give athletes

05:21 uh and performers lots of what we call internal feedback we direct them their attention to what their body's doing

05:28 you're bending your knee too much standing here what the bulk of motor learning research has shown is that's

05:34 very uh kind of not the best way to do things it kind of makes people once they start thinking about how they're moving

05:40 it makes them very mechanical and robotic what would much better is get them thinking externally well how their

05:47 their movement is affecting things you know the forces they're generating on the ground how they're they're you know

05:53 the objects they're moving and interacting with so that's one of the kind of things we principles of feedback

05:58 we try to allow to try to rules we try to use um but yeah and we this kind of

06:05 new view we don't let the athlete just do whatever they want we do obviously have certain kind of like a bandwidth

06:11 like I I like to think of it this is the what we're going to allow within that we're going to let you kind of be a

06:17 little more creative and in individual beyond that yeah definitely and I think

06:24 it's it's also a skill that you know you can learn and you can learn easier with more scaffolding like where in here can

06:31 I be like where are the the boundaries so again a poll example um inverting right a thing a lot of f dancers want to

06:37 do think full dancers a lot of them do do it there's lots of ways to get upside down but

06:43 like when are you like how much do you need to do to successfully get upside

06:49 down and not you know particularly if you're doing things more ballistically maybe turn it into a flip right CU that would be a failure to reach and hold an

06:56 inverted position so like exploring that inter you know boundary area uh there's a lot

07:03 in there right there's not just like the one single North Star of the only way to invert yeah I know I um you know I I

07:11 work with someone that's like coaches acrobatics you know one-handed lips and and there's the same kind of issue right

07:18 there's certain things you have to do you have to transfer the force from the ground you have to get about but within that there is a kind of some latitude to

07:25 do what works for you yeah so um we I mentioned that the you know the

07:33 title of your podcast is a perception and action podcast um and I

07:38 think I don't know I don't know that it's necessarily obvious to people who haven't really thought about it deeply

07:44 what is the role of perception in movement and in um and in learning

07:49 movement in particular yeah so the kind of kind of

07:56 yeah no I think that's the great question you know so the idea is that um it's a really important one of the thing

08:02 the important thing is our all of our movements are driven by the information we pick up we perceive from the

08:08 environment know that's one of the things we ESS be and a lot of times we train them we break those apart like uh

08:15 you know learn soccer or something basketball you have be dribbling around a cone is not there's no information

08:22 there you're not picking up your opponent so yeah I think having learning to perceive you know what the kind of

08:29 the some of the research opportunities for Action so you perceive when you can invert what you can do with that poll

08:35 you know um the moves that you can do you know and as you get better and better you learn you your perception

08:41 gets more calibrated to what you can actually do um so yeah I think as much as you can create an environment where

08:48 people can learn to perceive these things themselves instead of being told when this happens do this I think that

08:54 gives them more more makes them more skillful and then what what senses would

08:60 you say are are important when we're doing this perception is it just like I got to look at everything forever so a

09:06 lot of it's visual um a lot of it is you know the proceptive the internal senses

09:12 we get from you know extending our tendons our muscles um you we we can

09:18 sense our body position without looking especially something like dancing or right you can't look at where your feet

09:24 are all the time you have to as you become skillful you have to learn to sense where they are based on these

09:30 internal senses so I think what we find when people practice they get more and more word Reas a tune they get more

09:36 sensitive to different sources of information right the basketball player

09:41 can learn to dribble a ball without looking down at it they can look down the court because they learn to perceive

09:48 the um you know the proceptive the example I was give when I when I first did yoga right I think a lot of people

09:55 have when you do like a tree pose or something you stand on one foot and ask you to close close your eyes people

10:01 almost always fall over right because you're so used to controlling balance with vision but if you do you can learn

10:07 to do that quite easily by just tuning into the information you get from your tendons and your ankle and your right

10:13 they're giving you information about your balance and your inner ear sense so it's kind of learning to pick up the

10:19 right information yeah definitely and I I would also recommend uh you know working on on closing your eyes for

10:25 folks who are working on their balance and heels uh the more you can like really tune in to what you're you're

10:31 feeling and less on what you're looking at it's a very yeah it's a very very powerful information in a sense if you can but we're not we're not usually

10:39 given many demands to learn to to focus on that we're so visually dominant

10:44 creatures in most of our life yeah yeah and it's this is

10:50 something I've I've thought about a lot as a teacher uh particularly again coming from the dance world is that

10:56 often in dance we have mirrors for feedback but only in the studio it is well

11:03 depending on the type of dance you you do it is rare that you have a mirror on stage and even when you do have a mirror on stage you can't look at yourself in

11:09 it the whole time not not the best um experience for your audience generally

11:17 um so there's this sort of expectation that particularly if you have started training with a mirror if you want to

11:22 perform which not everyone wants to do which is fine but if that is something you're interested in working towards you have to learn how to not use the mirror

11:28 so you have this like I don't necessarily want to call it a crutch but you have this like big source of feedback that you're getting early on in

11:34 your training but at some point you're just expected to be able to stop using entirely and you know preparation for

11:40 that process shouldn't just be like all right just do it yeah for sure I would

11:46 you know at least some of your practice should be done without mirrors right um you know we have this in motor learning

11:52 we have this concept called transfer of training how much does what you do in practice transfer and make you good in

11:59 competition performance and you can actually get Negative like that's a good example of

12:05 it's going to make you could make you worse because you suddenly not going to be able to rely on that anymore it's going to be gone but yeah we want to try

12:11 to use some of the same information get get practicing you mentioned other s

12:17 variability practicing under a wide range of conditions even if blindfolded right I think kind of challenges the

12:24 athlete to do things differently I think is is very beneficial yeah absolutely I uh I'm also

12:30 a big fan of and training from time to time right you don't want to use them use them all the time yeah y for sure

12:37 yeah definely so we've talked a little bit about sort of like what we what

12:42 motor learning is what studying it is like um and if you had to you know summarize like the top three bullet

12:50 points of you know motor learning research that you uh think would be most

12:56 impactful for a mover um what are the three things you'd be like hey you got to you got to get in on these you should

13:02 know about these just about your body and how you learn yeah I think uh so kind of Mo you

13:09 know moving away from the idea that the way that you become skillful is just by repeating this one perfect way to do it

13:17 um one of the really influential researchers in in motor learning was a Russian guy named Nikolai Bernstein and

13:23 he he coined this phrase repetition without repetition what he meant by that is order to be able to repeat anything

13:30 you you can't move the same way all the time because the conditions are changing right when you're dancing you're

13:35 approaching from a different angle you're getting tired the ground you know there so you need a multiple solutions

13:42 to achieve the same thing so so thinking about uh getting that in practice adding

13:47 variability to the conditions you face um you know even you know what you see whether there's mirrors or blindfold

13:54 that's one example of using variability but that's a big a big benefit um uh I

13:59 think that's one of the things we we we there's lots of research showing the benefits of variability to practice I

14:06 think trying to focus um kind of externally don't worry too much about

14:11 think too much about what your body is doing that really um that kind of you know maybe at first it's okay but you

14:18 want to kind of get away from that it makes you slow and kind of mechanical I think you you want to let things flow

14:24 right we're much better when we kind of think at the top level those are kind of a couple of the really big ones I think

14:32 um and then you know allowing kind of that there's no kind of one cor way to

14:39 do things there's lots of different ways that that movement can be achieved and lots of you know obviously in your sport

14:46 your your activity you're allowing for creativity and inp you know there's there's lots of things like that yeah I

14:52 mean even and you know more on the artistic side I think there's a lot of

14:58 um focus and discussion on form and there

15:03 being one correct form for things and I think a lot of this honestly comes from people who have a ballet background I don't think it's coming from you know

15:09 the people who originated Pole where I think that there's not a super big focus on on form um and doing everything in a

15:16 very specific particular way um so I think that that can be something

15:22 that not every instructor is necessarily going to embrace but like as a student you should know about it right maybe

15:30 yeah for sure yeah I work with a lot of coaches trying to kind of make this

15:35 switch and there is a lot of resistance right and it's it's quite a change in

15:41 the way that we traditionally taught to do things oh yeah absolutely I'm thinking about like you know uh again a

15:48 lot of stuff in dance comes back to ballet particularly in in the western dance tradition because it's it was been so influential um but I'm thinking about

15:55 like the way that ballet class is organized you do the same thing every time maybe in a slightly different order and like you have to do it in exactly

16:01 the same way and just a bunch of times and that's the that is the process of going to class and I think if that's

16:07 your experience of dance that has created very strong expectations and habits in you as a

16:12 dancer and if that's how you've taught dance before I think that's created very strong habits and expectations in you as

16:18 a as a teacher so coming away from that I think is um I don't know it can feel scary right and that's the for sure yeah

16:25 yeah yeah um I I I think a very early episode in my podcast I tell my stories

16:30 about going to salsa dancing classes the first time and it was the teacher was so

16:36 mechanical like there's no M like there's no rhythm or I was all thinking about what your feet were doing and I

16:42 hated it right so I think you know for sure that's important Point

16:49 yeah um so I think another thing that uh is good to to talk about are some of the

16:56 major sort of theories in uh in motor reling um cuz I know I don't know a lot

17:01 of yall who are listening are you know yourself researchers or have a scientific background uh but there's uh when people say things like

17:08 according to science it just like puts my hackles up immediately um and there

17:14 is you know in any field of study and scientific field of study there's always disagreement and different theoretical

17:19 Frameworks that people are working in and that you know we're trying to figure out and figuring out you know what predictions do this framework might make

17:26 when do those hold and do they not uh but what are some of the the major Frameworks that that you're thinking

17:31 about in in motor uh learning and I'm I'm I prompting you here to talk about ecological learning and information for

17:37 sure yeah yeah so the uh yeah so the in skill acquisition there's there's basically a

17:44 dichotomy there's two um I think I have a if anyone's interested I have a YouTube video where I talk about the two

17:50 skill acquisition approaches that compare and contrast them one of them is kind of the traditional view of kind of

17:57 your it's it's very the idea that skill lives within your head in your brain we had develop these

18:04 when you learn to dance you develop this almost like a computer program we call it a motor program with all the commands

18:11 that go to your muscles for doing a certain dance routine and the way that you execute that is you you pull it out

18:16 and you execute it the same way every time and that's sometimes called the information processing approach and so

18:23 when you become skillful you're very automatic right you don't have to think about what you're doing and and that

18:29 kind of approach I contrast that with um the kind of where field is moving a

18:35 little bit some of us anyway um the ecological approach um comes from a a

18:41 person named James Gibson and as well his wife Elanor was also very big in this and developing this it's called

18:48 ecological because we it we look at skill as h a relationship between you

18:54 and your environment you and your your dance studio your or whatever ever you're forming and picking up the that

19:01 perceptual information and using it to control your movement so skills not all within in you it's it's this

19:09 relationship you develop and maintain and you adapt so that's kind of so we

19:14 focus a lot on Ecology of of a former that's where the name comes from so so

19:20 yeah that that's kind of the two main uh theories there's also various subtleties

19:26 and people that know this area will be scre right now I mean for for making such a simple dichotomy but those are

19:32 the two big ones and there's been you know there's been research trying to compare and contrast these you know um

19:39 trying to compare coach instruction where that's very prescriptive where the coach is telling the person what to do

19:45 and versus one where they're letting ecological approach we the what the kind

19:50 of approach we use when we train athletes is kind of letting them explore problem solve and figure out their own

19:56 way to do it as opposed to telling them what to do yeah and I think there's um I

20:03 mean I should say I was I was taught using a vo programs approach um and uh

20:08 also there was more of a focus on uh language acquisition just because of my background um than you know sports or or

20:15 sort of things that you you you would I should just to be clear a

20:21 language acquisition is when a baby learns their first language it is not language learning where you are taught your second X Language by an instruct so

20:29 when I was learning motor learning it was specifically for things that you do not ever receive explicit instruction in so this was just not a discussion we had

20:36 right like I hope to God no one ever has to teach you how to swallow because if

20:41 you are in that position it is a horrifying thing to experience um most people don't need to be taught

20:48 to swallow it's just something you learn or something you acquire naturally

20:54 um yeah I think it's a good one of the things we like sort inter by and people

20:60 in this field like to draw a parallel between skill acquisition that happens as adult and development motor

21:07 development that happens with a infant right they're don't we don't really consider them to be completely different

21:12 things they're very very similar and yeah the example I always give is is running right you don't you don't learn

21:19 to run by your parents setting up cones on your driveway and you telling you no one tells you when your right foot's in

21:26 the air your left foot should be doing this when you're running down the hill you just figure it out on your own by

21:31 playing around with your friends same with swallowing right as a kid you you get you know stimuli hopefully not small

21:37 things like grapes that are going to cause a bad experience but you get different experiences and you learn and

21:44 and explore and you know I was reading an article the other day that know it was arguing basically the reason babies

21:50 are born fat with all the extra is padding for falling when you're walk

21:56 learning to walk right is you're going to make a a lot of mistakes when you no one tells you how to walk as a baby you

22:01 just kind of learn through trial and error and you fall a lot so so yeah I think that that's an interesting

22:07 comparison H yeah and I again that being

22:12 the the background that I came in with um I did not get a lot of exposure to

22:20 the theory around like specifically teaching people things um but something that you know certainly is as an

22:25 instructor and someone who's been moving and dancing for a long time um um that I've noticed is

22:31 that it can be really challenging for people who have body proportions that

22:36 are very different from their instructors MH if you are taking this very structured this is the one right

22:42 way to do it approach right um and I I noticed this at first because I have particularly short arms right my you

22:49 know the difference between my height and my wingspan is like4 Ines I a little little stubby arms um so things where

22:55 I'm trying to reach the pole behind my back sometimes I just physically cannot do um using you know a specific set of

23:02 technique I have to like really shift my spine or my shoulders like something has to change pretty dramatically for me to achieve the same end goal um and what

23:10 has been most successful for me has been to have like that specific goal right I'm trying to touch x with Y an external

23:17 focus of attention and just trying different

23:23 things right trying to figure it out different positions different entrances um and I think you know they're still

23:28 absolutely a benefit of a skilled coach because they can tell you different things that you can try that may not necessarily be immediately intuitive to

23:35 you um within this like I'm trying to do this thing they're like well if you you

23:41 know you try to lean over more right see how that does it give you more or less room for the thing that you're trying to do um

23:48 and having that like expectation that people are going to need to experiment

23:54 and try different things and their approach may not end up looking exactly like like yours even if the goal is the

23:59 same um I think can be challenging this like the way that worked for you like

24:05 your perfect trick that you figured out for your body it's just not going to work for everybody um but also as a student like realizing that has been

24:11 really freeing for me cuz like oh it's going to look different on me right um and the way that I learn it is

24:19 going to be different and the types of feedback that I experiment with as I'm learning it should probably be different

24:24 and I should have like this wide range of things that I'm encouraged to try um to really be successful for sure yeah I

24:31 think there's a couple things there I think for the coach right the you described it perfect that I like to

24:37 think we're changing the view of the coach from the instructor that knows all the answers to a guide and a designer

24:43 they're going to help guide you like like you said why don't you try this why they still not got to use your knowledge as a coach to help people but you're

24:51 not you do it this way and yeah I think you know I really a strong believer in

24:57 this for for kids with especially when you're starting out I think a lot of

25:02 activities we kind of kids they show you the way they do it they can't do it that way they they come away with I'm not

25:09 coordinated I'm not sporty and they stop and they stop doing any kind of movement

25:14 and a later and then they get health problems later but so I really think I know I think there's so many benefits to

25:20 encouraging this like you described letting people find their own way and trying different things for sure yeah

25:28 and just having that sense of agency over your movement uh I know I I work with a lot of adults who had you know I

25:35 mean for me when we uh I remember when we did like a gymnastics segment in PE

25:40 and they're like do a cartwheel I just couldn't and eventually the instructor gave up on me and I was like well I guess I'm bad at moving I'm just a bad

25:47 mover um and look at me all these years later teaching dance um but that sort of like idea that you

25:55 get to be in control and you can try different things and there is not one one exact right way that you have to do it um I think can help especially adult

26:02 movers coming back into their bodies be like ah you know I have more control I have more agency I can do things and hey

26:07 the science backs me up that not trying to do things exactly the same way someone else is doing them um is okay

26:15 for sure and yeah you could hit on something really important there too we talk about like um word I you know

26:23 autonomy having some feeling like you are involved we do a lot of kind of the

26:28 athlete give their feedback and what choose of it is super powerful in terms of motivation keeping you

26:35 motivated um it's a you know it's way better than that when you get a victorial coach that's telling everybody

26:41 what to do that's that's very difficult so yeah I think agency autonomy like you

26:47 said I think those are very powerful when get that in the athlete or the perform absolutely I I looked over the

26:53 side when you said that because that's actually one of my studio values is yeah yeah

26:58 no it's it's you know there's a big theory in motivate called self-determination Theory what what what

27:06 leads to intrinsic motivation is the most powerful you're not after Awards and medals and things you're doing it

27:11 because you for yourself and theonomy is one of the big pieces of it letting you believe that you are in control of your

27:18 own destiny super powerful yeah absolutely especially for adult movers right like you're not yeah for sure

27:24 doing this cuz you have to I mean I hope you're not just like mhm I don't know I do know some people who

27:29 have have gotten into movement in adulthood as I don't know in kind of a punitive way or because they're you know

27:36 the doctors were like you have to move X number of times per week um and if they're just like trying to do the thing

27:42 that they can get over with the fasce and that they don't have you know they feel like they're being forced to they

27:48 it's just worse it's just less fun yes for sure yeah I find adults um it's kind

27:53 of so I do coach tennis and stuff sometimes and uh some sometimes adults

27:58 want okay well they want the hack show me well how to serve a tennis I can't

28:04 make you a good tennis unless you put in hours and hour there's no shortcut right to becoming good I can maybe do it a

28:10 little more efficiently and quickly than other people but you still got to practice right um put in the time so so

28:16 that can be a little challenging too with people but yeah I think I think you're right you know um this look this

28:22 kind of attitude about a lot of these things that it's punishment um which I which don't really

28:28 like it's there's so much joy that can come from it if you look at it the right way and and things like that and even if

28:36 you're not super into sports like you are going to have to learn to do new things with your body at some point

28:41 right they're going to come out with a new phone you have to put text into differently and you're going to have to learn how to do that

28:48 um and it's an important skill to be able to learn to do new things with your

28:53 body in a way that is just a effective and B is nice to your

28:58 yourself yeah no I think yeah like and you know I think benefits for as you age

29:04 the kind of maintaining a joy of movement it's G to be so good for your body and in your your the aging process

29:10 for sure another one of my studio values is sustainable lifelong movement yeah yeah

29:17 yeah no I love that I love that I think that's uh that's so important giving people different options and avenues for

29:24 that as opposed to the elite athlete model which is what everyone should

29:29 train to be Olympic gold medalist oh we don't all have we don't all have to fit that mold um you know and there's lots

29:36 of different ways you can express movement things like that I think that's very very valuable the world the our

29:42 world would be a better place in terms of health and health costs if everyone took that attitude yeah yeah absolutely

29:49 and I I don't know I think

29:54 uh I'm going to talk about weight here for folks for whom that's not a good topic you know Skip ahead a couple

30:00 minutes um and I think a lot of times it's really phrased you know specifically around fat phobia and like

30:06 you have to be thin um when the benefits of movement are so much greater than that um I'm thinking even just like

30:13 something simple like you have to move through your joint range of motion if you want to continue to be able to move through your joint range of motion as

30:19 you age and I think everybody wants that right like I want to be able to like reach up and get things off the shelf

30:24 you know 30 40 50 years from now um and if I never you know reach up to do

30:29 things I'm not going to be able to do that uh and

30:35 it is good for every part of your life if you're moving at least a little bit at least sometimes and it should be fun

30:42 yeah no I think you can yeah you preach to the choir for sure I think for mental health too for me like well I'm I live

30:49 in Arizona I do a lot of Trail I'm in trail running is my big hobby it's the only time in my life where I'm

30:55 completely in the moment I I don't have anxiety about what before or after

31:00 because I can or I'll trip and fall on my face right so I think I think there's a lot of mental health benefits to it as

31:06 well yeah absolutely if you can do something where you find that flow State yeah for sure 100% yeah I am a uh a big

31:15 freestyler is my my sort of thing that I'm really into in pole is just like moving just move you do

31:25 something uh all right so I don't want to keep you too too long but if folks

31:30 wanted to learn more about any of this or they wanted to find you somewhere where could they do that I know I've

31:36 mentioned the the podcast um which I'll I'll link below I myself a link to move in I have a so I have a website

31:43 perception action.com which has all my stuff as the links to the podcast and

31:49 some resources um also I have a book that I wrote how we learn to move where I kind

31:56 of tried to kind of a beginners to the ecological approach in this new way of looking at skill so I

32:03 cover creativity preventing injury from uh rehabilit so I think this applying

32:09 this to Rehabilitation a lot of things on their head as well so um that that book uh the

32:16 links are available so perception action.com kind of has everything yeah uh and links to all of that will be

32:23 below wherever you are you are consuming this um and then um before we wrap up if

32:30 there were one thing that you wanted people to take away from what we talked about today and just carry with them uh

32:36 what would it be or something else so I think you know don't be afraid

32:44 to kind of explore and know think of I think I like to think of movement as

32:49 problem solving you have this environment you're trying to achieve this goal give yourself different problems to solve whether it's you know

32:56 approaching the poll from different angles or different you know uh you know

33:01 like we said blindfolded versus not like I think that's so beneficial and that's what really makes you skillful being

33:07 able to adapt and adjust to these different new problems you face yeah put a little put a little play on

33:13 [Laughter] it it makes more fun too trying to do

33:19 trying to do the same thing over and over is boring super boring let's play around a little and have some fun yeah I

33:26 that's uh a great thing for us to take with us so thank you so much for join joining

33:32 me today uh Dr Gray um and I will see everyone else very soon bye pleasure

33:39 thank you hey pole dancer welcome to the evidence-based poll podcast my name is Rosie boa I'm a pole dancer poll teacher

33:46 and personal trainer and I've started this podcast so that we can learn together talk with the experts read the

33:52 research and feel better on and off the poll so if that sounds like something you're interested in doing let's go