Adult Learning Theory » Steve's BJJ Blog

Strategies for Success: Part 3 of 3

Adult Learning Theory, BJJ, Training 2 Responses »

Jul 092010

In reading through the last two installments, I regret not being a little more succinct. So, in this, the last of three installments, I’ll try to cut to the chase a little better. In the first article, I outlined the structure within which we learn, describing how short-term memory, long-term memory and metacognition work together to allow information to be absorbed, stored and then recalled to be used at a later time. In chapter 2, I talked in more depth about how and why this happens.

In this article, I’m going to go through some tips I share with people in a professional setting who are learning complex processes. I believe that they are as relevant to BJJ as they are to an employee learning a new job.

1: Avoid Irrelevance:

This is directly related to the concept of cognitive load. If you can only manage a handful of concepts or details at a time and expect to retain them, don’t waste your brain power on things that aren’t critical. In our hyper active, short attention span times, this is easier said than done, but irrelevance also includes things that may be interesting but aren’t informative. Overloading short-term memory can lead to losing everything. This is that phenomenon I talked about yesterday where you go to a seminar and learn all sorts of really good technical information, but find a few months later that not one thing made it into your game.

2: Activate as many senses as possible:

BJJ instruction is great for most learning types. At my school, our instruction is usually explained aurally and visually, followed by drills that are great for kinetic learners. Keeping a training log is a great way to reinforce details. It allows you to visualize the entire process and then articulate it in writing. Another way to accomplish the same thing is to simply teach the technique to someone else as best you can.

My general rule of thumb is, if I learn something I think is useful, I’ll try to teach it to at least two people. The act of teaching shares the information, but I’m really being selfish in that teaching others helps me as much as it helps them.

3: Novices: Focus on Steps over Strategy / Experts: Focus on Strategy over Steps

If you’re learning something completely new, pick a few key details to walk away with. Focus on what I called near-transfer. In other words, focus on trying to replicate that exact technique in that exact way. Innovation is almost impossible without a strong, fundamental understanding of how things work.

If you’ve got experience with a particular technique, don’t get caught up too much in the details. I’m not saying ignore them, but at some point begin to focus on what I called “far transfer,” which is thinking more generally about how the concepts and techniques can be applied in different situations. This emphasis helps lead to Adaptive Expertise.

4: Connect New Information to Something You Already Know

You really can’t learn anything in a vacuum. If you don’t have a frame of reference, that’s what you should be focusing on learning. Once again, if you’re new to BJJ, I highly recommend Stephan Kesting’s Roadmap for BJJ. It is specifically designed to give you a working model within which you can organize information. Without it, you’ll be left to do it yourself.

The point is, if you learn something in a vacuum, it will be very difficult to recall it when you need it.

For example, Coach showed us a sweep sequence from Deep Half Guard. I’d never really played at all with DHG before, but fortunately, the first thing he did was to show us a transition from a position that I’m very comfortable with. I use that entry all the time now as a direct result of this connection.

5: Self Regulate

This means essentially that you need to own your progress. You should continually be assessing your progress, deciding what you need to learn and what can be let go for now. You can’t learn everything at once.

Set goals for yourself. Make them specific and measurable. When setting goals, avoid goals that involve “understanding” or “identifying.” Focus instead on application or execution of concepts and techniques.

Ultimately, you have to own your own training. Jeff Bourgeois, a brown belt at my school, said one time (paraphrasing from memory), “If you’re a white belt, you can’t help but learn. You know so little, it’s impossible not to pick something up. But if you want to keep learning after blue belt, you’ll have to do some work.” There’s a point where just showing up, while more than most people do, isn’t going to be enough.

6: Stay Healthy physically, mentally and emotionally

This is so important. Do what you need to do to stay healthy. While I really can’t offer specific advice on HOW to stay healthy beyond the obvious things we all know, but don’t all do, it’s so critical.

For me, BJJ is part of how I stay healthy mentally. So, I try to do what I need to do to be physically able to train.

I hope that these simple tips help someone out. It may seem like common sense, but as I said before, sometimes just writing things down helps.

Tieing it all together

Adult Learning Theory, BJJ, Training 10 Responses »

Jul 082010

In the last article, Adult Learning and BJJ 1, I discussed the following points:

Adult learning is comprised of three key elements: short term memory, long term memory and metacognition.
Short term memory is our working space, where we make gains, draw conclusions and learn new things.
Long term memory is where we store skills, facts and the framework within which our expertise is organized.
Metacognition is where we manage our memory, make decisions and set goals. This is our strategic center.

In this article, I intend to dive a little deeper into how these three key components of learning interact, and how different people can maximize our time on the mats by applying some simple strategies for learning. I’ll start by discussing what we bring to the table, then the path that information takes from theory to application (and why it often doesn’t make it) and then end by going into the idea of adaptive expertise vs static expertise.

What We Bring to the Table

Other than the typical baggage we all carry with us. I’m talking about other, more productive things, like outside knowledge and experience. In this section, we’ll dive into expertise and how experts learn differently than novices. We’ll talk about how teaching a novice like an expert will actually undermine his learning, and vice versa; teaching an expert like a novice makes it more difficult for the expert.

The Conscious Competence Model

A common model for competence is what’s often referred to as the ‘Conscious Competence’ model, outlining four stages of competence through which we all move as we become more adept at any given activity or job.

The four stages look like this:

Unconsciously Incompetent: In other words, we don’t know what we don’t know. This is the BJJ like the one that Leslie mentions who says after a round of sparring, “Hey, I’m pretty good at this; I didn’t have to tap that round.” This guy is, quite literally, not competent to even analyze his round and doesn’t know it.
Consciously Incompetent: This is the stage where you usually blush with recognition at what an asshat you made of yourself. “Oh damn. I can’t believe I said that.” In the BJJ journey, this is right around 2 or 3 stripe white belt and lasts… well, at least through blue belt. I haven’t been into purple belt range yet, but I’d guess it’s somewhere in the middle purple belt range where we move out of this stage and into the next.
Consciously Competent: These are the guys who are really good. They apply good technique to every situation, have few holes in their games, if any, and can give anyone in the school a challenge. The difference between this stage and the next is subtle, but distinct. In this stage, there is expertise, but the skills are applied with intention. This one is hard to describe, but you know it when you see it. From what I’ve seen and learned, this is the primary distinction between brown belt and black belt. The brown belt in BJJ can do pretty much everything the black belt does. There’s just… some inneffable distinction between the way that the two execute the techniques.
Unconscious Competence: This is mastery, where there’s very little conscious thought applied to the execution of technique. Watching elite grapplers roll is a great example of this, particularly if you watch them roll with less experienced jitsuka. I don’t see the distinction between stages three and four very well until I see a black belt roll with, say, a purple belt. That’s where the distinction really becomes apparent.

Of course, BJJ is a complicated physical activity, so it’s unavoidable that we’re straddling different stages. It’s possible for someone to be very good in some positions and completely incompetent in others. This, then, is the first thing we bring to the table, and the first barrier to learning is to always seek out what we don’t know. In other words, we can’t learn something if we think we already know it. In Saulo Ribeiro’s book, “Jiu Jitsu University,” he says that one of the things he does is to get visiting black belts into mount to see how they escape. Often, he says, they can’t and their response when asked why is that they don’t let anyone get to mount on them. That’s the real hazard of stage one.

Novice vs Expert

Another aspect of adult learning is how we learn when we’re novice as opposed to how we learn as experts. The difference, simply put, has to do with whether the framework we organize the information into is provided internally or externally. Also, to be clear, we’re not talking about a binary situation here. Expertise isn’t on or off. It’s a sliding scale. In BJJ, it’s a very, very loooong scale.

As a novice, we have no frame of reference. We often refer to fundamentals as building blocks, and talk a lot about building a foundation. The analogy makes a lot of sense, because that’s exactly what we’re doing. I mentioned Stefan Kesting’s Roadmap for BJJ in part one. That’s exactly what his package does, and why it’s so helpful for new jitsuka who are attempting to learn BJJ. It provides a working model.

Teaching novices without providing this model is counterproductive and often a waste of time. The technique gets into short term memory, muddles around there for a while until, if we’re lucky, it imprints into long term memory, but ends up filed away and never to be seen or heard from again.

For the expert, and this might seem a little counterproductive, too much detail can actually be counterproductive. As we gain expertise, we are creating an internal architecture for storing all of this information. If I’m taught something that conflicts with my internal model, it causes some amount of conflict that adds to my cognitive load. Remember, we get maybe five chunks of information at a time to work with at a time in our short term memory, and if one of those chunks is reconciling an inconsequential detail, we might miss something truly critical.

So, let’s take a couple of examples. A novice and an expert are trying to learn a sweep from deep half guard. If we’re teaching to the novice, an explanation of what deep half-guard is, how it’s used and when it’s useful would be helpful. Also, in order to place the technique into some context, we’d need to teach at least some way to get from a familiar position to this unfamiliar one. So, for instance, a transition from half-guard to deep half guard is helpful. Otherwise, the technique is unconnected.

Teaching the same technique to a more experienced guy might sound more like, “So, get into deep half guard however you like to get there. The key to this technique is x, y and z.”

Another advantage of expertise is that the “chunks” I referred to in part one of this series can be larger. If I show basic side control to a white belt, he might take one key concept away, whether that’s hand placement or shoulder pressure, blocking the hip… something. Probably won’t take more than one or two of these, though. That’s about it.

Just don’t let your expertise become a barrier to training. Be open to correction and learning new ways to do things.

Adaptive Expertise vs Static Expertise

I mentioned in Part 1 of this series that the ability to learn, unlearn and relearn are crucial in this day and age. It applies as much to BJJ as it does to everything else in our lives. Things just change too fast to remain stagnant.

Static expertise is essentially becoming very good at something that never changes. I can type about 85 words per minute. I have expertise as a typist that can be measured, and, unless someone changes the QWERTY keyboard on me, I can count on this skill. This is static expertise that requires no real innovation. There’s no problem to solve or issues to expose.

Adaptive expertise is innovative, creative expertise. When we hear about someone like Marcelo Garcia taking a position like X-Guard and turning it into a comprehensive game, that’s adaptive expertise in action. Solving problems or overcoming obstacles in unique ways is adaptive expertise. While I hate the cliché “thinking outside the box,” that’s really what we’re talking about. This comes from experimentation and always looking for what we don’t know, and is often found in people who we consider strong critical thinkers.

The most often used example of adaptive expertise is in the Apollo 13 shuttle. They were in a situation where they were looking at limited Oxygen and an environment in which the CO2 wasn’t being filtered out, adding up to a potentially very bad day for the crew. The engineers had an idea to use parts and equipment in a completely new way to create access to filtration that eventually led to the crew landing safely. The knowledge of not only how to run things, but how things actually worked on that shuttle enabled them to approach the problem from a completely new perspective.

McGyver is the best fictional example I can think of. That guy could do anything from anywhere with a piece of chewing gum and some dental floss. The key is working with the end in mind, focusing on the steps only insofar as they lead to a result. It’s the result that matters.

The Path to Expertise

What happens when we learn a new technique? How does it go from theory to application?

Frankly, for most of us, the vast majority of what we learn simply doesn’t. It gets lost and forgotten. But not all of it. Hopefully enough makes it through to keep us coming back for more.

We start in STM, in our work space, ingesting the information. If we have no context for the information, this is where is usually stops. Ideally, we are either provided enough context or can involve our previous experiences enough to provide some context. This context is critical in taking the information out of theory and imprinting it in a usable way in our long term memory.

A really common barrier at this stage is cognitive overload – when you’ve got too many details and insufficient context to distinguish those few details that actually matter to you. From the perspective of the student, what really helps is to identify a few key points you want to take away from the lesson. Simply put, don’t try to remember everything. In fact, don’t try to remember MOST everything. Pick no more than 4 key details to take away. Absorb those, then the next time the technique rolls around, whether it’s asking someone at open mat or in formal class instruction, look for more.

Once in our long term memory, the challenge is bringing back when we need it and there are a lot of things that can get in the way of this. How many times have you gone to a seminar, learned some really, really cool stuff, only to find a few months later that none of it has found its way into your game? I’ve been lucky to take away one or two practical, applicable pieces of information. Sometimes, it’s a technique. Other times, it’s a concept. What’s happening is that there is a disconnect in transferring this information from long-term memory back to my working, short-term memory.

This kind of transfer failure is more often than not caused by a lack of context. I mentioned before that we need to have a strong framework within which information can be organized. The better developed that model, the better we are able to recall the information when needed.

Ruth Clark, in the book Building Expertise, distinguishes between three different types of transfer. Near transfer, moderate transfer and far transfer.

Near transfer works really well for brand new concepts or techniques. These are essentially tasks that can be done the same way every time. Same context and conditions lead to the same steps taken to achieve the same results. Yesterday at class, we learned a paper cutter from a transition out of side control. Thumb in the collar deep, control uke’s opposite side arm so that he can’t turn out of the choke, drive blade of forearm across the throat focusing on bringing the elbow to the mat. That’s near transfer, and the easiest to recall.

Moderate transfer involves some added variables. Applying the same techniques in varying situations is an example of moderate transfer. This would be discussions of various entries into the choke. Setting it up from North/South, or moving out of one technique into the paper cutter. The key difference between Near Transfer and Moderate Transfer is depth of understanding. In order to perform the paper cutter choke from side control, I don’t really need to know how or why it works; rather, I need only know how to apply it. However, if I want to apply it under a variety of conditions, I’m going to need to understand why.

Far transfer involves judgement, and is the most difficult to facilitate. Far transfer involves a deep understanding of underlying principles. For example, learning the ezekial from mount would be near transfer. Learning the Ezekial choke from mount, and then pplying the same principles to catch the ezekial choke from guard, half guard top, half guard bottom and side control would be a good example of far transfer.

Summary

In this article, the second of three, I looked at the following key points:

The Conscious Competence model, and what we bring to the table: It’s impossible to learn something if we think we already know it.
Novice vs Expert: How as a novice we have to regulate our learning differently as we shift from organizing new information in externally provided frameworks to internally provided frameworks.
Adaptive expertise vs Static Expertise: Some people never achieve adaptive expertise, but the best instructors can apply broader concepts in many different contexts adapting to a fluid environment.
The Path to Expertise: How we have to consciously manage the transfer of information so that it can be translated from abstract theory to application.

In the next article, I’ll go into some of the common problems I’ve encountered in corporate training, along with some strategies for avoiding these pitfalls.

Adult Learning and BJJ – Part 1 of 3

Adult Learning Theory, BJJ, Training 5 Responses »

Jul 072010

I’ve worked in training for several years now. Learning and training are topics that are extremely interesting to me personally and professionally. It occurred to me that many of the concepts used in creating business-training applications also apply to a complex physical activity such as Brazilian Jiu Jitsu. While I’m a relative novice in BJJ having trained for less than four years now, I’ve been helping employees develop professional expertise for over a decade.

This is the first of three articles on some common ideas about adult learning and how I see them applied to martial arts training, specifically BJJ. Hopefully these articles will provide some context for you, and help you create a framework that explains (and maybe alleviates) some common sources of frustration.

In this article, I’ll discuss how we learn… what’s going on behind the scenes in our brains and bodies. In the next installment, I’ll try to tie everything together, finishing up the trilogy by providing what I hope are some strategies for success.

As always, I’m more interested in sparking discussion than anything else, so if you have any comments, corrections or criticisms, I’d love to hear them.

How we learn

There are three components to learning: Short Term Memory (STM), Long Term Memory (LTM) and what is often referred to as Metacognition.

A common analogy is that of a computer, where STM is RAM, LTM is the hard drive and metacognition is the operating system. While this analogy works well, I prefer a more low-tech comparison. I like to cook, so I tend to think of short term memory as a kitchen counter. Long term memory, then, would be the pantry and drawers. Metacognition is pretty much everything else, the human element.

Short Term Memory

As I mentioned before, short term memory is the kitchen counters. It’s the active working area in which we do all of our intellectual heavy lifting. If I’m cooking a meal, I’m going to want a lot of things available to me, including tools, ingredients and perhaps a recipe. This is my active space, where I’ll use these items to mix, measure, chop and puree, and if I do everything correctly, I’ll end up with a meal that is edible.

Pretty much everything we do actively is a product of our short term memory: analyzing, adapting, understanding, and pretty much every other –ing that you can think of. It’s where we do all of our Cognition, Reasoning, Analysis and Practical Application, or CRAP. Hehe.

*Ahem.* Sorry.

From time to time, I’ll say that my brain is full, or in some drastic situations, that my brain is broken. Of course, these aren’t literal. What I’m talking about is something referred to as cognitive load. Cognitive load refers to the limited amount of space we have in our Short Term Memory. My kitchen counter can only hold so many things at once. If I don’t put things away, I’ll end up unable to find what I’m looking for.

Way back in 1956, a guy named Goerge Miller who at the time was a psychology professor at Princeton, described the functional limit of an average human’s working memory as seven plus or minus two. This pretty much means that most people can only juggle seven “chunks” of information at a time. Some people can manage up to nine, and others as few as five. What constitutes a chunk will vary, and I’ll go into that more in the next article. For now, just think about a chunk as an idea, concept, group of facts or some… well… chunk of information.

In Ruth Clark’s book, “Building Expertise,” an even more conservative position is taken, suggesting that we’re really only looking at a functional limit of four or five discrete concepts. The point, though, is that there is a limit. We only have so much space on our kitchen counters. If I’m not cleaning as I go and managing the different steps in a logical order, I’ll have too many pots on the stove, too many things going on. I’m going to end up with a mess and nothing delicious to show for it.

So, summing up short term memory, that’s where we have rapid access to information. It’s quick and accessible. But there is a functional limit, and when we overload our short term memory, we risk losing any gains we’ve made.

Getting back to some more familiar ground for a lot of us, Matt Thornton describes learning as being broken down into the Three I’s: Introduction, Isolation and Integration. Introduction and Isolation are both functions that are taking place within the short term memory.

Long Term Memory

If short term memory is the kitchen counter, long term memory is the pantry and cupboards. Think bulk storage. That’s where we keep our knowledge. It’s also where we house our expertise and build the framework within which we organize information into usable structures. Think recipes and cookbooks.

In Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, this is where we liberate ourselves from having to think consciously about what constitutes good side control. It’s there when we need it. Techniques are housed here. That half guard pass I learned from Andre Galvao’s DVD or the X-Guard Sweep I picked up from Marcelo Garcia’s book are both stored in my LTM.

Our brains are pretty damned amazing. Unless your name is Homer Simpson, there is no functional limit to what most of us can store in our Long Term Memories. The skills we develop along with the facts that accompany them.

The key is in the transfer of skills and information from LTM to STM, and that has to do with organization. An organized pantry makes it easy to find what we need. In the same way, our brains build models to quickly reference appropriate material. Stefan Kesting’s Roadmap for BJJ package is a terrific example of this concept. In it, he provides a working model in which a person can organize information. In this way, he’s facilitating the ability of the new BJJ practitioner to imprint concepts into their LTM from their STM.

Once again, I’ll talk a little more about how this works in the next article.

Metacognition

The third component of learning is metacognition, what essentially boils down to knowledge about knowledge. As I mentioned in the introduction, this is the human element of learning. Metacognition is what facilites that transfer of information to and from long term memory.

In terms of our cooking analogy, this would be the decision making process and how we manage choices. What’s for dinner? Which recipe do I choose? Should I tweak it? Seems like last time it was a little bland.

Metacognition is where we set goals for ourselves and organize the act of learning. It’s where we analyze our performance and develop a strategy or plan to follow. That’s where the inner dialogue comes from, “Man, my half guard bottom is weak. I need to just suck it up and pull half guard for a while until I can figure this out.” The analysis and decision to pull guard are central to what I’m talking about.

“The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn and relearn.” – Alvin Toffler

As far as I’m concerned, this is the most important trait that we can cultivate personally: the ability to learn, unlearn and relearn. Being able to do this requires an agile mind and a willingness to let go of information regardless of the personal investment we’ve made in acquiring it. Or said another way, it doesn’t matter how long it took to learn something that is now obsolete. In terms of Martial Arts, this is where we become afraid to try new things.

Summary

Adult learning is comprised of three key elements: short term memory, long term memory and metacognition.
Short term memory is our working space, where we make gains, draw conclusions and learn new things.
Long term memory is where we store skills, facts and the framework within which our expertise is organized.
Metacognition is where we manage our memory, make decisions and set goals. This is our strategic center.

In the next section, I’ll talk more about how these three elements fit together, along with other elements of learning such as the differences between learning as an expert and learning as a novice, adaptive vs static expertise and why we often learn something one day and never think about it again until the next time it’s taught (“Oh yeah. I remember learning that.”)