Why Muscle Memory Isn't Real & Ecological vs. Rote Learning Debate w/ Jon & Scott (SSOF Ep 101)

Scott1:10

So that's what I'd like to start with and say, I think Jon and I agree on lots of things. Now, under the hood, what's going on, whether perception's wholly direct, Jon's down another avenue in a rabbit hole at the moment with a different kind of theoretical perspective on that. But I think largely our thoughts about, again, representative design and whatnot and highly contextualized learning experience scaled to the learner is ultimately a good thing.

I don't know if I've done a good job of steel manning there, Jon, but you can go ahead now.

Jon3:16

You're absolutely right, Scott. There's very, very little that I have found myself disagreeing with that's come out of your stable. I wholeheartedly agree with representational design. I wholeheartedly agree with the concept of direct perception and how that influences people's interaction with their environment. And from our perspective, we're talking about, whether you want to call them students or athletes or participants, but they're interacting in our environment as we attempt to assist or facilitate them with their skill development.

I guess where we would maybe have a differing viewpoint will be right at the heart of the theoretical discussions around direct perception or the role of perception. And I'm not sure, and I guess this is one of my pet hates around a lot of these papers that come out in relation to skill acquisition, I don't think we're talking to the coaches. I don't think we're using the language of coaching enough in relation to these debates.

But one of my pet peeves, I guess, in relation to ecological dynamics is that it's one theory of direct perception. And I know it was originally conceptualized by Gibson in the 60s and into the 70s. The role of direct perception doesn't only exist within ecological dynamics.

So we're looking at that spectrum of cognitive sciences, or that spectrum of cognition, which on one end is a dualistic Cartesian kind of perspective of the mind and body being two separate things that dates back a number of centuries. And within the middle of the 20th century we had this cognitive revolution where the behaviorist theories that were based on that kind of dualistic approach were challenged. And we've moved along that spectrum or that continuum, and we've moved into embodied and enactive kind of space along that spectrum, and that's where I'm sitting at the moment with active inference.

So the active inference framework essentially says that the brain operates as a statistical model, so it's operating as a predictive machine which kind of mediates perception, but it suggests that perception and action are tightly coupled. The further down that spectrum you go into what would be termed radical enactivism is where ecological psychology sits, and ecological psychology has greatly influenced ecological dynamics. And the dynamics part of that in terms of movement comes from the complexity sciences and dynamical systems theory, which is absolutely fine.

So I guess to get into where my pet peeves are, and I'll go back to what I said a second ago in relation to papers such as, and let me start by saying I wouldn't diss any attempt to publish a paper. I know how much work goes into these things, and I know people want to add value to the discourse and value to research. So I wouldn't just diss the paper and say it's full of crap or nonsense or anything like that.

I did have issues with certain parts of it, and most of it is around, and it's not just this paper but in ecological dynamics itself, is that there's an attempt to kind of relabel or nearly reinvent the wheel or add new labels to coaching methods that have been in existence for a very long time.

And what I'm referring to there is the concept of problem-based learning, situated learning, learning in the game, game-based learning. You could even throw Teaching Games for Understanding in there, although a little bit further out on that spectrum. And coaches have been doing these things for a very, very long time. For example, game-based learning and conditioned games, which is something that was, something that is used and has been around for a long time before constraints-led coaching came around, which is very, very similar in its practical approach in that coaches will manipulate tasks to seek a desired outcome.

Now therein there's some theoretical differences in terms of the constraints-led approach is very much about movement and skill emerging organically from the application of certain constraints or natural constraints or constraints that have been imposed by the coach, for example. So these coaching methods and these approaches to skill development have been around for a long time, and coaches have been doing them for a long time.

Where ecological dynamics differs is at a theoretical level in relation to internal representation and how we view the world and how we interact with the world. And a lot of the differences are extremely philosophical, and sometimes I wonder whether that debate is even worth having with coaches who are looking for ways, practical ways or practical methods to bring to their coaching practice.

Now to go back to James's original point about the reel which was triggering, right, because it triggered me to a response and here we are today, perfect.

This whole idea, so it was a little bit absolutist, it was a little bit out there, James, in relation to what you said about drills and pad work. And I get that, right? They're a part of the mechanism in skill development, and some people will probably put too much emphasis on them. Some people, some cultures will know exactly where they fit within the context.

I have a big bugbear with the use or the term drills being told about drills being ineffective, et cetera. Now it took me a little while to get my head around the understanding of this because it appears to me now that actually we all carry different definitions of what drills actually are.

We had this discussion, myself and Scott, online. Sent him a little clip of a couple of juniors I was coaching on the national team a couple of years back, and it was a, we were working through getting off the ropes or getting out of the corner in a relatively dynamic fashion. There was no prescriptive kind of, okay, you must do this, you must do that.

They were allowed to, let me use the term, organize themselves. They were operating under real intention, but with the contact scaled back light for learning. I like to use that concept. Some people would look at it and say, depending on your the angle that you're looking at it, would say that's a conditioned game. Some may say I'm...

I'm applying constraints here to allow different skill behavior to emerge. Colloquially in kickboxing in Ireland anyway, but my understanding is it's probably pretty consistent across the board, that's a drill. So this is colloquially termed a drill.

And I guess I could say I'm fed up to the back teeth with people just throwing out "kill the drills, drills don't equal skills" and I understand that when it's looked at from the perspective of drilling from, for example, that military kind of tradition of following a prescriptive staged approach to developing something, and I get that totally. But not everybody shares that definition.

Now I've rambled for far too long there so I'll shut up and allow you guys to come in, but that's generally my perspective. But I do absolutely agree with a lot of what Scott has to say.

James de Lacey10:59

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Is that just a terminology thing, that's the main issue around it?

Jon12:24

Yeah, it's just a terminology. You said before the podcast I was talking to Scott and I was like, I'm pretty sure we're going to align with everything and the only thing that's going to be the issue is probably just terminology. But Scott, is there anything you wanted to add on top of that?

Scott12:51

No, so I agree. The use of the word drill is problematic because there's a different definition and different interpretation of it among coaches. So when John sent me that little clip, that for me was a little task-based situational snippet of the game which I would still consider sparring.

So yes, it's not helpful for every coach, but the way I talk about it, and again I can be a little bit click-baity, I thought of drilling rote repetition, highly prescribed, just rote repetition. Now the fact that we use the word militaristic, I think perhaps, and I'm not sure, I don't know the full etymology of the term coming into sports, but I think that does have connotations and I think the word drill does have connotations of this rote repetition.

So I get why coaches have different interpretations of it and different views and they define it differently. But if we are talking about that in sense of that rote repetition, then I don't think the title is quite as click-baity or triggering as it perhaps was. Or I don't think it should be because I do think there's a lot of that goes on.

Now to your point, John, that great coaches have already done this, I also agree. What this paper, I feel a little biased, very modest contribution, and what they approach is doing, there's two things that I think are wonderful here. It's drawing a lot of coaches into a space that would never have been into that theoretical space, and I think that should be celebrated, even if they're [expletive] up the science right now, they don't quite have a grasp of it.

The fact that you've got coaches and athletes and students in martial arts starting to pay attention through the sharing of social media, whatever, starting to be curious, we talk about that all the time, John, being curious. I think that should be celebrated.

Now they might not come down on the side of ecological dynamics and maybe that's where this tug of war is going to be in the future, which side they're pulling into. But I think it's wonderful that, because when I was coaching and even when I was reading about coaching and trying to get into it and being curious, these discussions weren't going on and they're getting much richer and better now. So I think we can all agree that's a good thing.

To your point about coaches have already done this, or Thornton was talking about aliveness for 25 years, correct. Now I think the aliveness can precede that, the talk of aliveness through Bruce Lee and whatnot, but I grant, I'll grant that. In fact, one of my, when I had Adam Singer on, I paid the respect due to Coach Matt Thornton when I said "Standing on the Shoulders of the Aliveness Giant." That was the name of the title. So I personally recognize that we are somewhat coming behind all these great coaches.

But what's happened so far, I think, John, is that a lot of coaches are having this mix and match thing. And my question would be to a lot of coaches: okay, what if you're doing what you're doing, if you're designing a practice activity, what do you actually think is going on? I think having a theoretical perspective will help at least answer that question and will narrow the search space for coaches, and at least if they're throwing shite at the wall, that shite will be a little bit stickier. I hope I didn't get too technical here there at the end.

The last thing I want to add on to John is the, again, we're all guilty of this. So we're all, and that's why I wanted to start off as a steel man, we're all guilty of being able to straw man on the other side. And we're very guilty of a lot of the coaches saying this is IP, this is ecological without a full understanding of what IP is.

Also, IP didn't disregard the high importance of putting context into the training environment. It had a different assumption of what was going on and it was more of a linear process, how we built things and put it together. But it was still a very important part of the informational processing approach, whether it be the generalized motor program, which we then in context. So they overlap a bit more than we give them credit for. So I agree when we're arguing back and forward, both sides have the tendency to do that.

James de Lacey17:08

Yeah, there's my reel, that's right.

Jon17:08

It's a great point. Can't disagree with any of that, Scott, to be honest with you. And I was thinking about this before we came on, and I thought, you know, if we got all of the coaches that are on both sides and in the middle of all of this debate and you asked them to put their hand up about who actually is here to help people get better at their sport, everybody put your hand up, we'd all put our hand up.

Every one of us would put our hand up. We all share that commonality, which is why we're here I think discussing this the way we are.

I agreed to a point around the ecological dynamics, the theory-based papers coming out that allows coaches to kind of get a grasp of what's going on and bring them into that kind of picture of discussion. And you mentioned about being constantly curious and it might help in that way. I have, personally, I can only speak about this personally, I've got a different perspective on that.

Because when I ventured into the ecological dynamics world, I found curiosity was something that was not entertained. Now I'll caveat that particular thing I've said by saying that was based a lot on interactions through Twitter as it was at the time, which is probably not the best space to be interacting with likeminded people. But I did find my curiosity was stifled, especially around the use of drills, also the use of instruction, which is another pet peeve of mine.

And again, I think it's pushed by coaches who don't fully understand the theory that underpins ecological dynamics. And it's not too long ago, you can go back on X as it is now and look at conversations I had with people who would shove ecological dynamics down your throat as if it was the be-all and end-all and the solution to world poverty and ending wars. Didn't fully understand the role of instruction within an ecological dynamics framework and said it shouldn't be used.

In fact, one person, if I could call him that, said that there should be a move towards non-verbal coaching. And I mean, this kind of nonsense. And then as we dug into the theory a little bit more, their position changed from, well, sometimes instructions are needed because, as long as it's not too many instructions, because instructions kill creativity. And then it went from that into instructions are fine actually because we can just say...

They're constraints. So everything is cool in relation of instructions. That confuses the life out of coaches who are coming to ecological dynamics or the idea of direct perception. Confuses the life out of them. I've had conversations with people who have just recoiled from it because of how this misinterpretation of the theory is put forward by those who claim to know it best. And when I say that, I'm talking about coaches and not people who would be actual experts in the area of the theory itself.

That's the part I think that we're not doing coaches any service at all in relation to how we're actually going about that debate. So if there's lots of different definitions around the use of drills, for example, why not just call it out as rote learning? We all get rote learning doesn't work from a skill acquisition perspective. Why don't we just focus in on block practice as opposed to just using the term drill, which might mean something for me, something for Scott, something for James, completely different.

I think from a theoretical perspective, I think it's useful for coaches to understand how human beings interact with their environment and how they move within their environment. I think that has to underpin everything that we do. The option to go down that rabbit hole should be left open for coaches. Some may have absolutely no interest in going down that avenue. It's an area where only a few of us reside because I guess we're curious about getting stuck into the meat about what we're doing certain things.

Some coaches are really just interested in methods that are going to help them become better coaches and methods that are going to help their participants become better or more skillful movers. I think that, for me, is probably one of the biggest downfalls of some of these theoretical conversations.

But when you dig right into it, when you move all the coaching methods and all the practice stuff away and the learning design away from where the discrepancy actually sits between some of these theories, internal representation or not, internal models or not—for me, I don't think 90% of the coaches really care about that as one. And number two, I wonder whether the conversations around those theoretical constructs are actually useful in the broader world of coaching.

James de Lacey22:18

Would you, if I'm trying to bring this practical, would you say that regardless of all these models, the end goal is pretty much the same? You're trying to train a fighter that can essentially problem-solve what is happening in front of them and use basically a toolbox that they've developed through coaching to solve that problem. Would that just be the end goal regardless of how someone's trying to approach it then?

Jon22:18

Yeah, I think so. I think the really interesting debate I think for coaches is around what might be defined as just bad coaching versus better coaching. If you go to any combat sport event or tournament or competition and you've got coaches sitting in the corner, you will see nine times out of ten you'll see them screaming the life out of the athlete, so telling them what to do from one to the next.

And when you start to understand theory and understand how people learn and interact with their environment, and from a sport perspective, that's not only a waste of time, but you're actually probably getting in their way, getting in the athlete's way in terms of making their own decision, self-regulating, self-organizing within the context in the ring or the cage, et cetera.

So I don't want to paint a picture either that everything's rosy in the garden with combat sport coaching. It really, really isn't. And again, I just wonder whether these kind of hybrid theoretical conversations are actually hitting the audience and targeting the audience, and that audience being other coaches. Does that make sense?

Scott23:40

It makes sense, and I agree. There can be—and I always try and avoid this, and this is something me and you talk about privately—if we're to take it at face value, trying to, if you're going down the theoretical space, doesn't make a lot of sense to try and integrate or jump between both sides of the direct perception or indirect perception space.

I think it's good to be—I use the word agnostic, and it's maybe not the correct word to use here. What I'm saying is I'm very conscious of being over-zealot and saying perception's absolutely direct. But for me, I've had to pick a side, or I've picked a side, I've chosen to pick a side, which resonates with myself.

What I like about the ecological approach is that for me it's quite simple and elegant. It's a lot of work to get my head around, but it helps me parse out what I actually believe is going on when a human being learns to interact with their environment and learn. And I think that can give me a lot of information, and it can help me design effective practices.

It doesn't really tell me how to coach, how to interact with a human being, how to get my player and my team lifted up, how to create that bond, that unity, how to communicate. Doesn't really tell us any of that.

But I'd like this to circle back to maybe something you mentioned in the Instagram too, that we've created some kind of straw man by saying that there's this kind of—this is what goes on in gyms. And you push back, and fairly you push back, say, well, that's not—we're caricaturing this as being a part of combat sports, but in your experience you don't really see much of that.

I think a quick scroll through social media, or certainly gyms I've been in and whatnot, there's a ton of that going on. There's a ton of this rote repetition and rote drills, and to be quite frank, nonsense going on in gyms.

James de Lacey25:33

Those are Scott's favorite Instagram posts to comment on and then to get blocked.

Scott25:33

That could easily be eliminated by just coaches having even a superficial understanding of what skill is, whether it be from even an information processing account, which again doesn't say we have to strip all the context away and it eventually puts that back in. All coaches have always used constraints. All coaches have always trusted or relied on self-organization in a sense, because it's impossible to micromanage to that scale your athletes. So we've all trusted that, whether we know about it or not.

So yes, effective coaching practices have emerged and just organically evolved over time because that's who's created the best fighters. But we're still stuck in this—I would argue most gyms are still having this mismatch of things that make a lot of sense and are wholly aligned with how we see the sport and being representative and contextually rich. But there's still a lot of this shite left in there. And I think having an approach and an understanding of theory helps you just to minimize some of that shite.

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Jon28:06

Again, I don't want to get too technical here.

James de Lacey28:06

You're in good company.

Jon28:06

No, and I agree. I absolutely agree. But sometimes I wonder whether, as you say, you're scrolling through social media—now there's a lot of nonsense on social media, my God, in terms of what's happening in combat sports.

Scott28:38

Sorry, John, can I just add? You see a lot of shite in some of the highest-level gyms with the highest-level performers.

Jon28:38

Absolutely. Oh yeah, absolutely. Yeah, absolutely.

James de Lacey28:38

James's whole channel is about that. I've been breaking all sorts of strength conditioning stuff just from clips, and people seem to enjoy it. But it's very few and far between you find something that's somewhat sound.

Jon29:04

Absolutely. And some of the dumbest stuff you see in the most highly-paid gyms, the professional ranks, where they've got the money to bring in experts but they don't. They bring in their mate from the block who's been holding pads all his life and what have you, and you do see some mad [stuff].

Scott29:28

Stuff coming out in terms of tennis balls getting thrown at people and laser beams, touching flashing lights, and that's all in the race to look super tech and super flashy and novel. Scott's point is: when you start to understand the theory that underpins how human beings move, become skillful, then we know that this stuff is absolute pants.

Jon29:28

But to go back to the rote repetition stuff, sometimes I think there's then the straw man that I refer to. I'll bring information processing theory into this in a second. Sometimes the straw man I think that's referred to is that coaches, or some coaches, will use rote repetition, chasing the ideal technique, coaching technique through verbal instruction, making sure it looks picture perfect, and then trying to insert that into a performance. So it goes straight from rote repetition into a dynamic context, into the performance.

There's a middle bit. Fitts and Posner refer to it as the associative stage, where you build up on the understanding of that—agree with that if you will or not. But I think most coaches will, rightly or wrongly, go through a process of trying to piece it together before it goes into the performance environment.

Now, for me, I think that's where the beauty of good coaching actually sits: making sure that it's been pieced together in a way that it can be transferred to the performance environment. There's lots of ways that coaches might think they're piecing it together that actually won't transfer to the performance environment.

And sometimes information processing theory gets the [expletive] beaten out of it a lot. There's no information processing coaching manual anywhere that suggests you must do rote repetition and then get in and play the game. It doesn't say that at all. And I think that's a—it's a bit of—information processing theory is a little bit of a bogeyman under the bed.

James de Lacey30:53

Do you want to just define that quickly, John? Just information processing?

Jon31:24

Yeah, sure. So information processing theory is a theory on how we understand the brain from a computational perspective. So it essentially suggests that the brain is a passive receiver of information. So information goes in, the brain will computate and cognate and run through a series of stages before it makes a decision, and that decision then is the output of the action. So we've got input, cognition, and then output from an information processing. And it was pretty much built on our understanding of how computers work, right?

Now, things have moved on drastically in cognitive science, and I don't think there's anyone now that's active within the field who would suggest that the brain works like a computer. And that's where direct perception comes in. So the idea that's posited by ecological dynamics and embodied cognition would suggest that perception and action are nearly one and the same thing—they're tightly coupled. So there's no processing.

James de Lacey31:56

Does that make sense?

Jon32:28

Yeah, because that's the part of the paper that you had an issue with, where it was—whatever—the information was, then it was cognition, and then it was action.

James de Lacey32:28

Perception, cognition, and action, I think it was.

Jon32:28

Exactly, yeah. And Scott, in fairness, did clarify that for me by suggesting another paper which I read, which is really enjoyable.

But I don't think information processing is the problem. Now, I'll caveat that by saying a lot of the coach education syllabi that has come throughout the years has been influenced by how formal education is actually carried out. So when you go to school, for example, how do you learn your times tables? By [expletive] doing them over and over again, right? Rote repetition. That's how you learn them, how you retrieve them, to use that terminology.

A lot of those methods crept into coach education and into skill acquisition. And I guess if you just unravel that enough, somewhere along the way you'll find methods that will be underpinned by what might be termed as information processing theory. And that's where the jumble-up in coach ed and coaching methods, I think, actually happens.

But I've lost my train of thought there slightly. I was going back to the information processing theory as a straw man. I think we're wasting our time keep pointing at this information processing thing. Nobody anywhere really understands—or no one anywhere knows—that their coaching practice is being underpinned by information processing theory. Like, you won't go to a gym anywhere in the world and see 'IP' over the door—'this is an information processing gym.' But you will see 'ecological' over some gyms and some labels and stuff, and that's fine—I'm not saying it's a bad thing.

But I just think there's a straw man argument in relation to ecological dynamics and ecological psychology. It sits on the far end of that spectrum I spoke about earlier—radical enactivism. Information processing theory sits on the very opposite end of it. In the middle is a whole spectrum of cognition and our understanding of the brain and our interaction with the environment. And just a little bit back from information—or from ecological psychology—is embodied or situated cognition, which does actually suggest that perception and action are coupled.

The only difference here—and here is that right here—it suggests that we're still using a model, an internal model. Ecological psychology would say no model. And for me, sometimes I think: who gives a [expletive] if both—if we understand that perception is direct and that environmental and contextual information is key, and we share that understanding, here? That, for me, is—I think that, for me, is the magic that influences the methods behind culture. Does that make sense?

James de Lacey34:58

It makes sense.

Scott34:58

Here's—John, I'll push back and say I don't think it's a straw man. I can see from your perspective that you believe it's a strong straw man, and I agree: I have yet to meet the coach who says, 'We are an IP gym,' and 'We have IP above the door.' I have 'ecological' above ours—I mean, figuratively speaking.

But this seems to be the de facto position that most coaches, without any kind of theoretical understanding—because IP, or the computational idea of the brain being a computer—input, process, output—has been the really main game in town for the last couple of generations. So I think coaches—most coaches—actually believe that. They might not have a sophisticated understanding of what's going on, and admittedly they might not. But I think the majority of coaches out there still have this idea, or if you were to press them or ask them what's going on, they would probably have this thing.

This is why the term 'muscle memory' comes out. This is why we're going to get it down. If they do that, you'll do this. John, you're clearly in upper levels of coaching, so you're not seeing as much of this. But I would say this is the majority of what goes on in gyms all over the world.

And I think what this paper has done—and what this paper intended to do—was give a different perspective and help—the way it was written too, with the case studies and whatnot—was to help coaches start a discussion. And I'm celebrating that. It's certainly taken off in grappling, and there's this big debate in the grappling space now. And unfortunately, the debate—because it's early and immature and the coaches haven't quite got their heads around it yet—we're still talking about, 'Well, we'll do 20% of our classes IP and then the rest ecological.'

So they have a sense 'ecological' means just doing the [expletive] thing, right? And they have a sense that the IP is, 'Let's break it all down and micromanage it.' To an extent, that's a really rough 30,000-foot view. But when the only game in town has been this 'wax on, wax off, paint the fence, Mr. Miyagi' [expletive] for the last couple of generations, I think—I'm not—let me use this word without sounding offensive—I think naively, just because you're at the higher levels of coaching, John, you don't see that this is part and parcel of most training environments across—not just across martial arts—but across sports generally.

Jon37:56

Yeah, it's a fair point. But I also came through that process myself. I wasn't born into the world coaching with a national team. I started off coaching children in a very prescriptive fashion, actually coming from traditional martial arts of taekwondo. And I went on my own journey then. I came across problem-based learning and situated learning, et cetera, which pushed me into trying to understand constraint-based coaching and stuff like that.

But again, Scott, I just wonder whether the theoretical Mickey-measuring that goes on through academic papers and stuff like that—whether it's actually beneficial to bring coaches along and on a journey. I think all coaches need to know is how and why people perceive information in their environment and how they act on that. And you can bring that in through different coaching methods and styles of practice.

And you're right when you say—in relation to, 'We'll do eco for a bit and IP for a little bit.' And I was listening to one of the actual experts in ecological dynamics, Keith—

Keith Davids was on a podcast not so long ago and he even made reference to— Yeah, what did I say? Richards, the guitar player. Yeah, I'm sorry, apologies. You must have perceived the guitar on the wall there. The guitar is back, yes. You resonated with the Stone. David is listening in, I do apologize. But you are still one of the experts in Ecological Dynamics and really interesting podcast.

Scott39:29

And he referenced learning as being on a continuum. He said that, down one end of that continuum it's stable, we might need to use verbal instruction or verbal commands, it might need to be simple in terms of the information that's available to the learner. But the further you go up that continuum, it becomes unstable into that practice fidelity where you've got that lots of contextual information at play.

So even within Ecological Dynamics there's an understanding that we need to shift along this continuum of learning depending on the context. But it's knowing that we shouldn't stay at any one point for too long. So I think maybe some of the issues in combat sport coaching is that a lot of the time is spent maybe down within that stable, low contextual interference kind of part of the continuum.

Jon40:27

So again, with regards to this paper and the approach, if coaches take the colleges serious—what I try to tell myself now in my coaching is, okay, I could be wrong, could absolutely be wrong, but if I'm going to be coaching from this perspective I'm going to take direct perception seriously, I'm going to take ecology seriously, I'm going to take self-organization seriously. And there's, that covers an umbrella, different terms and different concepts.

So when I talk about the starting position—and that was my contribution to the paper, was getting onboarding learners right—if again from our perspective there is a world out there and we are immersed in this lawfully structured information, right from the get-go I want them to start, just start in a manageable, safe way, to start attuning and picking up on that information. Because I believe, and I believe that's what the approach is telling us and the theory is telling us, that this is what underpins skilled action over time.

So, to go back to Coach Thoren, the three-eye method, they had the introduction stage which in many ways sounds super reasonable, right? We're going to kind of do the things and maybe even a—maybe even, I don't want to, because Adam will chase me here if I get this wrong—but there's maybe a space for this rote repetition to start with to get a more technical ideal down first and then we're going to integrate it.

I think from my perspective, and again taking direct perception, self-organization, and ecology seriously—and I know Adam's moving that way too—we're going to either try and remove that all together, this introduction part, or we are going to squeeze it into a very, very small space. I don't think it's particularly coherent to say there's, we're going to show you what to do and tell you what to do and how to move, but then we really don't—as ecological coaches we really don't believe in that—but this is maybe going to be one step back to take two steps forward.

Perhaps it is, perhaps there is a better way to get someone at least moving close to that ideal first. I don't believe it, but I'm not overzealous. I'm saying that this is ultimately detrimental in the long term because I think you're going to get there. And the spectrum you spoke about, this is what we're trying to do as a community: we're trying to shove people along that spectrum.

And if we leave all this wiggle room, John, that, yeah, well it doesn't completely violate the ecological approach by giving somebody direct instruction and whatnot, I think what we're doing is we're allowing to continue this mishmash of ideas. And perhaps there's a role to be a little bit overzealous just now and overshoot a little bit now, to drag people, the coaches who want to come, to drag them into this space deep, deep, deep, deep into the space. And then they can start walking it back a little bit and picking things from a practical standpoint.

From a practical standpoint, when they're dealing with their students, I don't talk to my students with all the—I struggle to talk to you about it with the high-fluency language, but I certainly don't do that with my students. I got to meet them where they are at. And when they're coming in on the first day, I got to meet them where they're at.

But sometimes meeting them where they're at is trying to undo years and years of seeing all this on social media and this perception of what it is to learn martial arts: we're going to tell you exactly how to stand, you're going to move your feet only this way and this kind of stuff. And I don't think it's helpful, so I'd rather get rid of it all together. And that's what we try and do, and I think this is what the paper was trying to present.

Scott44:17

Of course. I'm biased, I think this is what the paper was trying to present. I'm finding it really hard to disagree with you.

James de Lacey44:17

Sorry, James.

Scott44:17

No, you're 100% right. And I think it boils down to the context. So let's take the, let's take rote repetition away for a second and just let's bring in say an isolated practice just for—

Jon44:42

I'm sorry, I'm very rude of me to interrupt you. I'd love to take it away, but what I'm saying is I think this is ubiquitous amongst gyms across all learning environments: that there's still a ton of this roteness going on. Maybe not in yours, and I know why it's not in yours, because you're an informed coach and you coach at the higher levels and you don't see much value at all in that.

But what we're trying to do here is, as communicators who are—especially me, right? You're in the academic space and the coaching space. I'm not really in the academic space, right? I'm not even considering myself. I'm academically curious and I'm in these, I've managed to find my, a seat at the table somehow, sneak my way in, and I'm talking to coaches in that space.

But really what I'm trying to do is make the best learning environment for my people in my gym who don't give a [expletive] about the science. They just want a good experience, and for some of them they really want to learn to be skillful. So I think there's a danger with what you're saying, is you seem to be—again, my perception—that this rote repetition is such a small part of the game we don't really need to worry about it so much. I think it's a bigger part of the broader community than perhaps you think it is.

Scott46:07

Do you think sometimes we get confused with isolated practice and rote learning?

Jon46:07

Yes. Well, you would have to define what you think isolated practice is for me. I think because I'd certainly isolate parts of the practice, absolutely I do. But I'm always keeping this—and this is what we talk about, the fighter-cage system. Now, we had a discussion about that, and again I only had a small contribution, what the words we were going to use. And was it fighter system? Was it the different the terminology that we're going to use?

Now I have my own way of speaking about things, and we can, they're all just words and labels, it's the meaning that's important. So one of the themes that continues to come through, and from that paper too, was the relationship: the relationship the fighter has with their environment, with their opponent, with their cage, with their skill development generally, with their intention.

And I think that is a great message, regardless of what we think is going on in the theoretical approach. If coaches can get that down and just know how important it is that when two fighters or training partners come together, that itself is a complex adaptive system from which behaviors are going to emerge, I think coaching can take a giant leap up just from that understanding alone. And I think we're both on the same page here.

Scott47:32

We are 100%, absolutely are on the same page. But what I found in the paper was that there was an attempt to relabel certain things that didn't need to be relabeled based on theoretical constructs, such as fight IQ, for example. Is that an argument we really need to be having?

Jon47:32

Possibly we don't need to be having, but they have to choose words. And it is a— I mean, just to pick, I guess just to be a little bit picky about some aspects of the paper.

Scott47:32

And what I said at the start was some of the relabeling or reinventing the wheel. There was a paragraph on why using terms like fight IQ might be counterproductive and reductionist. And is that really where we're going with this debate in terms of relabeling things?

There was also reference to maybe in your experience, but never in mine, Kata been used as part of a performance preparation. So my interpretation of Kata is the old traditional making forms with your hands and punching in very traditional—

Jon49:05

Ways, in the air essentially and not at people. I don't think Salt would be using Kata. I agree MMA coaches worth their salt, but I think if you just swap the word Kata out, I get why you think that was maybe a stretch. That's a strong man for sure.

Well, I would say it could be considered a straw man, but if you were just to swap out the Kata with combo of the day, I don't think it then is quite the straw man.

James de Lacey49:31

You're talking to martial artists and I think if you ask any martial artist what a Kata is, you'll get that traditional definition.

Jon49:31

Sure. I remember from Karate when I was younger, it was 30 marching up and down lines in white pajamas.

James de Lacey49:31

I still don't, it doesn't happen in MMA, James, in fairness. So I thought it was a little maybe disingenuous towards MMA coaches, regardless of where they are on their journey. Kata is not, it's not a thing in sport-based MMA.

Scott49:58

Okay, but if Kata is a prescriptive rehearsal of some idealized sequence, I don't think it's a big leap to say Katas are any different from these combinations that you see practiced ad nauseam all over our social media. When we see on social media, this is happening, we're seeing it at the highest levels, we're seeing professional fighters do these. Yes, you call it Kata, you can call it a combo of the day, you can call it whatever. This rehearsal of an idealized technique.

James de Lacey50:28

And it gets worse than that, John. There's coaches out there with enormous followings, right, that triggers us all, that are talking about the nuances of where the foot placement is and where you're driving off. I will grant you all day that there's better and worse ways to produce force from kicks and punches. But again, I take self-organization seriously and I don't think it's helpful, and this is again for me what the paper is trying to push back against.

Scott50:59

So I accept you didn't like the use of the word Kata and you thought that was maybe a low blow, but I don't think when you, again I think they're almost synonymous, Kata and the let's do the six-strike combo on a pad over and over and over and over. That's rote, and I don't think rote and Kata are, I think they're bedfellows.

James de Lacey51:25

No, but not to go on about it, but I think Kata is understood within the martial arts world as something very specific, which is that white pajamas marching in lines, punching up and down the hall under the command of a senior instructor counting from one to ten. What you're essentially referring to there is that kind of decontextualized kind of movement, or even the use of overly constraining a student.

And you're talking about footwork, and you see this all the time on social media, people being told exactly where to put their feet and they're being constrained by markings on the floor or plates on the floor that they put their feet on and things like that. I mean, for me, that shows a fundamental ignorance around just how people move. They don't need to be told where to put their feet. If they don't know where to put their feet, they'll [expletive] fall down.

They'll find that out pretty quickly when you get them moving a little bit against each other, and there's lots of games, and some of them are mentioned in the paper about how to bring that kind of movement out and whatnot.

So, look, I think we're 100% on the same page when we dig into the nuances of it.

Jon52:37

And I know papers in particular, scholarly papers and articles for science journals and what have you, have to have a specific kind of structure and formality and language to them. But I would suggest that coaches are probably getting more out of this conversation, which has been influenced by the paper. There's no doubt about it. And myself, Scott, and you, James, have had conversations around our observations and understanding of what happens on social media.

I'll go back to my original point, is that I don't know if harping on about information processing and other theoretical constructs is doing the conversation any use. And that's where again we respectfully disagree, because I think it's creating a conversation at least.

Scott53:08

But we could have that conversation with, I mean you could take ecological dynamics out of that paper completely, not mention it, and still be a good paper around here's better ways to coach based on certain understandings of perception and action.

James de Lacey53:38

We could, but it was specifically addressing this approach and introducing this approach to coaches. It was the first, we spoke about, I spoke about the authors the other day, that when people are asking for definitive studies and metrics on an ecological approach and ecological learning, that's not that easy to get into a science paper. It's not that easy to do a study of fighters in their actual environment.

One of the things too, again, I take seriously is this idea of perturbations, right, or noise, or having to, when someone's kicking and punching you and moving you, this is the sport. And when we strip that away from the training environment, we're doing our, I believe we're doing our athletes an enormous disservice. It's artificial and false.

Jon54:06

But information processing theory, if you wanted to dig into that, doesn't argue against that.

James de Lacey54:35

I agree. I started out with, I think there's an overlap there. There is an overlap, and I think that overlap is sometimes missed in those theoretical conversations because the bogeyman is always information processing theory. And we get into rabbit holes around how the brain works and like what the [expletive], who cares from a coaching perspective? Who cares?

Jon54:35

I want to try to sum up kind of you guys' points. Definitely agree, pretty much on most things. I'll say, John, you talked before about training across the spectrum, right? You're training maybe, if we're just talking striking example, pad work, various live games, whatever it is, sparring. And then you're going to be more or less on either side or in the middle, depending on what stage you are in.

Somewhat, Scott's trying to say, just skip out, almost skip out the pad side because it's not representative of what's happening. Now I'll jump to what you're saying, John, about perception and action always being coupled. I know you guys both say that too. So then my question would be, I think hopefully this should be good for listeners to kind of sum everything up as well, at what point then does, we'll call it rote learning in terms of maybe combinations on pads and things like that, at what point does that become less effective for someone to learn because the perception and the environment is not the same or similar to what is happening when someone's in front of you?

Scott55:59

I'll go first on that. And I'm guilty of dismissing pad work, right? We don't do any pad work in our group practice. I tell my boys do pad work till the cows come home. Again, we have to, I think, one important thing for coaches to do is whatever they have their athlete do, ask yourself what is it we think's going on here? What are we trying to achieve?

Pad work has tremendous benefits in certain regards. If we're talking about it from a skilled action perspective and being able to transfer skills to a fighting context, I think the value is very limited.

If it's for, John and I talk about that too, if it's for power expression and whatnot, confidence, conditioning, I grant all that. Now again, it was a conversation John and I have had, is that power expression, somewhat false too when you don't have the, when the temporal and spatial constraints are not the same. I don't know, because I see the highest level fighters look magically wonderful on pads.

But I don't see that necessarily manifest in a fight. Likewise, I see beautiful technique, idealized technique out there. I don't necessarily see that manifest in a fight. I did share the other day, and I've spoke about this before, Donald Cerrone in a post the other day, but I forget who it was. Evan Dunham, I keep getting this wrong, and I'm not sure if there was any, he landed the four-piece, right?

And everyone lost their [expletive] because a four-piece landed, yet routinely they're practicing six, seven, eight, nine, ten-hit strike sequences with duck-unders and step-overs and that. You're hard-pressed to find four-pieces that land routinely. Most of fighting is chaotic, it's a little messy. That is the sport. And I think as long as we're training in that space responsibly and ethically, I think we're doing our fighters the best service we can give them. I think there's limited application to the use of pads, to be honest with you.

James de Lacey58:09

I'm not a fan of them. I try not to use them, but I have found them to be useful with certain athletes who actually find them enjoyable. So I won't take that away from them, from the fact that they enjoy them. I won't tell them that they're wasting their time. I don't want to kill their enjoyment. I have used them to some success in what we might call priming or becoming, increasing...

Scott58:35

Sensitivity to certain affordances. So if we're about to step into the ring against another fighter who we've studied and we've managed to kind of sus out their game plan, we might have one or two tactics that will just isolate on the pads. Information processing theory says you can do that. Ecological dynamics theory says you do that, and everything in between says it does say you do that.

Jon58:35

It does say you can guide their intent, you can guide your intention.

Scott59:01

That's exactly the point. So from an information processing theory, it might be deemed that we're storing a general motor program for retrieval later on. And from ecological dynamics perspective, we could be increasing that sensitivity to understanding the affordance that they might come across in the ring. But the method is the same. The theoretical understanding of it is different.

But to go back to the point, I have used pads to prep somebody right before we would get in to the ring, and to some success as well. So again, it's contextual. Is doing 10 rounds of pads, of three minute rounds on the pads, any way an indicator of performance ability? No, 100% it's not. I know people who are really good on the pads.

And for a while there, the style of padding from Mayweather, tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap, that was everywhere and I was like, this is getting into really silliness now.

Jon59:59

Still everywhere.

Scott59:59

Yeah, it's still everywhere. I mean, people aren't even punching properly at this point. So it's all about how much you can actually remember in a set pattern and repeat the pattern over and over. So yeah, it goes down that rabbit hole. I think there's a place for pads, but it's probably not where everybody thinks it is.

Jon1:00:21

I'll go a little further here with my concern about pads, and something I've noticed recently. There's a certain coach out there that's built a career on the rhythm step and L step and whatnot. I don't see that with my fighters because I think what pads can perhaps do—pads when there's this reset moment after the combination or the thing—that's where I believe that behavior, that attractor state, has come from, that reset position. Don't see it in these engaged games.

The issue I have, and the reason that I still leave room for pads—and this is maybe a larger detriment because I'm always trying to stay on the—we talk about light for learning, right? It was one of our podcasts. If my athletes aren't able, for ethical and safety reasons, to express true force in the spar, will that manifest in a fight? And that's a problem I have.

That's one of the central problems, other than the head contact. Again, we both agree there. And the only interesting question for me right now is—striking, there's many—but the real interesting question is how representative is representative enough, and how light can we spar to have effective transfer? I don't really know the answer to that question, and I'm staying on the cautious side.

But I do think the lack of corrective feedback—and I mean corrective feedback from the sense of both informationally and realistically—the corrective feedback that you can get on pads. Yes, talk about you can have great pad holders and pad holders can really simulate the fight. I don't think even the greatest padwork can simulate a fight. I think there's better and worse padwork.

But what tends to happen padwork is this relationship that's been built up between the pad holder and the pad, and they resonate with each other on the same wavelength. So it looks and it feels beautiful, and that's great. That gives a lot of confidence to the fighter and people looking in is aesthetically pleasing and everything. But I think it's a big red herring.

Scott1:02:17

I agree. That's a great point actually that you made around the rhythm step or L steps, and how that might be an attractor state based on standing in front of pads and waiting on the next command to come. It's a really great point. Same the bag.

Jon1:02:17

Step back, step back. Yeah.

Scott1:02:17

Absolutely. It's a really good point. I was going to say something else about padwork there and it's gone out of my head. What was it?

James de Lacey1:02:41

We've actually got a few questions—well, some comments on the YouTube about it. Someone saying, Alan Lewis, he's saying, "Padwork is vital to teach certain combinations. It's great to do the repetitions to get muscle memory down. It is also great way to change your reaction to certain movements and shots."

And then, before you respond to that, just to go on from Donald Cerrone's combo that Scott mentioned, he's saying that there are countless videos of him practicing that exact combo on pads. That specific combo can be practiced safely countless times on pads. He cannot safely practice that combo on sparring partners and certainly cannot practice it over and over again at a single session.

Scott1:03:30

Can I jump in quickly there? If you watch if you watch the combination, it's not particularly technically ideal at all. And if you were to see someone punching and kicking like Cerrone did with that four piece on a pad, they would get chastised by their coach for being sloppy. This is the reality of fighting.

I'm going to let Jon answer the muscle memory thing because, unfortunately, and I don't want to be rude to the commenter, but when someone brings up the idea of muscle memory, for me that is showing a little bit of a lack of understanding of what's going on. Now, if you're saying muscle memory is a synonym for perceptual attunement, that's fine, but I don't think most people are using in that regard.

I think that muscle memory, whether you think it's in the muscles, whether you think it's a motor program that we're retrieving, I don't believe in that. So if I don't believe in it, then I don't agree with it.

Jon1:04:30

A lot of the work within psychology and within neuroscience, who actually study, pull apart the brain and study it, will suggest that general motor program theory was probably of its time back in the '60s and '70s. So to the guy there that commented on that, it's not actually how the brain works.

Muscles don't store, they don't have memory, they don't have any cells or tissue that would represent them having any form of memory or use of memory. Or even the term "memory" has a different understanding within the construct of direct perception or perception-action coupling. And that memory is actually stored at the magical interface between the person and their environment and through their action.

So maybe to go back to Scott's point about how some of this terminology is proliferated through coaching and through combat sport, maybe with the term "muscle memory" you might have an understanding that we practice something to memorize it, and then during a performance we retrieve the memory and then carry it out. There's no evidence to suggest that's how these things happen at all.

And Scott mentioned the term in terms of the sensitivity to affordances, and affordances would be seen as opportunities or invitations for action through direct perception construct. And that's how our understanding of decision-making—and I guess that's the underpinning of this conversation here today—is how we understand decision-making. And it's not from that theoretical construct of general motor programs and schema theory, where we practice things over and over and over and then retrieve them and use them when we feel necessary.

Lots of really good—there's podcast with myself, Scott, and James talking about these constructs if you want to dive into that and see where that goes for that listener. I didn't realize we were on YouTube, so hello to everyone, hello.

Scott1:06:32

And the concept of muscle memory, I'm not—I bashed it for the longest time. I'll agree that the system has, whether you call it hysteresis, or there is a—and it can build up effective synergies and attractors and whatnot that, and behaviors. I'll grant that. And that could, you could almost sneak that into a form of muscle memory if you just wanted to use a colloquial term.

But I think the way it's getting used and thrown around—and yeah, I'll grant you that he maybe even practiced that on pads till the cows came home. But for every combination that someone's practiced on pads that manifest and shows up in a fight, I can show you hundreds that did not.

And implore coaches to look, instead of looking at what's showing up technically ideal in a fight, look at all the rest of the stuff. Slow fighting down a bit. Actually look at the footwork. Actually look at the technique. Actually look at the rotation in the mechanics. It's not that pretty. And then when you bring it all the way down to the lower professional levels and amateur levels, it's even uglier. This is a reality of our sport.

Jon1:07:24

Nice, which means that training for that perfect or that ideal technique or position is probably a waste of time.

Scott1:07:53

I think it's futile, largely futile. But then we're all human and we see it crop up now and again. The classic one was Conor practicing that just before he knocked out Aldo. He was definitely, they were definitely guiding his intention. He was, his intention and attention were focused on that, the chances of that happening.

So it was whatever you want to call it. It looked extraordinary, right? He managed to pull it off. He almost got clobbered and knocked out himself. It was almost a double knockdown. But even that in itself, beautifully skillful, beautifully timed, not that actually not that technical the way he did it. The way he came back, I'm sure he was throwing it on pads a lot more technically and powerfully. But this was the nature of the game.

And if we can get our, if we can, we've agreed on a lot of things today and I knew we would, John. If we can agree that whatever you want to call them, opportunities, affordances, openings, if we can agree that that is the meat and potatoes of what makes a skilled fighter, and we need to give our fighters the opportunity in a safe manner, in an appropriately challenging manner, and in a scaled manner to over time detect and exploit these openings, affordances, and opportunities, I think we're doing our fighters the best service we can do.

Jon1:08:47

Absolutely. If I could just come in very quickly, James, on that. Scott uses the example of McGregor practicing that check left hook when Aldo runs at him. And there's, it's a great example, and there's a broader picture to that in terms of the whole buildup to the fight was about goading Aldo enough to have him run at him and then try and catch him with that left hook.

And a different perspective in terms of predictive processing. So where I'm sitting in relation to body cognition, we're going there, we're going there. That theoretical construct would say that that was a prediction that Conor was working on. So from a predictive processing perspective, but when you watch that away and you look at the underpinning theoretical construct of that, there's a lot of overlap in terms of direct perception, affordances, opportunities for action, etc.

And this can't be glossed over, the fact that the importance of researching and picking up tendencies from your potential opponent. So this is where film studying can be useful. To think a fight is going to go exactly the way you think it's going to go, again, you can show me the odd one and I'll show you thousands that didn't go that way.

Look at Mazvidal. Mazvidal wasn't practicing his check hook in the locker room. He was practicing kneeing this [expletive] as he shot because that was more likely to happen. So again, regardless of the theoretical underpinnings, the ecological approach would just say you are helping guide intention and focusing their attention towards certain likely events.

And it's okay to say likely because, Aldo, to come in a little shorter guy and throw a haymaker was more likely than him shooting like Askren was going to shoot on Mazvidal. And I like all these fighters, so I'm not [expletive] on either of them. I have the highest respect for all these guys.

James de Lacey1:10:40

I want to finish this podcast with one more question I was actually asked earlier in the podcast. I never got around to asking because I was just trying to fit it in. But from TP, I don't know if you guys have come across this, this might be interesting. He's asking, how would you explain the situation, for example in judo, he can apply techniques very well in sparring sessions, but while drilling in place it feels unusual to him. Any input on something like that?

Jon1:11:09

Go ahead, Scott.

Scott1:11:09

I'd like to. So this is a conversation that's coming up a lot in the grappling space, right? Can we drill it to get this movement down? Someone they'll call it muscle memory, whatever. Can we drill it, this rehearsal? And okay, here's what I'd say about that: practicing a move under the lowest of resistance, almost like passively, right? I don't put a lot of value in it.

But what it can do, and I'm really finding I'm trying to squeak in some value here, it can help guide intention, right? It can help guide intention to what you're going to actually be trying to do. The problem with it's passive is you're not getting, again, if you take information detection and direct perception seriously, which I do, all the resistance and the movements and the haptic information that you're picking up on that your body is trying to become sensitive to, that's not present. That's not present when we do it passively.

So when we go to do it in a live situation, it's going to feel different. It's going to feel different because it's two different things, and I think we can't disregard that. And that is the reason I try and, again, I'm always trying to play devil's advocate because I'm Mr. [expletive] Switzerland over here. But I do think there's pros and cons from doing a little bit of drilling and rehearsal.

One thing another thing it does is it makes the athletes somewhat myopic. So they have this end goal and they're not seeing the forest for the trees kind of thing. And so again, unapologetically, we don't do any static drilling. We don't do very detailed demonstrations or whatnot. I keep the information and the demonstrations very, very sparse, kind of sloppy. I try not to show someone how I want them to move.

It's all appropriately challenging end goal and task outcomes. And again, I take self-organization seriously. I think that will develop over time. But I don't want to rob the learner of that, the necessary information they need to become, to be tuned to, perceptually tuned to.

Jon1:13:20

I couldn't add anything more of any value to what Scott just said there. I absolutely agree. And maybe just use a very glib analogy: it's a little bit like learning to swim without getting into the water. It's going to feel different when you get in, for sure.

James de Lacey1:13:49

Nice, perfect. And Sean Miska just popped in saying thanks to Scott and John for authentically sharing thoughts and ideas from their respective perspectives and thanks for bringing the platform for a discussion such as this.

Jon1:13:49

No, this has been a great chat. Thanks for thanks for tuning in, Sean, to everything as well. So one thing, one thing here. Yeah, yeah. Our mutual friend Jamie Taylor got in touch with me today, John. Perhaps that's a, perhaps as a, we could do a doubles match, tag team match. Maybe myself and Sean, if you guys are up for it, we can have a chat sometime, yourself and Jamie.

Scott1:14:17

Absolutely, yeah, sounds great. Sounds great. I think the meat, to be honest with you, the meat and all these, the magic and all these conversations is really good for coaches from a practical perspective. You can read articles and papers until the cows come home, but actually getting into conversations with other coaches and teasing out different ideas, I think it's where the magic lies. So absolutely.

James de Lacey1:14:41

Scott, do you start with you, John? Do let me share where people can find and follow you with what you're doing.

Jon1:14:41

No, I don't want to be found or followed. Look, I'm head down in a doctoral project at the moment. I'm on Instagram. I used to share lots of stuff about throwing tennis balls at people and shiny lights and [expletive] [expletive] like that.

I'm on Twitter, which is where most of the good conversations happen around skill acquisition, give or take a couple of trolls, but anyway, that's Twitter or X as it is now. But that's where I am: John Mackey 14, or John Mackey on Instagram. Drop in and say hello.

James de Lacey1:15:06

And Scott?

Scott1:15:06

Oh, I never get fed up on my own voice. No, I'm just [expletive] with you. But I am a coach at Primal with my partner Ben Schultz, Primal MKE in Milwaukee. Five years in of trying for better or worse to embrace the ecological approach.

I have a podcast called the Primal MMA Coaching Podcast where I speak to guests like Sean Miska, John, Rob Gray is going to be coming on here soon. So I'm always very, very receptive because the community and my mentors have been very, very receptive to me. So if anyone wants to reach out, tell me I'm full of [expletive], or inquire about what we're doing, I'm completely up for that too. And I'm not on Twitter that much, I'm on the dollar store Twitter now, which is Threads.

James de Lacey1:15:59

Nice, perfect. Thanks, guys, for coming on and chatting and debating this topic, and we'll see you again, I'm sure, for the fourth appearance for you guys at some point. Much love, Scott. Hope you're well, mate. I'll see you soon.

Scott1:15:59

You too. All right, thanks boys, take care, guys.