EP 34 "How We Learn to Move - Part 3" with Dr. Rob Gray

Rob Gray is a psychology professor and research psychologist with a focus on perceptual-motor control in driving, aviation, and sports. He also hosts the Perception & Action Podcast, is the author of two bestselling books on the acquisition of movement skills ‘How We Learn To Move’ and ‘Learning to Optimize Movement’, and he serves as the Skill Acquisition Specialist for the Boston Red Sox. In this interview, Dr. Gray discusses the key aspects from chapters 5 and 6 of How We Learn to Move. Rob provides insights on how coaches and trainers can embrace a motor learning environment that is a nonlinear, self-organizational model of movement. Also mentioned is how the perception of the world is embodied and how affordances shape the way we perceive opportunities for action. Dr. Gray introduces the important concept of ‘invariance’ and why it matters in performance and coaching. Additional topics covered in this interview are embodied perception, Gibson’s Affordances and his theory in conflict with traditionalist views, body & action capacity scaling, the importance of variability, intrinsic dynamics and how they relate to movement variability, and how the ‘law of attraction’ relates to movement variability and invariance. This interview contains practical insights on how trainers should embrace the ecological, nonlinear, self-organizational model of instruction, modify constraints to cause learners to self-organize movements, and understand the application of affordances and the laws of attraction to design effective training environments. Find Dr. Gray's exceptional 'Perception / Action Podcast' here: https://perceptionaction.com/