It is not my words that matter. It's the words that help them understand and action the understanding that matters. And the only way, the only way I know that is if I'm looking and I'm listening. And if I'm asking questions, so I have something to listen to, and I'm creating the space for them to move and own. So look and listen.
Have you ever fallen totally flat? when coaching or cuing a client? You're pulling out everything out of your playbook, and for whatever reason, it's just not working?
If so, welcome to the club. I know this has happened to me in the past, and it has most definitely happened to today's guest, Nick Winkleman. At the time, Nick was working with some of the most elite athletes on the planet at Exos as the head coach of their NFL Combine Prep program. And when he determined he wasn't truly connecting and making an impact on his athletes'performance, that's when he realized he he needed to change.
In today's episode, we're going to talk about the language of coaching, which just so happens to also be the title of Nick's new book on this very topic. We're going to talk about the moment before the movement and why it's so powerful. We're going to discuss why many of us are interfering with our clients and athletes movements versus actually informing them and making them better.
And perhaps most importantly, we're going to talk about the five step coaching and communication loop that Nick uses with his athletes to enhance their performance and get the absolute most out of their movement. Now, if you're a regular to the show, welcome back. As always, love and appreciate you.
And if you're new here, welcome. I'm Mike Robertson, and this is the Physical Preparation Podcast. In this show, we take deep dives into the art and science of coaching, cueing, program design, business, and personal development.
Basically, anything that can help you become a better trainer, coach, or rehab professional. Now, even though I've been in the game for 21 years now, I... I still found myself taking tons of notes during this episode and writing down all the things I want to improve about my own coaching. So if you're interested in taking your coaching and cueing skills to the next level, I know you're going to love this episode.
So we're going to take a quick break and then we'll jump into this awesome new show with my guy, Nick Winkle. Today's episode of the Physical Preparation Podcast is brought to you by ExerFly. If you're unfamiliar with flywheel training, it's a method of strength training where your athletes generate resistance by using the inertia of a flywheel instead of traditional gravity-based resistance training. By accelerating and then decelerating a disc, your athletes generate resistance at all phases of movement.
This allows for high force training as well as eccentric overloading without the need for crazy heavy weights. I first got interested in flywheel training because I wanted my athletes to be better prepared for sport. Standard free weight training is great for the early preparatory phases, but I wanted something that could improve the rate of force development in both the concentric and eccentric phases of the lift. Most importantly, I wanted to make sure my athletes were prepared for those eccentric forces that they'll encounter in sports.
And with their motorized technology, the ExerFly allows you to increase the eccentric phase of the lift from anywhere from 1 up to 80%. The biggest objection I had early on was learning a new piece of tech or equipment. After all, sometimes these Sings sound great, but really aren't all that functional or they take forever to figure out. But luckily, if you take the time to watch a few short videos and experiment a little bit, you'll be using the Exerfly like a pro in no time. Setup is quick and easy and my athletes are absolutely loving it.
Last but not least, there are tons of different exercises and variations you can use as well. Whether we're talking squats, hinges, presses, split squats, If you can think of it, chances are you can figure out a way to do it with the Exerfly. The really cool thing is Exerfly is used by numerous teams in the NFL, NBA, over 50% of the English Premier League, and numerous Olympic developmental programs as well. Now as a small business owner, I normally think, hey, this is way outside of my budget, I can't afford it, because we all know in a small business, every penny counts.
But Exerfly has you covered there as well. They offer 36-month, interest-free financing so you can get started. Start ASAP with your training and pay as you go. And when you factor in a 30-day money back guarantee, 2-year warranty, and free shipping, I really believe this is a solid investment. Look, the bottom line is this.
If I don't really love something, I'm not going to promote it on my show. I love my Exerfly, the results I'm getting with it, and I think you will as well. To learn more, head over to Exerfly.com so you can start building some savage, athletic beasts in your gym. Again, That's xerfly.com. All right, Nick, man, thanks so much for coming on the show here today.
Really excited to get you back on. Could you start by just telling us a little bit about yourself? Yeah, Mike, it's good to be back on. Before I do that, how long has it been? It might have been like, it might be like eight years ago.
You're pretty damn close. You were the seventh episode, right? The seventh episode, and we're like 320, 330 in. So you were last on in 2015. Almost eight.
Oh, wow. So my intuition wasn't that far off. No, you're right on, dude.
Um, cool. Very cool. It's great to be back on and, and, and congrats on, uh, continuing to provide this platform for as long as you have.
I just, I think I tried podcasting for like three episodes over COVID and that's about how long I lasted. So huge kudos to you and others that do this. Um, okay.
Who, who, who am I? So strength coach now for, uh, 20 years or approaching 20 years. Um, Really, I'm in Chapter 2 of my professional career. So Chapter 1 was 10 years at Athletes Performance, now EXOS, as people know it, under and with Mark Verstegen and the Luke Richesons and the Sue Falsons and the Darcy Normans of the world. So I spent 10 years, and really that was two different...
Major responsibilities, one overseeing our education department, our mentorship, and now people know through the XPS and the online education. I was fortunate enough to be a part of all that. And then the other piece, which really was my canvas for becoming a coach, was overseeing our NFL Combined Development Program, which obviously, Mike, you know all about in the work that you do.
And so I did that. I led that for seven of those 10 years, primarily from the speed development side. And we can kind of circle back to it. But. For me, it's been in the development of, you know, helping people move better on the field through the full diversity of complex movement that is sprinting and agility and jumping and plyometrics that I really learned how to become a coach and fell in love with coaching as an act and an art as much as I loved the strength and conditioning discipline specifically.
And I think making that distinction. is quite important. So after 10 years, a PhD and permanently tan skin living in Phoenix, Arizona, I had the opportunity to move across the pond, as they say, and join Irish rugby.
And my present role, I've been here now for coming up on seven years as the head of athletic performance and science. And so here I am still both coach and coach developer. but much more of the latter in a leadership role that has me working with roughly 34 S&C coaches and sports scientists within the athletic performance department across four professional teams and our national teams, which obviously are made up of players on those four professional teams.
And so... It's an amazing gig I'm in right now. It's amazing to live in another country, let alone work in an unfamiliar sport. And fortunately now, six and a half years in, we've been able to do some really cool things across sports science, across coaching, across physical development that maybe we'll touch on today. And the red thread, I guess, throughout all of that, that likely has you and I talking, is my interest, my passion project.
in the act and art of coaching, specifically looking at this space between us and others, and notably our ability to communicate movement and communicate in such a way that helps our athletes or just clients and patients of all varieties move better. So I'm very much so literally interested in the act of coaching, how we coach. and the role of communication in that space.
And so fortunately, in 2020, I had my book, The Language of Coaching, published, and I continue on that journey trying to yell from the rooftops to anyone that'll listen about it. I love it. I love it. So I don't know if I've ever heard you talk about this, or maybe I haven't.
It's just like kind of just totally spacing out on me right now. But what originally got you interested in this idea of coaching and communication? Like, Was there like a specific moment or like a series of things that happened to you that made you think, man, this is really like interesting and something I want to dive more into?
Yeah, it's a great question. And every time I'm asked that question, I feel like my sense of where it came from deepens or brightens, whatever synonym you prefer. So if my mom was here on the call, she's still here with us on Earth. She would. She would tell you that.
I always had the gift of gab. I was always a talker, you know, she told me that my mouth would either have me as standing in a courtroom as a lawyer or on the other side, you know, so she always liked to joke about that. And so it's unsurprising to me and those that know me that I fell into something that had me interested in language and words and communicating. And I think a lot of this came from my own.
desire more probably by chance than choice of just to be of to be understood and i think it's a human quality right we all want to be understood in its various forms and one of our primary ways to access or help people access us is through how we communicate with them and so that there was just always an inner drive for me in and around that space now that that's solidified into something useful uh if you want to give it a moment probably there was two moments. One was in college. I was a few months into my practicum as an aspiring personal trainer at the time, just trying to cut my teeth in the entry point to coaching others.
And I was working with a gentleman, shadowing him. And I was just enamored with him as a coach. He was quite a controversial character, very energetic, very charismatic.
loved and the opposite of loved by some, but he was passionate. He was passionate, Mike, about what he did. He was very good. He was great with his clients. And so I tried to understand why he seemed to be so different from the other coaches.
I mean, he bench pressed on Mondays. He did bicep curls at the end of the session. What he did was not remarkably different from others, but yet at the same time, it was.
And what I inevitably realized is it was his communication generally, but specifically his communication around the movement that was quite unique. He seemed to have this natural understanding that the moment before the movement was sacred. And I use that word because he seemed to protect it for one idea.
And it usually would be a little story, a little riff, an analogy, a visual. But he would give the person one thing to focus on to get the most out of the lift. And, you know, funny enough, he did a lot in the bodybuilding, the amateur bodybuilding space.
And we read a lot on Teenation and other places on the mind-muscle connection. And so he really leaned into that. And so he got a reputation. Literally, his reputation was to help clients feel muscle and feel movement, especially in the bodybuilder space. that others couldn't or they couldn't under their own ideas.
And so I'll never forget the day that kind of clicked with me. I went to another mentor and I said, listen, what this guy is doing is unbelievable. And I literally said, I was 19 or 20 at the time.
I said, I'm going to write a book on this one day. Now, the crazy thing is, Mike, why would I, in an instant of realizing what this person was doing, suddenly extrapolate that. to I'm going to write a book on the topic as if I was the expert. But for whatever reason, that's what came out of my mouth.
And at the time I said, you know, the book's going to be called The Form Within. I can see it and hear it as clear as I can everything in front of me right now, The Form Within. And so, you know, fast forward almost 15 years later, that book was born in the language of coaching.
And there certainly has been steps along the way that have reminded me and deepened the attraction towards that as a concept. And probably most notably was in 2009 was really the spark that gave rise to the modern inception of what I'm doing and what I'm sharing. And so that was my first year running the NFL combine.
I was probably week two or three into the program. I was on the track. It was a January morning in Phoenix, a little bit cold outside, but still sunny and nice. And I'm coaching and I'm coaching the heck out of these, you know, 15. skill players.
And I have this moment and literally this is going to sound like I'm trying to exaggerate or hype this up, but how it felt was like I woke up. I had a moment of insight, of spark. And it was if my eyes went from inside my head to finally turning outside.
That's how I felt. And seeing life, seeing reality for the first moment. It's kind of like when Neo wakes up. up in the matrix, right?
Not to that same extent, but by way of analogy, that's kind of how it emotionally felt. And what I realized was, wow, I'm... controlling the session with military precision. I'm giving, you know, surgical precision cues that are all textbook biomechanical. My interns are writing down copious notes of everything I'm saying, giving themselves carpal tunnel in the process.
What I realized is I'm just monologuing. I'm just broadcasting all of this information, sometimes before the movement, sometimes after, many times during. mostly to the whole group.
And I'm actually not aware at all, outside of the fact that the cues and the words sound good to my head, I have no idea how they sound to them. And I'm certainly not drawing any correlation or connection between what I'm saying and how they're moving. And how could I? I'm saying five things just in the last 15 seconds. Who heard me?
And if they did hear me, what did they hear? How did they interpret it? Am I closing that feedback loop to actually understand? And so it was that moment in 2009 that then I had this unbelievable burden put on top of me and this anxiety, productive anxiety put on top of me that led me just to voraciously and ferociously consume as much of the motor learning, skill acquisition, psychology, educational psychology, communication literature that I could.
until it formed into this deep understanding science and practice of how we communicate, how we communicate movement and how we get to the words that work. I love it. I love it.
Okay. So with that being said, what I want to do now is kind of dive in and we want to talk about, you know, some basic concepts that maybe people aren't familiar with, or the young coaches listening in haven't been exposed to before. And then we'll go into some, some deeper level stuff, but. Let's start really basic and we'll work from there.
New client comes to you. How are you communicating with that client or athlete versus somebody that's established? What are some of the big takeaways that you would say, oh, I'm going to talk to the new person this way and I'm going to talk to the established person this way? Okay, really good question. So what I'd like to do to answer most of these questions is try to embed them.
in a, the answer in a model, a model that think of it like as a blueprint, as a guide, as a compass to help us learn. And here's the phrase I'll use, organize our communication in a manner that is most productive and impactful for the person in front of us. So recognizing that a newbie is different than a 10-year client.
And so I refer to this as the coaching communication loop. And what I want to be clear on is for you and for your audience, Mike, right, is we use communication all the time, right? We use it to recruit the client. We use it in the coffee shop before they even come to their session. And then we're communicating beginning, middle and end, both to build rapport generally to understand, to get to know them.
But then we're also using communication quite specifically to coach movement. to offer up cues and ideas to get them to understand, feel, and execute the movement better. And so I'd be disingenuous if I just tried to talk about all of that as if we can in a meaningful way, because we can't. And so what I want to first do is look at, there's two layers of communication that I try to talk about and think about in answering these type of questions.
And so when we're in the context of a training session, because that's what you're asking about, and that's what we're focusing on. So that's the first constraint. I'm going to put around your question.
We're in a training session. The next constraint is there's two different ways we're going to interact. We're trying to interact with the person to build the relationship, to build the psychological safety, to build an environment that is conducive for motivation and learning.
I call all of those communication habits and tools interpersonal communication, right? Not my term. very well known.
It's just how I connect with you as you, as Mike, as an individual. From that, from that relationship building process, in my understanding of you, I'm going to start to then recognize how you see movement, how you see the world, how you understand generally, and how you understand what you're trying to learn specifically. From that, think of that like a mind, that a quarry. right? Whether it be diamonds or gold or iron, that's a quarry of information.
That's a quarry of preferences and memories that make up you as you, who you are and how you exist in this world. From that quarry, I'm going to utilize relevant information to then do the other form of communicating. And that is communicating movement.
Okay. That's me talking to you in terms of the movements you are trying to learn. So this is now the second constraint I'm going to put on your question.
I'm not talking about interpersonal communication right now. I'm going to talk about movement communication. But what I want the audience to recognize is to be good at communicating movement, to be good at offering up a cue, like push the ground away in a sprint or As you're lowering an RDL from head to heel, imagine you're like a teeter-totter or a seesaw.
To know how to utilize language that can be converted and transferred into movement, you need to know who you are talking to. And so with that, the first primary difference between a newbie client and one I've been working with for five to 10 years, Mike, is one with the one I've been working with for 10 years, I know them. I have a history of memories and preferences that have been born out of countless conversations that know it or not, I can lean on and leverage when I'm trying to coach them.
And many coaches do this. I'd argue most coaches do this, but they do it more by chance, Mike, than choice. Not all, most. And so the first thing that I'm going to say that is important with a client that is new is I'm going to leverage a lot more.
of my time and my communication real estate in getting to know them. And so I'm going to ask them a lot of questions. If it's a movement, I might say, have you ever performed this before? Have you ever had a coach before? Right?
If maybe they haven't a coach, hey, what did you like? Or what type of coaching, what type of communication do you most enjoy? Just general information gathering as anyone would to get to know them.
So I'm going to make the assumption that that practice is going on. Now, the question that you've asked is how do we then communicate movement to a newbie versus someone who's highly experienced? And this goes back to the coaching communication loop. And so the coaching communication loop is designed to help individuals organize their movement communication in and around the coaching of a movement. So this is now the final constraint.
I want people to think about, okay, I'm coaching an Olympic lift, or I'm coaching a sprint, or I'm coaching a kettlebell swing, okay? The communication loop has five moments. I don't want to call them steps or stages, because that suggests that they always need to occur.
But rather, there are five core communication moments that always are there, know it or not, around the execution of the movement. And the way I'm going to use those five is a little bit different if you are new versus highly experienced. Okay, so let's start with the newbie. Let's say I'm going to use a skill I teach all the time.
I know you do as well, sprinting. When I'm working with someone for the first time, the very first step is I'm going to describe the movement. Okay, the second moment is I'm going to demonstrate it. So this description and demonstration are the first two options. opportunities to provide the client and the athlete with information, verbal and visual information about how that movement should take form.
Now, the key thing to understand is you are just trying to give them a basic explanation and a basic visual understanding of what is being asked of them. And so to demonstrate that, I might say, listen, Mike, we're gonna do this sprint. Some of the big things we're looking for is as you push off the ground from head to heel, you're nice and long.
We want to see a... big knee drive, come forward. Everything's nice and big, right?
And we're going to smash that leg back to the ground. You can almost think of your leg like a hammer. We're going to lift it up and then we're going to hammer the nail and push it down.
Now, this is great, right? You're following along. I'm trying to give you a few pictures. Then I say, okay, I'm going to demonstrate it.
I demonstrate, I reinforce nice and big. So those are my first two moments. Now, the key thing is how those two moments interact.
Sometimes I'll describe then demonstrate. There's certain times where I might say, I'm going to demonstrate something. Then I'm going to talk to you about it. I demonstrate first and then I describe. And I would encourage those listening to think about that, right?
There isn't one way to do it. But those are the two pieces of information I'm trying to provide. It's the same reason when we see someone give a good presentation, there's usually a nice image on the slide and minimal viable information, MVI.
Same thing when I'm coaching a movement. I give MVI, minimal viable information. And I really allow the visual, the demonstration itself to be the shining star. The third moment, and I hesitate here because without slides, sometimes it can be difficult, but the third moment is what I call the cue.
Okay. The coaching cue. Now people think, well, hold on, Nick, didn't you just say there was a description? Isn't that all the information you need to provide? But I think Mike, you and I've talked about this before.
The cue is the third moment because it is the moment before the movement. It is the moment that that mentor I had years ago kept sacred. It's the moment that he intuitively recognized because it was the last thing we said before they moved.
increase the odds that that was the thing they think about, thought about while they were moving and thus had the biggest impact on the movement itself. And so we protect the cue as this third moment, the moment before the movement, because it increases the odds that you remember to take all of that soapbox speech that you just gave to paint a picture of the movement. And from that, you extract the one idea that you know is going to help them.
get a little bit better. Now, the key thing that I want to say to you and to the audience is, do you need to provide a cue every single time, even if it's a newbie? And the answer without question or hesitation is no, we don't need to always provide a cue. And this is why I'm trying to change the way people think about this as a model in that this is a moment such that when you do decide to cue, this is going to provide you a bit of guidance, what you and I are going to talk about next, what you call deepening it. But we don't always need to provide a cue.
It's only when you feel it is necessary. So that's the third moment. From there, then they do it, right? So we've described, demonstrated, cue, then they do it. Now, people ask the question, should communication happen while someone moves?
And for me, usually the answer is no. It's like when you're working with an athlete and they're doing a single leg RDL or a single leg squat, and they finally balance and you're like, good job. And they fall over, right?
It is so easy. to distract people. And so too often communication, even though it's meant to inform, it can interfere.
And so we rarely want to be communicating while they are moving, unless we're providing general encouragement, which usually is okay, especially for large groups. If we are reinforcing short, brief statements. So for example, single leg RDL, I want to see someone nice and long.
I might. in a tempo type fashion, say long, up, long. And in that case, I'm not providing new information and I'm not providing cues at an intellectual conceptual level, but I'm using language like rhythm, like a metronome, like song to help them with timing and control. But I'm just doing it through familiar words. that had already been baked into either a cue or a description that preceded it.
Okay. With a sprint, it might be a faster rhythm, push, push, push, which is as much about the motivation and the energy I convey in saying the word as it is the word itself. And so those are the only examples that I can give where I'm communicating while they move.
Otherwise, silence creates space for them to own the change. That's moment number four, obviously a critical one that needs to happen every time. And then moment number five is the debrief.
So describe, demonstrate, cue, do, debrief. And the debrief, the final piece there is we are trying to figure out the next best cue, the next best idea that's meant to help that person move better. And so through discussion, through dialogue versus monologue, We're trying to figure out one of three things. Do I repeat the cue because it worked, felt good, felt right for them?
Do I refine the cue in that the cue meant the right thing, pushed the ground away, they need better hip extension during the sprint, fine. That was the right thing, but it didn't resonate with them, didn't land with them. It's as if I move into a house and I paint the walls green, Mike, but you like blue, okay? It's the same walls, but you prefer a different color. Oftentimes, that's what we have to do with cueing.
The meaning, the biomechanical change we desire was accurately identified, but the phrasing in its relation to their own preferences, understanding, memories, and experiences with language and how they apply it to life is a little bit different. It's not landing, it's not resonating with them. So I refined the cue.
I come up with a different way to say the same thing. And the final possibility is I retire the cue because it backfired or it got kind of into the peanuts. Wah, wah, wah.
I've said it so many times. It's lost its potency. And so the shelf life has expired and I got to come up with a new cue.
So there's your five moments. Now, you asked a question a long time ago about the newbie versus the experienced. Well, I don't think so much about the newbie versus the experienced holistically, but more is the movement new to me or am I experienced with it?
And so if the movement is new to me, I use all five moments. Typically, I use what I call the long loop. But when I'm working with someone who is experienced with the movement pattern, then I use the latter three steps.
the latter three moments, excuse me, what I call the short loop. Cue, do, debrief. Cue, do, debrief.
And so ultimately, people should think of this like a funnel, okay? What's a funnel? It starts out wide, and then it narrows.
So when I describe and demonstrate, that's wide, isn't it? That's the wide part of the funnel. I'm providing you with background information. We're talking about biomechanics. Maybe we even talk about your experiences if I'm working on a sports skill.
We narrow a little bit when I demonstrate, because now I'm just giving you a single source of information, of one visual snapshot. But then the cue narrows one step further. I give you one idea, or we work together to come up with one idea that you will focus on to perform that movement.
And then we will close that feedback loop by me watching, did it make a difference? and me asking you, did it feel different? And us connecting and closing the loop around whether or not that cue should be repeated, refined, or retired.
And if you take that process and you loop it, hence the name of the model, you loop it again and again and again, you provide yourself with an unavoidable path towards getting to the words that work and ensuring to the degree with which we can use language to improve movement, you exhaust that pathway. And the beauty, the final thing I'll say, then I'll stop talking. The beauty of this is as follows.
If you understand the principles behind each of those moments, which we can get to, and you understand how to use that model in a flexible manner for a new movement versus one that a person's experienced with, and you exhaust that process, not only are you better at using language to change movement, But you also start to get feedback on when language is no longer enough. And when you see that language is no longer enough, it inevitably draws your attention back to the other variables that affect movement, strength, power, mobility, stability, functional biomechanical capacities that are trainable, but if restricted, might not be coachable on the day. So in an indirect way, this provides a secondary form.
of movement screening and that you quickly through this process, realize what is coachable, what is changeable right now and subject to influence because the person has the capacity to change and what is not. And thus needs to be addressed through a longer term physical development plan, recognizing that these paths always run as great talks about in parallel, but it starts to inform where the strategies can make a difference for the person. Yeah.
I love that dude. Okay. So I think. This next kind of idea or concept is going to go really seamlessly with what we just talked about, because you and I have both been doing this long enough.
We've had interns, right? We've had young coaches. And I always describe it as this moment when I feel like a young coach really starts to see movement, right? In our gym, maybe it's six, eight, 10 weeks in, and they're like, oh my gosh, now I like see all the things this person is doing wrong.
Now, the downside to that, as you know, is that they feel it's their job. to immediately fix all 10 of those things that they just saw this person do wrong. So when you have a young coach or a young intern, you know you want them to focus on like one thing, one cue.
How do you help them narrow that field and get to that one thing faster? Ah, it takes time. I hesitate because there is no... Shortcut. Yes.
In my experience, this is my opinion, there is no pill, there is no book, there is no shortcut to watching movement. It just takes time. Because there's an old Zen quote, and I love this, okay? It goes something like this. Before I studied Zen, The mountains were the mountains and the rivers the rivers.
When I studied Zen, the mountains were no longer the mountains and the rivers no longer the rivers. And when I mastered Zen... The mountains once again were the mountains and the rivers once again the rivers.
I feel that that is a remarkably apt way to think about the coaching eye. When you initially watch movement, you watch it with a beautiful naivete. You know, watching the person, oh, are they running? Well, what do they look like? Ah, they look a little hunched over or squatting.
Something looks wrong with their knees, right? You see the whole movement and any movement anomaly that just kind of doesn't feel right, that my mom, again, could probably see if her and I were sitting around a lake on a Saturday morning watching people run. And I said, hey, on a scale of one to five, grade people if you think they're good at running, if it looks good or bad. She's probably not going to be far off my own grading. The difference is.
The difference is I'm going to be able to tell her what's wrong with the bad people, whereas she'll just know it doesn't look right. And so that's how it starts. People know when it, and how do I know that?
Because I do, I feel I do know that because I use what's called an AB demonstration with my athletes. Okay. And this is teaching athletes, you know, change of direction, sprinting and they're, and they're rugby players, right?
It's not like they're sprint coaches. Okay. They're not used to analyzing sprint technique. And so I'll do an A, B demonstration where either A or B is, let's say, the wrong way to do it or the exaggerated error.
And the alternative, A or B, is, let's say, what I want to see. In both cases, physically demonstrated, no language at all. And I say, which one do we want to see? And I've never heard an athlete get it wrong.
Ever. Ever. So the rivers were the rivers and the mountains were the mountains. When the athlete, when the coach comes in. They have an intuitive sense that something is wrong.
Then what we do is we reveal to them the full force of biomechanics. And we explain the head, shoulders, knees, and toes. We explain how it's all connected at a fascial level, at a joint level, at a muscular level, at a neural level, both independently and collectively.
And so inevitably, they become overwhelmed by information. And so they start to perceive themselves as seeing everything, right? So the mountains are no longer the mountains, and the rivers are no longer the rivers because they are zoomed in so heavily. They just watch the knees on the last rep, or they just watch the shoulder, or they just watch the hip.
And so you zoom in so far, the thing you're looking at is now out of perspective. It is no longer the holistic runner. or the holistic squatter.
That's why the Zen quote goes, the river's no longer the rivers, the mountains no longer the mountains. Now, this is a part of the process, Mike, is we have to start to understand the parts to then be able to zoom back out to the whole and be able to watch the whole movement, but then have our intuition quickly go to the area where the change, if made, will have the biggest improvement. I don't know how you expedite. that outside of the fact that I use a zoom in, zoom out encouragement with young coaches.
And that is, hey, on one rep, I want you to allow yourself to just watch the lower limbs or just watch the upper limbs or just watch the trunk. But then every time I want you on the next rep or after a few reps, zoom out and just allow your vision as if wide frame, bird's eye view to take in the whole thing. And that zoom in, zoom out, zoom in, zoom out process, I think starts to educate the intuition of the micro in terms of the macro, because if you're not watching the macro, you are going to convince yourself through a literally a biased perspective that, oh, the knee is what needs to change.
Well, yeah, if the only thing you were watching were the knees, that's the only source of information available to you. And thus, that's the thing you're most likely to try to change. And so I remember that that was the recommendation I was given by, by Daryl Leto was that zoom in. zoom out type approach.
And to be honest, Mike, right. My, my, my son, a few years back, learned how to ride his bike. Okay. Fell off at a ton of times, but never learned how to ride the bike.
And he's riding the bike proficiently. When I asked my son, Hey, I'm Madden. How did you learn to ride your bike?
You said, I don't know. I just did it. Mike, I'm going to be honest with you.
That's, that's what, that's what's happening here. Right. Trying to explain the complexity Of educating a coaching eye, for me, is a fool's agenda. I think we can explain the steps, the process, recognizing that how fast that happens is how quickly you accumulate hours of observation.
and how correlated that is with your own education to help understand better what you're looking at. And then it's the ability to be confident in stepping back and zooming out and taking in the picture as a whole. Because inevitably, the best coaches allow that detail to settle down, like the sediment at the bottom of a river, into their intuition. And they allow that gut instinct, which oftentimes people think is guessing.
It's not guessing. That gut instinct says, hey, I'm going to allow... all the complexity of what I'm going to see run through years and years of observation, knowing that likely what comes to mind is the thing that needs to change has been born out of detail in years of practice of trial and error of closing feedback loops of testing assumptions to the point where they're no longer assumptions.
And so I don't know if that's a great answer. To be honest with you, it probably isn't. It's going to take time.
But if you want the mountains to once again become the mountains and the rivers become the rivers. you have to zoom in to begin and then zoom out. The problem is if you stay too close, you stay too close, you're lost.
Yes. No, it's perfect. And it's absolutely perfect because I think a lot of times in this world, in this space that we live in now, everybody is obsessed with fast tracking and hacks.
And, you know, like that's great, but there is no hack to like reps. And that's what I always try and explain to. young coaches and interns that come through our facility, they're like, well, how do you see that? I'm like, because I've been doing it for like 21 years, you know, so I don't expect you to have the same level of, you know, attention to detail and knowing what things to look for.
Hell, most of them don't even have a movement model constructed yet, you know, let alone like, oh, this is how they're deviating from a model. So like, I think that's absolutely perfect. But let me interject.
Let me interject one thing. There was a hack and it's not even a hack. It's a strategy.
Okay. So, so I'm a young coach. I've been working with Mike for, you know, 10 weeks and I'm starting to feel like I'm getting a voice and I feel 100% certain. I feel like I'm starting to see something. Okay.
If we go back and I mean this, right, this is why, this is how I mean. that understanding your communication strategies will help you better understand your training and your biomechanical analysis as a way of deduction, right? Of checking things off the list of what it can or cannot be in terms of a biomechanical change. And so, if I'm watching them move and I have a hunch, an intuition of what needs to change, okay? Maybe I can justify it, maybe I cannot.
As long as I commit to providing one cue, one coaching cue, that is directed at making that change. And let's say, Mike, I can't even come up with the coaching cue, then I involve the athlete. I say, Mike, we need you to get a little bit more push off the ground when you're sprinting. What do you think you can focus on to do that?
Right? How great of a pressure release is that on a coach? You don't even need to freaking come up with the cue.
And I'm as experienced as anyone doing this. And I use that strategy all the time. Because I'm also pressing that autonomy inclusion button, which is great for motivation, attention, and ultimately learning. So nonetheless, I come up with the cue or I involve the athlete to come up with the cue.
Either way, I have a cue and we try it. Cue it, do it, now I debrief. Hey, how'd that feel? I didn't quite feel right, but I, you know what? I don't know if I did it right.
Let me try it again. Okay. Try it again.
How'd that feel? Yeah, it's not, it's not quite right. Okay.
So maybe I try a different cue that means the same thing. And I try another one. And maybe now two or three different cues that are all on push the ground away. They're not working. I'm pulling my hair up.
Okay, obviously, this is not likely the issue. If the athlete knows what the change is, if I know what the change is, if we found two or three different ways to communicate that change, and still it's not happening, either one of two things are going on here. Either one.
They're directing their cue at the wrong error. It's not the error that is going to lead to the actual change of the problem they observed. Or it is the error.
It is the error. However, it's not subject to change by cues. It is hip flexor stiffness. It is ankle stiffness. It's some kind of biomechanical handbrake.
And so either way now, they're recognized with a binary choice. Either I'm going to commit to this as the issue, but I'm going to try to tackle this from a training perspective in parallel, or I'm going to broaden my view. I'm going to go back through the proverbial tape. And I'm going to see, could it be something else? And maybe we realize, ah, they're really short on their front side mechanics.
So let me try, instead of the backside, let me try the front side. And if I get a bigger lift, that lift is going to by default require a longer push. And so now we flip the script.
Okay. I want you to now think about driving your knee forward. Is it to shatter a pane of glass? Or imagine I have a sparring mitt, right?
And your knee is that as that right hand jab, jab through it, punch through it. And now all of a sudden, bam, it works. It connects. So even though I didn't get to that on the first step, Mike, because I use a deductive process, I commit to one coaching cue.
I commit to the process of the debrief to make sure that I confirmed it was thought about, focused on, whether or not it worked. I give that a little bit of oxygen. give it a bit of time. And if it doesn't start to grow, if the fire doesn't burn, then I either double check, is it a biomechanical issue possibly?
But to confirm that, maybe I try cueing a different error that might be downstream connected. And if I start to use that process, that's coaching. If I start to use that process, it informs what I do and how I do it. I love it.
Okay. So let's stay on this theme of coaching because another thing that I know may be famous is a stretch, but I would say you're probably famous for talking about this idea of using analogies in coaching and in your queuing. So how can you use analogies to help clients and athletes ultimately get better outcomes in their movement or performance?
Okay, so let's do a quick thought experiment. You're in Vegas, you walk in to MGM Grand, and you see this big sign, let's make a bet. Like, okay, you walk in and you see the MGM branded track. Okay.
You walk up to the attendant, you're like, what's this about? Like, well, really, really simple. We're going to give you this card on this card or three different coaching cues. Okay. You're going to read each coaching cue and you're going to make a bet on which coaching cue you think is going to allow you to run the fastest 10 yard time.
And let's just say we have some biological magic. that ensures that you do focus on the coaching cue and that you are fully recovered for every one of your reps. Okay. So we have a little bit of Las Vegas biological magic going on. Okay.
And so here's the three cues. Here's the three cues. Okay.
And remember this is for a 10 yard sprint. So cue number one is focus on rapidly extending your knees, focus on rapidly extending your knees. So you kind of close your eyes and listeners can do this. Close your eyes and imagine, okay, rapidly extending the knees, rapidly extending the knees. Got it.
And you read the next cue focus on. Rapidly pushing the ground away. Rapidly pushing the ground away.
So again, you're like, this kind of sounds similar, but you close your eyes and you try it out. You go through your mental repetition. And already you're making a bet between those two.
Even the listeners now have already picked one. I'm sure you have as well. And then you get to the third one and you're like, okay, imagine there was a rattlesnake right behind you, ready to strike.
beat the bite, beat the bite. And so again, if, if, if, well, it depends on your affinity towards snakes and snakes at that, but you close your eyes and you have a go at that one. Okay.
Now for you, Mike, which one do you bet on for yourself to run the fastest 10 yard time? Well, Nick, I don't know if you know much about me, but I hate snakes, dude. So I'm going with I'm trying to get away from that snake, dude.
Okay. And so, and you've seen me do this at conferences and I've done this on our podcast. Without fail, we see it's usually B or C, but most people pick C.
Most people pick C. And so I'm actually in the process with a group of researchers of writing up a paper on this. We actually did this experiment with 125 athletes and we had them across 16 different movements read internal cues. So extend the knees.
External cues push the ground away and analogies beat the bite. And what we found is, you know, over over 80 percent of individuals, over 80 percent of individuals have a systematic bias towards external cues and analogies. Right now, what's what's really interesting is you're more likely, though, this is this is and this is something we actually need to do some follow up investigation on.
So it's still speculative. So let me put my Ph.D. hat on for a second here. But still say is.
We found a relationship between your preference for analogies and your visual imagery abilities. So how good you grade yourself at imagining things. had a direct relationship with how likely you were to preferentially select analogies. Oh, wow.
And so what this starts to tell us is, first and foremost, visual things that are easy to visualize, visual outcome-oriented information that falls in the form of an external cue, push the ground away. The ground is a literal thing, right? It's a noun.
It's something that I can see, feel, and touch. That's why it's visual, right? or beat the bite, I can imagine a snake and it has the emotional addition on top of it, that it could harm me, which increases the psychological potency, assuming I'm afraid of snakes, as you and I both are, and as many people are.
And so visual language tends to be easier for us to act out, which is why words can be converted into motor equity, into motion, into movement. But with analogies... They're micro stories, right?
When you read a fiction book, it is unavoidable that you convert the words on the page into visuals in your mind, right? It is without fail that if you read an emotional passage, you take on those emotions, you feel it. And so what analogies allow us to do better than any other phrasing, whether it be internal cue or external cue, is it allows us to not only convey motion, but convey emotion. And when I convey emotion, I convey the energy of how to perform the movement. Fast or slow, I just don't know, but through analogies you do.
And so when I'm working with individuals, yes, you are right. I have found over the years that these analogies are the most potent form of cue. They are the most readily transferable to movement.
Why is that? Well, it's because analogies are built out of past experience, literally. Analogies allow me to help you collaborate with yourself. Analogies allow me to help you coach yourself. So for example, If you're sprinting and you either pop up too quickly or you stay too low, what you are telling me is you are not intuitively understanding how to naturally rise.
Now, Mike, that's a pretty complex topic to explain. How do you biomechanically run in a manner where you go rise over run from low to high in a progressive way? Please, I would welcome anyone to explain that very concisely, such that an athlete can convert that into actually doing it.
Well, there is a way to, and that is to find something that a person is familiar with, that has that attribute, that already inherent to it is that skill of gradually rising with the... attributes, ideally, that relate to the human body, at the very least in terms of shape and structure. And so if no one has thought of it yet listening, it would be a plane taking off. A plane is a perfect example of something that starts nice and low and gradually rises in a progressive manner.
It also has the addition that from tip to tail, it's long, it's stiff, just like head to heel. It also has the physical physics attributes, the Newtonian attributes of accelerating very rapidly until it reaches a constant speed. We are now at altitude.
Ding, ding, take the belt off. Okay. So here I can now say, I want you to explode off the line and gradually rise like a jet taking off.
The beauty of that analogy is I can start to play with it. I can start to tell a story. that lives beyond the initial sharing of the cue, such that I could say, hey, on that last rep, you stayed on the tarmac.
That's a way of me saying you stayed too low. Hey, on that last rep, you popped up too quickly, right? Nose was way up in the air. So even now, as they're running over a longer distance, I can start to say, take off, take off, as a trigger for them to start to gradually rise. Hidden inside of that analogy.
is incredible biomechanical complexity, but that allows me to mirror. a visual in my mind. I can act as if I'm the jet.
And in the same way my kid can learn how to ride a bike by responding to gravity against the instability of the bike, we can in a very real sense learn to map our movement to a mental image that gives us a sense and emotive feeling of what that real thing is. We can act as if and in doing so become. And so in the same way, if I'm having someone do a single leg RDL and I'm trying to get better length from head to heel, I want better extension. I want them to be neutral, throw whatever biomechanical synonym you want. Again, that's a complex thing because I'm like, okay, check it.
You got to go down, but also stay long at the same time. That is like, if you think about that from a client that has, you know, low, low motor equity. doesn't really understand their movement pattern. You want me to pat my head and rub my tummy, basically.
So if I say, as you are lowering, I want you to imagine your body is a rubber band, okay? And I want you from head to heel, I want you to stretch that rubber band as you lower. Their focus is now on getting long, but in getting long, they create stability, which as you and I both know, Mike, allows it easier for all the motion then to happen at the end. And so the hip happens as a consequence of the stability I create through the analogy of head to heel, be a band being pulled, or head to heel, be a chain, take the slack out of the chain. Or, hey, don't be a bent nail.
Like the nail is bending, get nice and long. And so these are different ways to add in texture, feel, and the essence of something that I can act as if without explaining it. verbatim. Language is not reality.
I cannot eat the menu, Mike. And so what we have to do is we have to actually offer up language that hides the complexity in something that, like Simon says, like show and tell, like charades, that I can act out, that I can act as if. That's why analogies are so powerful. They're based on our inherent ability to storytell.
to visualize and to mirror. And so analogies are what I call verbal demonstrations, verbal demonstrations. It makes it unavoidable that I see and feel something via language and such.
It's a shortcut. It's an accelerant to the words that work. Love it. Okay.
So here's a question that I've literally wanted to ask you for years. And I'm really interested in this because Obviously, you've talked a ton about performance-based stuff and external cueing. I'm always a believer, or at least in most cases, there's the light side and the dark side of the force, right?
So is there ever a time to use internal versus external cueing, like in a rehab environment? Or is there a time where you're trying to call attention to a muscle or internalize these feelings? Yeah.
So it's my favorite question. It is my favorite question. I love the light side, dark side.
So we have to go back to bedrock principles here. And what I mean by that is ask ourselves with a body of evidence now that is 24 years old in terms of explicit research on this topic. So 1998 was the first explicit study that looked at internal versus external cueing.
And now we're approaching probably 220 papers. And if you widen your search criteria, closer to 500, 800. Okay. So we know how the body digests internal cues versus external cues on good ground.
The first thing I'll say is this, when you reach for your coffee cup in the morning or your pint glass at night, or your water glass, whatever your beverage preference is, time of day. or you drive your car for that matter, or even right now as people are listening, I'm going to argue that your body is fundamentally invisible to you. You operate at a conscious level of oneness, of wholeness, where you are what you are paying attention to.
And because we have to navigate, interact, and dance with a physical environment, the vast majority of our time, especially when it comes to movement, Our attention is placed on our interaction with our environment and the outcomes we are motivated to achieve, whatever they might be, as simple as walking down the street or reaching for a glass. And our body is fundamentally invisible to us. Now, some coaches might say, well, that's the problem if we are a bit more aware of our body. But what I would argue is that's not the point I'm trying to make. The point I'm trying to make is it is natural, holistically and biologically critical.
that we place our attention on the environment we're interacting with. We are not meant to think about our body while we move our body. It's certainly not what's happening during riding a bike or walking for that matter. And even for a child who's learning to walk, they don't have the verbal structures that you and I do as an adult. So even if we talk about coaching cues, well, then how does a child learn to move, right?
If they don't have verbal structures, well, they're experiencing the movement. They're not thinking about it at an intellectual, conceptual level as we require people to do when we offer them language that needs to be processed, understood, and then converted into a motor pattern. So what I'm pointing towards here is the intuition and the biological necessity of keeping our mind in an external state when we are trying to coordinate many, many joints and muscles to achieve a singular task. So an... An external cue is oftentimes called a holistic cue, or I would call it a natural cue because it is inviting the person to step into, mind you, a curated focus, but a curated focus that is holistically aligned to how we naturally organize movement.
And that's in terms of our environment, in terms of our outcomes. So there is nothing natural about an internal cue. And I have no problem saying that. I don't believe there's anything natural or necessary about it. Now, with that said, we as humans do have language.
We as humans do define and categorize, sometimes to a fault, Mike, but nonetheless, we do it. And it's unavoidable. There is no life now that we can think about without language. And thus, because we have language and we have bodies, we have language for our body. And so because of the way we teach people in physical therapy and physio, ATC, sport coaching, strength coaching, we...
We codify into their brains that movement is talked about in terms of the body. We never tell them that there's another way to do it. So nonetheless, we have internal language now.
And so many athletes, because of their coaches or therapists, will think about their body while they move their body. And so here comes your question. Is there a time? So we go to the tape. We go to the research.
What do we know? When you give someone an external cue, These are the positives that happen. We know you can lift more weight. At the same controlled weight, we know you can do more repetitions. We know that strength endurance goes up.
We know that power goes up. We know the velocity goes up. We know that EMG goes down, in fact. So movement economy, movement efficiency, the amount of neural output to achieve a given outcome is reduced.
So economy efficiency of movement goes up. We know that external cues result in complex biomechanical changes that are positive, that are less associated with ACL risk, as an example. And so all of that comes in the form of an external cue to the benefit above an internal cue.
So the question always is, is there a time for internal language? Well, the one bedrock principle that can be observed in terms of how the body behaves with an internal cue is around, as I said earlier, EMG. So when you give someone an internal cue, like squeeze the glute or squeeze your calf or squeeze your quad. Okay.
And here I'm thinking about really early on, uh, rehab. Yeah. We see that there is an increased general activation of the cued muscle. So bodybuilders, I was the last author on a paper with Brad Schoenfeld on this showing that in fact, in the upper body, not the lower body, but in the upper body, cueing the biceps, squeezing the bicep resulted in greater hypertrophy of the biceps muscle than focusing on the barbell itself, right?
Albeit small, and it didn't show in the lower body, it still showed that. And so people are like, okay, should I be using internal cues for muscle activation and for bodybuilding? And so there's some early evidence, emerging evidence that says possibly, but then what I always encourage people to look at is, okay, but do you want to then forsake force, velocity, coordinate, right?
So what do you, in what you're getting, what are you giving up? And so this is where it comes back to. If you are doing isolated muscle activation, where you want an increased activation of the given muscle group, but you are also okay with greater co-contraction because that's what happens.
It's a generalized increase in activation. So part of the reason the bicep fires more when I tell you to squeeze your bicep, even people listening do it now, squeeze your bicep. It's unavoidable.
You feel your tricep fire as well. Everything in the general area fires. And the reason is, is because you're not giving the motor system a task because it is just fire the muscle.
And that's all the thinking is doing. It just sends a general signal. So the body is exactly what you say.
You want a general muscle to fire? I'm going to send a general signal. Versus if you tell me to reach for my pint glass by thinking I'm thirsty and I'm going to reach for the pint glass, I have a much more fine motor control and nuanced motor control because my attentional system provides greater clarity of, so to speak, motor instruction. And so to put a bow on that, if you want isolated, increased EMG in a given muscle, then use an internal cue. But if you want any other performance variable and notably coordination across more than one joint, then it's external cues and analogies all the way down.
Love it. Love it. Okay.
I know we're probably up against the clock here because it is far later for you than it is for me, but I've got one more big question that I want to ask you. Yeah, go for it. Again, a lot of, let me preface this by saying you and I have been doing this for a little while now, right? Like 20 some years in, we've seen a lot of people above us, below us. You know, we're at a stage now where I think we both want to give back and we want to grow the next wave of coaches.
So if you could give one message, and sometimes I hate these questions, but I'm going to say it anyway. If you could give like one message to every young coach, trainer, rehab professional. To help them communicate more effectively, what would it be? It really comes to two things, which oddly enough doesn't involve communication.
It's looking and listening. Yeah, that's really good. And listening.
Because communication is not what is said. It is what is heard. It is not my words that matter. It's the words that help them understand.
and action the understanding that matters and the only way the only way i know that is if i'm looking and i'm listening and if i'm asking questions so i have something to listen to and i'm creating the space for them to move and own so look and listen you gotta live it that's not some bumper sticker right i mean look with intention look with purpose am i seeing a change listen with purpose ask questions and offer opportunity space for dialogue for you to have something to listen to. But without that feedback, you can never close the loop to understand if your words worked or how to get to the words that work. So looking and listening are the two critical ingredients that that day in 2009 when I woke up, I woke up to the fact that I hadn't been looking and I hadn't been listening. And when I created the opportunity to do those two things, that's when my language, the final L changed.
I love it, dude. That's awesome. Okay, man.
Again, thank you so much for your time. What I want to get out of you, two last things. Number one, tell us about what's new.
Like, what are you excited about? What are you working on? What's coming up for you?
And then number two, tell us where we can find out more about your work. Well, you heard it here first. I have my second book now acquired.
by human kinetics. It is going to be the language of coaching for baseball. It will be the first and hopefully a long lifelong pursuit series of books, contextualizing everything we've talked about to, to sports and continuing to deepen the well, uh, as I say, of elevating how we do what we do to the same level as what we do.
And so the language of coaching, uh, lives on. Love it. I'm also in the background of that working on a fictional book.
that will bring these concepts to life in a far more visual, accessible narrative format. And so more to come on that as well. And, you know, I'm going to continue to, I'm going to stay in this space, Mike.
I'm not going to deter from it. I feel it. There's lifetimes in this work.
And ultimately for me, it's good work. It's work that is helping to improve the space between us and others and connect us. And from that, it feels worthwhile. And in terms of how to stay in contact, it's at Nick Winkleman on all the various social platforms, the language of coaching dot com and the book that people can pick up now.
It's the language of coaching, the art and science of teaching movement on Amazon. Have a look. I love it, man. I'll make sure I get all the links in the show notes.
But, man, always great catching up with you. Thank you so much for your time, Nick. I really appreciate it. Absolutely. I'll see you in eight years.
Hopefully not that long. Hopefully sooner. Hopefully sooner, Mike. Thanks for having me again. I really appreciate it.
All right, my friend, that does it for this week's episode with Nick Winkleman. Really hope you enjoyed it. Like I said up top, man, I've been doing this like 21 years now, and I'd like to feel like I've had some success.
I do a lot of the things that he talks about in the show, but I mean, that doesn't mean... There isn't room for improvement. That doesn't mean I can't continue to get better.
And so I think a lot of things that you learn or maybe you stumble upon over the years that you're successful with, it helps to hear somebody like Nick break it down in such an eloquent fashion, give you the step-by-step process as to what to do. So if you're listening to this in your car or while you're taking a walk. That coaching communication loop that he talked about, go back and listen to that section again.
Take notes because it's absolute gold and it's going to help you get better results with your clients and athletes. So generally at this point in time, I'd ask you to subscribe and I will ask you to subscribe if you're not already, but I have a little bit bigger ask for you today. If you enjoyed this episode, as you know, I'm constantly reinvesting in the show.
trying to make it better and really trying to bring on world-class guests. So if you enjoyed today's episode, please share it with a fellow coach, a fellow trainer, a fellow rehab professional, anybody that you feel like would benefit from Nick's message. pass it along to them and just say hey I was listening to this show I feel like Nick has a great message about communication and it might help you out if you would do that for me and just help me spread the word I would appreciate it more than you know so my friend as always thank you so much for your support love and appreciate you and we'll be back next week with our next episode take care