Kettlebell How to practice: interleaving (mixing up regressions and progressions.

[guardian7]

A core idea in Strongfirst is practice don't workout. However, there is a key concept that I think is missing from almost all training discussions and actual teaching practice: Interleaving.

One area I work in is learning skills for university students and teaching skills for faculty. The concept of interleaving, mixing together information and or skills before it is mastered, is a well-established concept in psychology:
The Interleaving Effect: Mixing It Up Boosts Learning
Practicing problems over sessions that are spaced increases learning | Open Learning

However, almost all teaching focuses on block learning, that is sequential, or master this before you learn that, type teaching. Or block learning, learning one skill with mass practice. Yesterday we learned the KB deadlift, now we will learn the swing.

However, the research is pretty clear that you should constantly regress and progress and mix together different types of practice for skills during the same session.

Let's take learning the snatch. Rather than a sequence of say a top down snatch and high pull followed by Snatch practice, what should ideally happen is that the trainee should keep practicing all of the skills together. In other words, keep up the high pull while also practicing the snatch, so that the high pull is "perfect." Many people including me rush skills like the clean because it is not as fun.

For the getup, it should be broken down into steps and then put together, but the individual steps should still be practiced, not the entire sequence every time. For example, a trainee might do the entire sequence with one size bell but focus on the first movement with a heavier bell.

A related concept is spaced practice. This means that you should keep practicing skills that are not your current focus across time rather than letting them drop entirely. For example, one set of presses when your workout focus is deadlift. A good one many people would benefit from is perfecting their pushup as an example, even if you did only one set per day as the focus would be on practice.

Another example would be the KB course. Rather than goblet squat, TGU, and press. You would practice them more than once throughout the day rather than three blocks.

The only problem is that students can struggle a bit more using this approach but they need time to struggle with the movements to work them out with feedback. The literature is quite clear that learning and skills development also wave and are not linear processes.

Is this concept well known or applied?

I think there is a lot of good valid research in the field of motor skills development that is not widely used in exercise science or education for that matter.

 

[Bauer]

Thanks for the writeup.

I believe that, say, Pavel is at least aware of these options. Learning/training should be chaotic in a way. However, it is pretty difficult to write a plan that people will actually follow and that will produce results reliably.

The original training plan in Russian Kettlebell Challenge (very cheap on kindle! ) is pretty much in line with your ideas.

However, S&S is much easier to follow. Plus, as less skills are needed, you can focus on a few qualities and the physical adaptations that follow consistent practice and volume.

 

[guardian7]

Thanks for the writeup.

I believe that, say, Pavel is at least aware of these options. Learning/training should be chaotic in a way. However, it is pretty difficult to write a plan that people will actually follow and that will produce results reliably.

The original training plan in Russian Kettlebell Challenge (very cheap on kindle! ) is pretty much in line with your ideas.

However, S&S is much easier to follow. Plus, as less skills are needed, you can focus on a few qualities and the physical adaptations that follow consistent practice and volume.

The programming does not have to be complicated as it should as you suggest contain a random element. For example, a person doing S&S could include a set or a subset of another skill in each session between sets. A press set concentrating on pulling down the bell or one of many other cues. Concentrating on pushing out the knees in a goblet squat. etc.

 

[Bauer]

With regard to swings and tgu I am actually usually focussing on one element per set, like shoulder stability or timing.

I am trying to imagine how this might be formalized in a way.

Maybe just a list of "cues, drills & skills" that you would choose from.

Or include a bit of variety day feeling into the main days. For example doing a bottom up press on the first rung of a ROP ladder and doing OS commando rocking imbetween ladders. Plus some easy crawling and front squats here and there.

Planks, bird dogs, dead bugs, crawling, single bell carries (also BU) for midsection stability.

Maybe doing just one set of one of the tension day drills per session.
The Tension Day | StrongFirst

Doing something from the Original Strength youtube channel.

So far this would easily fit into existing programming. But as soon as you begin to change the original programming, things get a little more complicated. For example I like to use a different bell for each set. That way each set feels different and is a fresh challenge. However, this doesn't comply with the S&S step progression. It is much more like the original Easy Strength programming.

 

[Antti]

A valid and interesting question. One thing comes to mind.

In general, the adaptation of exercise is explained through some kind of compensation, whether the supercompensation or the fitness-fatigue model. In any case, one must experience a proper amount of specific stress, or fatigue, which initially degrades performance. After a certain period of time, the fatigue goes away, while a positive compensation is still in place. One should train the specific exercise again while the fatigue has been eliminated, but the compensation, or increased fitness, is still in place. This demands a certain sequence in training. Training too many things at once either makes us split the stress so that we do not stress a certain muscle or motor unit enough, or we do not have the time to stress it again when it is favourable.

 

[Tim Randolph]

However, the research is pretty clear that you should constantly regress and progress and mix together different types of practice for skills during the same session.

Thanks for the interesting and thoughtful post. It has been a while since I first used the ETK DVD to learn the basic exercises. I was a good student in that I actually worked on the progressions like towel swings and sitting back.

But I was a bad student because I was mixing it up with swinging right away. So in that era at least I was interleaving out of impatience. I suspect this is not that unusual and that non-interleaved compliance is the exception. But please let me know if I am missing the concept.

And at what point in skills acquisition does the best way to learn change to whole movements if ever? If Brett Jones is stil working on his one perfect swing, we all should be. But what is the best way to improve when you already have a high level of skill?

 

[guardian7]

Thanks for the interesting and thoughtful post. It has been a while since I first used the ETK DVD to learn the basic exercises. I was a good student in that I actually worked on the progressions like towel swings and sitting back.

But I was a bad student because I was mixing it up with swinging right away. So in that era at least I was interleaving out of impatience. I suspect this is not that unusual and that non-interleaved compliance is the exception. But please let me know if I am missing the concept.

And at what point in skills acquisition does the best way to learn change to whole movements if ever? If Brett Jones is still working on his one perfect swing, we all should be. But what is the best way to improve when you already have a high level of skill?

This is a good question. There are two factors. One is that retaining expertise requires practice. Musicians are a good example. A famous quote from a pianist illustrates this:
If I don't practice one day, I know it; two days, the critics know it; three days, the public knows it. Jascha Heifetz

If you want to retain a skill, you need to practice the basics. Many professional musicians practice scales. We all know that if we don't keep pressing for example we will regress. In physical skills there is a muscular element but also a neurological element (CNS) to skill retention. This could be as little as part of a warmup before the main practice if the person is competent, however.

Secondly, the more expert you get, the more you breakdown the skill focus. When you take a complex skill like the getup, you could focus on something like your neck position in the tall sit or foot position in the first movement. In the pushup you could focus on your hand position and screwing in your lats for tension etc. A beginner would maybe focus on not sagging in the hips or getting the right depth. The more advanced the practitioner, the more minute the focus.

I am not certified, but I have heard repeatedly that people pick up things that they need to improve and work on from the expert coaching and that is one of the most valuable parts of the cert. These are people who are confident enough to go for certification, hardly beginners.

Bret Jones says that he is still working on his swing. I think that this combination of expertise and humility is what makes real mastery possible. Like the saying that getting a black belt is a new beginning of your martial arts journey.

What I expect real experts do is that they practice whole movements but then they also isolate what part of the movement they want to work on for that day. I don't count myself as an expert but when swinging I might focus today on the standing plank and watch for hyperextension (which I know is a weak point for me) or using Pavel Macek's four count swing concept, which all beginners should learn. In short, experts would both regress and do the entire routine. For a getup you could regress. For a more ballistic movement, you might focus on one point that day by being more conscious of it. In my Thai boxing, yesterday I worked on turning my left ankle more sharply and the timing of the rotation of my leg in my right kick, which is worse than my left. I notice that the best fighters in my gym do more shadow boxing and less heavy bag work, which is less advanced but they are working on form and muscle memory, not trying to hit the bag as hard as possible with sloppy form like beginners.

Musicians do this too. They play a song but focus on the one part that is difficult to play as well. They can speed one part up for mastery or slow it down to take it apart. Amateurs just run through the entire song again and again. Olympic figure skaters fall down more than high school ones because the focus on their difficult jumps according to a book called the Talent Code. They know that progress comes from being uncomfortable and failing.

There is a body of research on "deliberate practice" that explains this and a number of popular articles on the topic that summarizes it. However, this approach works best for clearly defined skills like chess, sports, etc. rather than general complex ones like business skills, teaching, or coaching etc. according to recent criticism of the theory.

Is there a time when an advanced athlete does not need to do the basics? I would say no. I have heard some say that experts just do the basics better.

With regard to your "bad student" behavior, I suspect that some move ahead quickly but DON'T regress as well. The key would be whether you both pushed ahead and regressed consistently, not that you rushed the process. In this strict sense, very few, including me at times, train properly I would think. This could be alleviated by having the regression or review quite short. Teachers move more quickly than they should often because they don't want students to get bored or trainers to lose clients, which is another problem or they want to keep on track with the material in the syllabus, which is a huge problem in our education system. With more practice, anyone can do well in subjects like math. The term to look up is "mastery learning" here.

It would be interesting to hear exactly how some experts in this forum practice. What their thought process is while training. Their rep and set scheme would not give the entire story I imagine.

 

[guardian7]

A valid and interesting question. One thing comes to mind.

In general, the adaptation of exercise is explained through some kind of compensation, whether the supercompensation or the fitness-fatigue model. In any case, one must experience a proper amount of specific stress, or fatigue, which initially degrades performance. After a certain period of time, the fatigue goes away, while a positive compensation is still in place. One should train the specific exercise again while the fatigue has been eliminated, but the compensation, or increased fitness, is still in place. This demands a certain sequence in training. Training too many things at once either makes us split the stress so that we do not stress a certain muscle or motor unit enough, or we do not have the time to stress it again when it is favourable.

I see your point but we should distinguish between muscle adaptation and nervous system practice here. What I am talking about is skill acquisition rather than conditioning or hypertrophy. This is why GTG works so well is because it maximizes nervous system learning. One Good Rep: How to Perform the Perfect Push-up | StrongFirst
If hypertrophy is your goal then interleaving is not the answer.

 

[guardian7]

With regard to swings and tgu I am actually usually focussing on one element per set, like shoulder stability or timing.

I am trying to imagine how this might be formalized in a way.

Maybe just a list of "cues, drills & skills" that you would choose from.

Or include a bit of variety day feeling into the main days. For example doing a bottom up press on the first rung of a ROP ladder and doing OS commando rocking imbetween ladders. Plus some easy crawling and front squats here and there.

Planks, bird dogs, dead bugs, crawling, single bell carries (also BU) for midsection stability.

Maybe doing just one set of one of the tension day drills per session.
The Tension Day | StrongFirst

Doing something from the Original Strength youtube channel.

So far this would easily fit into existing programming. But as soon as you begin to change the original programming, things get a little more complicated. For example I like to use a different bell for each set. That way each set feels different and is a fresh challenge. However, this doesn't comply with the S&S step progression. It is much more like the original Easy Strength programming.

The main focus here is on skill acquisition rather than a well rounded routine covering the basic movements, so what you should do is repeat every day what you learned last week as well as what you are learning/practicing this week. For example, continue doing the KB deadlift all week while adding the swing. Or continuing doing the high pull progression even when you have start to do a full snatch. etc.

 

[offwidth]

This is a really interesting thread. Thanks to @guardian7 for starting it.

I wonder how many real experts (in any field) give any thought to this; or if they just do.

 

[Antti]

I see your point but we should distinguish between muscle adaptation and nervous system practice here. What I am talking about is skill acquisition rather than conditioning or hypertrophy. This is why GTG works so well is because it maximizes nervous system learning. One Good Rep: How to Perform the Perfect Push-up | StrongFirst
If hypertrophy is your goal then interleaving is not the answer.

Motor unit activation is dependent on the load. Strength training demands a heavy load. The heavy load activates and fatigues the motor units most efficiently. The load requires rest.

 

[Steve Freides]

@guardian7, I don't think your examples of interleaving are necessarily valid in the ways you've given them, and I'll do my best to explain why.

During our kettlebell cert, we will revisit the swing many times. But we don't necessarily have anyone swing if their kettlebell deadlift isn't good. The high pull is another example - for some people, it doesn't provide much, if any, carryover to the snatch, and I don't know that there is point in interleaving high pull and snatch even for those people with a lot of carryover between the two because the snatch includes the high pull.

OTOH, practice scales on the piano and practicing chords on the piano are different, and interleaving them might be beneficial. Interleaving snatch practice and getup practice, or press and swing practice - those things might be beneficial.

I will also relate a little bit of a conversation I've had with @Brett Jones - we've even talked about writing an article about it. Our conversation was about being dogmatic in one's approach. If we go back to the Bruce Lee quotation in Power To The People!, some people in there early stages of learning will need to learn the details of a punch they aren't aware of, or will have to work on mastering some of those details. Other people will need to hear simply something like "explode" and more details would hinder, not help, their performance of the skill.

There is undoubtedly benefit to interleaving practice, but one must understand each skill, and interleave skills that don't have a lot of overlap, I believe. When one skill is a progression along the way to another, similar but more difficult skill, then interleaving those two things doesn't make as much sense.

And then there are times not to be dogmatic simply because some things do take a lot of hammering on the same point before progress is made. I'll give you a personal example, my cello lesson yesterday. I spent over an hour with my teacher, and no matter what we were doing, he kept having me work on the same thing, in this case tension in my bow arm. And I simply wasn't relaxing my bow arm enough, so we just kept going at it, and at the end of an hour of working basically on one thing, I started to make some progress. It took me that long, with him prompting, cueing, and demonstrating, for me to finally be able to make some progress. It wasn't too much on the same thing, it was what was needed for me at that time.

-S-

 

[Brett Jones]

@guardian7
A good area of investigation and study—I discuss some of these concepts here:
It's OK to Struggle | StrongFirst

We implement interleaving of the practice at our certifications where we switch from exercise to exercise layering and building skill over the certification.

There is a difference between the strategy used when learning a skill and using that skill to build capacity etc... so while it may appear that we are heavily block practice oriented but that is in a training perspective.

 

[wespom9]

There is undoubtedly benefit to interleaving practice, but one must understand each skill, and interleave skills that don't have a lot of overlap, I believe. When one skill is a progression along the way to another, similar but more difficult skill, then interleaving those two things doesn't make as much sense

Herein lies an important point I believe. What's the point of practicing a regression if it is unrelated to the current form (if you can snatch, why high pull? interleave snatch with something completely different). I agree with Steve's point as well that without proper form it could be unsafe to advance. If someone can't deadlift right, I'm interleaving other drills along with a deadlift, not interleaving a deadlift, swing and snatch.

Basically, interleaving different skills - absolutely. Evidence is mounting. I've applied it to learning piano and I find my daily recall getting better each time.
Along with spacing and interleaving is recall > recognition. The act of the brain attempting to find the solution (rather than recognizing it from a multiple choice format) assists the neural connectivity. I'd be very interested in hearing opinions on how this would work in the physical realm.

I've mentioned it before but these concepts are also reported in the book Make it Stick by Brown, Roediger III & McDaniel. Highly recommended read. If only I did this in university.

 

[wespom9]

There is a difference between the strategy used when learning a skill and using that skill to build capacity

This highlights the distinction I was trying to make in a much more succinct way

 

[guardian7]

Thanks for the writeup.

I believe that, say, Pavel is at least aware of these options. Learning/training should be chaotic in a way. However, it is pretty difficult to write a plan that people will actually follow and that will produce results reliably.

The original training plan in Russian Kettlebell Challenge (very cheap on kindle! ) is pretty much in line with your ideas.

However, S&S is much easier to follow. Plus, as less skills are needed, you can focus on a few qualities and the physical adaptations that follow consistent practice and volume.

Thanks for the tip. I had fogotten about that book and picked it up on Kindle. Russian Kettlebell Challenge. Interesting stories and historical detail. And Russian jokes. haha.