I Slowed Down My Athletes for Years Without Knowing

Hello,

This is Romain. For years, I coached as I was taught. "Squeeze the glutes. Lock the pelvis. Keep the back straight." I was convinced I was doing the right thing. I was stiffening my athletes with each instruction, without realizing it.

Here's what happens in the body. When you bring someone's attention to their own body, to a muscle, to a position, you interfere with the automation of the movement. The movement becomes tense.

The researcher Gabriele Wulf showed the opposite: as soon as you direct attention towards the effect to be produced in the world, pushing the ground, aiming at the target, projecting the bar far ahead, the movement becomes free and gains fluidity.

I owe you the nuance, because I hate overselling. This effect has long been presented as a law.

Recent studies have shown that its extent was exaggerated. It often helps, but it's not a magic wand. You use it as a reliable tool, not as a dogma.

What changes from your next session: listen to yourself coach for ten minutes.

Count the instructions that talk about the body, and those that talk about the effect to be produced outside. Shift the focus towards the effect, and watch the movement change on its own.

Motor learning is the foundation of movement, and we give it our all, because it's our starting point.

Our real work, the RNP, Neuro-Postural Reprogramming, begins afterwards, when the movement still doesn't come and we need to read what the body perceives poorly.

We have laid all this out in the introduction to RNP, offered for free.

The body moves better when you stop talking to it about itself.

👉 The link to the free introduction!

Romain for the LabO-RNP team