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The Primal MMA podcast brings together coaches, athletes, and sports scientists to discuss training and practice design for Mixed Martial Arts. Exploring the science of skill acquisition, human motivation, and sports psychology, the podcast seeks answers to the question, can we get better quicker?
65 Episodes
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Send us a text In today's podcast, we're honored to have Jon Mackey as our guest, a celebrated coach in both Taekwon-Do and Kickboxing. With a career that began in 1987, Jon has trained numerous national, European, and world gold medalists in Taekwon-Do and Kickboxing, including Amy Wall, Lauren Bradshaw, and Robyn McDonnell. As the founder of Red Star Kickboxing and the National Director of Coaching for Kickboxing Ireland, Jon has significantly contributed to the Irish national team's succes...
Send us a text On this episode we delve a little more into the underpinning science of Ecological Dynamics. I recently read 'Introduction to Ecological Psychology' written by Dr Julia Blau and Dr Jeff Wagman which was a terrific read. The book was just recently published in the summer of 2022. Had this book been available years ago, it might have saved me countless hours of confusion and frustration. While there is little talk of MMA or Grappling in this episode, it does offer a teaser of ...
Send us a text For 30 years, Coach Greg Nelson has overseen the training and development of thousands of combat sports athletes at his gym The Academy in Minnesota. Among these fighters and champ that he has helped produce, Brock Lesnar, Kaitlin Young, Brock Larson, Sean Sherk, Dave Menne and Nick Thompson. He is also a regular part of UFC Straw-weight former reigning champ Rose Namajunas team. Coach Nelson talks about his approach, philosophies and methods that he employs from entry leve...
Send us a text I finally snagged the boys from Emergence to come and talk to me about MMA. I have been following Shawn Myszka AKA @movementmiyagi since coming across his youtube channel several years ago. Shawn is an NFL skill coach and movement consultant, co-founder of Emergentmvmt.com, regular podcast and skill conference presenter and co-author of the recently published paper "Applying an ecological approach to practice design in American Football". His biz partner Tyler Yearby also a...
Send us a text UFC vet and UK MMA pioneer Leigh Remedios returns to chat on the Primal MMA podcast. Ireland's 'Team Torres' Coach Martin McLaughlin also joined the chat. Martin is diving deep into the Ecological Approach and speaks about how he is implementing the theory and principles of the Eco D practically on the mats. This was largely an informal chat between the coaches and we shared lots of ideas and challenges we've experienced as we try to get the most out of our training time. It...
Send us a text Todd Fossey is the founder of and Chief Instructor at Integrative Defense Strategies in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Today he accepted my invite to chat with me about managing anxiety and arousal in training and competiton, and how getting the right levels can help promote learning, skill development and performance. Todd has been in the sport coaching and motor-learning space for several decades, add to that movie producer, trained psychotherapist and high performance consultant a...
Send us a text Cal Jones is both a Judo coach and practitioner from North Wales (UK). He also recently completed his Master Degree in sports science with a thesis on "Representative Learning Design". Cal is well connected in the skill acquisition community and is a frequent guest on the coaching podcast circuits. Should you want to reach out or follow Cal, he can be reached on his twitter account @CalJonesJudo This is the part one of a two part episode where we discuss RLD and its implicat...
Send us a text Cal Jones is both a Judo coach and practitioner from North Wales (UK). He also recently completed his Master Degree in sports science with a thesis on "Representative Learning Design". Cal is well connected in the skill acquisition community and is a frequent guest on the coaching podcast circuits. Should you want to reach out or follow Cal, he can be reached on his twitter account @CalJonesJudo This is the part one of a two part episode where we discuss RLD and its implic...
Send us a text My old pal and returning guest Will Massey PhD, Sport Psychologist, educator, coach, and practicing martial artist. In this episode, Will offers his insight into how we can foster and cultivate independent and self-directed learning within a group setting. We cover, learned helplessness, implicit learning, practicing for performance vs practice for learning. Motivation theory and considerations. And finally Will gives some practical takeaways for coaches loo...
Send us a text Today's guest brings both a practical and theoretical perspective to skill development in marital arts. Dr. Alan Dunton is a former Irish National TKD team competitor and now a researcher and lecturer at Cork institute of technology. Alan received his PhD in Skill Acquisition under the guidance of former guest, professor Ed Coughlan. (aka. Dr SkillAcq) . I really clicked with Alan and we went down several rabbit holes and discussed a whole lot of different a...
Send us a text Today's guest brings both a practical and theoretical perspective to skill development in marital arts. Dr. Alan Dunton is a former Irish National TKD team competitor and now a researcher and lecturer at Cork institute of technology. Alan received his PhD in Skill Acquisition under the guidance of former guest, professor Ed Coughlan. (aka. Dr SkillAcq) . I really clicked with Alan and we went down several rabbit holes and discussed a whole lot of different a...
Send us a text I finally snagged him! After months of pestering, Professor Rob Gray joined me to chat and answer some of my questions on skill development in martial arts. Rob is a giant in the skill acquisition space, and his voice has become all too familiar to me after spending much of my last few years working through his huge catalogue of podcasts of his show 'The Perception Action Podcast" . Rob is an Associate Professor of Human Systems Engineering at Arizona State University and r...
Send us a text Coach Leigh Remedios is the owner and head coach of VT Jiu-Jitsu in England UK. He is a life long martial artist, former professional fighter and UFC vet, and a recipient of 4 different black belts. My first contact and introduction to Leigh was an exchange over a post I'd made on a BJJ FB group about shrimping and bear crawling in jiu-jitsu practice being a waste of time. What started off as a terse back and forth led to a more substantive exchange, where ...
Send us a text My discussion with Professor Nicola Hodges was all about demonstrations! Dr Hodges researches and teaches out of the motor skill lab at the University of British Columbia. I reached out to Dr Nicola to ask for her to lend her expertise and insight into the science of demonstrations and learning in sport. Being such a big part of our sport and coaching, I was interested in how we might make the most of the demonstration time while increasin...
Send us a text An information loaded discussion with Professor James Stafford. Dr Stafford has a PhD in experimental psycology with a keen interest in Motor Learning and Skill Acquisition and Virtual Reality. James and I discuss the incredibly sensitive and sophisticated calibration of the perceptual motor system as it pertains to movement in martial arts and sport more generally. James delivers a ton of fascinating insights into what we think is going on and why this is so cruc...
Send us a text PART 2 of my discussion with Coach, Educator and Professor of Skill Acquisition Dr. Ed Coughlan. Ed and I discuss the growing non-linear approach to skill acquisition in sport and how it can help us design more effective training and development environments for MMA. A two part episode here discusses the slow moving paradigm shift in sports coaching and skill development. Dr. Ed helps clear up some of my nagging confusion and ambivalence in my own coaching methods...
Send us a text I finally snagged Coach, Educator and Professor of Skill Acquisition Dr. Ed Coughlan. Ed and I discuss the growing non-linear approach to skill acquisition in sport and how it can help us design more effective training and development environments for MMA. A two part episode here discusses the slow moving paradigm shift in sports coaching and skill development. Dr. Ed helps clear up some of my nagging confusion and ambivalence in my own coaching methods. Co...
Send us a text Season 2 kicks off with a talk with Coach John Kessel. Coach John is an US Volleyball Hall of Fame inductee with over 50 years of coaching men's and women's volley ball at the collegiate, international and Olympic level. Coach Kessel is a strong advocate of specificity and authentic representative practice and empowering athletes through relationships and prioritizing a love for sport. John credits much of the success of US Volleyball to an era that embraced the ...
Send us a text What was intended as a quick test conversation for a future Primal MMA podcast, turned into a fun and broad discussion of training for MMA and Sam's recent foray into the ecological non-linear space. (So we decided to upload it) Sam is a coach at Ronin Fitness in Eau Claire Wisconsin and has been rapidly gravitating towards the ecological and constraint led approach to martial arts training, in this three part episode we discuss the non-linear vs more traditional linear traini...
Send us a text What was intended as a quick test conversation for a future Primal MMA podcast, turned into a fun and broad discussion of training for MMA and Sam's recent foray into the ecological non-linear space. (So we decided to upload it) Sam is a coach at Ronin Fitness in Eau Claire Wisconsin and has been rapidly gravitating towards the ecological and constraint led approach to martial arts training, in this three part episode we discuss the non-linear vs more traditional linear traini...
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