 Welcome back to Schoolcast and it's question and answer number three, or Tres. What language is that? You would have thought that looking at it, would you? If you have any future questions put them in the comments below, but also at the same time click subscribe so you don't miss any of our other videos coming up. Excellent. So Tim would you like to hear the first question? Yes please question Master. The first question is actually immediately after last week's one about what's on Earth that's going on with Jacko's hair. Yeah this is a good topic actually. Jacko's got quite a detailed hair history which is available for all to see if you just google David Jackson mullet into your favourite web browser. So to quote a good friend of mine, Sam Raven if he's watching, we used to talk about the idea of when you're in between hairstyles you've just got a letter of B. So I'm just currently lettering a B, we're all growing our hair because if you're not currently cutting it it's growing and if you have your hair cut then obviously you've made the decision. I haven't made that decision so I've got a good question actually. It's a bit like a mullet as long as the business at the front part of the back. This is more like a frullet where it's a front mullet. So just enlighten us so that I'm aware because I'm not sure how I feel about the mullet making a real impression. No it's not, no. What are you transitioning towards? I don't know, that's all I mean I'm just letting it be. Alright. That would be not a man bun. Let's move on to it. I would be lying if I'd say it has never been in a ponytail yesterday. Anyway, so the first question, we're getting some good questions in now. Yes thanks for saying those in. There's no one's word before I won't go into the question. So the Masterio Fiegel, this is from YouTube, he says hi, nice video. Thanks. He would like to know how to make a plan for learning a new skill, things he would need to consider and he was after it. Or an example he gave was if he wanted to learn the pistol squat. Okay, so we can kick him off with that. So the skill acquisition is a really detailed, quite complex subject. So we're going to just try and break it down into some simple terms because people have literally written textbooks about this. It involves a neural system which is pretty complicated in itself and just to get our heads around. So we'll keep it in terms of what's actually going to make a difference in the gym. So there's a couple of things about learning a new skill. It doesn't matter if it's a pistol squat or you're playing a piano or you want to ride a bike or anything like that. You're going to have to go through a process of teaching yourself how to move in the way or how to conduct movement in a way which is going to mean that you can do that particular thing. And that involves you having to develop potentially new or refining existing neural pathways to be able to do that. So the central nervous system communicates with the muscles around the body through the neural system telling them how to move, when to activate, the level of activation, all that kind of stuff and the integration between the muscles. Let's take our hands then because it's a bit more skill-based than a pistol squat. We'll come on to why in a minute. When you've never balanced on your hands before, having to learn to do that means that you're going to have to practice it so that your brain can start to learn those neural pathways. Now when we get something which is called myelination, which is basically an increase in a fatty substance which surrounds the neurons and that helps the thicker that neuron, that myelination becomes or the myelinated sheath comes, the more embedded that neural pattern becomes. So imagine it starts off as nothing. When we start learning the skill that myelinated sheath starts to thicken because we lay down strips for each time we're practicing that movement pattern and then we start to build robust skill movements if we want to talk about our new movement patterns. Like when you learn to do the first time you do something new and it feels weird because you haven't built that up and then when something starts to click and feels a bit more normal or people might say it feels natural now because you've been through that process and built that up. Let's talk about why it's easy for kids to learn skills. The rate of how quickly that myelin develops in young children is rapid so they can pick up stuff. So if you want to learn something fast or you look at people that have learned things like people who have been gymnastic and learned to walk on the hands when they were five years old can probably still do it now they just got to optimise that development stage of their lives when they were exposed to a particular skill acquisition. Now what does that mean for people of later generations and slightly older and longer into that habit? Yeah and you haven't done gymnastics. Yeah exactly. So the pistol squat is about and any skill acquisition is about finding a number of different progressions which are going to help you to take that whole movement and break it down into bite sized chunks. What are your thoughts on that around a pistol squat? Well I just talked a little bit generically first, basing our theories around what the framework that we use at the School of Cassettes is for any of our movements. There's a movement aspect and there's a strength aspect and so we'll take the pistol squat then. Have you got the hip and ankle mobility to be able to create the shape we need to in order that you don't just fall backwards when you go down to that bottom position? If people want some more information about that we've got a video so you can go and check that out. Two part video to the pistol squat. And then there's a case of are you strong enough to be able to control yourself down eccentrically, stabilise the bottom and then have you got enough strength to come up concentrically. And some of the thing about learning the new movement if we're talking about that as being the skill is formulating some ways where you can work some exercises where you make the whole movement easier for you to be able to give the brain a chance to learn that new movement skill or pattern. So you might be, you might jack your heel off so that you're able to get a better door selection so you can hold that bottom position in your pistol squat or you're doing a learning hand standing and you're going to be against the wall so you don't have to worry too much about the balance but you're being upside down and giving the brain that whole movement that you're trying to do but in an easier environment as it were to be able to learn that. The pistol squat for me is an example of a movement but it's actually one that body is pretty comfortable with. Sort of a squatting based pattern, yeah over the years of what our modern day lifestyle has looked like we've kind of jacked up the hips and ankles, we've done quite a good job of messing up what was actually a very good natural functional movement but we should be strong on one leg the body knows that particularly well so if you can get the range of movement and the strength you're probably not going to have a massively difficult time of sticking together a pistol squat what becomes much more difficult is like a human flag where you've got absolutely no history of doing a push-pull at maximum effort with straight arms extended overhead in any kind of previous training that you might have done so that's a real opportunity where you're going to see what I'm talking about with that marinated sheath where we have to learn from scratch and the more we do it the more we get that reinforcement of the movement pattern and we start to lay down a must activation sequence and some synchronization music starts to produce a movement and it's all about a little and often that responds quite well so we're doing a skill acquisition, we can get really good benefits from doing it regularly and quite consistently as well, yeah not doing it at the end of the session when you're smashing when you're trying to learn some business, yeah remember you're trying to train the neurosis we talk about fatigue quite generally but the neurosis gets tired, it gets fatigued so doing things that you're highly complex, new skills, do those at the beginning of the session work out what it is that you're wanting to work towards and get the progressions within that we've got loads of videos of it's hand balancing, you can find some of our stuff on human flags and back levers and that's what our whole process is like Jack referred to the framework is broken down into actually we have a whole section called movement patterning as part of our framework which is completely designated to how we do skill acquisition so if there's something particularly when I work on either have a look through what you can find on YouTube as we've done quite a few videos on those or check out the ebooks but feel free if you've got some more questions around a specific movement then just in questioning it just to finish off because he's asking specifically about the pistol squat and as Tim was describing squatting movements or patterns in general like we're quite used to just to remind you Tim's got a 10 week old baby Jack and he although essentially Tim has been training him but generally like he's got look at a baby like they automatically have that squat pattern like they can sit into a deep squat so it's not that you need to look you might need to relearn it but it's there in terms of a pistol squat when you try and do it it's going to feel impossible and look a bit crazy when you see someone doing that easy but that's only because you've got a lot of junk in your ankle and your hips have stopped you from being able to do that thing there's not many things in life that you're better at when you're like 10 weeks old compared to when you are old you are now but squatting probably is one of those things you should see his hip hinge like his hamstring length is his spinal push is beautiful it's a bit assisted at the moment but we're working on it I like to think he's developing quite quickly that's quite a long answer but there's a lot to it it's very complicated but come back to us if that's not quite clear great question yeah really good go so question number two do we have to ask the question master so question master what is question number two question number two Tim is from Paul H I don't know if that's his surname he's like triple H sorry it's not like it's just the initial again off YouTube he doesn't say like the last video but he's just a tie I'm struggling with the transition it's a good one actually it's something I've found very takes a lot of time and works hard on being through quite a bit of struggles on this but Tim is the master of his head of handstands I'm struggling with the transition between doing handstand push-ups against the wall, attempting and freestanding any advice appreciated I like to take a mentor approach in my role as head of handstand so Dave why don't you enlighten us as to what you've learnt from your journey into unbalancing first and foremost there is a huge difference between being supported against a wall with your feet holding supporting you even though they're not helping you up compared to being freestanding so when you're freestanding trying to do a handstand press-up you've got all of it's like being able to do the difference between doing loads of dips on bars and trying to do dips on rings and people are really struggling with dips on rings when they haven't done them before because the stabilising muscles around the shoulder don't know what the hell's going on when you're on that ring instead of the prime moves like the your chest, your pecs, your triceps aren't able to even get going because the joint or the shoulder doesn't feel stable enough so you might be able to bosh out ten handstand push-ups with your feet getting to what you tried to do on freestanding your balance might be quite good but as soon as you start trying to move you don't feel like you've got the strength of the horsepower to get back up because you haven't upgraded the stabilising structures around the shoulder to be able to work effectively and actually put down the strength you've got and the range is like pulling back some of that strength that you've got so it doesn't feel stable and so there's a balance aspect of that like I don't know why you're at Paul H whether you're like balancing, are you really good at balancing or have you just done war handstand press-ups and actually you need to get good at balancing on your hands that proprioception of balance through the fingers and that feedback through the hands and the fingers and then try and build that in together or are you just completely struggling with that I think that bang on and I think the other thing that actually links back to what we were talking about before is like handstand push-ups against the wall is an easier skill than a freestanding handstand push-up so your ability to be able to apply force when that wall is not supporting you you've got so many more variables that you're trying to control so the skill component of how you actually control that movement what your feet do, how does your body weight shift as you lower down towards the ground are you able to keep the feet in a position where you're then at the same time stronger to hold that shape which you don't have to rub out against the wall or when you drop down as the body angle change because you're losing some strength through that range which then means you lose your balance there's all of that sort of stuff going on so I wanted to say something on that as you're saying that there when you're, if it is the wall your feet are up against the wall you've automatically got some like banana back issues going on even if you've got it like minimal but the difference being on your when you're freestanding as you say as Tim says your body comes down and you actually angle your feet slightly behind you it changes the mechanics of what's going on and where you actually, where you're pushing from a little bit like and so something that I've helped to practice that and gave this one to Harvey he loved our camera and some bits of visuals he loved this one where you go into that handstand against the wall you take your feet off and get your balance and then you slowly just lower down to control so literally your nose touches the floor hold that bottom position your feet are slightly backwards of you and you have that little bit of angle because you've come down forward slightly you haven't gone straight down and put your head between your hands because your elbows are going to flare out to the side and jump up that shoulder you've come forward there and then just be able to control and feel that position and just doing slow eccentric to those so five seconds on the way down minimum and not even doing a huge number of reps on that but just giving the break a little bit like the first question giving the break and the opportunity to learn that movement and build up the strength through that eccentric you get the control as well you'll soon be able to get back up and get that out position I would also then practice the outward bit then still use the wall so again come up to the wall away from it control yourself lower down then as you come back up you should then come back up and find the wall again and then eventually take the wall out all together spend some time this is Harvey talking about freestanding handstand pushups that's a pretty advanced skill not to be scoffed at in how difficult it is but definitely use this system we call it an assistance tool it's from our locker which kind of helps a little bit around meaning that we can train progressively use that to get your body position right the strength should be there but you've got to learn to apply that strength when you've got a whole heap more stability to your skin so use those eccentric to defeat off the wall that is my play around with that one great progression number three please David question master third and final question is from Billy Dragon actual surname, how exciting not the capital D though I wish I'd got a better alias you could change your name think of a good one very insightful session enjoyed it, that's the previous Q&A Jack and I like positive feedback question for you both this is a great question Dragon can I call you Dragon name five mistakes you made when you started calisthenics keep up the great work guys face Tim you've got to go for five I've done a blog actually about the ten mistakes like not to make or something like that that was a couple of months ago and now probably as I'm getting older and more experienced I think my top five are going to change a little bit I'm going to flip this because when I thought about this question I won't do the five best things no, I think I've made more mistakes since starting calisthenics than when I first began so I actually think when Jack... made more mistakes now than you did at the beginning and I'll tell you why I might not have got five but I'm going to actually record for a minute about this when Jack and I first started training calisthenics we knew training because we're a strength and conditioning coach so we knew what the training environment looked like we didn't know anything about calisthenics and there wasn't a lot of people providing particularly progressive and systematic training that's why we developed what we developed through the school because we started bringing those two things together however we just went in the gym and we messed about and we had a lot of fun and people would say to us, what are you boys doing in the gym because it just looks like you're messing about and we were like, yeah we are we're messing about, but we used to go in the gym and the gym was just across the road and we would try and balance on things on our hands we would just hang off stuff can you do that? I don't know, can I do that? I'll try it it seems like I can do it it's massive, this was actually tired to get a really nice skill acquisition stuff we were learning new skills one of that sort of got us addicted to it didn't it, because it was that new stuff so we played and then we did a lot of basic strength work so we were doing a lot of dips, a lot of pull ups push up variations and we did more of that sort of stuff because partly we couldn't really do a lot else so we just did a lot of that and as we've gone through stuff I think over complicated times which is power in that we know a lot about training and we understand a lot about how we can adapt the variables but it also can provide a really cloudy approach to training and especially when we throw work and general fatigue and we travel a lot so we're all over the place and the consistency I don't have a job that I finish at 9 o'clock or 5 o'clock in the afternoon I go to the gym every day and I can do this sort of stuff we have to fit it all in so things become really kind of messy like everybody does the mistake I think when I'm going with this is I don't concentrate enough on basic strength which is what I'm doing now I'm trying to get strong I try and do too many things at the same time where I should actually just focus in on achieving something and moving forwards with it I think one of the mistakes is at one point I realised that I thought I could keep all those plates spinning at the same time so why can't I learn a front lever and a muscle up and a handstand and a human flag at the same time I've got four different training sessions for each day, sometimes multiples the neural system again we go back to that can't hack it and the stuff that you have to embed around those skills the specific strength that's required needs repetition if you're doing something different every day you're never really kind of putting it through if we're going to take an athlete and go right we need to improve 10m sprint time we've been looking through lower body power based or strength based sessions maybe 3-4 sessions a week and hitting some variations over and over and over again whereas if I go to gym Monday's pull up day I'm trying to work on my muscle up but I'm not training the same things that's three, give me a break and you can have a go I might finish off with two others in a minute so I echo those statements definitely one thing I've never never been good at was never patient enough so I would and this is a mistake but it's something that's helped me be a better coach I should be I say this now, I've said this a few times doing calisthenics based about three years and even at the start so it was finish rugby wanted to carry on training, love training lifting weights, got board lifting weights quite quickly when no game to play at the weekend so got into calisthenics because we were just messing about basically and I was actually still lifting some weights that time so I thought the stock lifting weights and I'd lose all my size and I didn't want to get small which was obviously wrong and I would always be trying to do stuff that's way too difficult for me that was definitely a mistake you still do that now in three years I should be better at calisthenics than I am now but I feel like I'm a better coach because I've made I know the pitfalls and the stakes that everyone else is going to go through my handstand mistake of spending too long early doors kicking up and being way further behind on my handstand development than you but then being able to then figure out and finding that transition out of that process and so much more difficult I've tried everything under the sun and figured out actually what works and what doesn't work and what's affected in that the evidence of that is like I was like I don't know I just kind of do it whereas you've actually had to go back and figure it out it was different where I just kind of did it and you don't have as much of a probably coaching back or understanding as the detail of that because it came quite naturally so patience another one being don't try and do stuff that's too hard for you but at the same time you've got to I like that challenge of doing crazy stuff and potentially nearly broke my back when I landed on that that was a mistake but that was being trying to do some hand standing stuff that I wasn't going to have to do we didn't have a kit in the gym so we were learning to handstand on farmers warp bars and if you know what they are they've got pylons where you put the weights on so we were using those with parallel bars and it sounds ridiculous now we definitely suggest that you don't do that because the chaco landed and it literally could have broken his spine it was quite a hair-raising moment for us so I think my progress my personal progress has been slower because of that but I think it's helping to be a better coach which for me and what we're doing with the school I'm really quite happy I'd prefer it to be that way round I'd hate for us to be able to do way more stuff but I can't teach anyone as to it because I get the massive someone was asking, I was speaking to someone on the phone yesterday about the calisthenics and asking about they were even saying do you like it when you're at the workshops coach we finished the workshops it was buzzing because people are getting such a kick out seeing everybody else go through that thing doing something new for the first time and really getting a kick out training enjoying their training, loving their training and not hating training but just knowing it's good for you to stay fit and healthy but actually really enjoying what we do I think there's something in that guys we genuinely I think that's four things between us I think we're done alright there we genuinely are passionate about sharing this information with you and that's why we started the school because we were in the same place as a lot of you guys are, it just wasn't a resource so the mistakes that we made with Packies that even know what we know about how to train athletes you actually can avoid a heap of those if you follow the blogging information that we put out we're not trying to like sugarcoat anything we'll literally tell you we are two extra players trying to learn calisthenics these are mistakes we've known but the benefit that we have is we can come through that because we actually can apply it to a bit of training sites if you can't do it sometimes people look at others now and go you've always been able to do that it's like no I haven't or well I've got this wrist injury it's like well yeah like tim just got your shoulder I broke my scapula I broke my thumb I broke my wrist my hands are awful for hand balancing but you'll find a way we work with people that don't have an arm we don't have a leg or like with the Paralympics stuff we do you don't think that it's not for you I've got one more this would be amazing if it's the same thing 1, 2, 3 I didn't do enough stretching and mobility work I was going to say we're getting bonus one then but you're a hard robot no but we completely overloaded tendons in the upper body because you train so regularly mine was I didn't have enough rest so I literally like train every day or try to train every day and then wonder why I've been training now for 3 weeks and I've now worse like whatever I'm trying to weight I could do 30 kilo chins like 2 weeks ago now I can only do 25 like how am I weaker and then you're not weaker you're just tired then it'll be like oh my flag feels terrible because you had not rested so I rest rest fulfilled and in rest days and be progressive I actually am a victim of this this week a really nice little example so I'm doing some more front lever work I'm going to do some more work on my back lever with the palms down towards the ground and that's actually going to put a heap more tension through my elbow so I woke up the following day and I've got elbow niggles and I know what it feels like now I've got another one so my first go to after that was I went in, I got some time in the gym spent some time loosing off and then went into corrective strategy I actually want to do a video on this one because it's a really useful one but it's fixed it in a day it's just starting to understand how the wrist and the elbow works and why that's starting to kick off because if you ignore that niggle I promise you I was having a great time with physio about elbows being a combination of muscular and neural impingements all sorts of issues going to go on if you go down that route because you don't rest enough you don't do enough mobility work and it's the same thing you're going to have problems so prioritise that, that is probably the number one because it halts your training and it's a really, you have to be strict with yourself because you want to train but actually the best thing for you is to give at least some of that time pre and post to mobilisation and that again fits into our sort of preparation phase and taking care of your body because what we're doing is high demand and you're not accustomed to it because unless you've done a lot of hanging stuff ligaments and tendons and connected tissue it takes a long time to adapt so just thinking you can do, you usually do five days a week bodybuilding thinking you can do five days a week calisthenics from a beginner's level is a completely different ball game last one then and it links into that nicely was like listen to your body I didn't listen to my body so and I'd know like there'd be that voice going like why are you still doing that like you've got that elbow pain but you're just going to carry on doing that exercise that you know hurts it rather than actually figuring out what was the problem sawing it out giving it some rest and then coming back we actually get quite a lot of questions coming in about injuries should I do this if I've got a slipped dish the flat answer to that is the one which you're concerned about we can't diagnose or anything like that go and see people get someone to get some support it's worth the investment and the last thing I'm going to say is you do that around like training through injuries often because I'm trying to keep up with Jacko we're training together and like Tim is doing that today so if we want to train together we're going to do that sometimes you've got to take your own little path and mix it together wow exhausted that was a great one amazing one wasn't it I've got questions for for Q&A number 4 the next one comment below if you haven't yet subscribed make sure you click that over there these ones always come on my face I'm just sitting here today you get like if there be a thumb over my face and it's like floating here we've got a free beginners guide which we'd love to give you if you haven't yet got started and that is down there you get that from the website it's free there's no just downloaded there's no reason why you wouldn't pull it to us and Tim's leaning over because one over here that's going to be last week's Q&A in case you missed it I don't like it when it's on my face it's just my shoulders I'm sat there like looking like a right lemon giving it to myself nothing but it's a knowledge bombs in there so it's the next time class dismissed