“Play” is a key element of the GMB philosophy, and it runs through all of our programming in some form or another.
But what is play exactly?
We get questions quite often from people who don’t quite understand what we mean by “play,” and it’s understandable. As adults, we basically never play, so we’ve forgotten what it feels like. Often, we mistake “practice” for “play” but that’s really missing the point.
Here’s a snippet of what Andy had to say on the matter:
Practice happens at the edge of your ability; Play happens at the core of your competence.
In this episode, Andy and Ryan discuss what we mean when we talk about play. Watch and/or listen to get a clear understanding of playful movement and exploration.
- (01:22) “How the hell am I supposed to play with a movement if I’m just learning how to do it?”
- (09:37) The idea of play is to take a movement you’ve practiced and start to think outside the box. How can you take that move and expand it, explore with it?
- (10:26) The most difficult part of stringing two (or more) movements together is the transitional phase between point A and point B.
- (14:24) What practice means is that you work at it. What play means is that you play at it, and that you’re safe if you “screw up.”
- (15:00) We learn through our mistakes.
- (19:15) If you aren’t so creative and don’t really know how to “explore,” then copy other people’s movement combinations.
Andy: All right. Breaker, breaker one-niner on the interweb. Get your ears on for the GMB Fitness Skills Show. Over the next 30 minutes plus or minus, weâre going to be talking about how to get stronger, how to move better and how to be a better person because goddammit, thatâs what really matters.
My name is Andy. Here with me Ryan Hurst, GMBâs head coach, all around badass and good guy.
Ryan: Whatâs up man? Whatâs up?
Andy: Iâm all right. Iâm all right. Iâm wearing my horizontal stripes. So hopefully this will make me look a little fatter.
Ryan: Yeah, yeah. Thatâs what itâs about, yeah. I like it. That looks good there. Just the whole time.
Andy: And maybe if I could foreshorten this in the camera there, something like that. I donât know. Anyway, so today weâre going to be talking about â what were we going to be talking about? Play and what it means. We talk about playing and the importance of play and exploration and you use the word âplayâ like itâs something that people should already know what the hell youâre already talking about. But a lot of them donât and we get people asking us, âWell, how the hell how am I supposed to play with this when Iâm just learning to do it?â or âHow do you play with a push-up?â or stuff like that.
So weâre going to talk about play and weâre going to talk about Playâs good looking older brother Practice as well because you canât have one without the other.
[Music]Andy: So before that, some things that have been going on. I was just talking to Nate Miyaki not long ago. Really great guy. If you want to know anything about fitness, nutrition, Nate is the man to listen to and actually Ryan was just saying you are officially back on the Nate Miyaki plan.
Ryan: Back on it, man. Back on it. So good stuff. Nate has been a friend of us for quite a while now and he has helped me out with my nutrition throughout the years. So Iâm actually back on a plan that heâs doing for me. So I love it and itâs just â for me itâs very easy to do and whatâs what I like about it as far as the lifestyle and of course it helps me to do what I need to do.
So if you donât know anything about Nate, we will put a link in there so you can check Nate out, Nateâs information out. Really solid, solid stuff. Not just some kind of fad diet kind of thing.
Andy: No. So we should mention you havenât been on Nateâs plan for a few months and so obviously we â just with training, thereâs no nutrition plan thatâs perfect for anyone. Everything â you have to adjust and find whatâs appropriate for your goals. So obviously then something changed with your training lately.
Ryan: Right.
Andy: Without giving away the farm entirely, you want to talk about that for just a second?
Ryan: Yeah, I reevaluated my training and what was going on as far as recovery-wise and thereâs so much stuff going on in my life. So I needed to take a look at how I could still work on my skills and do the things that I want to do without killing myself, without going crazy but basically more importantly, I just wasnât getting the proper recovery that I needed.
So I made some changes to my programming which so far is looking very good. Iâm a little bit reluctant to tell you exactly what Iâm doing because itâs no secret. Itâs not like thereâs any secrets out there.
Andy: I will blab about it every â you cannot trust me.
Ryan: I just made some changes as far as how many times I was working out a day and âŚ
Andy: Down from six.
Ryan: Down from six to five. Thatâs a big change. But changed up the nutrition and found something â well, not that I found but went back and actually talked to Nate and he helped me readjust some things to make sure that I was getting what I need and actually giving my body a break from eating so much in the morning because it was actually just â it wasnât working for me and we found that â by this little change, itâs making a big difference for me right now. Itâs just really cool.
So again, just like Andy mentioned, you got to find something that works for you and it might be seasonal. Thatâs another thing too. I donât just jump from diet to diet. Iâm on a nutrition plan for quite a while and then depending on what I change in my workouts, I also need to adjust my nutrition and so itâs like that really with everybody. If youâre doing it the way Iâm doing it which basically because this is my job, I have to be careful and make sure that I am doing whatever I need to do in order to give me the results that I need. So thanks to Nate and his program. Iâm now back on track and ready to go.
[Music]Andy: Yeah. I mean I also think thatâs true for everyone really. You donât have to be a professional athlete or a fitness professional or anything to focus on specific goals or to adjust your training or your nutrition or your lifestyle to things that are going on. We talk about general fitness, general physical preparedness, GPP, things like CrossFit or based on the whole idea that you have general fitness that youâre trying to achieve that just means stronger, better and faster, whatever, and itâs not specific to certain skills and thereâs nothing terribly wrong with that.
We tend to focus on specific things but your life is always going to go through cycles and changes and if you have a busy phase at work because of a project or time of year, seasonal depending on what kind of work you do or if you have kids that have a school schedule that you have to change your lifestyle around, if you live some place unlike Hawaii where you have to â you donât want to be outside for a few months of the year. I am pretty lucky. Iâm wearing a sweater today because the AC is up so high.
Ryan: Iâm wearing like six layers underneath it.
Andy: Right?
Ryan: But yeah, thatâs a great point.
Andy: The point being though is we all have cycles and stuff. So you may not think that some of the things we talk about with cycling â oh, thatâs not relevant to me because Iâm not really working on a specialization, skill. Iâm not that high level yet or whatever. The thing is, your life is in cycles already. Your lifestyle goes through cycles whether you choose to recognize it or not and personally I think that your training should fit your lifestyle cycles and if you have training goals that are cyclical, then you can try to match those up. But even if you donât, even if youâre just doing general training, it should fit the cycles that naturally occur.
Ryan: Yeah. Thatâs good. So find something that will work with your lifestyle and do it.
Andy: Absolutely.
[Music]Andy: So letâs just get right into talking about play because this is something thatâs kind of central to GMB. We started â from the very beginning, we were teaching â hereâs exercises but you want to work towards a flow, routine, being able to put things together in a way and we made a flow of routines. But Ryan you always said from the very beginning that the ultimate goal is to be able to flow without a routine, to be able to move and transition and improvise and so itâs not â you learn the routine to be able to learn to improvise and my metaphor for that is always music but maybe something that people can relate to better and just what is play because people ask us all the time.
Ryan: Yeah. Play â depending on of course the person because if you look at children, letâs just look at children first and talk about play, what play is to children. The children, these are my kids, donât have a defined movement pattern yet and what I mean by that is they donât have these blinders of OK, this movement has to look this way or maybe even if they couldnât do that movement, they donât still have a concept of what anything is.
So they just move their bodies through space. So if they see something, they just try and climb up on it or they jump from the table to the bed or whatever theyâre doing. OK? In their mind, thatâs play.
When we talk about play, weâre talking about taking movements that weâve practiced and that weâre very, very comfortable with and thinking of how to take those movements and expand upon those movements.
So rather than think about weâre going to do a cartwheel, weâre going to do exactly the way that weâve been taught, we take that cartwheel that weâve â I donât want to use the term âmasteredâ. I donât even â because I donât think that we can master anything. I think weâre working towards that but we take a movement that weâve practiced a lot and âpracticeâ is the keyword. A lot of practice and we start to think out of the box. How can we take that cartwheel and expand, explore? See what other kind of movements we can do.
What if we do our head â what if we turn our head this way? What if instead of facing our hips this way, we turn to the outside? We explore. That is the meaning of play.
Now getting into where weâre trying to put movements together, this is where things can get difficult because we kind of have those blinders on and we forget that our bodies were meant to move. Thatâs kind of what weâre born to do because if you canât move, you canât be productive and thereâs no point and we will just put you on the cliff and let you die.
So anyway, stringing two movements together and Iâve got two movements in the beginning. The most difficult part people have is the transitional phase, in between point A and B.
So it all comes back to practice, practice, practice, practice. Once you can understand one transition, letâs say â I want to keep it just very easy. Geez, I donât even know. Walking, youâre walking, and then you do a lunge and you stand up and keep walking.
Pretty simple stuff but itâs amazing how many people have trouble stringing movements together. So when we talk about the play aspect, itâs not just running around and using the jungle gym and rolling around on the ground and doing silly stuff outside. Thatâs good. But when we talk about play, we talk about finding new options so that we can put things together in a better way that we havenât performed before.
This is where it gets tough because I say having performed before. Itâs not that we havenât practiced each individual movement before. Itâs that weâre trying to think of new ways to perform that movement.
[Music]Ryan: So play, again, if we could define it, I donât know. You can help me out with something. Maybe â I donât even want to use the term âfreeformâ because as soon as we start talking about freeform, people just start thinking that âŚ
Andy: Heâs doing whatever the hell.
Ryan: Yeah, whatever the hell I want to do and they just kind of miss it. I would say â oh my goodness. I donât even know a good way because a lot of people mistake the practice and the play and again letâs just talk about practice one more time. Practice is focusing on one particular movement or a combination of movements in order to perform one pattern. So once you get that pattern down, the exploration of that pattern is the play. So âŚ
Andy: So another way to look at that is letâs say that we take a skill that has different progressions, right? Like almost all the skills that we teach, right? Thereâs a beginner level and letâs just say thereâs three. Thereâs a beginner, the middle, and the advanced level. Thereâs probably a lot more in between but just for the sake of simplicity, right?
So letâs say that youâve been practicing for a while. Youâve made it through the beginner level and now youâre working on the middle level of the skill. Your practice is now the middle level. You donât practice the beginner level very much anymore. You still come back to it, warm up with it, whatever. But your practice is the middle level.
But you probably canât really achieve true play. You canât â when youâre practicing on the middle level, you donât have enough room. You donât have enough leeway to play with it. It takes concentration. You might be at the limits of your mobility or your strengths and you just have to really work at it.
But that beginner level is much easier for you. So when you go back and you work and you do the beginner level, you will find that you donât need as much concentration. It doesnât take as much strength and you can then maybe play around with it and explore more. So, then the same thing happens when you move up to the advanced level for practice. Your play is going to be at the middle or the beginner level.
Both of those are areas you can play with. So it helps to think of it in that way. Theyâre not different skills. Itâs not that you can play with some things and you canât with others or some things are just exercises and some things are just dicking around. They all work on the same continuum and practice happens at the edge of your ability.
Ryan: Yes.
Andy: Play happens at the core of your competence and thatâs really what the difference is. What practice is means you work at it. What play means is that you play at it and that you can explore different things and try things and youâre free to screw up because itâs not at the edge of your ability. Itâs not dangerous for you to screw up at that level.
Ryan: Thatâs the big point. Through these screw-ups or these mistakes which actually arenât even mistakes, because theyâre just something that weâve tried, thatâs where you learn.
[Music]Ryan: By doing exactly what you said and taking that basic version or the version that youâre very comfortable with and playing with that, new things start to happen and through these mistakes and these new things that you see, then you start learning, then you start realizing, oh, this is possible. Thatâs what weâre after with play is looking at possibilities so that when we start moving on to something else, we can then add that into our toolbox of movements.
I always like what you say about music where you practice the scales in the beginning. You practice the notes but once you have those down, then you take what youâve got, those notes, and try to string them together in a new way. Youâre just playing with the notes. Thatâs where you start to create music and thatâs what weâre doing here with GMB and all kinds of music.
So the basics are those scales, the notes that weâre looking at, and putting those together in a structured way so that we have some sort of a key that we can pull off of, and key Iâm not talking about music key but actually having âŚ
Andy: Like a legend.
Ryan: Legend, thank you. Yes. Then we can start taking pieces of that and exploring and trying to put those together. Now again, it doesnât have to be multiple movements at the same time. It can just be one movement.
But thatâs what weâre talking about play. So you see all these people recently and theyâre performing these awesome movements and everything and just like wow. Thereâs this wow factor thatâs huge right now. The only reason that theyâre able to do that is because they have the basics down and they stepped up and said, âIâm going to play with these basics and see what else I can come up with and string things together.”
Thatâs what weâre talking about when you talk about play and some really beautiful things can happen from that and it doesnât have to be at the advanced level nor should it if youâre not at that level.
Andy: Yeah, absolutely. So yeah, thatâs what play is, folks. Itâs taking the things that youâve practiced, taking the things that are within your ability and then just exploring them without expectation of what the outcome is going to be and kind of seeing what comes up and thereâs not a lot more we can do to explain it. Itâs just like how do you explain to a child how to play with Legos?
Ryan: Yeah.
Andy: I mean you can show them how they fit together and everything. You can teach them how to read the instructions to make a spaceship but ultimately, theyâre going to â they might make the spaceship or not but ultimately theyâre going to just play with the damn blocks and they donât need you to show them that.
Ryan: But you bring up â I mean that reminds me of when my kids when they were so little that they werenât even able to hold that Lego. So first thing, they had to learn how to hold that Lego then they got to learn how to put them together. Then they can start building things and thatâs exactly what weâre talking about.
So even children, itâs the same way. When my kids, when they play in the monkey bars now, they first had to learn how to hold on to the bar and then go from one bar to the other. So thatâs play. Thatâs play.
[Music]Andy: You mentioned Legos. Like my daughter is just a year and a half and she has these big Duplo blocks and she just figured out how to stack them, right?
Ryan: Cool.
Andy: But you know what? She has had them for over a month now. She played with them the whole time. How does she play with them when she canât stack them? She picked them up and she threw them. She would put them in a bucket and she dumped them out. She found things that she could do with them that that was her play at that level and now she can stack them up and so sheâs starting to play with different ways to stack them up. So wherever you are with your movements or with your exercise or whatever, play for you depends on your own level and whatâs comfortable for you and what you can then mess around with, so yeah.
Ryan: Nice, nice. Thatâs good. Thatâs good man. Yeah. We covered a lot here and I mean it is really hard to define exactly what it is and so â but I think you did bring up a good way to saying this, to practice your level at that basic level for you and you can play anyway you want really. Itâs an exploration and figuring out what you can do with it.
Andy: Yeah. Youâre only limited by your creativity in that and some people might think, âWell, Iâm not creative.â Well, you know what? Thatâs why you watch other people who are and you copy their shit and when you try to do the things that other people are doing and you apply it to the level and the movements that you do it at, then you will come up with something thatâs different.
If you watch somebody whoâs advanced and you say, oh well, somebody from a back flip, the next step for them to play with it is to do a twisting flip or to do a back flip while theyâre running forward or something like that.
So maybe youâre just working on squatting if thatâs all you can do. Well, what if you squat and twist? What if you squat and walk forward? Itâs the same things that you can apply to whatever movement. So if you think youâre not creative, copy somebody.
Ryan: Itâs just like in music, same thing. Learning the guitar, you copy who you enjoy and then from that, we learn. Thatâs also how I learned language. I donât know if youâre the same way but when I was in Niigata [0:20:10] [Phonetic], when I was university, I copied the way that my Kendo instructor spoke because he spoke very well and so once you learn that, then you can start making it your own and yeah, thatâs the way to do it. All right man. Good stuff.
Andy: Well, so thanks for watching and listening and play with what you can play with. Donât think that itâs something you have to wait until youâre advanced for. Play with what you can do. Throw the blocks. Put them in a bucket and show us what you got. I would love to see if you can come up with something thatâs really â thatâs interesting and fun for you, that uses just very basic stuff. So share it and thatâs how we all enrich our experience and our creativity together.
Ryan: All right. Until next time. Later.
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