19 | discipline through freedom

Back in issue 8, I referenced Joan Keonig’s book The Musical Child: Using Music to Raise Children Who Are Happy. With softball season approaching, I am drawn to another theme that surfaced multiple times throughout the book: musicking. Musicking is Koenig’s term for any making of music, which doesn’t have to be highly structured or formal. In other words, banging pots and pans counts! Koenig goes on to describe musicking as a pathway to eventually taking a more disciplined approach to music, but strongly advises people to guard against too much discipline or technical instruction too quickly.

Humans were making music together long before the first note was written on the first staff, but the practice has largely disappeared from our daily lives. Music has never been so readily available on so many platforms, and yet we are several generations into the false belief that musicking – my preferred term for musical practice – requires arduous training. In highly developed societies where music is instantly available on multiple devices, I see less and less spontaneous musicking in homes. Rather than singing and dancing with them, we send our children to music class. This is as developmentally absurd as not speaking with your child and sending her to weekly language lessons in her native tongue….[W]e have lost sight of the oral origins of music – and have needlessly complicated what is actually a very simple and organic process of mastering music.

Koenig, Joan. 2021. The Musical Child: Using the Power of Music to Raise Children Who Are Happy.

I see parallels to sport. There are numerous training opportunities but often a narrow view of what playing a sport should look like. Additionally, the professionalization of sport has shifted the focus from gaining experience to chasing expertise. Clips of elite athletes touting the path of discipline circulate widely. And while “freedom through discipline” may be true for some things, it isn’t necessarily true for movement. On the contrary, discipline - as in being skilled enough to repeat desired movement outcomes - may follow freedom.

As an example, I coached softball for the first time last season. I had previously coached baseball at the high school and college levels, but 10u softball was an entirely different animal. Hitting was a major challenge, with many players seemingly paralyzed over the decision to swing or not. When we played an opponent with a free-swinging lineup, I asked their coach what he did to encourage such reckless abandon at the plate. His answer was brilliant: “They have to swing at everything in batting practice. In games, we take a ‘shins to grins’ approach. If the ball is between your shins and your smile, swing.” I loved it. As a first time coach, I had been hesitant to push such policy, but his advice helped me move in that direction. I brought the mindset into our practices, and the next time we played his team, we turned the tables on the them.

Hitting isn’t only about knowing the strike zone. It is about having an innate understanding of what pitches you can hit hard. Rather than learning the strike zone, hitters may be better served to first learn their own hit zone. How do you learn your own limits? By exploring their edges. In other words, start by trying to hit everything. Keep it simple by eliminating decision-making. After all, the ball doesn’t need to be a strike for it to be in your personal zone!

Much like Koenig’s observations about basic music competency, I wonder if we have “needlessly complicated what is actually a very simple and organic process” when it comes to skills like plate discipline. Additionally, an approach based on freedom to swing liberally lines up with what we are increasingly discovering about the value of variability within skilled movement. It also lines up with prioritizing knowledge of, which is developed through interacting with the perceptual elements in a skilled movement, over knowledge about, which is simply understanding a movement intellectually. In this example, knowledge of translates to a player who swings aggressively at pitches she can hit hard and takes those she can’t. Knowledge about translates to an athlete who can tell you the strike zone, and perhaps even identify balls and strikes as they arrive, but who isn’t translating that knowledge into performance outcomes.

Obviously, discipline means more than one thing and has value in different contexts. You can’t learn plate discipline via freedom at the plate if you aren’t practicing, and I am not arguing against all forms of routine and structure. I am simply urging people to consider the limits of discipline and recognize that, although it may make sense at the macro level for training, it doesn’t necessarily translate to the micro level when it comes to developing adaptable, creative movers.

Morgan C. Karow, Rebecca R. Rogers, Joseph A. Pederson, Tyler D. Williams, Mallory R. Marshall, and Christopher G. Ballman. 2020. Effects of preferred and nonpreferred warm-up music on exercise performance. Perceptual and Motor Skills, 127(5), 912-924.

summary: In this study, researchers examined whether preferred music would influence performance in a rowing task. 12 physically active individuals completed the research protocol:

1. Music preference survey where genre preferences were ranked from most preferred to least preferred and participants identified a self-selected song from most preferred category

2. Three rowing sessions (counterbalanced), each separated by 48 hours: no music (NM), preferred music (PREF), and non-preferred music (NON-PREF); each session followed same format:

   • Warm-up on rowing ergometer at 50% max HR for 5 minutes while in current music condition

   • Motivation assessment

   • 2000m row “as quickly as possible”

   • Borg Rating of Perceived Exertion (RPE) measures were collected every minute

Researchers reported several findings:

• POWER: Power output was significantly higher in PREF vs NM, but there were no differences between NM and NON-PREF or PREF and NON-PREF

• TRIAL TIME: Time to completion was significantly faster for the PREF vs NM, but there were no differences between NM and NON-PREF or PREF and NON-PREF

• HEART RATE: Average HR was significantly higher in PREF vs NM, but there were no differences between NM and NON-PREF or PREF and NON-PREF

• RPE: No differences

• MOTIVATION: Motivation was significantly higher in PREF vs NM and NON-PREF conditions, but there was no motivation difference between NM and NON-PREF

potential translations to sport: Like many research studies, the participant numbers were low and the results were mixed. A onsistent theme, however, was that allowing participants to listen to preferred music seemed to offer some advantages. Providing athletes freedom to choose music, at least during some aspects of training, may be an easy way to enhance effort and enjoyment at little risk to the desired outcomes. This could be an especially useful tool for less enjoyable aspects of training. In team sports, it could even be a method of distraction/bonding if athlete preferences were gathered anonymously and teammates engaged in a guessing game over whose selection had been chosen on a particular day.

Professor Adam Nicholls recently posted a clip of Netballer Helen Housby singing and dancing to Lizzo’s ABOUT DAMN TIME during a match. Housby, who was unaware that she was being captured, explained her behavior:

I find it relaxes me, keeps me smiling, enjoying the moment and once the whistle goes, you kick into action.

Helen Housby

In the full post, Nicholls describes the research that supports Housby’s unique approach to reducing anxiety and boosting self-confidence. In her case, freeing herself to move to the beat seemed to also free her up for sport performance when the play went live!

If you had to pick a song to put you into your ideal competitive state, what song would you choose?

Kris Kristofferson penned perhaps the most famous musical definition of freedom.

Freedom is just another word
For nothing left to lose

kris kristofferson (most notably via janis joplin) ME AND BOBBY MCGEE

But he was not the only artist with thoughts on the subject!

Freedom, now you're on your own
Freedom, or does it really mean you're just all alone

jefferson airplane FREEDOM

I am running with the theme of freedom for this issue’s playlist. Every song is titled FREEDOM. I went with a blunt instrument and just searched “freedom” within Spotify. I stopped once I was 500 tracks down the list of results, so if you think of other songs that should be added, drop them to the comments below.