issue 0.2

If the chordinnation develops into anything of value, I will forever owe a debt of gratitude to Ol’ Dirty Bastard.

[Full disclosure: I never met the man and he was in no way directly involved in anything related to this effort. But if not for his existence on this planet, the seed for the project may never have been sown.]

Flashback to 2011. Knoxville, Tennessee. My hair was thinning but hadn’t yet surrendered. I was working on my dissertation at the University of Tennessee. I wanted to extend previous literature on the benefits of giving people control over some aspect of the practice experience (e.g., practice schedule, feedback, amount of practice). I decided to open things up and create a more realistic learning environment than the typical experimental setting. I would provide learners with multiple sources of instructional assistance to use as they pleased. It would be a real-world task. It would occur over several days. Then we would see if this learner-control was really as good as advertised!

The task? A 3-ball cascade juggle.

The design? Participants would have 4 days to practice. During each of the four, 45-minute practice sessions, they could request one of four types of instructional assistance prior to each juggling attempt:

1. video instructions

2. a live juggling demo

3. kinematic feedback about their biggest error (aka Knowledge of Performance or KP)

4. the count of how many successive catches they made on the previous attempt (aka Knowledge of Results or KR)

The goal? They were told to get as good as possible by day 5, at which time they would be tested without access to any assistance.

The outcome measure? The average number of consecutive catches they could string together on day 5.

To make things more interesting for me, I made a couple of decisions that felt superficial at the time:

• I set the instructional video to the Wu-Tang Clan’s “Gravel Pit” instrumental; if I was going to have to listen to this thing repeatedly, I wanted to hear something other than my own voice.

• I let the participants select pseudonyms from a list of celebrities and fictional characters; among those names were the entire Wu-Tang roster.

I will never know for sure whether these decisions influenced what would unfold, but given that no one can prove that they didn’t, I will assume that they did!

--

Data collection was a star-studded affair. LeBron James, U-God, Justin Bieber, and Batman stole the show in terms of performance gains. Lady Gaga and Carrie Underwood languished for the duration of practice and walked away with nothing to show other than participation credit for Intro to Psych.

True to his choice of pseudonym, his juggling style “had no father.” It was a frenzy of movement. Tiger-style, if you will.

It was Ol’ Dirty Bastard (aka ODB), however, who taught me the greatest lesson. True to his choice of pseudonym, his juggling style “had no father.” It was a frenzy of movement. Tiger-style, if you will. In the instructional video, I advised learners to toss each juggling ball toward their opposite shoulder at forehead height. ODB was having none of that. His juggling attempts never left his mid-section. It was pure chaos! In this line of research, however, the experimenter only offers assistance when asked. And ODB wasn’t asking.

Eventually, perhaps out of boredom, he requested kinematic feedback.

This was my moment!

I told him that his progress was being limited by the lack of height in his tosses. On the next attempt, he corrected it. His rhythm was more consistent. He set a new PR for catches. Another attempt followed. Another PR! I thought to myself, “This is what God must feel like!”

Then ODB interrupted those delusions.

“You are right,” he said. “It is way easier that way. But I like doing it this way.”

And he went right back to Tiger-style for the rest of the study.

--

When I reflect upon that research, his was perhaps the most important lesson. He answered a question that I wasn’t asking but perhaps should have been. He forced me to confront the reality that individuals have their own reasons for learning. And that movement is about more than just efficiency or effectiveness. ODB may have understood intellectually that following the instructions made the most sense. But movement isn’t just an intellectual act. Maybe he preferred how he was moving. Perhaps he didn’t want to give that up. Would he have become a better juggler had he conformed to the guidance? Possibly. But at the expense of being true to himself? Maybe it wasn’t worth it.

It might be tempting to dismiss the whole experience as just the byproduct of an undergraduate looking for class credit. But I think there is more to it than that. Even in my attempt to provide learners with greater control, I pre-determined their goal. I limited their exploration by prescribing an “ideal” technique. I allowed my own creativity to be the limiting factor to theirs.

In the years since, I have developed an even greater appreciation for that experience. It helped me see that following the learner’s lead has value, even if I do not see it in the moment. So when I kept hearing athlete after athlete referencing the effect that music had on them, I followed their lead. At first, I was embarrassed over being confronted by a body of literature that was far more compelling than that which supported much of my current practices.1 That quickly turned to excitement over the possibilities, however. I started looking for ways to work music into athlete support.

Three experiences from that exploration period stand out as cementing my decision to make the effort official:

1. I created a video highlight mix that transitioned from free throw shooting to dunking for an athlete who struggled to remain composed for the non-explosive aspects of his game (e.g., Free Throws, Mid-range jumpers). I used the Fat Tony Too Short / Brooks & Dunn mix as the backing track. Correlation doesn’t equal causation, but the client fired me shortly thereafter.

2. I recruited an athlete to identify different tracks for different components of his game. I reached out to a former college teammate who worked in the music industry and - yada, yada, yada - DJ King Tech mixed the songs into a 3-minute track to back the athlete highlight reel. He also recruited Sway for an intro and added a RZA-narrated meditation. The athlete was a fan. Later, Tech explained to me that his decision to add Sway and RZA was meant to signal his ability to recruit almost any artist to provide personalized messages, narrations, or even original tracks. Those options required money that I did not have, but I appreciated his vision!

3. I incorporated music into my support for an 800m runner who was navigating the U.S. Olympic Trials. It was a combination of pre-event content that connected with his past performances and within-trials content that included musical elements. He did not make the U.S. Team, but did achieve his goal of making it to the finals of his event. After failing to make the finals the previous two years, it was an encouraging result.

After reflecting upon the failures and successes of these initial efforts, it seemed better to create something new rather than retrofit music into my existing work. If people liked it, they could engage. If not, no big deal. I would take a lesson from ODB - actual and fake - and try to prioritize creativity, self-expression, and exploration over efficiency. Is there a better way to attack the project? Most certainly. But I like doing it this way!

1 If you want a nice overview of music and sport, check out the Costas Karageorghis text Applying Music in Exercise and Sport