What do you think?
Rate this book
How We Learn to Move: A Revolution in the Way We Coach & Practice Sports Skills
What is the new, revolutionary way people are becoming skillful? How is sports practice and coaching becoming more creative and fun – giving athletes the opportunity to explore and support their own individuality and creativity? Why is it time we move away from the idea that we learn through boring repetition of a skill in an un-game-like practice environment, running through tires, hitting off tees and dribbling through cones? A look at the exciting alternative approach to how we learn to move and its implications for practice design, coaching, keeping kids engaged in sports, injury prevention, developing training technology, using analytics and more.
266 pages, Kindle Edition
Published November 1, 2021
240 people are currently reading
839 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 32 reviews
January 29, 2022
Very interesting take it on how we should rethink teaching and coaching movement and sports. But this book had sooooo many typos. It also read like an academic paper with a couple of jokes sprinkled in. It could use some work if the author wants to spread this message a little more seriously. Good ideas though when you sift through the incoherent sentences and scientific words.
October 10, 2022
Totally changed my view of skill development, particularly in basketball. We often think of moving players/athletes towards the "right" technique when in reality, Gray makes the case that most experts have the highest amount of flexibility/variations--and it is an argument that has totally changed my view on how to teach movement skills. Really grateful for the read and recommend to any aspiring coach in any sport.
April 10, 2025
A really interesting read that backs up but also develops on some other theories on skill acquisition I've read. Some useful information throughout, though a little prescriptive, and some weird typos at points - might just be the edition I had though!
August 9, 2023
I was in and out of this book for a year before finishing the back half on vacation in a week. This was key because as he identifies in chapter 15, his own journey was one of exploration. As I constructed practice environments with varying degrees of success over the past year, engaged back and forth with Gray’s content, I was better able to receive, learn and understand what was going on in his book and the research he was engaging with.
Make no mistake, this is hard stuff for coaches like me who are working to grow out of my old patterns of controlled, predictable, and we’ll organized environments. But if you’re willing to engage with it over time, and like your athletes, fail and try again, you will make better gains and create better training environments that also have the added benefit of being fun.
I’m excited to apply this newfound knowledge (built on previous engagements with it) to my planning of our next off-season. But I’m also excited to keep learning and growing, figuring out what works, what doesn’t, and continuing to engage with the Appendix resources, as well as parts of the book itself that I didn’t understand my first time through.
Make no mistake, this is hard stuff for coaches like me who are working to grow out of my old patterns of controlled, predictable, and we’ll organized environments. But if you’re willing to engage with it over time, and like your athletes, fail and try again, you will make better gains and create better training environments that also have the added benefit of being fun.
I’m excited to apply this newfound knowledge (built on previous engagements with it) to my planning of our next off-season. But I’m also excited to keep learning and growing, figuring out what works, what doesn’t, and continuing to engage with the Appendix resources, as well as parts of the book itself that I didn’t understand my first time through.
April 14, 2023
4 stars. Rob Gray has created an incredible resource for those interested in an ecological approach to skill development. It has completely changed my mindset to coaching. The only reason I can’t give this book 5 stars is because it contains typos and is a bit dry to read. Other than that it’s a great resource I can recommend.
January 1, 2025
"Eco" training methods (basing training more on games and competitions and less on drilling) are pretty hot in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu right now, and (having finally got around to trying this approach with my mate Judo Bob), it's an approach that I quite enjoy and that seems to work nicely with the contours of my mind.
This book has been mentioned in various podcasts, social media posts etc etc, and when the Eco training started to click, I got curious enough to give it a try.
So... the book is a high-level flyover of ecological thinking about movement from an academic sports scientist, Rob Gray. Gray is one of the major popularisers of this approach, with several books, podcast appearances, consultancy gigs etc, etc.
The book sits somewhere between popular science and science (it's more sciencey than most popular science and way less sciencey than an academic paper or textbook). The main theme of the book is that, given the right conditions, we can self-organise in relation to the environment, and we don't need elaborate sports science models of modules and steps to explain this. Instead, we need to work out appropriate levels of variability and appropriate constraints in games and training to help athletes figure it out for themselves.
This approach is illustrated by case studies on injuries, training gizmos, as well as case studies (e.g. why he thinks Brazilian footballers are so good).
I don't have enough of a sports science background (i.e. none) to critically assess the content, but I enjoyed the interest in variation in movements and the idea that averaging a bunch of experts together to come up with an optimum movement strategy might, in fact, be throwing away a lot of interesting and useful individual information.
My one gripe (noting this is popular science) is that Gray seems to be making some strong conclusions based on some small sample-size studies. The replication crisis in psychology has taught us that this is a dangerous path to tread, and it reinforces my concern that a lot of sports science seems to draw very strong conclusions based on pretty weak studies. Given that I really grok with what's being said here, it seems particularly important to note this limitition.
I didn't follow up, but the book also contains a bunch of YouTube links so you can see various illustrations/ demonstrations of some key points.
This book has been mentioned in various podcasts, social media posts etc etc, and when the Eco training started to click, I got curious enough to give it a try.
So... the book is a high-level flyover of ecological thinking about movement from an academic sports scientist, Rob Gray. Gray is one of the major popularisers of this approach, with several books, podcast appearances, consultancy gigs etc, etc.
The book sits somewhere between popular science and science (it's more sciencey than most popular science and way less sciencey than an academic paper or textbook). The main theme of the book is that, given the right conditions, we can self-organise in relation to the environment, and we don't need elaborate sports science models of modules and steps to explain this. Instead, we need to work out appropriate levels of variability and appropriate constraints in games and training to help athletes figure it out for themselves.
This approach is illustrated by case studies on injuries, training gizmos, as well as case studies (e.g. why he thinks Brazilian footballers are so good).
I don't have enough of a sports science background (i.e. none) to critically assess the content, but I enjoyed the interest in variation in movements and the idea that averaging a bunch of experts together to come up with an optimum movement strategy might, in fact, be throwing away a lot of interesting and useful individual information.
My one gripe (noting this is popular science) is that Gray seems to be making some strong conclusions based on some small sample-size studies. The replication crisis in psychology has taught us that this is a dangerous path to tread, and it reinforces my concern that a lot of sports science seems to draw very strong conclusions based on pretty weak studies. Given that I really grok with what's being said here, it seems particularly important to note this limitition.
I didn't follow up, but the book also contains a bunch of YouTube links so you can see various illustrations/ demonstrations of some key points.
July 23, 2024
The theory behind the popular constraint led approach (CLA) in current sports training. Came to this book because multiple climbing coaches started to advocate CLA and climbing community has always knew by experience that with such great variability of climbing (body type, strength, and skill level), one person’s beta doesn’t necessarily work for another, and every climber knows eventually you have to find your own solution to a problem. And how many times have we get on a route or boulder problem, find out something unexpected (holds, route conditions, preconceived beta doesn’t work), then have to stay cool and improvise on the go? Saying we have some preset internal mental models for all the problems is just outright absurd.
What is more intriguing is Gray’s opinion about injury and how it changes athletes’ perception of movement. I definitely am more attentive to my movement of body parts that have been injured before and have learned to climb with those injuries/constraints as self exploration of how my body moves as well as active “rehab”. And I came out as a new person with new sets of skills. E.g. after my toe injury, I am now more careful with my footwork on small holds and developed more sensitivity to my feet, down climb more, and divide half of my climbing to sports climb from bouldering.
As a psychologist, I’m also very familiar with the traditional information processing theory. Now thinking back, all our examples were cognitive tasks or simple motor skills that need to explain. When venturing into more complex realm, it never explains really well about where the new solution to a new complex problem comes from? Our old internal models or something new? But how? With infinite amount of problems, do we just have infinite number of presets? Gay’s theory does a better job to explain these questions because it believes we train our brain and/or body to expand the capacity to taking into information from the environment Therefore adapt to the various situations and problems. Basics are just the tools, and experts know how to use it efficiently.
What is more intriguing is Gray’s opinion about injury and how it changes athletes’ perception of movement. I definitely am more attentive to my movement of body parts that have been injured before and have learned to climb with those injuries/constraints as self exploration of how my body moves as well as active “rehab”. And I came out as a new person with new sets of skills. E.g. after my toe injury, I am now more careful with my footwork on small holds and developed more sensitivity to my feet, down climb more, and divide half of my climbing to sports climb from bouldering.
As a psychologist, I’m also very familiar with the traditional information processing theory. Now thinking back, all our examples were cognitive tasks or simple motor skills that need to explain. When venturing into more complex realm, it never explains really well about where the new solution to a new complex problem comes from? Our old internal models or something new? But how? With infinite amount of problems, do we just have infinite number of presets? Gay’s theory does a better job to explain these questions because it believes we train our brain and/or body to expand the capacity to taking into information from the environment Therefore adapt to the various situations and problems. Basics are just the tools, and experts know how to use it efficiently.
April 18, 2024
Some really good ideas, that I've already started to implement in my practices.
However I'm not sure you can be a purist about this. It may be more effective overall to adapt some of these ideas, but I think abandoning entirely the "old ways" of coaching is akin to throwing out the baby with the bathwater.
About his concept of cause of injury, he does not make a compelling argument. I've had enough injuries in my long athletic career and more variability (or less) does not seem to be the dominant factor. Sometimes it's dumb luck, but usually it's a combination of overuse, inadequate recovery, incorrect technique, and pushing the limits of your capabilities.
However I'm not sure you can be a purist about this. It may be more effective overall to adapt some of these ideas, but I think abandoning entirely the "old ways" of coaching is akin to throwing out the baby with the bathwater.
About his concept of cause of injury, he does not make a compelling argument. I've had enough injuries in my long athletic career and more variability (or less) does not seem to be the dominant factor. Sometimes it's dumb luck, but usually it's a combination of overuse, inadequate recovery, incorrect technique, and pushing the limits of your capabilities.
January 26, 2025
I read this book because of Greg Souders: high priest of CLA for jiu-jitsu, smiter of Information Processing, and lord of ecological dynamics in grappling. Rob presents a great introduction and compelling case for an alternative way of coaching and practising physical skills. Other reviewers have mentioned that the language he uses is in-between non-technical and academic which I liked. Rob's arguments and explanations come across as thoughtful, intelligent, and well-structured. Wish I had access to this information in my twenties as it would have saved me a lot of time and heartache. I'm a full-convert to the CLA, and this book helped me understand cognitively what I've experienced bodily.
January 21, 2025
I found this book while looking to deepen my understanding of how we move well and learn to move well, in the process of working on some strength-endurance-agility gains. I want to be a kind of jack-of-all athletic performer, but also the plans I have seen for getting there are all routine-based, involving only repeated movements (whether running, or using machines, or whatever else. The same movement, in the same conditions, so you could better measure short term progress). They all felt incomplete to me.
This book was a huge step in understanding why and understanding more of the direction I want to go.
I can only do an initial review for now because there is so much gold in this that i made like 20 bookmarks and have to go back through all of them and assemble all I learned. I honestly got so excited while reading that I had to stop and chill for a bit. Like a dog going crazy over a bone.
I took away a star because there are sooooo many grammatical errors. I have never seen this many grammatical errors in a book. Maybe my PDF copy was an earlier version somehow. God it was distracting though. Every single page, I do not kid. I think the author should hire a great editor and a great marketer and re-release this book.
Overall, I am incredibly impressed.
This book was a huge step in understanding why and understanding more of the direction I want to go.
I can only do an initial review for now because there is so much gold in this that i made like 20 bookmarks and have to go back through all of them and assemble all I learned. I honestly got so excited while reading that I had to stop and chill for a bit. Like a dog going crazy over a bone.
I took away a star because there are sooooo many grammatical errors. I have never seen this many grammatical errors in a book. Maybe my PDF copy was an earlier version somehow. God it was distracting though. Every single page, I do not kid. I think the author should hire a great editor and a great marketer and re-release this book.
Overall, I am incredibly impressed.
September 7, 2022
I’ve been coaching golf for over 40 years and have found that there is definitely a place for the constraints based approach to learning as described in this book. That approach works even better when there is a sound base in understanding and application of principles and how they apply to golf. From that point the constraints approach is the way to go to bring out the artistry in the athlete.
August 29, 2023
I am a hobby climber and grappler as well as a professional artist.
I have discovered this book due to my obsession with learning grappling but the most interesting I found looking back and comparing my skill acquisition throughout my youth to adulthood in academic art.
I think this skill learning research could go way beyond sport. Excellent read!
I have discovered this book due to my obsession with learning grappling but the most interesting I found looking back and comparing my skill acquisition throughout my youth to adulthood in academic art.
I think this skill learning research could go way beyond sport. Excellent read!
October 28, 2023
This sports how-to is oriented towards the youth coach, motivational skills, and how the basis for movement is build. It's a very niche orientation, and Gray earns the respect he's been given in other reviews. Alas...I know nothing more about "motor synergies" than what Gray has taught me. If I had a better education, I'd be able to better review (and enjoy) his text.
November 15, 2022
A great intro/overview of ecological dynamics, CLA, and differential learning. Much more reader-friendly than the scientific literature, but could be a bit overwhelming for new coaches who may want to give Gray’s podcast a listen before diving in.
November 24, 2022
excellent and easy to understand!
As a professional coach but a layman in skill acquisition, I found this book easy to understand, gives me many new directions to explore and is easy to experiment with and implement in my practices. Well done!
As a professional coach but a layman in skill acquisition, I found this book easy to understand, gives me many new directions to explore and is easy to experiment with and implement in my practices. Well done!
May 7, 2023
New and thought provoking approach to skill development backed by lots of data and presented somewhat digestibly.
Recommend It not just to anyone involved in coaching, but anyone looking for new and effective was to improve their performance in sports or other leisurely activities
Recommend It not just to anyone involved in coaching, but anyone looking for new and effective was to improve their performance in sports or other leisurely activities
December 14, 2022
**** 1/2
Read
September 23, 2023Not an interesting read to me
October 15, 2023
I found this book very boring at the beginning. It gets better towards the end but still… I had higher expectations I guess
July 29, 2024
Interesting but clearly self published and a lot of really overly scientific language that I didn’t understand
January 2, 2025
Heavy research but...
There's a lot of good research backing this book and the author does a good job explaining the data. But...if I'm being picky, I would liked to have seen more variations in shorts and how the CLA approach to coaching was used across more sports.
There's a lot of good research backing this book and the author does a good job explaining the data. But...if I'm being picky, I would liked to have seen more variations in shorts and how the CLA approach to coaching was used across more sports.
January 6, 2025
Hyvä kirja jos esim. valmentaminen tai liikkuminen kiinnostaa. Antaa perspektiiviä myös esim. Kuntoutusalan ammattilaisille
February 10, 2025
I read this after getting into ecological dynamics and such, so if you have a background in that stuff it isn’t super necessary
February 27, 2025
Great concepts. Cool studies and examples about learning and coaching in various sports.
June 5, 2025
If you are a coach its a must read!
August 26, 2025
Changed my perspective on movement and skill development
March 16, 2023
If you are interested in learning about a different method of practice and skill acquisition I highly recommend this book. Several times I had to put it down and ponder the implications of what I had just read. I'm excited to try it out in my jiu jitsu training
Read
April 29, 2024Bro science??
July 6, 2025
Awesome book that (a) presents genuinely novel ideas, even for those who have spent many years coaching / playing sports, (b) gives practical, clear advice and frameworks, (c) is written clearly and to the point, and (d) is short enough that it doesn't repeat itself or outstay its welcome.
November 7, 2021
Explore!
Learning is meant to be fun and this guide on the science behind athletes skill acquisition teaches us that it is more effective that way as well. Explore this book!
Learning is meant to be fun and this guide on the science behind athletes skill acquisition teaches us that it is more effective that way as well. Explore this book!
Displaying 1 - 30 of 32 reviews