Keegan Smith explains how to learn physical skills ten times faster by staying relaxed, setting clear intentions, and letting your brain handle the work. Juggling, handstands, and backflips show the method. Sleep and REM cycles wire in the gains.
This message might seem like a strange one coming from a world champion coach coach, top level rugby teams and the highest profile rugby player in the world, Sonny Boo Williams. But the message is chill out and let it happen. When you do the thing, you will get better at it. You'll be better at it next time you do it. Don't worry about pushing to the last limit of your abilities. You, you might want to do that once or twice a year, you might want to do that from time to time. But in general, the goal of the session is just to get to the next session. And when you're doing the thing like juggling or handstands or something, where you could allow yourself to become frustrated by the challenge of the process. Let it go, let it go. You don't do the improving. The improving just happens. All you have to do is put your intention towards the thing. The intention is that I'm going to be able to three ball juggle and I'm going to do this process and I'm going to listen to the instructions. Okay, now throw slightly higher. Okay, now throw slightly lower. I don't care if the balls are hitting the floor. It goes the same for all of the skills. But the juggling is a good one because it's very visual, it's very clear. It doesn't matter whether the ball's hitting the floor, it matters that you're throwing the balls and you're watching the balls and you have the intention to catch the balls. I'm not saying don't try and get better, the intention is to get better. But don't worry about the outcome. As long as you're intending towards what it is that you want, you're going to get better. You get better much faster if you're relaxed, if you're chilling out, if you've got nice music on, could be some up tempo stuff, can be good for the learning and the arousal. But enjoy the journey. What else is there? This training system is a joyful training system, if you will allow it to be. The way we've been conditioned and brought up oftentimes is to be frustrated. This morning I was here training with Lucas and we're kicking the ball back and forward and we were playing a game where you juggle. I do one touch, then he does one, then I do two, then he does two and juggling up and the pressure's building because you're getting to like 10 juggles and then pass it across without it hitting the floor. And you could get frustrated of like, oh, we want to do 10. But, you know, we're only getting to eight. We're only getting to six, seven, six. Like, we haven't made it yet. But it's a beautiful journey. Just let it happen. Just let it happen. And even beyond that, embrace messing it up. Deliberately mess it up by going outside of your comfort zone. Stretch yourself a little bit. We're going to talk more in detail about how to become an exceptional athlete. That part of it is to go a little bit beyond what you think is possible, because we often hold back from doing the things that we would like to do, having a go at the skills that we would like to have a go at, because we think, oh, no, I could never do that. I'm not ready for that. I recently had two men come down from Poland for a training camp here. On the first day, they did backflips. They've been wanting to do backflips their whole life. On the first day, they did backflips, and they're like, what was I waiting for? Of course, I took them through a process, and it was systematic. And there is a good process here that does make these journeys much faster. The goal is to learn 10 times faster within new athlete of how you might otherwise learn. If you kind of trial and error and piecing things together off YouTube often, it'll be a lot faster than 10 times, because these guys had waited their whole lives to do the backflip, and then they did it in one day. That's more than 10 times faster. I hope this message is getting through. Enjoy the process. Let it happen. Your brain will do the rewiring for you. A lot of it's about sleep. Work hard, then go sleep. If you can have the time to go sleep in the day like I do, professional athlete, go sleep. If not at night, your brain will do the work. Sleep. Get your REM cycles. Sleep well, my friend. This is what Lubo often says to me, my partner in building the Montenegro Village Oasis. Sleep well, my friend. He's like, don't worry about it. It's gonna be fine. That's what it's definitely gonna be. With all of your development here, you're gonna get so much better and relax, enjoy the process, take on some tips, take on some new challenges, do it a little bit differently if it's not going exactly the way you want, but enjoy it. It never gets any better than this. It's a beautiful thing that we get to share this experience together, and you are gonna get so much better that you don't even recognize yourself. Enjoy that.
