Hi, I'm Kevin Dunn, the Get Fit Guy, and I'm here to share my accumulated decade of knowledge in the strength and conditioning industry with you to help you to become the best version of yourself.

Recently, I've been spending a significant portion of my time working with a gymnastics coach. The reason for this is that I

have a goal to improve my balance and coordination with things like the gymnastic beam,

but also to develop some cool tricks like a back somersault. I'm getting close on a somersault,

but it didn't start that way. So how did it start and how can we work towards complex skills?

If you've been following my episodes, right at the beginning, I defined the meaning of a coach,

that it's a safe and efficient journey from a point of origin to a defined end goal.

In the case of a back somersault, first of all, I had to demonstrate that I could jump

high enough, that I could make the required shape as I jumped, and that I could transition

from one shape to another in mid-air. Only once I could do all of those things with the safety

of giant crash mats was I permitted to progress to flipping into a giant foam filled pit.

I could definitely have started just jumping backwards into the pit, but it's unlikely that I would have made meaningful long-term progress because I'd be developing potential bad habits.

Every time we move our body, it's the result of a signal from our brain travelling to motor units that control muscle contractions,

move our joints. There's no other way to move intentionally.

The more complex or explosive the contraction, the more training has to go into learning the sequence in which things have to move.

So, as a trainee, we have to be able to look at the task, assess the type of contraction required,

and make sure that all the physical steps below that contraction are in place.

This would be a contraction hierarchy.

Most time should be spent at the very base of the hierarchy. However, this is typically where most trainees spend the least time.

This is because sometimes there's a disconnect with how these steps build to a full physical picture,

but also because simple tasks can be boring and people can be impatient.

This base layer of the hierarchy is called motor control. It involves training

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