The Adaptable Athlete Podcast

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This episode is a different format from our usual show. It's Ian Renshaw's acceptance speech for the Emergence Lifetime Achievement Award in Movement and Skill Acquisition, recorded live and shared here in full.
Ian is an Adjunct Associate Professor at Queensland University of Technology and one of the most respected names in the constraint-led approach. He has spent over 30 years teaching and researching across England, New Zealand, and Australia, co-edited books with Keith Davids, and co-founded The Constraints Collective.
In his own words, he walks through:
Backyard football and cricket, and how unstructured play shaped his coaching
Why drills built in isolation don't transfer to the game
The move from information processing to ecological psychology
A homemade experiment with a fake umpire on a cricket pitch
Meeting Keith Davids and the research years at QUT
Coaching his own son to a professional cricket career
If you coach or work in skill acquisition, this is a direct look at how a pioneer in the field built his career.
Resources:
The Constraints Collective
Emergence
Certified Skill Acquisition Specialist (CSAS)
2026 Skill Acquisition Retreat, November 6 in Chandler, AZ
Credits: Song- "Starstruck" by Freebeats.io

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Is speed a capacity, or a skill? Most coaching treats them as the same thing, and that's where the gap starts.
Speed as a capacity, not an outcome: why a stopwatch measures something real, but not the thing that actually shows up in a game
Speed through the constraints triangle: task, environment, and individual, why the same physical capacity looks completely different depending on the sport, the surface, and the athlete standing in front of you
Speed as problem-solving: why raw speed without perception is an incomplete tool, and why some of the fastest testers never make it in their sport
A short, direct episode on a topic almost every coach thinks they already understand.
Join us this November in Chandler, Arizona for the Skill Acquisition Retreat, and stay the next day for CSAS testing, the Certified Skill Acquisition Specialist certification.
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Podcast website: theadaptableathlete.com
 Emergence: emergentmvmt.com
Follow along: @thecoachjav on Instagram

Credits: Song- "Starstruck" by Freebeats.io

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IG: @thecoachjav

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What if skill isn't something an athlete has, but something a moment gives them?
This episode pulls together three conversations that each answer a piece of that question, more directly than any single guest could get to on their own.
What skill actually is: Duarte Araújo defines skill as potential, not possession, using an example from Neil Armstrong's first steps on the moon to show how the same person moves completely differently depending on their circumstances
The mechanism underneath it: Alan Dunton breaks down metastability, the concept explaining why staying adaptable between states, rather than locked into one ideal pattern, is what makes skill possible in the first place
What it looks like in practice: Garrett Baker, skill acquisition specialist with the New York Mets, explains why he trains pitchers with more variability before working toward stability, the reverse of what most coaching assumes
Definition, mechanism, application. Three different sports, three different guests, one throughline.
This one's for coaches and practitioners who've felt the tension between what "good technique" is supposed to look like and what actually holds up under real competitive pressure.
Guests referenced in this episode:
Duarte Araújo — full conversation in Ep 113, Why Athletes Don't "Acquire" Skill, They Adapt It
Alan Dunton — full conversation in Ep 112, What Is Metastability, Making Theory Practical
Garrett Baker, skill acquisition specialist, New York Mets — full conversation in Ep 109, Breaking Free from Perfect Mechanics
Join us this November in Chandler, Arizona for the Skill Acquisition Retreat. Garrett Baker, featured in today's episode, will be one of the practitioners on site the next day for CSAS testing, the Certified Skill Acquisition Specialist certification.
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Credits: Song- "Starstruck" by Freebeats.io

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What happens when a strength coach spends nine years unlearning everything she was taught about "correct" technique?
Molly Binetti is the Women's Basketball Sports Performance coach at the University of South Carolina, where she's built a program around a really high player availability rate and a training philosophy that runs counter to how most strength coaches are taught to operate. She brings a variability-driven, athlete-centered approach to a field that still leans heavily on uniform technique and control, and the conversation goes deep on movement, motivation, and the limits of data.
Topics covered:
Why "pretty" isn't the goal — the case against cookie cutter technique cues and what actually happens when athletes are allowed to move differently
Rebuilding her coaching philosophy — what changed after her first year at South Carolina and why the dictator coaching model didn't work
Self-determination theory — the three psychological needs behind real athlete buy-in, and why most coaching problems are human, not technical
Variability as injury prevention — how training in a wider range of positions plays into her program's track record on player health
A contrarian take on tech — why she's skeptical of force plates, GPS, and the broader data obsession in strength and conditioning
If you coach in a setting where "the way we've always done it" gets treated as fact, this conversation is worth your time.
Find Molly on Instagram @mbinetti22.
Don't forget to join us in Arizona for the Skill Acquisition Retreat!
If you want to go deeper on skill acquisition, check out the Certified Skill Acquisition Specialist certification over at emergentmvmt.com.
Free Modern Coach's Checklist
Credits: Song- "Starstruck" by Freebeats.io
Let's Chat!
 Twitter: @thecoachjav
 IG: @thecoachjav
Credits: Song- "Starstruck" by Freebeats.io

Let's Chat!
Twitter: @thecoachjav
IG: @thecoachjav

Send us Fan Mail
What does it actually mean to train a boxer to be adaptable when the most representative practice, hard sparring, also causes permanent damage?
Adam Haniver is a boxing coach and England Boxing DISE program lead who's spent years working through exactly that tension. He brings an ecological dynamics lens to a sport that has historically treated tradition as gospel, and the conversation goes deep on skill acquisition, affordances, and what most boxing training gets fundamentally wrong.
Topics covered:
"Anything but the thing" — why most boxing training is unopposed, decomposed, and doesn't transfer to competition
Perceive to act AND act to perceive — how the best boxers generate opportunities rather than wait for them
The GAP framework (Great, Average, Poor) as a tool for athlete-directed intention before sparring
Teaching boxers to punch versus teaching them to land — why these are two completely different things
Naseem Hamed and Brendan Ingle as examples of what freedom in movement actually produces
Play sparring, head trauma, and how to build representativeness without increasing injury risk
If you coach in any combat or contact sport and you're thinking through how to square representative practice with athlete safety, this conversation is worth your time.
Find Adam at www.theboxgathering.com and on the Box Gathering Podcast on all platforms. England Boxing DISE program: @dice_boxing_brighton on socials.
Don't forget to join us in Arizona for the Skill Acquisition Retreat!
If you want to go deeper on skill acquisition, check out the Certified Skill Acquisition Specialist certification over at emergentmvmt.com.
Free Modern Coach's Checklist
Credits: Song- "Starstruck" by Freebeats.io

Let's Chat!
Twitter: @thecoachjav
IG: @thecoachjav