406: Rafe Kelley on Empowering Athletic Movement Potential

Today’s podcast features Rafe Kelley, owner of Evolve Move Play. Rafe has studied and taught a multitude of movement practices spanning gymnastics, parkour, martial arts, weightlifting, and more for over 20 years. His passion is to help people build the physical practice that will help make them the strongest, most adaptable, and most resilient version of themselves in movement and life. Rafe has had a profound impact on my coaching and training philosophy and has helped me expand my views on the totality of the bio-psycho-social model of movement and human performance. Much of modern training is overly prescriptive, reliant on drills, and overemphasizes winning. This leads to practices with a reduced learning potential, a downplay of creativity, and a lowered ceiling of movement and skill potential. It also leads to less engaging practices in general. In today’s episode, Rafe delves into his unique methods and teachings that foster creative and adaptable athletic movement. He explores the interplay of constraints and play in sport and skill training, underscores the significance of creativity and improvisation in movement (and how to cultivate it), and shares insights on the role of joy in movement. Rafe also touches upon collaborative movement training, rough-housing, dance, and movement improvisation, and how these elements can shape better learners and movers in their respective sports or movement practices. By gaining a deeper understanding of play, exploration, and constraints, we can unlock the full potential of human performance. Today’s episode is brought to you by TeamBuildr, the Plyomat, and LILA Exogen. Use the code “justfly25” for 25% off of any Lila Exogen wearable resistance training, including the popular Exogen Calf Sleeves. For this offer head to Lilateam.com TeamBuildr is an online software for coaches and trainers. Use the code “JUSTFLY” for a free 30 day trial of the TeamBuildr software at https://teambuildr.com. The Plyomat is a functional, intuitive, and affordable contact mat for jump and plyometric training and testing. Check out the Plyomat at www.plyomat.net View more podcast episodes at the podcast homepage. Main Points 2:30- The balance between constraints and free play in coaching, as well as children’s skill development 15:30- Training based off of “following one’s joy”, versus more set skill rehearsal 25:30- Creativity and improvisation in human movement and sport performance 32:30- Athleticism, dance, and individual dancing versus dancing with others, in context of sport 41:00- Roughhousing and links to team sport movement and problem solving 48:00- Forms of play that are both done for winning, as well as learning, exploration and mutual growth 57:30- Scaling and continuums of effort in individual and team sports, for improved learning 1:07:00- The use of roughhousing, and contact improv oriented work, on facilitating play states, and opening up movement options in a donor sport format Rafe Kelley Quotes “Soccer works because there is a set of constraints; there are structures that allow the game to exist, but there are infinite degrees of freedom once the constraints are in place” “Usually I’ll have 3 areas I’m working in, and then one core skill” “At the end of the session, I’ll ask them “What was your rose, your bud and your thorn”. They get to reflect on what they want to hold going forward” “Sweet, we are playing tag. How do we add a little more speed demand to that tag. How do we play a version of tag that looks like this, and gives you the thing you are looking for?” “Creativity is the ability to create a solution to a movement problem, in a sport situation” “What made Barry Sanders special wasn’t that he did set plays better than anybody else” “A gymnast doing a high bar routine, is actually adjusting constantly to try to achieve the goal; they are not doing the exact same thing… but that’s far less chaotic then adding another player” “We tend to fall in love with expressions of Type 1 athleticism (sprinting, jumping, explosive power)” “(Jokic) is able to attune to everyone else on the team incredibly well; so he conducts his team on an extraordinary level; I do think that in some sense, that’s the type of thing that is cultivated in dance” “A human being is a super-predator because of our capacity to do what quarterbacks do” “I found you could break down (10 human core capacities) into locomotion, manipulation, and combat” “The reason we enjoy football is because it allows us to experience (locomotion, cooperation, combat)” “One of the things we discovered with contact improv, is that removing the competitive intent, or creating a creative intent allows to you explore spaces you would avoid, if you were having a competitive interaction’ “What we are going to play with is a coach/athlete dynamic, the coach’s role is to provide the environment that the athlete becomes skillful within” “Once you have reached a certain level of skill, you shouldn’t be giving yourself the option of using all of your skills, you should limit yourself in some way to give yourself the bandwidth you need to work on” “Where are you feeding the athlete a safe, scalable exposure to all of the different ways that their structure can end up interacting with another athlete, and that’s something where contact improve, martial arts, or roughhousing can be extremely valuable” “Sometimes (roughhousing) is the most neurally potent way of inviting a play-state in” “We get a lot of social stimulus constantly, with very low value as far as intimacy” “A warmup should be as much social and psychological as much as it is physical” Show Notes Evolve Move Play invites you on a journey to rediscover this primal joy through our Roughhousing programs. Each tailored to meet different needs, these programs offer a unique blend of physical skill-building, emotional bonding, and pure, uninhibited fun. Check out these programs and more at evolvemoveplay.com/courses/ About Rafe Kelley Rafe Kelley is the owner of Evolve, Move, Play, a business designed to use movement practice to develop more resilient and embodied humans. Raised by two yoga instructors, he was a basketball player and gymnast (and gymnastics coach) in his teens. Rafe started in the martial arts at 6 years old, studying Tang Soo Do, Aikido, Kung Fu, Kick Boxing, Brazilian Ju Jitsu and Muay Thai. Rafe also has experience in modern training disciplines such as sprinting, gymnastics, crossfit, FRC, modern dance and many others. His primary specialization is in parkour, the practice of navigating obstacles by jumping, running, flipping or swinging over them, a skill set he primarily taught himself by watching videos and training deep in the woods. Rafe co-founded Parkour visions at age 23, and eventually left to form Evolve, Move, Play. His students have included world-class parkour athletes and MMA fighters, as well as untrained grandmothers. His passion to is help people build the physical practice that will help make them the strongest, most adaptable and resilient version of themselves in movement and in life.