I’ve been around movement coaches for years — fifteen years of Aikido, then parkour and Art du Déplacement — physical practices that bring you into rooms with people who are good at doing the thing they’re trying to teach you to do. The longer I’ve watched, the more interested I’ve become in what coaches can and can’t actually pass on.
This thread mixes Movers Mindset Field Notes — distillations of conversations with coaches and movement teachers — with my own writing as a long-time student. What students need before they can hear anything. What coaches can set up but can’t manufacture. What gets transmitted in the unstructured time between drills. And the part nobody plans for — what can’t be directly taught and has to be coaxed out instead.
The thread is sequenced for someone curious about what teaching actually does.
The Permission Slip
Movers Mindset Field Note
Open with what coaching adults requires first. Ask what gets adults into parkour and the answer is fun — but fun isn’t the first thing that happens. Permission is. “Permission to falter, to look incompetent, to be the oldest person in the room doing something poorly.” Fun is what they discover on the other side, after they’ve already paid.
A student of Aikido
constantine.name — June 2015
The other side of the dynamic — what fifteen years of being a student looked like. Sensei Wirth’s catch-phrases — “No this. No that. No delay.” and “Relax beyond any indication of every injury you’ve ever received” — convey what was being transmitted underneath the technique. The closing line says it: “All things considered? I’m delighted to still feel I am a beginner.”
Earnest practice
constantine.name — October 2021
The hard truth in two sentences, from the founder of Aikido himself. “The teachings of your instructor constitute only a small fraction of what you will learn. Your mastery of each movement will depend almost completely on individual, earnest practice.” — Morihei Ueshiba. Coaches set up the conditions; the practice belongs to the student.
Coaxing readiness
Movers Mindset Field Note — with Bane
Movement culture celebrates the override — push through, send it, commit. Bane describes the opposite. “I’ve set myself a goal of doing it when I’m ready to do it and it’s about coaxing that readiness out of me.” Readiness already exists somewhere inside, waiting to surface. You don’t build it. You don’t manufacture it. You create the conditions for it to emerge.
Novice and expert learners
constantine.name — March 2018
The structural rift John Hall named at Art of Retreat: “by virtue of their position, teachers coaches and educators will always be experts. They have deep domain specific knowledge about an issue and understand it in a very different manner from the novice learners they are invariably teaching.” What the expert sees is not what the novice sees. Coaching has to bridge a gap that isn’t visible from one side.
The sense you can’t teach
Movers Mindset Field Note — with Cristina Latici
The frustrating limit. Cristina is dragged by a dog toward a lamppost and her body throws her arms around it, spins to dissipate force, falls — but she’s okay. “That’s because I’m a dancer.” What she’s describing is touch — pattern recognition faster than conscious thought. “You can’t directly train touch. It emerges as a byproduct of sustained, varied movement practice.” Coaches can create the conditions, then get out of the way.
An incredible deal
constantine.name — July 2024
What was actually transmitted, decades later. “I spent many years studying Aikido. If I had to pick one thing which most helped me — one thing which led to the biggest changes in my life — it would be meditation.” The Aikido was the container; the gift inside was a daily mindfulness practice that has continued long after I stopped stepping onto the practice mat. The deepest things a coach passes on are usually the ones nobody named at the time.
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