Send us Fan Mail NBA shooting coach Dave Love has spent over 15 years working at the highest level of basketball, with the Phoenix Suns, Cleveland Cavaliers, Orlando Magic, Dallas Mavericks, and currently an Eastern Conference team. He's also one of the few practitioners at that level actively contributing to peer-reviewed research. In this episode, Dave and Coach Jav dig into why the pursuit of a repeatable, perfect shot is the wrong goal entirely and what coaches should be focused on instea...

Send us Fan Mail Use Code: Javi26 for 10% off of your SMSC registration 🎟️ In this "Ask Emergence" episode, Coach Jav answers three questions from coaches about skill acquisition, constraints, and practice design. The conversation starts with a foundational question: What is skill? Too often skill is viewed as repetition or the ability to reproduce the same movement over and over. But in sport, athletes must adapt to constantly changing problems. Coach Jav shares his current definitio...

Send a text In this episode, Coach Jav sits down with Steve Whalen to explore his journey into coaching, his shift toward ecological dynamics, and what it means to truly design learning environments that transfer to competition. Steve shares how he entered tennis coaching from a non-traditional background, the tensions he experienced within traditional coach education, and the turning points that led him toward a constraints-led approach. The conversation unpacks why players who look sharp in...

Send a text In this episode, Coach Jav sits down with Emergence co-founder Shawn Myszka to preview the 2026 Sport Movement Skill Conference (SMSC). They unpack this year’s theme — “Challenge Point” — and explain why the conference will feature debate-style matchups between leading voices from differing theoretical foundations. The conversation explores why now is the right time to bring contrasting coaching philosophies back to the table, how intellectual sparring can sharpen clarity, and wha...

Send a text In this episode of The Adaptable Athlete Podcast, Coach Jav breaks down three mistakes he made while applying ecological dynamics and the constraints-led approach in his coaching. From prioritizing drills over principles, to progressing athletes from decontextualized work instead of designing representative learning environments, to failing to give athletes ownership in the skill acquisition process, Coach Jav reflects on what changed — and why it matters for modern coaching. If y...

Send us a text In this episode, coach Jav breaks down the most common mistakes coaches make in agility training—and why many popular drills fail to transfer to sport. Inspired by a recent Six of the Best contribution with Sportsmith (Emergence Co-founder Shawn, Myszka was also featured), the the episode centers on a core problem: coaches often give athletes the answers instead of setting real problems to solve. Jav explains why repetition without context limits adaptability, why randomness al...

Send us a text The Modern Coach's Planner — built for coaches who think differently — Back! Order yours today at: https://thecoachjav.com/products/modern-coach-planner In this episode, coach Jav sits down with Rob Gray to explore what comes after the basics of ecological dynamics and the constraints-led approach. They discuss why “fundamentals first” thinking continues to persist in sport, how constraints can lose their effectiveness over time, and the difference between developing skill an...

Send us a text The Modern Coach's Planner — built for coaches who think differently — is now available for pre-order. This is a limited run, and once these copies are gone, they’re gone. Order yours today at: https://thecoachjav.com/products/modern-coach-planner In this episode, Coach Jav sits down with Greg Souders, founder of Standard Jiu-Jitsu, and DeAndre Corbe, one of the top grapplers in the world — the 2024 ADCC West Coast Trials champion and a recent competitor in the Craig Jones ...

Send us a text *Checkout the free practice guide at the end of the show notes! For decades, coaches and scientists have used the term skill acquisition — but what if that’s not what’s really happening? In this short episode, we dive into the idea that athletes don’t acquire skill — they adapt it. Inspired by our recent conversation with Duarte Araújo, this concept challenges the traditional view of skill as something stored or possessed, and instead reframes it as a continuous process shaped...

Send us a text *Checkout the free practice guide at the end of the show notes! What is skill, really? And what if it’s not something athletes acquire — but something they continuously adapt? In this episode, Duarte Araújo joins us on the pod to unpack one of the most fundamental questions in sport: what does it truly mean to be skillful? Duarte breaks down why “acquisition” is the wrong metaphor, and how coaches can design environments that bring intelligence and creativity to the surface. T...