He found himself in a spot a lot of athletes I talk to seem to find themselves in at some point in there training; he had hit a plateau and their training has become inefficient.

I said to him: “R-Phase is the ABC’s of Athletic Movement, right?”. “Right”, he replied. “Imagine you were learning how to read or spell; first you learn the ABC’s. You sing the song until you know it cold. Then you begin looking at each letter, ‘sounding them out’ phonetically. Then you begin putting them together to make words; you learn rules like ‘ph’ sounds like ‘f’ and in some words certain letters are ‘silent’. Later you learn the rules of grammar and how to put words together to convey feelings and ideas. Right?”

“Right” he replied, giving me one of those looks where I knew ‘a lightbulb just went off’.