The Difference Between Fun and Frustrating in Training
Understanding Skill Floors, and Skill Ceilings.
Ever have a training session where you’re trying new things, and you’re nailing all of them on the first couple tries and you feel like a total badass? And have you ever had a training session where the opposite is true? Where you’re constantly smacking your head against a brick wall of failure and it’s getting more and more frustrating.
Welcome to the Hotel Skillington. Where every room has a ‘Skill Floor’, and a ‘Skill Ceiling’. But no mini-fridge.
Understanding these two concepts; ‘Skill Floors’ and ‘Skill Ceilings’ will help you get a better handle on your training and potentially help make your training a little less of a rollercoaster, and help you manage your expectations about your own performance and ability.
Explain Yourself!
A ‘Skill Floor’ is a measure of how difficult an activity is to ‘pick up’ and be able to do. The lower the ‘Skill Floor’, the easier it is to pick up and do. Activities with low ‘Skill Floor’s’ are easy to make progress in, you can typically make a lot of progress within a short amount of time.
A ‘Skill Ceiling’ is a measure of growth within an activity and how difficult it is to master. The higher the ‘Skill Ceiling’ the harder it is to master that activity and the more room there is to grow. You’ll find that the higher a ‘Skill Ceiling’ is in an activity, the harder it is to make progress. Activities with higher ‘Skill Ceilings’ tend to mean slower progress.
Now here’s the tricky thing; your ‘Skill Floor’ is constantly changing. As you improve at all the various foundational facets of acrobatics; skill, strength, mobility, handstand, body awareness, positioning (to name but a few)your ‘Skill Floor’ gets lower and lots of things get easier. But the ‘Skill Ceiling’ never changes. Something that’s difficult to master, will always be difficult to master. Confused yet? Me too. Let’s break it down.
B-b-b-break down
Let’s look at a couple activities talk about their specific floors and ceilings and why they’re like that. Note that these are all subjective, and you might not agree with how I’ve placed some of them.
Let's take a widely understood activity; soccer/football. Soccer has a very low skill floor. Why? Because any idiot can kick a ball. But, it has an extremely high skill ceiling. Why? Not a lot of people can 'Bend it like Beckham'. See how this works?
L-Base Acro
Low Skill Floor - Contains a lot of simple, easy to learn material that is easily accessible to most people.
High Skill Ceiling - Also has very difficult material. Some washing machines, whips and pops are all tricky and take a significant amount of time to master.
Handstands
Low Skill Floor - Most people are able to do something that sort-of-kinda-resembles a handstand on Day 1 with little or no prior training is not out of the question. At the very least; it should be possible to weight bear into the hands.
High Skill Ceiling - There is a mastery of handstands that takes decades of work. Handstands may not even have a skill ceiling!
Standing Acrobatics - Not Including Hand to Hand
Medium Skill Floor - Many people would struggle with the basic skills on their first attempt. Requires at least some prior skill level or experience.
High Skill Ceiling - Same as L-Basing. There are elements and tricks that take significant time to achieve/master. But at some point the material stops increasing in difficulty and everything becomes as hard as everything else.
Hand to Hand
High Skill Floor - A person would need a significant amount of prior training, experience and physical ability to even begin attempting the basics of this discipline.
Extremely High Skill Ceiling - There are tricks / elements within this discipline that are extremely difficult to master.
Easy There Tiger
Now, none of this is to say that one discipline is better/cooler/sexier than another. It's an honest framework to describe the fact that someone can learn 'bird' quicker than they can learn a one-arm handstand.
Now (again), this is also not to say that these disciplines exist in their own little microcosms. They intermingle, co-exist and overlap.
Good. I feel that covers me for the things people might get mad at me about.
So What?
Well, good question. Here’s the thing: armed with this knowledge you can structure your trainings / practices / playtimes to include tricks that are on your ‘Skill Floor’, as well as things where you can’t quite touch the ceiling yet.
You can avoid the frustrating experience of turning up to a training and just find yourself failing over and over again until you’re fed up. You can make training more enjoyable, more effective and more sustainable by putting this newfound knowledge into practice.
There’s a couple ways you can do this and they are all essentially the equivalent of rewarding a child with marshmallows for doing their homework. Simple, but effective.
Sweet & Sour
Say you’re working on a skill that’s tricky for you, and a little frustrating, but it’s something you want to achieve so you keep going at it. Rather than just doing that trick over and over and over again; every now and again think of a trick that used to be hard for you, a trick that once felt like the one you’re doing now and just bust out a couple goes of the old one.
Remind yourself that this skill you can bust out on demand, at one point in time, used to be the same as the one you’re working on now. Not only will you get a little rush of pride, but you’ll also give you and your partner the opportunity to ‘reset’ the skill you’re working on. You’ll come back at it reenergized and ready to go.
Sequencing
The other way to utilize this knowledge, is to deliberately create sequences of tricks that contain; a trick you can nail, a trick that you’re working on but is within your wheelhouse and then a trick that’s pushing the edge of your ability.
So, if you’re working on an Icarian Front Salto, you might want to perform it as part of a sequence:
- Running jump into bird
- Bird to Throne
- Throne Front Salto
This has a couple advantages. One, you get the little positive mental boost of nailing tricks and finding success. And two, and this is a big one, you’re changing your practice from ‘Block’ training to something that resembles ‘Random’ training.
There’s a lot of evidence to suggest that doing the same skill over and over again in isolation (Block Training) is maybe not the best way to learn something. This was something I was taught this at Cirque du Soleil as part of my Artist Coach training, and CDS try and utilize this wherever they can. So jump on the bandwagon with us.
Success with less suck
We all love that feeling of achieving something new, and that feeling is what keeps us going. But sometimes, you can go months without it, especially if you’re training something with a high ‘Skill Ceiling’, like Hand to Hand. That drought of achievement can really get you down and cause you to not even want to turn up at all because it all feels a bit pointless.
You’re trying and trying, but you never get closer to the ceiling because the ceiling is so far away and takes such a long time to get to!
So, take the time to try new things that are at or below your level so you can keep the feeling of accomplishment, and you can continue to have the enjoyment of learning new things. We all do this because we love it, but it’s easy to fall out of love with it if it’s constantly frustrating and you feel stuck in a rut. Don’t let yourself get stuck!
