Sunday Jun 21, 2026

Rob Gray: Problems not solutions

Rob Gray is a Professor of Human Systems Engineering at Arizona State University and host of the brilliant Perception and Action Podcast. With over 25 years of experience he has worked with elite sports teams including MLB and NBA franchises, and is the author of How We Learn to Move, How to Be an Ecological Coach, and Learning to Optimize Movement. He's one of the biggest names going in ecological dynamics and the constraints-led approach, and has this rare gift of taking genuinely dense science and making it sound like the most obvious thing in the world. His main applied sport is baseball, though his work spans golf, tennis, driving, cycling and even martial arts.

Three Key Messages

1. The environment should do most of the talking Picture watching a really skilful coach at work, what you'd notice is how little they actually say. Time spent designing the practice. Constraints that create problems for athletes to solve. The coach stepping in occasionally to guide rather than constantly instruct. It's a shift from coach as the holder of all the answers to coach as designer and guide, someone who sets problems rather than prescribes solutions.

2. Repetition without repetition One of the standout ideas in this episode, borrowed from neuroscientist Nicolai Bernstein. We don't get better by repeating the same movement over and over. We get better by repeating outcomes while constantly adapting the movement that produces them.

3. Make the mistake loud Mistakes aren't something to rescue athletes from, they're information. At the right level of challenge, a mistake tells an athlete almost everything they need to know to fix it next time. The coach's job is to understand why a mistake happened and design the next problem accordingly.

Find Rob's Work

The Perception & Action Podcast: http://perceptionaction.com

Rob's books: How We Learn to Move, How to Be an Ecological Coach, Learning to Optimize Movement