Mini Ep. 83: Learning Modalities

Speaker 1: Hey everybody, before we get started this week, I have huge news. She actually did it. We're pleased to announce that Beatrice Jin, top-ranked women's competitor in North America and long-time BJJ Mental Models premium community member, has published her first ever course with us, exclusive to BJJ Mental Models. It's called Stop Being Nice. It's a three-part audio series designed to solve real mindset problems that regular folks experience in Jiu-Jitsu. If you struggle to be aggressive and competitive in Jiu-Jitsu, you'll find the solutions here. If you're already a BJJ Mental Models premium subscriber, you've already got access. And if you are not, good news, you can get it now and get your first week free. Go to BJJmentalmodels.com and check it out today. Speaker 1: Hey everybody, welcome to another BJJ Mental Models mini episode. My name is Steve Kwan, and BJJ Mental Models is your guide to a conceptual and intelligent Jiu-Jitsu approach. Now, on this show, we love to use mental models to help teach Jiu-Jitsu. But the problem with mental models is they're not guaranteed to be accurate. Some mental models are wrong. And in this mini episode, we're going to talk about one of those mental models that's wrong, the idea of learning styles. You might have heard of this before, sometimes people will say that they are a visual learner, or an audio learner, or maybe they learn by doing or by reading. That sounds great, and a lot of people believe this, but the problem is it's not true. The idea of learning styles has been repeatedly debunked. But for some reason, it's something that keeps coming up, it's something that people think is true, and in Jiu-Jitsu, I often hear people talk about learning styles. Let's use this episode to just clarify that there is no science proving that learning styles are a thing. It's been repeatedly disproven. So, we should discard this idea that you can be a visual learner or an audio learner, or a person who learns by doing or reading. Learning styles have been debunked. So, if you're a Jiu-Jitsu coach who is using the mental model of learning styles to inform how you coach, you might want to rethink that because there's no science to prove that that approach works. Speaker 1: However, I think there is an argument to be said that we should look at instruction through these different lenses, even if the idea of having a learning style is not true. There may not be such a thing as someone who is a visual learner, but we should still use visuals to teach. There may not be such a thing as someone who is an audio learner, but we should still use audio. Doing and reading are also going to be helpful as well. I like to look at the learning approach as something that we attack repeatedly using these different tools rather than relying on just one. So, in many ways, I encourage the opposite of the traditional learning styles approach, rather than assuming that someone is a visual learner, so only giving them visual material, I think it's important to give people a wide variety of ways to learn the same thing. Expose them to an idea with visuals, but also with audio, also with hands-on experience, and also with written material as well if that's available. The more material that you present someone with, the more chances you have to get the message across. And sometimes, different aspects of the message communicate differently depending on how you do it. So, on BJJ Mental Models, when we make content, most of the time, we do it cameras off, audio only. That's a very unique approach in Jiu-Jitsu. And it's not because I think that video is bad or doesn't work for teaching Jiu-Jitsu, it definitely is useful. But I think that audio also has a place, and by attacking through this vehicle, we can teach in a way that is quite different from people who focus on visual instruction. People who have been on our podcast before will tell you that it's hard to talk about Jiu-Jitsu and teach it without a visual aid. You have to clarify your thinking and really understand why you're telling people to do what you're telling them. That's a lot harder than just having them look at you and you demonstrate something and you tell them to copy it. So, although learning styles are not backed by science, I do think that when teaching something new, it makes sense to present that information in different ways. Try to figure out, is there a way that I can provide a visual element to this? Can I explain it through audio? Can I give people a hands-on lesson? Is there written word that can accompany this? First of all, if you teach that way, you provide multiple attempts to get the message through, which helps reinforce learning from the student's perspective, but also, it helps you as an instructor get better because by having to represent this information in different forms, it means that you have to understand the material better as well. I don't like to use the term learning styles because it's been debunked. So, what do we call this mental model where we encourage people to do the opposite, rather than focusing on one medium for learning, we focus on several. Tracy from the Mental Arts suggested to me that we call this learning modalities. That's the name that I've been using. If you have a better name or if there's a more accepted one, please do feel free to share it because I would prefer to use standardized terminology. So, on BJJ Mental Models, we will talk about this concept as learning modalities, which is where we encourage people to present their lessons through different formats. That way students have more opportunities to learn and the instructor has to have a deeper understanding of the material they're teaching. This is a really helpful concept for understanding quickly how to present information and also how to learn information. If you want more like this, go to BJJmentalmodels.com. The mini episodes like this, plus our full-length episodes and our newsletter are completely free. And if you want more like this, if you want structured conversational courses, check out BJJ Mental Models Premium. It is the world's largest Jiu-Jitsu audio library of courses on strategy and tactics. If you enjoy this format for learning, you'll enjoy BJJ Mental Models Premium. Your first week is free, you can check that out, plus everything else we make at BJJmentalmodels.com. Thanks for listening, talk to you soon.