Jamie Hamilton has built a football perspective by closely observing the game, learning from the best players, and constantly seeking alternatives to keep improving. Today, he shares his perspective with us as we talk about modern football... and try to decipher what the advantages of the future will be.

Martí Cañellas | Fosbury Flop

Here you have the video of the conversation with Jamie:

Notes of the episode

Jamie Hamilton on Medium

La evolución táctica del fútbol 1863 - 1945: Descifrando el código genético del fútbol de la mano del falso 9 | Martí Perarnau

Inverting the Pyramid: The History of Football Tactics | Jonathan Wilson

A fehér sneaker korszaka | István Beregi

Luis Enrique on control | Pau Casassa

Luis Enrique on unpredictability | PSG - Paris Saint Germain

Luis Enrique on adaptation | Ataque Futbolero

József Bozsik on Medium

József Bozsik on Twitter

WHAT IS RELATIONISM? | Jamie Hamilton

‘If we pray like a gringo, then we play like a gringo’ | Stephen Gibbs

Brazil Fizzles Again: the Capitalist Rot at the Heart of Brazilian Football | Brian Mier

In a Flight of Starlings: The Wonder of Complex Systems | Giorgio Parisi

Movement is a language, whether you understand it or not. It usually emits no sound waves, but it says a great deal. Paulí’s movement did not speak verbally but motorically, telling the defenders: “Look at this three I am about to make right in your face!” However, the bastard’s movement —incredibly clever— did not let them know that he would exploit their understanding of the language once they jumped into the air, disappointed, believing they were blocking the shot. Instinctively, Oriol Paulí put the ball on the floor to finish with a lay-up just millimeters from the basket. I believe that creating an effective style of play —whether we are talking about a player or a team— is exactly this: creating a unique language of movement that your teammates understand but your opponents do not. “You want your enemies to be maximally predictable to you; you want to be maximally unpredictable to to your enemies”, says Taleb. Guardiola’s Barça showed us this, as a team, I think.

What did Antonín Panenka say to the rival goalkeeper, Maier, before taking the penalty kick that would become a historical revolution? Ted Kroeten deciphered it: his body, without making a sound, screamed powerfully: “I am about to blast this ball as hard as I can to your right.” Maier understood the language but not the intention and dove to the side. Antonín Panenka chipped the ball, very subtly, down the center of the goal. Motorically, Antonín formulated a sentence that Maier, fluent in the same grammar, had no choice but to understand.

Paulí and Antonín communicate with teammates and rivals, but also with us, the observers. To me, Paulí clearly communicated how to prepare for the sport of the future. How to face a landscape that seems destined to be ruled by Big Data, video over-analysis, an ocean of information, AI and GPS. A paradigm characterized by innovation —which is not synonymous with technology: a pen and paper in the hands of a genius mind can be more technological than any incomplete data collection interpreted by a mediocre mindset. Innovation is not always synonymous with technology: it only becomes so if it empowers us to solve problems, modify our environment or make our professional lives easier.

During World War II, the US military wanted to armor their planes so they would not get shot down so often. They analyzed the bullet holes on the bombers that returned. They were on the wings, the fuselage and the tail. While everyone wanted to reinforce those areas, Abraham Wald decided to reinforce all the others: the key was to pay attention to the planes that did not return and, therefore, reinforce the engines and the cockpit. Oriol Paulí was telling me that we must follow Wald’s lessons: fostering everything that professionals on the outside of the sideline —rather than the inside— cannot control, yet insist on trying to. Paying attention to everything that slips through the innovative —which does not mean effective— ”tools” ruling today’s training world. Because that is where and when the interesting things happen. Uncapturable. Unanalyzable. And above all:

Unpredictable.

This, Paulí told me, was the path we had to take with sports: moving from “if you can’t measure it, you can’t improve it” to “if you can’t measure it, you must exploit it”. More about feeling and attuning than measuring and memorizing; more about breaking the logic of the moment than perfecting game systems down to the smallest possible detail. Fernando Diniz understood this long before I did. He was kind enough to share it:

“I highly respect physiological data, but the player is not just a bunch of bones and muscles. There are other things that are often even more important. The way the players connect, the willingness to play, the moment they are living through. Low performance has a biological component, but it has other components that are deeply neglected because they are not quantified. People have no way of measuring fear, courage, joy or enthusiasm. These things cannot be measured. And honestly, these things interest me the most. If you manage to get close and do these things right —connecting with the players by asking, living together, stimulating and respecting them— I believe that football and life are more about feeling than measuring. And I always shape my work that way: never disregarding what biology shows, but integrating other components to make the best decisions.”

As a coach, I do not want to fall into the comfort —a familiar trap— of knowing my team’s behavior beforehand. I am interested in not killing my players’ capacity to do things I could never dictate or command, but which benefit us, the team, enormously: knowing when to fake a shot to draw two defenders and free a teammate; breaking the team’s help defense rules for the sake of collective effectiveness; making the antonymous pass to the one the defense anticipated; trapping a rival attacker in an unexpected moment and zone; playing a pre-written micro-pattern without letting it play us; denying the extra-pass to the 45-degree angle by leaving the corner receiver open to force the “bad shooter” to shoot; jumping to simulate a shot, drawing all the defensive attention, while keeping a teammate near the basket awake, knowing they will receive an unforeseen pass that disrupts the defense but not your teammates; turning a numerical defensive disadvantage into a socio-affective superiority... playing with the rival’s intentions, subordinating them to our own.

And so much more that I cannot even imagine, anticipate or foresee. Behaviors that I doubt any data, AI, scouting, video or Excel sheet can optimize. The first step to coaching them is often to become more humble as a coach: letting them emerge, not obstructing them with the need to control. Worrying about not ruining it. Keeping quiet —because, usually, we talk more than we should. Emphasizing it, valuing it and recognizing it when it happens. Letting the sport belong to the teams —players included— and not exclusively to the coach. This often means letting them play and holding back the constant urge to optimize through direct intervention.

And no: this does not mean the coach has no voice or vote. That they must remain silent. That they cannot give any orders. No. They can instruct, punish, break the blackboard or slam the water bottles on the floor at halftime. They can speak, interact, ask. They can intervene and, even more importantly, they can deliberately decide not to intervene. It means that everything they do or leave undone —both actions being equally relevant— must be subordinated to the desire to create this common language that respects everyone’s individual expressions, while forcing them, of course, to be comprehensible to all. To be diversely effective as a collective and unpredictable to the opponent. They can prescribe plays or closed movements, establish structures... but these should not stem from a desire of “let’s have every solution to every situation prepared and perfected”, but rather “let’s have alternative ways of communicating that allow us to be more effective”, to generate uncertainty and unpredictability. The construction of these plays and structures must not be unidirectional —from coach to players— but bidirectional —both roles feeding into each other. Coaches constrain players and players constrain coaches. “We will establish this structure not so that our ways of solving problems or achieving game objectives converge here... but to use this structure to diverge in how we are effective.” Let them fly; do not clip their wings. Now, if everyone flies off on their own... then, like a craftsman, you will need to intervene to coordinate the collective.

Paulí, faking the three-pointer —just like Panenka or Guardiola’s Barça— knew that the rival knew: when he made the Barça defenders believe they had cracked his playing pattern, he transformed that false security, plunging them into absolute entropy. That is the thing about geniuses: they use their integrative information —their order— to generate an entropy —a disorder— so massive that it renders the opponent’s behavior dysfunctional. “There is great disorder under heaven; the situation is excellent”, as Mao Zedong said. Something so powerful. Something no coach —nor any of the tools accompanying them— can dictate or control. This possibility of speaking a common language that makes us effective as a team while making the opponent dysfunctional.

This fascinating element is often at risk of being murdered by today’s ultimate coaching modus operandi. By executives who leave no room for a coaching staff to work, fail, learn and succeed. By a way of doing things built on the premise that the coach must do whatever it takes never to lose absolute control —or the illusion of it. And to achieve this, if they feel they need it, they rely on Big Data, video analysis of as many games as possible, maximum available information, AI and GPS. This is why Paulí’s action spoke so loudly to me: because it could not be understood, controlled or anticipated by this current trend —I would describe it as iatrogenic. By subjugating all these tools —interesting if used well— to such poor, mediocre beliefs, the coach —and often the team they influence— becomes the defenders jumping at Paulí’s fake: comfortable in a certainty that is false because, in reality, they are being manipulated by the immense complexity of the game and by a rival who, because they know you know... is capable of making you dysfunctional. Enzo Maresca analyzed 9 games of Sunderland playing with a back four. He “prepared” the match against them assuming he would face that. Before heading out to play them, however, in the locker room, he announced to his Chelsea players that all the preparation for the match was going into the trash. Sunderland was lining up with a back five.

All this paraphernalia kills the unpredictability that allows us to successfully surprise rivals who think they have us trapped: the coach will know the range of possibilities their team has, while probably making it easily recognizable to the opponent too. The security the coach seeks can be their own downfall. It would be interesting if rivals could not find effective solutions by analyzing a video or looking at an Excel sheet, but if the coach wants everything to originate from them... they make the opponent’s job easy. The coach will know the behavior and so will the rival.

I, however, am interested in the rival not knowing and sometimes the price to pay is a minimal loss of comfort —or certainties. By reducing entropy —the measure of disorder— the coach loses more than they gain: they destroy their own functional entropy —unpredictability— creating an ordered —so, predictable— collective behavior. Punsí says that “an excess of order in an organism is a worrying sign”. This predictability will be used by rivals to generate entropy, disrupting them, making the team more dysfunctional. Data, like the coach’s role, is essential to reduce noise and know the context and it would be useless not to use it nowadays: but the game is mastered by managing an uncertain order in the moment, not by imprisoning it in a computer or in the dictates of a single person.

That is why we must escape. Run in the opposite direction of this need for control. Let things happen that we do not know. To me, it seems more interesting sometimes not to understand —or control— what the players do well, as long as the rivals do not understand it either. “What is not intelligible to me is not necessarily unintelligent”, as Nietzsche said. Otherwise, the predictability emerging from the pursuit of comfort will be your defeat.

Oriol Paulí was telling me that the sport of the future will not come from refining current training methods that control the team’s game, analyzing the opponent down to the smallest detail as if we were Formula 1 engineers... but from everything that escapes this way of doing things. Because, as Oren Harari said: “The electric light did not come from the continuous improvement of candles.” The next level, the game of the future, will emerge from a paradigm shift, not from a refinement or hyper-optimization of the current one. From questioning. From conceiving things differently... and better.

Oriol told me that the plan should not be certainty, but adaptation to uncertainty. And to trust, trying not to inhibit, what emerges effectively yet unknowingly from the depths of the player. What cannot be foreseen or dictated. And celebrating that the more diversely functional it is, the better. To never stop surprising. Because the richer the expressions of each player and the ways of combining them, the more powerful the language we share as a team will be —a language the rival will never be able to understand. A language in which we all understand each other, even if everyone expresses it true to the person they are. Where when two people speak it, unique individual forms emerge, different from when other players speak it... but understood by everyone.

To prepare for the future, however, I like to look at the past: the Lindy effect suggests that the longer a non-perishable idea, technology or practice has survived, the more likely it is to remain useful in the future. To understand what the future will look like, we do not need to dream in a laboratory; we need to look at what humans were doing thousands of years ago, because they will probably keep doing it. Whatever is most adaptable persists —whether we have an explanation for it or not: the wheel, fasting or gold as a store of value, for example.

The same goes for sports: only time will tell if today’s inventions are a historical revolution or a passing fad. This does not mean that what we create now is not useful or can’t survive. We simply cannot know. I do not reject innovation. I analyze it with caution and try to ensure that fascination does not bias my reasoning. Lindy, like Oriol Paulí, tells me what will remain present and necessary in the training of the future.

I face a harsh reality: the figure of the coach —as we understand it today— has existed for much less time than most sports. The sport is more essential than the coach —and let’s not even mention the strength and conditioning coach, the video analyst or the data scientist and AI.

Looking back, I find sport practiced as informal play and I do not see much organized training. I see game contexts that are not imposed or managed by an adult, but by motivated players who self-organize while feeling an emotion that is hard to put into words. I find this game and this decision to play it. Not the imposition of tasks that often kill this intrinsic, addictive emotion players feel; I do not see soulless cattle grazing, motorically reproducing a game plan. Going even further back, I see how play has allowed every mammal to practice crucial skills without the deadly consequences of reality. Beings playing in a safe environment, simulating reality and learning to cooperate, compete and survive. A game that generated adaptations that never occurred from the top-down —from expert to ignorant— but among equals —among intelligent people learning. A game that constantly posed exciting challenges to players, which they solved creatively. One that generated a functional diversity of responses to unexpected events in which they experience a sudden loss of control. Homo sapiens experiencing a discovery, intra- and interpersonal, of their own personal methods for coping with different kinds of unexpected misfortunes.

Yes: I look at sport, I look back and I find that the street is much more Lindy than any playbook, game model or training methodology. I think we are mistaken in replacing the game, the spirit of the street —thousands of years old— with hyper-structured training —a few days old. Lindy, without making a sound, tells me that, probably, if we do not change things and become revolutionaries, the sport will also outlive us, the coaches.

In that past where I see no coaches, however, I do observe the presence of leaders. Even if there was no coach, I believe that in societies —such as a team— there has always been a guardian of the collective purpose: in football, before the figure of the manager emerged, for instance, the captain took charge of it. Someone who shows the way, who creates meaning for the effort, who does not pull or push but makes the group want to walk. Someone who elevates bodies, not cuts off heads. Who does not put the players at the service of the coach, but rather, among equals, putting all the components of the team —coach and staff included— at the service of collective effectiveness. This is why I think we must seek to create this language and, should we want to use Big Data, video over-analysis, over-information, AI and GPS... subordinate them to this intention. I do not criticize structure while embracing freedom. They are not antonyms. I seek a structure that enables new freedoms. I do not reject innovation; I detest subordinating ourselves to it instead of using it to our advantage.

Forgive me, for perhaps my hearing is not very sharp. It would be no surprise if I were wrong. Paulí’s action —advised by Lindy— tells me how we can do a job that favors the longevity of the coach’s figure: creating conditions so that behaviors we cannot imagine can emerge. There is no need to solely pursue having players execute what had been prepared, dictated and imagined. We must look for what will allow us to do things together that we could never have planned, foreseen or anticipated.

The coach must keep intervening. But not necessarily from the logic of control: rather by creating meaning as a leader, being more humble and a protagonist in the shadow; intervening less to prescribe and more to create conditions. Let us not impede, let us preserve and, if we can, amplify what today’s “tools” cannot foresee. Let us not disrupt what the intelligence of our people has not yet revealed it is capable of creating. In the pursuit of effectiveness, let’s take advantage of everything we did not expect to find. Let’s not avoid the uncertainty of the game; let’s exploit it. It is then, I think, that the figure of the coach, even if less long-lived than the game, can become revolutionary: the Paulís who send opponents flying will appear thanks to our intervention, not despite it.

Martí Cañellas | Fosbury Flop

“Tradition is not the worship of ashes, but the preservation of fire.”
—Gustav Mahler

Last Saturday, I could not help but take a photo of myself with his commemorative bust at the Vienna Opera House. I knew Gustav had something to do with music. I had no damn clue what. I just took a picture because he had a great quote.

Watching my eagerness to immortalize a moment with Gustav Mahler, I can just picture any random Viennese guy —the kind who has loved opera since he was a twinkle in his father’s eye, holds a stalls ticket that costs over €200 and thinks it is a total steal, and would score an 11 out of 10 if his style were judged by the venue’s traditional dress code— telling me: “What? You like Mahler? His [insert Mahler’s best symphony] symphony is delightful, don’t you think?”

It would be hilarious to see his reaction when I told him that, for me, my favorite thing about Mahler is a single quote. It would be like any expat occupying Barcelona telling me that the only thing they know —and, at the same time, love most— about Gaudí is his maxim: “First love, then technique.” The sheer embarrassment that this hypothetical situation caused me led me to try and learn a bit more about the figure of Gustav Mahler.

And then, the magic happened. Yes: I found another one of those quotes that slaps you right in the face with your own stupidity, because it delivers a massive explanation in the simplest way possible. It goes like this:

“What is best in music is not to be found in the notes.”
—Gustav Mahler

Pretty great, right? What makes music special is not found in what, to us ignoramuses, are its building blocks. However, I did not truly grasp the quote until —finally!— I understood Mahler’s figure on a slightly less superficial level.

When Gustav was appointed director of the Vienna Opera —the equivalent of a football manager being named Barça’s coach— what would have been a source of pride and satisfaction for many was a total headache for him: it got in the way of his true calling as a composer. He was not happy standing in front of the orchestra; his moments of pure joy were found in his leisure time, locked away in his apartment on Wipplingerstrasse, playing with his full creative potential. Putting notes on score sheets. (What a joke. Keeping with the previous analogy: as if Gaudí were just piling up bricks.) No. Mahler loved composing music —which is not the same as putting notes on score sheets.

But weeds do not exist and things happen for a reason: by serving as a director, Gustav experienced musical tradition by discovering the fire and brushing away the ashes when it came to crafting his own compositions. He composed highly controversial works that took time to win the approval of mediocrity.

Mahler was also a relentless perfectionist from birth. With a crystal-clear musical vision. What he could not express in words, he said through his musical compositions. Scores that had rhythms, notes, tempos... and countless annotations along the margins, describing something he desperately needed to convey but that the constraints of the musical scale language would not allow.

This was not exclusive to Mahler. Or maybe it was. Other composers, for the sake of those performing the symphonies, would write words in the margins like “allegro”, “andante”, “forte”, or “crescendo”. Mahler, sometimes for the performers and sometimes for himself, would write:

• “The entire piece delicate and flowing throughout! No fortissimo! No dragging!”

• “Slow. Dragging. Like a sound of nature.”

• “With parody.”

• “Stormily moving.”

• “Like a bird song.“

• “Bird’s voice, bird call.“

• “Dying away, allow to die away.“

• “Imperceptibly pressing forward.“

• “Don’t rush; don’t even think about rushing.”

• “Occupy the place ‘in the distance’.”

• “Carried by the wind.”

• “With humor.”

• “With the greatest unfolding of power.”

• “All at once somewhat heavier.”

• “Passionate but tender.”

• “Always very flowing.”

• “Always still imperceptibly holding back.”

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Víctor López Ros trains coaches and teachers, coaches Olympic champions, and has worked at the elite level of team sports. I appreciate that he embodies the very thing he argues is essential for training the professionals of the future: debating and questioning what we so often take for granted… among other things. Now the conversation begins in Catalan. You have the English version in the YouTube video of the episode.

Martí Cañellas | Fosbury Flop

Here you have the video with English subtitles of the conversation with Víctor:

Notes of the episode

Tactical intentions | Claude Bayer

First Steps: How Upright Walking Made Us Human | Jeremy Desilva

The Theory of Communicative Action, Vol 1: Reason & the Rationalization of Society | Jürgen Habermas

The Theory of Communicative Action, Vol 2: Lifeworld & System: A Critique of Functionalist Reason | Jürgen Habermas

Acts of Meaning | Jerome Bruner

Activity Theory of Leontiev | Inter_ECODAL

Philosophical Investigations | Ludwig Wittgenstein

Homenatge als caiguts | Albert Sánchez Piñol

The Empire of Fashion: Dressing Modern Democracy | Gilles Lipovetsky

ALBERT BATALLA | The art and science of teaching

Universo y sentido: En busca del sentido en la inmensidad | Norbert Bilbeny

La evolución táctica del fútbol | Martí Perarnau

Real Coaching | Joel Filliol

Exercised: Why Something We Never Evolved to Do Is Healthy and Rewarding | Daniel E. Lieberman

La resistencia íntima | Josep Maria Esquirol Calaf

Vivir no es tan divertido, y envejecer, un coñazo | Óscar Tusquets

Ted Kroeten is the founder of Joy of the People, a non-profit organization that promotes free play as a way to build healthier kids and stronger communities. By simply watching children play, he began to notice what had been lost in the transition from street play to private academies. He discovered the value of free play, how to build sports talent and the secret not of “overload” but of its opposite, “underload”. Fortunately, Ted now shares these insights with the rest of us.

Martí Cañellas | Fosbury Flop

Here you have the video of the conversation with Ted:

Notes of the episode

Joy of the People website

Fitness landscape | Wikipedia

Homo Ludens: A Study of the Play Element in Culture | Johan Huizinga

The Folly of Fools: The Logic of Deceit and Self-Deception in Human Life | Robert Trivers

NATÀLIA BALAGUÉ | Biological Intelligence

Orgel’s rules | Wikipedia

Just respect the essence | Martí Cañellas

Philosophical Investigations | Ludwig Wittgenstein

Universal Play Grammar | Ted Kroeten

Juanma Lillo - El mejor libro de táctica y las probabilidades | Fútbol Práctico

Stephen Krashen | Wikipedia

The Link Between Evolution and Language | Richard Dawkins | TED

Bernardo Silva don’t do gym | Out of Context Football

Why Athletes Don’t “Acquire” Skill—They Adapt it w/ Duarte Araújo | The Adaptable Athlete Podcast

PAU CASASSA | Idea Barça

Andreu Enrich returns to Fosbury Flop, keeping the bar as high as he left it: connecting genuine ideas and philosophers such as Nietzsche, Heidegger, or Foucault with the figure of the coach. Now, the chapter in Catalan begins; in English, you have the YouTube video of the episode.

The first episode with Andreu Enrich here:

Martí Cañellas | Fosbury Flop

Here you have the video with English subtitles of the conversation with Andreu:

Notes of the episode

Unpopular opinion of Andreu Enrich | @martict99

The art of coaching: a matter of walls and slopes | @JordiLieF

Coaching meditations | Andreu Enrich

SMALL-SIDED GAMES: How to effectively train your players in variable and complex environments | Andreu Enrich

Hockey: 50 Tips From Intelligent Players | Andreu Enrich

The Birth of Tragedy | Friedrich Nietzsche

Homo Ludens: A Study of the Play Element in Culture | Johan Huizinga

Man, Play and Games | Roger Caillois

Les estructures elementals de la narrativa | Albert Sánchez Piñol

Fragments | Heraclitus

On Nature | Paramenides

Citadelle | Antonie Saint-Exupéry

Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder | Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Being and Time | Martin Heidegger

Victus: The Fall of Barcelona | Albert Sánchez Piñol

Antoni Gaudí, vida i obra | Armand Puig i Tàrrech

JAVIER CAÑADA | Training between Ulm and Cádiz

The Prince | Niccolò Machiavelli

Pregària a Prosèrpina | Albert Sánchez Piñol

Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison | Michel Foucault

Sport, Coaching, and Performance | Jim Denison & Zoe Avner

Psychopolitics: Neoliberalism and New Technologies of Power | Byung-Chul Han

The Concept of the Political | Carl Schmitt

Fora de classe. Textos de filosofia de guerrilla | Marina Garcés

Phenomenology of Perception | Maurice Merleau-Ponty

From the very first moment I read about design, I was captivated. Moholy-Nagy said that “designing is not a profession but an attitude of resourcefulness and inventiveness”. Miguel Milá, that it “consists of fulfilling a function while maintaining emotion”. Bruno Munari called it “a method centered around problem-solving”. And Don Norman stated that “the goal is to produce a great product, one that is successful, and that customers love”. I kept wondering to myself: “Doesn’t all this speak to me as a coach?” To explore this connection, I chat with Javier Cañada: someone I dare not classify into any label, adjective, or profession. The conversation is in Catalan. The English version is available in the YouTube video of the episode.

Martí Cañellas | Fosbury Flop

Here you have the video with English subtitles of the conversation with Javier:

Notes of the episode

Newsletter: De Ulm a Cádiz | Javier Cañada

Lo esencial: Una guía de diseño para la vida | Miguel Milá

¿Cómo nacen los objetos? Apuntes para una metodología proyectual | Bruno Munari

The Design of Everyday Things | Donald A. Norman

La pregunta | Javier Cañada

Santa Olalla: Una grieta en el destino | Javier Cañada

Ivrea, 1982 | Javier Cañada

Les estructures elementals de la narrativa | Albert Sánchez Piñol

The Book of Tea | Kakuzō Okakura

Lo Barroco | Eugeni d’Ors

Dios lo ve | Óscar Tusquets

Programa Desarrollo Directivo y Liderazgo | Jaime Rodríguez de Santiago, Instituto Tramontana

It’s not you. Bad doors are everywhere | Vox

Like when I had spent my whole life playing basketball and gr…

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13.19: A person asks whether they can help us with anything.

13.20: I address this person the way many “coaches” address their players: “Can you bring me all the books you have related to ‘coaches’ or training? Right noooooow!!!!! Move it!!!! What are you waiting for?” I start, with a voice volume elevated compared to the standard levels of the enclosure, a countdown.

13.22: Seeing that she is taking too long, I activate the function of blowing the whistle, imposing a punishment to correct behavior or maintain discipline, and I shout at her: “Quick, to the baseline: fifty burpees with sprint. If you take more than 2 minutes, you repeat.”

13.23: She shows no symptoms of obedience.

13.24: I begin to reduce the distance toward her while changing the color of my face to “angry reddish”, but before I arrive and say anything, the security guard hits me with a baton that sends me to a location I cannot situate.

13.29: The blow is such a major perturbation that it transforms the nature of my components, their organization and interaction, generating a random change of human appearance.

13.30: Forgotten words from “coach”.

13.31: I raise my head.

13.32: There is a sign above me that says Bookstore —must have been a worker from the competition infiltrated.

13.33: Citcat of Snorom tells me he is on his way but walking humanly very slowly: he wants to explore the idea of being a philosopher.

13.47: No word from Citcat of Snorom.

13.59: Citcat of Snorom arrives. We go back inside.

14.00: The worker of this bookstore, with an expression that shows her interest has been awakened, asks me if we know each other. I have never seen her in my terrestrial or optimian life, but since it seems that on planet Earth it is not permitted to confess that you do not know something, I answer her using a security technique described in the report: I close one of my two eyes for 0.5” and say “from something”, pretending I am sure of something I have absolutely no idea about.

14.02: We address the worker of this fuel shop with a different strategy than before: “Dear Sir/Madam, we would like to buy all the books that have any relation to ‘coaches’ or training. Thank you. Sincerely.”

14.03: She says that, for her, all books are related to the act of training or being a coach.

14.04: We are surprised that this worker does not fall into the human habit of creating categories and taking them as real and definitive without realizing the fuzziness of their boundaries.

14.05: Citcat of Snorom changes the direction of his gaze —he no longer looks into the eyes of the worker and instead looks into mine—, I penetrate his gaze and see that it says: “Not everything is lost yet.”

14.06: She, the worker, continues telling us that she assumes a coach must know about life: just as, when dealing with a husband treating his wife, sometimes the football forward must also give space and not crowd the teammate, trusting him to do what is best for the team. That a coach must know how to diversify the assets that depend on him, with the flexibility to change, adapt, and reinvent in response to uncertain competition, like an entrepreneur and markets. That, for this reason, a coach must know how to create empowering narratives like Cervantes, govern societies like Saint-Exupéry, address and manage conflict like Dostoyevsky, foster an environment that empowers and enables like Jullien or Catmull, design interventions thinking like Moholy-Nagy, and move you by filling you with the will to defend ideals as Sánchez Piñol explains.

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Because the Fosbury Flop —what gives this project its name— was never just a jump.

The protagonist is someone whose peculiar behavioural traits clash with those of the majority. A way of being that prevents him from blending in with the people around him. When his authenticity exposes many to their own embarrassments, he is socially reduced, stoned. That’s why, often, only mediocrity is socially plausible. There are always experts convinced they possess knowledge, ready to “fix” that authenticity —which they themselves call “madness”. This is the story of Dick Fosbury and of many others, like Lubbert Das, another one who suffered the consequences of being an authentic obstacle standing against the advance of homogeneity.

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11.29: We did not assume that the worker who told us that “what we were about to experience today, not everyone can say they have lived it” was saying it from a negative perspective.

11.30: Once Citcat of Snorom and I, Duarf of the Euqinchet, gather enough evidence to certify that his words have indeed come true, we continue in search of “coaches”; we proceed with mission E.C.

11.31: In the first meters of our intentional displacement toward the outside of the facility, the presence of several humans using the athletics track around the grass field catches our attention.

11.32: There is a human with a little belly —we assume that is where he stores inside it the immutability of unfalsifiable human knowledge he speaks from, the levels of faith high enough to obtain the title of “King of the Mediocre” in Optimiam, the conviction in what he says that not even a certain Josep Guardiola i Sala has ever displayed… who tells another human facing a mattress: “No, you can’t enter from the left side and jump with your right foot.”

11.33: The young one opens his arms like that human they have everywhere with a cross behind him.

11.34: The belly-man continues: “Dick Fosbury took off with his left foot and entered from the right side. You can’t take off with your right foot and enter from the left.”

11.35: Instant investigation: who called Fosbury to his dick? Result: turns out he was a “madman” who, without meaning to, changed the sport of high jump. A madman is a person who interprets reality following a logic that is not that of the majority point of view. Reflection: who is crazier, the one who can’t help being so, or the one who chooses to be?

11.36: The young one drops his arms and starts moving his head, looking to the ground, side to side, while another young one jumps; when he lands, he hears: “Very good technique! So clean!”

11.37: The jumper does not share the evaluation and answers that he did not clear the bar. Another young one jumps, and once the jump is done, he receives the comment: “Remember: drive your lead-arm up high! Arch the arm so it is the first part of your body that is over the bar.”

11.38: With no ability to anticipate the event, I observe Citcat of Snorom, fist closed, showing his extended index finger as he raises his arm above his head.

11.39: I analyze his finger. At the same time, the belly-man asks what the hell is wrong with his finger, that the movement he is describing is totally different, and that, please, he should not distract his athletes with insignificant gestures.

11.40: Just as I am about to tell him he is right and to stop bothering people, Citcat of Snorom apologizes for the inconvenience but explains he could not help it, because he had never noticed that —even though it is daytime— Optimiam is visible.

11.41: “What the hell is Optimiam?” asks the belly-man without waiting for an answer. He tells us that, as the team “coach”, we should leave because we are an impediment to the muscle memory process.

11.42: We continue our displacement toward the outside of the coliseum. Instant investigation: what is muscle memory? Result: a symbolic tale of the human collective that does not match reality.

11.45: No word from “coach”.

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It happens often, though, in real competition: the basketball player drives left and finishes with the right hand, and the crusader for the aesthetic values of sport —the coach, I mean— scolds him, saying that if you go left, you must finish with the left. Please, do not be crusaders for aesthetic values. Do not let fear win. You could be mortgaging many futures.

If it were not for people like that, this would not be called Fosbury Flop but De la Quadra Salcedo Style:

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10.05: According to the report, humans label the days of the week following a linear set of rules and a widely shared consensus that remains stable over time: they are “Monday”, “Tuesday”, “Wednesday”… until “Sunday”. This consensus, however, collapses once they enter the sports field. The labels are no longer the same and change from week to week. For example, a “Monday” may be labeled inside the field as +1, +2, -4 or -3… —among other possibilities. These labels correspond to the time elapsed since the previous competition and the time remaining until the next one. (We have already seen that many “coaches” tend to make war —”training”— in order to achieve peace —”competition”.) What is predetermined, though, is what must be done on each of these days. If it is +1 or +2, it must be a light session, and those who played less must exert themselves physically —not to improve or accelerate development, but to compensate for something they call “loads”. On -4 or -3, work is oriented toward the upcoming match and many “automatisms” —as if they were machines...— must be performed. On -1, the match is very close. It is imperative to carry out a playful exercise —can they only have fun on day -1?—, fixed corner-kick or free-kick patterns, finishing drills, and some “small-sided games”.

10.07: From the stands, we observe that the person who demanded our accreditations —and expelled us from the video training room a few minutes ago— is walking toward us, facial muscles severely tensed. In the time it takes him to lift and replant his right foot on the ground, we review the safety protocols from the report. We find two options: (1) to say “Calm down! Do not shoot! I am mentally retarded!” and reinforce it with the sentence: “Israel has the right to defend itself. It is not a genocide but a war.” We hesitate. A similar strategy had previously brought us not safety, but the opposite. (2) To adopt the physical appearance of two human infants —beings who represent innocence and curiosity, rather than adult distrust and insecurity. We choose the second.

10.08: The muscles on the person’s face relax and his mouth describes a turn from convexity to concavity.

10.10: At a distance of 0.5 meters, he tells us to follow him; that what we are about to experience today, not everyone can say they have lived it.

10.11: We arrive at the grass of the field. He says we can sit on the bench throughout the session. We ask if we may ask questions.

10.12: He says that here, the questions are his to ask.

10.13: The curiosity algorithm invites us to inquire about what his players are doing, performing a choreography or executing movements with materials from other sports at really low intensity. We cannot. We therefore assume it is what they call “warm-up”: a supposedly essential process that prepares the body to do what the body already knows how to do: move and adapt. Apparently, it is an organic process of progressive adaptation that they have turned into an artificialized ritual. This process, where the sympathetic nervous system activates and blood vessels dilate so that muscles consume more oxygen, is something the human body already does spontaneously whenever it transitions from rest to activity. Yet it seems that if this is not directed by a “physical coach”, it does not occur —as if this “coach” were the one activating all those processes in their bodies.

10.15: Citcat of Snorom asks me, Duarf of the Euqinhcet, whether I can internally formulate the hypothetical scenario of a hunter-gatherer or a cheetah saying: “Damn, I am really hungry but I can’t chase that prey that I do not know when it is going to appear again because I have not done my ’warm-up’.”

10.17: No word from “coach”.

10.18: It is becoming quite clear to us that humans have a systematic tendency to invent problems in order to become their own saviors.

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With the least common of senses, backed by verified information, the speaker questioned the dominant model of player and team development in Catalan basketball —technique, fundamentals, basics, and so on. Here are some of the doubts he raised:

• “When your junior player goes up to train with the first team, or with the higher squad, do they ask him to score 20 points? No. They ask him to kill himself defending, catch every rebound, and not lose the ball. Then why are most coaches obsessed with offensive potential?” Besides, maybe not in football, but in basketball the time spent attacking and defending is roughly 50-50.

• Basketball is a game of continuous efforts. That is, you perform an action —a lay-up— and then you have to go catch the offensive rebound, get back on defense, or press the ball handler. Many drills focus on training a single effort and repeating it: we do one and either repeat it or rest —we do not chain them. In that sense, the offensive rebound is a huge advantage, but many drills end the moment there is a shot.

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5:32: We start the exploration early. Maybe yesterday we did not find the “coaches” we were looking for because we failed to coincide in space and time with them. Today we have adjusted our timing.

5.33: Just stepping out of the spacecraft we disguised as a terrestrial building, we almost crash into a human using bipedal locomotion with cyclical transfers of body weight between lower limbs and combined moments of flight. Although her displacement velocity remains within the usual margins of a Gaussian normal distribution, the subject is dressed in synthetic fabrics designed to reduce air resistance. On one of her upper limbs she carries a device that emits tiny lights and beeping noises —the report said it was called a “little dictator”. The being covers the end of each of her lower limbs with textile and plastic contraptions they call “trainers”. These people are labeled as “runners”.

5.34: We program her displacement speed and start following her, Citcat of Snorom on one side, and I, Duarf of the Euqinhcet, on the other. We ask what she is running away from.

5.35: She answers that she is preparing for an Ironman —a regulated rite of self-destruction. We assume she is fleeing from something important but ask what this preparation consists of. Simply put, she executes the weekly plan sent by a “coach” she has never seen nor met: distances, training exercises, rhythm —all carried out thanks to the “heart rate monitor”, the “little dictator”. We were not aware that to run you needed a “coach”. From what ignorance must he save you, to what expertise must she lead you? If developing a function generally depends on exploiting it in varied ways.

5.36: These humans have spent millennia trying to maximize efficiency —moving as little as possible to achieve as much as possible to survive— and here we find them doing the opposite: forcing themselves, reluctantly, to move, wasting energy, achieving nothing.

5.37: At the end of each of her lower limbs, the “runner” possesses perfectly capable tools for displacement, polished over millennia by natural selection. We ask why she covers them with textile and plastic contraptions called “trainers”.

5.38: Moving at full speed in the opposite direction, we observe another human attached to a mechanical artifact with two wheels, propelled by his own biological energy —called a “cyclist”. Telepathically, in a millisecond, Citcat of Snorom and I agree that it may be interesting to interact with him. We split up. Citcat of Snorom activates wheel displacement and programs the cyclist’s speed.

5.39: As if nothing had happened, in response to my serious question about the “trainers”, the “runner” reacts with “laughter”, which I interpret as treating it like a joke. I do not understand the fun in disabling your own body; in killing a biological catapult that absorbs impacts, stores elastic energy, and releases it to propel the body forward. They are disabling a long elastic Achilles tendon, a plantar arch, an aligned big toe, an impact-resistant calcaneus, sensory receptors in every foot, a general joint capacity to absorb shock… everything that has enabled them to be a species capable of running and walking long distances. The “runner” points out that she had to buy seven different pairs, taking out three loans, before finding ones that did not hurt. I do not know if this is meant as an achievement that elevates her above others, or as a confession exposing her own foolish behavior. This seems to be a recurring pattern in the human species: create a problem where none exists, invent an object that “solves” this “problem”, and end up venerating it as if it were indispensable, as if it were a “coach”.

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“Sometimes you mix the past with the present and your happiness disappears”, says this monk who —to me, an ignorant— seems Buddhist. What I suppose he tells a traveler …

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17.35: The “coaches” crowd around me, expectant, waiting for me to clarify the pronouncement about the 10,000 hours/repetitions. It seems I have hit something personal, as if I had disrespected something they cherish, something that’s part of them. According to the research conducted in Area 61 on the planet Optimiam, the statement I have just made is clear evidence of progress: it reflects the discovery that to master any skill it is indeed crucial to play, put in the hours, devote oneself fully, and repeat many actions… qualitatively, not quantitatively —as previously thought. We had indications, however, that other planets had reached similar conclusions. Here on planet Earth, though, these conclusions were —and seem to still be— corrupted by social values: those who pee standing up and start flushing before they have even finished still think they can shorten the path to expertise by minimizing the time between repetitions, eliminating all variability, everything that is not “productive”. Then, they end up getting exactly what keeps them from their greedy wishes: doing countless repetitions that are useless because they are done like cows grazing —soullessly. So, that’s it: I assumed that what we —Citcat of Snorom and Duarf of the Euqinhcet, and the rest of planet Optimiam— knew would also be shared by those beings from other galaxies who never stop going on about something they call “intelligent life”.

17.36: They ask me what I believe in if not in the 10,000 hours/repetitions. I answer by asking them whether the best way to learn a game might be by playing it, and if they will allow me to show them with an example.

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Well, after five seasons, I have returned to the role of Head Coach of a basketball team. During the entire first week of training, I kept remembering Jordi’s words. He told me Paco Seirul·lo used to say that every proposal can be traced back to its primary source: it either comes from love or from fear. I did not consciously recall it in order to put it into practice afterward. Quite the opposite: I observed my own behavior and could not help but remember Jordi’s words. It is something I had already learned in Finland, but domain dependence prevented me from applying it to other areas. Like what the tutor of the orphan protagonist in Cold Skin taught him from a young age; that “in this world, there are two kinds of attitudes: choosing life or choosing death. A man could be the humblest of coalmen and choose life; another could be the most celebrated writer of his homeland and his era, and choose the path of death. It did not matter.”

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DAY 293

7.03: (Planet Earth Time) Date: 4Zθ.μ.Γ36. Location: 18° 18′ 0″ N, 64° 49′ 30″ W.
We decide to go out in search of a “coach”.

7.04: Citcat of Snorom has been studying human behavior during a dark period they call “night”. As he tells me that on planet Earth, the only thing that holds authority is prejudice, we consider it wise not to show our true intergalactic appearance and decide to adopt the one of individualized human beings. We consult the Catalog.

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Because no: I do not want my players to become Tarahumaras in that sense. I could not care less about long-distance running. It would be a great twist, would it not? After everything I have preached, to promote decontextualized interventions in isolated environments with a perception-action cycle that has nothing to do with competitive behavior. Selling advice I do not even buy myself. Without skin in the game —apologies, NNT. Criticizing traditional training methods with Natàlia Balagué, John Kiely or Pau Casassa, while I spend pre-season “filling the tanks” doing laps around the pitch and running up hills. But no. That’s not what I mean. That’s something I would have done back when I was a moron —or, at least, more of one than I am now.

I want my players to become Tarahumaras in a different sense: the Tarahumaras do not understand what “training” means. They have no clue about that “modern”, planned, formal notion, separated from the competition, that we Westerners call “training”.

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