Provide the perfect push and pull” is a Judo saying. Judo is easy to describe, but hard for a layman to understand. I will try to explain to you what a perfect push and pull is.

In the old days, Japanese warriors wore heavy armor to protect them from being injured during their fights. A complete set of armor with helmet weighed 55 to 60 pounds. As long as you stood upright, it was good protection, but not if you fell during the fight and lay flat on your back. Because the armor was so heavy, you could not get up quickly, which often meant you lost the battle.

In modern Judo, the heavy armor has been replaced by a much lighter suit, called Judogi in Japanese. What has remained the same is that if you end up flat on your back—you lose. For that reason, Judo players all over the world practice throwing their opponents flat on their backs. If that happens, the referee says, “Ippons,” which means “end of the fight.” Over the years, I practiced my favorite Judo throw so many times that it became a reflex.

Another principle of Judo comes from an old Japanese sensei (teacher): “It is difficult to move a heavy rock, but once the rock is moving, it will take less energy.” In Judo, we think of it this way: “It’s easier to throw your opponent while he is moving.” So, to become a Judo specialist, you need to move your opponent first, and while he is moving, you use your throwing technique.

Mister Jigoro Kano taught us to use the strength of our opponent against him. “If you push your opponent, you will get a reaction. If you pull your opponent, you will get a reaction. Find the balance between push and pull.”

If you push your opponent’s shoulders, you will get some resistance, which you can use for your Judo technique. If you pull on someone’s Judogi sleeves, he will probably pull back, and you can use that power for your technique. Mister Kano explained this as “Action gives a reaction, and a reaction asks for the next action.”

To use Judo techniques successfully, you continually have to push and pull your opponent. You use the power of the reactions you create. It’s not only the Judo throwing technique that creates a result, but a combination between the throwing technique and the perfect push and pull.

That is exactly what you want to create in your reinforcement program. A good foundation (like the throwing techniques in the Judo world) is not enough. You need the perfect push and pull to “connect” with your learners.

PAIRING THE PRINCIPLES

If you compare the three principles you used to build your foundation with the three principles you will use to create engagement, you will see that:

• Building the foundation starts with the perfect balance of the 3 phases (Principle 1). Creating engagement starts with the balance between push and pull (Principle 4).
• Closing the five gaps (Principle 2) is required to have a solid foundation. Creating friction and direction (Principle 5) is required to let learners’ brains work hard and drive involvement.
• To create measurable behavior change (Principle 3), you use your measurement plan to verify the performance. By following the reinforcement flow (Principle 6), you optimize learners’ performance.

You can see the relationships among these principles in Figure 10.1.

PUSHING THE BRAIN TO ENGAGE

If you take a closer look at Principle 4, “Provide the Perfect Push and Pull,” you will see that an acceleration of the learners’ growth cannot and will not occur if your learners are left to drive their own growth. One of the reasons is that the brain is lazy. More important is the relationship between memory and energy and the role that this relationship plays in learning.

The memory function of the brain allows your learners to update their knowledge and avoid mistakes. As you remember things, an ongoing energy dynamic occurs in your brain. However, your brain is extremely lazy. Before you judge your brain for its lack of motivation, realize that it’s that way for a reason. Despite accounting for only about 2 percent of your body weight, it sucks up an average of 20 percent of your overall energy (as measured in calorie burn).

Your brain sucks up 20 percent of your overall energy.

Because of this intense energy demand, your brain is always looking for shortcuts that will allow it to use less energy whenever possible. In the worst case, it won’t even use shortcuts but simply will not spend any energy at all. For that reason, you constantly need to “push” your brain and avoid using shortcuts when learning new knowledge and skills. There are no shortcuts in top-level sports or when mastering new knowledge and skills.

The memory system helps the brain effectively use energy. When you offer learners a novel environment (mostly in the training events), their brains are active and absorbing information. They must think in those situations, which, in turn, generates memories that are easier to access during the reinforcement. Once the learners are around certain stimuli enough, their lazy brains start to mush those memories together and group them into a distinguishable collection.

A critical component of all this is that thinking hard feels difficult because your brain is fighting to stop you from using energy unnecessarily. Cognitive scientists talk about the difficulty in terms of fluency (easy thoughts) and disfluency (difficult thoughts).

That’s why exposing ourselves to familiar environments and concepts is always more comfortable. We don’t have to think hard (or at all) about them, and our brains remain calm because we don’t have to worry about its precious energy going away.

When learning something new, everything will seem difficult and confusing at first, and the brain will fight back because it’s blasting through energy it doesn’t want to give away. But once a learner has been exposed to the new information frequently enough, everything starts to get easier. Even though the learner will still be a novice when this begins to happen, it will feel less and less like a chore to learn.

In your reinforcement role, you must understand and embrace the early disfluency (difficult thoughts) the learners will feel and push through until they reach a baseline level of fluency (easy thoughts). Once they reach that baseline, learning becomes progressively easier. You must stimulate their brains until learners reach the baseline level of fluency (easy thoughts). If you don’t, the learners will drop off, and you will see no participation.

Before you try to use Principle 4, “Provide the Perfect Push and Pull,” make sure you understand why brains need a push and pull and how to create memories via mnemonics techniques (visual or verbal) to activate the memory system. You can use mnemonics (visual or verbal) to activate the memory system. Reuse images, models, or phrases.

BALANCING PUSH WITH PULL

If you want to facilitate the learning process and accelerate learners’ growth, you need to push and pull. This principle is all about the perfect balance between push and pull communication moments. If you send information to learners, it is considered a push communication. When you pull information, you ask the learners to do or evaluate something or answer your message. All the messages you send to the learners are push messages, but not all of your push results in a pull.

Not all of your push is a pull.

Tracking your progress

If you want to check the progress of your reinforcement program, use the Pull Thermometer in Figure 10.2. Count all of the messages in your reinforcement program, and determine the percentage of pull messages (the messages that require an action from the learner via a question). Do not count the self-reflections without a question. Determine the number of pull messages divided by the number of total messages and add this percentage to the Pull Thermometer.

What is your percentage? Make sure you stay between 35 percent and 70 percent. I personally prefer to be in the range of 40 to 65 percent.

If your score is below 35 percent, your program is more like a micro learning module. That’s good if that is your goal. However, for a reinforcement program, you need to create more interaction with the learners. This drives the engagement.

If your score is above 70 percent, you have a lot of pull messages, perhaps too many. Your reinforcement program leans more toward an assessment. Again, if that is the goal, it’s perfect. But if your goal is to create a reinforcement program, you need to reduce the number of pull questions. Give the learners added value via learning and pitfalls. More assignments and evaluations increase the application of knowledge and skills as well as the engagement of your learners.