The Science Of: Why Some People Learn Faster Than Others

Added: 2026-05-28

[00:00:00]Some people learn faster, not because they're more talented, but because their nervous system is getting dramatically clearer signals whenever they practice, which means the real difference between fast learners and people who stay stuck for years may have almost nothing to do with intelligence. Every time your brain practices a skill, it is constantly trying to answer one question: Is anything actually worth keeping, or strengthening, and devoting resources to? And the people who improve insanely fast are often training in ways that make those patterns dramatically easier for the nervous system to recognize and lock in. While most people annoyingly practice in ways that flood their nervous system with too much noise, which is basically uncertainty, which explains why two people can spend the same amount of time practicing something and end up with completely different results. One of my favorite things I got to watch when I took all the science and built programs around it, including one inside an Olympic facility where I taught hundreds of athletes, was the look of genuine shock and awe on someone's face when they realized just how much faster they could actually learn. One student, Kyle, and his sister, Helen, really wanted a butterfly twist, a skill where you roll through the air like a ninja out of Naruto, and I still remember the day they went from genuinely not knowing if they could ever get close to it to getting far enough down the path that they could feel what the skill was like, and they could see that they were going to get it, along with a whole bunch of other bigger skills like a corkscrew. And I remember looking at Kyle and his sister and saying, "It's like this for everything.

[00:01:36]These same rules apply to almost anything you want to learn in life."

[00:01:41]Here's what's actually happening underneath all of that. Your nervous system is not just randomly improving from repetition alone. Every single time you practice something, your brain is constantly asking, "What patterns, if any, are actually useful enough to strengthen [music] and keep, to devote resources to because it's working. And the clearer those signals are, the faster your nervous system can build stable skills, build reactions and capabilities into you. And this is where most people accidentally slow themselves way down without really knowing it. When practice becomes too chaotic, too overwhelming, and really you go too far beyond the point where your nervous system can actually tell, what the heck is happening, your brain receives really messy, unreliable information instead.

[00:02:31]And when that happens, people mistake the problem they're encountering for a lack of talent. But the real issue is that their nervous system is just struggling to figure out what it actually should be reinforcing and changing in the [music] first place, which is why two people can spend the same amount of time while something while one improves rapidly, and you look at the other person and they're barely moving at all. One person's nervous system is getting very clear signals it can clearly build around, and the other is constantly flooded with uncertainty and hesitation, which means that their nervous system is not confident enough in anything that's happening to lock a skill in. And over time, this creates one of the biggest illusions in human performance and just coaching and teaching and learning anything. So from the outside, when someone's doing awesome, fast learners look so naturally gifted. When in reality, many of them are simply practicing in ways that give their nervous system something that is so clear what to do and to build from.

[00:03:28]So the deeper principle driving almost all of this is something called signal-to-noise ratio. And this is one of, if not, the biggest hidden rule behind why some people improve dramatically faster than others and actually get what they want. And it's the exact principle I built an entire free series around. You can find it linked down below. And this is also why one of the biggest mistakes in learning is trying to just jump so far ahead of what your nervous system is actually ready to build from. So, most people think that rapid growth comes from just constantly throwing themselves across the chasm at the hardest possible version of something right now, but that just floods the brain with too much uncertainty at once. Too many things that it's having to change and [music] figure out simultaneously, and it's just too many signals that are competing for the brains and the neurons' attention.

[00:04:22]The nervous system has no solid foundation to build from yet, and this is where people just get stuck in one of the most frustrating cycles in learning.

[00:04:31]They work insanely hard, but never fully in control of what they're doing. They hesitate. They overthink. They rush the moment that they're going to try to commit to something, and they second-guess themselves right before they go for something. And really, I just watch people repeat the same inconsistent attempts over and over without anything improving where your nervous system trust what's happening and builds it into you. What I saw over years of coaching is that the fastest learners were almost never the people who were trying to skip steps or force massive jumps overnight. They were the people building skills in ways where each challenge stayed close enough to what their nervous system could already handle, while still pushing just far enough past what they already knew that their neurons had to adapt and grow and build more things into them. Because this is the exact point where the nervous system gets cleaner and very clean signals about what is actually working and what is not working, and it's able to accurately identify them.

[00:05:37]And once enough solid repetitions start stacking on each other, this is where the magic happens. This is where skills stop feeling random, and they get built into you far faster than people are used to. Movements start feeling smoother. Hesitation and the feeling of fear just kind of disappears and capabilities and awesome skills and abilities that once felt so out of reach really become easy and automatic and you can move on to way more advanced and cooler stuff pretty easy. The time I really got to take these rules to the absolute max was when a friend of mine who created much of the technical terminology for tricks, which is many of the complex stunt skills, him and I were training to set a world record and pretty much all of the skills felt and looked completely impossible. I mean, I clung to these rules for dear life because I was genuinely afraid of getting sent to the ER and having to explain to the doctor how I broke my femur, but these rules made skills that felt so dangerous and so out of reach very possible and eventually easy. One skill that I was reportedly the first person to ever do was a literal Tony Hawk style 900° spin that has four kicks inside of it called a double hyper jackknife and that was just one among many 900 and 720° skills that we were stringing together back-to-back for the record. And I say all of this because your nervous system is absurdly capable at turning things that feel impossible into things that eventually just feel natural when you understand the rules behind how it actually works. And honestly, one of the things I most wanted to stop happening to people is having people walk away from something they could have actually become incredible at simply because the beginning felt awkward, frustrating, or painfully slow because none of us were taught how learning actually works. Most people never realize that the early stages of learning are supposed to feel clunky. That's not your nervous system being incapable. That is your nervous system in its first phase testing patterns, running experiments, and figuring out what's worth building before commits resources to making it fast and easy and awesome. And I find that because of this, people constantly overwhelm themselves.

[00:08:09]They try to do impossible jumps, chaotic practice, and they go off of vague advice from people who don't understand how signal and noise works. They start mistaking this completely normal phase for proof that they're just not talented or gifted or capable. And I find that most people lower what they believe that they can become and do. So, your nervous system is far more capable and adaptable than really we're ever taught. I have spent a career obsessing and watching skills that feel and look impossible routinely becoming just easy for people.

[00:08:46]And this is just what happens when your brain is repeatedly given signals it can actually build from. The fastest learners in the world are rarely the people who started with the most talent.

[00:09:00]They are the people who learn to work with how their nervous system actually builds skill instead of against it. And as neuroscience repeatedly shows, human limits are far less fixed than people think. The brain behaves almost the exact opposite of a fixed structure. And my mission is simple: give you these rules so you stop selling yourself short, and you build everything your nervous system is actually capable of.

[00:09:26]But if none of this was very interesting, I saved my best fact for last. There's a specific problem almost everyone runs into once they understand signal, and it's the reason people freeze, panic, their brains become less plastic, and they suddenly stop progressing right when things should be getting easier. And most people never realize this problem exists until it's already cost them months of effort. And it comes down to one major rule that hides behind most of learning. That's exactly what I break down in this video right here. It's all just some lovely science. I'll see you in the next one.