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Scaling is a recurring concept in Liberation Martial Arts (LMA). Whether it's a game or a movement task, scaling is about increasing or decreasing the number of conditions or the load of each condition to maximize the practitioner's wayfinding. The objective of proper scaling is to avoid rescuing the practitioner from the learning process. It is not about seeing how far they can go before you intervene and give them the solution; it's about designing an environment for them to self-discover the solution. When they discover it themselves, the solution becomes their own truth rather than top-down information to be recalled. This also reduces the strain on the guide because you don't have to know everything. Your job isn't to know everything but to ensure training is safe, scaled, and guided. In this way, any peer can and should be a guide. You don't need to master all knowledge to lead LMA. (For the parents, there's lots of crossover between LMA and parenting.)
When you have the combination of a developing practitioner and an experienced practitioner, scaling allows for both parties to benefit and grow. If an experienced practitioner only spars with practitioners of equal skill, their growth can get stunted because they will rely on their most confident movements. By pairing with a partner with developing abilities, they can now explore their own developing movements. Likewise, by the more established practitioner scaling their abilities and affording the developing practitioner opportunities, the developing practitioner can develop their game sense and sense for their own abilities while being challenged to grow.
For experienced practitioners, developing practitioners can challenge their perception and expectations. Working with the same level can create ruts and automatic responses where you're on autopilot. Developing practitioners lack the automaticity and patterns that experienced practitioners can get too used to. For developing practitioners, experienced practitioners not only provide valuable experience but behaviors to model.
A great example of scaling is professional wrestler Kenny Omega wrestling nine-year-old Haruka. The most important thing in pro wrestling is to make the moves look devastating while protecting your partner. For Haruka, she could explore her movements while knowing Omega would protect her. It also gave her first-hand experience with one of the very best, giving her lots of behaviors to model. For Omega, he had to be absolutely perfect as a wrestler.
Learning to work with a nine-year-old means learning to work with any wrestler. For Haruka, she had to perform to the level where she gave Omega enough to work with but also deliver her own performance that elevated the match. Omega scaling to Haruka allowed him to look like a million bucks and for Haruka to look like a million bucks. Haruka delivering on the opportunities Omega afforded and the opportunities she gave herself made her look like a wrestling prodigy and Omega a wrestling god. A rare win-win.
How they both worked the wrestling basics like facial expressions and selling was the connective tissue for this match. Regardless of your level, you have to deliver on the basics.
A fruitful sparring experience is one where both practitioners are scaled and attuned to each other. Then, both walk away better for the experience because that's what matters, not the level of either practitioner but the experience they can produce together. Sparring isn't self-serving or about individuals, it's about the experience. How anyone gets better isn't through innate abilities but through accumulated experience. Leveling up is all about XP (stares in Webtoons).
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Understanding Scaling Through Pro Wrestling