Over the last 75 years, skill-acquisition pedagogy in both music and sports has become rooted in linear-programming models based on Fitts’s Information Processing Theory (IPT) of the 1940s. IPT maintains that complex skills must be taught through the isolation and perfection of “fundamentals” using a three-stage process: the teacher presents the “correct” model, the student works to reproduce the model and is given feedback on how to “fix” deviations, and then the corrected skill is made automatic through repetition. When perfected skills become automatic, they are introduced into performance. When problems occur in performance, fundamentals are again isolated and reexamined.Emerging neuroscience research suggests that by-products of this kind of training - linear-programming, concepts of correctness, mechanical isolation, excessive focus on cognition, reduced individual awareness, and rote-repetition - are primary contributors to musicians’ playing-related-pain and injury.In the last 20+ years nonlinear approaches to skill acquisition have shown promise in both performance and long-term health outcomes in sports training through an alternative coaching model known as Ecological Dynamics (ED). This work is based, in part, on the work of Soviet neurophysiologist, Nikolai Bernstein, who observed that masters of complex skill gained expertise through dexterity, or the ability to adapt an action to the unique demands of each performance. Dexterity requires us to perceive individual affordances like stature, flexibility, and development, and to recognize how the changing circumstances of task and environment require us to vary our movement solutions to optimize both performance and health.This workshop will explore how non-linear skill acquisition strategies of ED can be applied to instrumental teaching, and how teachers can transition from fundamentals-focused approaches to ones that build dexterity and adaptability. Teachers will learn to replace step-by-step instruction/modeling with action-based experiments that allow students to discover individualized movement solutions. In place of correction, teachers can learn to use constraints to help students perceive restrictions resulting from energy leakage or breaks in the kinetic chain and recognize more effective alternatives.Participants will learn diagnostic tools by gaining insights into their own “action boundaries” for healthy performance, using constrained choice to assess affordances in individual students, and student-led teaching to discover missing affordances in a group setting. Non-linear teaching tools like equipment scaling, task-precision variants, and rate limiters, will benefit studio teachers, while classroom teachers can explore co-adaptive practice strategies, the use of multi-directional constraints, and sliding-scale rules for learners who are progressing at varied rates.