“I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand.”
— Confucius
Throughout my career, I’ve had the pleasure to work with literally every age and skill level. These experiences taught me that you MUST adapt your coaching to each athlete. However, while there are individual learning styles, there should be a basic system in place to keep continuity between coaches and simplicity for the athlete.
We like the “Show, Do, Feed” template system. This means you’ll show the athlete what to do, let them execute the drill, and then give them feedback. In our experience this base template helps support the coach to do their job, help minimize confusion, and work through the session with fluidity.
It also sets the athlete for success by eliminating typical coaching errors, like over cueing and talking incessantly. This helps both the athlete and coach eliminate frustrations and headaches through miscommunication and over thinking.
The Show
It’s important for the athlete’s to visualize what you’re asking them to do and to see themselves doing the movement via video feedback (we typically use the “Coaches Eye” application). The video feedback allows the athlete to see how it looks and relate it back to how it felt. By doing so, you’ll help the athlete build awareness of how the movement should look and feel.
I also prefer to have visual cues for the athletes so that they can relate back to it. For example, if we’re going over the acceleration phase of a sprint, I’ll point to a picture that has the angles I want them to mimic. In my experience, this helps eliminate the athlete from visualizing an incorrect movement.
Finally, you as the coach and/or personal trainer should be able to execute the drill properly. You don’t have to be perfect by any means but the athletes should be able to see you accomplish the drill in a manner that you see fit.
The Do
For the athlete to progressively learn the movement, they must “Do”, execute the movement. This allows the athlete to build awareness of the movement that will eventually prove useful for the coach and the athlete via autocorrection and useful feedback.
It’s all too common for coaches to talk too much about the science of thing and flood the athlete with feedback- fix ABC, EFG, HIJ, etc… As a coach or personal trainer, our intentions is to focus on building our client and athlete. However, if we don’t allow them to build awareness, via “DOing” the movement, this will diminish the athlete’s awareness = trickle down effect = feedback isn’t nearly as accurate = coaching isn’t as precise = frustration = lower performance. We talk more about this below.
“You Haven’t Taught Until They Have Learned”
– John Wooden
The Feed
The “Feed” is for feedback. After a few run throughs the coach/trainer should discuss with the athlete how the movement went and then develop feedback for them. Keep in mind, it’s important for the athlete to do a few run throughs on their own, withOUT any feedback. This will force the athlete to be aware throughout the movement and prevent them from over-relying on the coach’s feedback.
During this time, the choice of cues are very important. Overload them with too much information and you’ll confuse them. Typically young trainers and coaches will give long winded feedback about musculature, firing patterns, leverage angles, force production etc… while their intentions come from a positive place , it’ll just confuse this shit out of the athlete.
The simpler the cue the better, trust me it’ll make your job much easier! The cues you give should be focused on analogies or external cues and not necessarily internal cues.
“Wulf et al. (17) defined the hypothesis, stating that focusing on body movements (i.e. internal) increases consciousness and “constrains the motor system by interfering with automatic motor control process that would ‘normally’ regulate the movement,” and therefore by focusing on the movement outcome (i.e., external) allows the “motor system to more naturally self-organize, unconstrained by the interference caused by conscious control attempts.” (1)
Put in layman terms, internal cue tend to have the the athlete over think, external allows the athlete to just “do” and let their body take over, automation.
There’s positive research that show external cues to be more effective than intrinsic, however there will be outliers in each group. With that said, in my coaching experience I’ve found that the simpler the cue and the less the athlete “thinks”, the better they’ll do.
Quick examples of internal vs external cues
Intrinsic cues and over cuing, opens the door to a big check list like, am I squeezing my abs, push hard to full extension of my hips, push through the ankles, drive with the opposite leg, etc… you limit the body from doing what it needs to do. It’s also very easy to get frustrated when you’re trying to focus on so many things while executing a complicated fast movement.
To add to this, the athlete may not fully understand your terminology or movement, despite them saying they “understand”. This is why it’s usually easier to keep the cues simple and straight forward. Instead of “once you make contact, push with your quads, then extend through your hip, squeeze your glutes, while still staying loose in the upper body…. how about “push the track back hard”? Simple, straight forward, easy. 🙂
Conclusion
In short, our system of coaching is to keep it simple- Show, Do, Feed.
The coach will show the athletes what they want and what they do not want to see, the athletes do the movement a few times, then the coach will give feedback and have a straight forward cue for them. After a few times around the coach can add in another variable via video feedback of the athlete doing the movement.
I just barely brushed the surface on this topic. If you want to go more in-depth about this topic, check out “Attention and Motor Skill Learning”- Gabriele Wulf it’s an old book but a VERY solid read every strength and conditioning coach, personal trainer, and physical therapist should read.
That’s it for today. Coach smart!
Reference
(1)Winkelman, Nick “What We Say Matters”. NSCA. http://www.nsca.com/Education/Articles/Hot-Topic-What-We-Say-Matters-Part-I/