As a coach, seeing technical flaws in real time and having the ability to give quick and effective feedback for your athletes is a challenging skill to master. Just like training, there is a progressive process you can take yourself through to steadily improve. In my 19+ year career, this is the process that worked best for me.
Slow down to go fast
Find the fire
Create light bulbs
SLOW DOWN TO GO FAST
I was fortunate enough to have the privilege of playing college baseball. The biggest adjustment as I progressed in the sport from middle school to high school to college was the speed of the game. At each level everything seemed like a blur at the beginning, but as I got more experience it all started to slow down. Coaching is very similar. Not only when you first start, but as you encounter each new movement that needs to be coached. Early on I would watch an athlete complete a snatch and in my head I was thinking, ‘Uh, looks good to me.’ while outwardly I would say something like, “It’s getting better, keep working hard and you’ll get there.” Get where? Initially, I didn’t know the answer to that so I put some things in place for myself to fix that.
Education: One at a time, I began to educate myself through videos, articles, conferences and discussion with other coaches about the key points of each movement to find the correct, most efficient technique. This allowed me to know what I was looking for in the first place.
Video: I started to video the live lifts and movements of my athletes and after class I would look through them in slow motion and frame by frame. This allowed me see what errors were occurring. As I began to pick things out more quickly, I was able to look at the video after their lift and give them feedback within the training session.
Slow, pause and segmented: With a lot of the barbell lifts I began to program tempo, pause and segmented portions of the full movement so I could focus on one specific thing at a time.
Pop quiz: While the lift was being videoed, I would watch the live lift and think about what I saw. I would then look at the video to confirm or correct my thoughts.
This became a looped cycle. Educate, video, break it down, pop quiz, repeat. Over and over again.
FIND THE FIRE
As I begin to improve my ability to identify flaws and give corrections live it was now time to start finding the reason(s) why the flaws were occurring. The same common error in a lift can be caused by multiple different things. Here is an example using the common error of the barbell swinging out in a snatch
Possible causes: how they set up to the barbell before beginning the lift, hips rising early, weight shifting into the toes, early pull, early launch or lack of pull.
I realized simply trying to coach to the error itself is coaching the smoke. Finding and coaching to the cause of the error is coaching the fire. This not only allowed me to more effectively give cues, but also provide drills and auxiliary movements to improve the lift. I used the same things mentioned earlier to consistently get better at this. Educate, video, break it down, pop quiz, repeat.
“As a coach, if your athlete is doing a movement inefficiently or incorrectly it’s your fault. ”
CREATE LIGHT BULBS
I found myself using the same cues over and over again and when it didn’t work I would get frustrated. I started to understand that athletes react differently to what is said and how it is said. The same cue can create a light bulb for one person and have another just smiling and nodding in the dark. I thought about how many different ways I could say the same thing. Finish your pull, keep your elbows above the bar, elbow someone behind you…these are all trying to accomplish the same correction but paint a different mental picture.
Here are the best ways I have found to increase your inventory:
Take class at your gym: listen to how the other coaches explain movements and give corrections
Talk shop: talk training with coaches and athletes to learn different ways people like to be communicated with
Watch videos and tutorials: listen to how they describe the movements and drills
Learn new movements: find a coach to teach you something new and listen to how they communicate and think about what resonated with you and what didn’t and why
Just keep showing up. I have said this to a lot of athletes. If you consistently show up, you will get better. This is true, but you can also accelerate your progress by having a plan that you mentally and physically execute at a high level.
Coaching is no different. Keep coaching classes and you will get better, but having a specific plan will exponentially increase your ability to help each and every athlete you have the privilege to work with.
Coach harder smarter.