(Lots of credit to coaches like Nick Winkelman, Frans Bosch, Dan Fichter, and Matt Gifford, whose influences have all made a profound impact on my coaching, as well as the construction of this article)
As a young coach, all I really cared about was “the workout program”. I dove far, far into the rabbit hole of periodization, sets and reps, strength training, plyometrics, and training cycles.
The years moved forward, and I started to gain a much greater appreciation for the fine points of technique in sprinting, jumping, and track events; things I cared little for in my early 20’s. I originally wanted to be strength coach, over a track coach, largely because all of the track coaches throwing out various cues during meets didn’t seem that appealing to me; that, and I also didn’t have much of an appreciation yet for the biomechanics of sport and the human body.
One of the trademarks of young coaches is thinking they know it all, or at least “know enough to be really good”, and if I could rewind time, one thing I wish I would have spent more time on in my early 20’s would be learning more about movement, and less hair splitting on various periodization models. It isn’t until we learn how one should move that we can build a true and total performance program.
Although these two areas were great for me as a coach, there is one huge field that I’m not working into, and it is the true distinguisher between a good coach, and a great coach. That field is:
Cueing and motor learning
In my next phase of coach development, I’ve started to really embrace thoughts, ideas and research in the field of motor learning, and how to properly cue and communicate with athletes to maximize their performance.
In the world of coaching and performance, just a subtle change in the course of a workout can have a strong trickle down effect as the season progresses, so it’s crucial to be up to speed in this area of athletics.
For this article, I’m going to share three coaching tactics that go far beyond sets and reps to magnify both your athlete’s performance, as well as their experience in training.
1. Let your strength and corrective program do much of your technical coaching for you
If you listened to our podcast, episode #8 with Dan Fichter, you probably heard Dan Mention that it takes a very experienced and intuitive coach to be able to give athletes direct cues that truly help them perform better.
Remember, that form is dictated by function. If an athlete has a poorly firing muscle pattern, or weakness, such as in the frontal plane (think peroneals, adductors/abductors, etc.), technique will suffer, and cueing to fix it will just be a conscious compensation on the part of the athlete, and little to no real improvement will occur, not to mention retention of that improvement.
I was a javelin thrower, amongst other things as a college athlete. One thing I very quickly found out with the javelin was that just “thinking of something” related to the throw wasn’t super helpful in making the javelin go really far.
What was helpful was doing drills related to the aspect of the throw I needed to improve between hard throws.
For example, if I needed to keep my rear arm straighter for a fraction of a second longer, then I would do 5-10 reps of a hip/hand separation drill before I took my next throw. Doing things this way would allow me to let my subconscious mind take more responsibility in self-organizing (letting the sub-conscious arrange the movement) the throw vs. trying to just think of “one thing” consciously. I’m actually surprised that so few coaches seem to work with athletes this way, because it works so well!
Chris Korfist has a great take on this in his approach to utilizing mini-hurdle drills in improving sprint technique. Using the mini-hurdles essentially does much of his coaching for him by allowing athletes to self organize the proper technique to run over the hurdles, which also just so happens to be the proper sprint technique. Just telling athletes to do something like “lift their knees more” usually results in conscious compensation, rather than the ultimate adaptation, which is the self-organizing ability of the subconscious.
Matt Gifford had a great point in the Just Fly Performance Podcast, Episode #2, where he referenced “always bringing things back to the warmup”. When you train proper positions in the warmup, then you can wire those positions into all systems of the athlete, and give them the background to be more easily cued later on in training. Matt uses his movement program to help cue his athletes, and you should as well.
USATF high jump chair, Dave Kerin wrote a great piece some time ago (with a rather prophetic piece regarding Stephen Curry), called “Fixing the Right Problem”. Amongst other nice points was this particular quote:
“Mastery is the key here. In the rush to performance and hoped for success, many coaches and athletes skip over mastery in the part / whole learning curve. Its human nature to be in a rush just as it‘shuman nature to spend minimal time on that which is perceived to be of lesser importance. This is flawed logic as the performance chain is only as strong as its weakest link.”
Coaches often find themselves in a place of cueing with no results, because, amongst other reasons, the baseline hasn’t been set, and the athlete has been rushed through the stages of function, dynamic play, and general progression to a fragile, overly-specialized model of performance. Make sure the “roots” of the athletic tree are in place so you can more easily instruct athletes toward the proper technique.
2. External cues beat internal cues
When I was 24, I finished a few months of staring at excel screens for hours on end, sorting out tens of thousands of cells of data in my master’s thesis, which was based on the kinetics of different types of depth jumps:
A control jump, with no external cues or goals, and then two different types of external, goal-based jumps: a hurdle jump and a target jump.
What I found, amongst other cool things, was that the simple act of putting a target or goal in a depth jump increased takeoff velocity by around 10%. Jumping over a hurdle actually produced an even greater vertical velocity than jumping to a vertec. Having a goal allows athletes to self-organize (do you see a pattern forming?).
External cues: Coaching cues related to the outside environment
Internal cues: Coaching cues related to an athlete’s body (do X with your leg/arm/whatever)
Examples of internal cues would be things like: “Lift your knees”, “Brace your core”, or “Drive through your hips”.
External cues would be saying things like: “Squish bugs with your feet (Chris Korfist)”, or “There is a roof over your head” (for agility).
I also believe that external cues can also be environmental constraints, such as trying to jump and touch a vertec, or doing mini-hurdle/wicket runs. When coaching high jump, it is rare where I practice without some sort of mini-cone arrangement that puts constraints on how athletes run the curve.
Follow the cones. Constraint based high jump practice.
(Speaking of high jump, my most hated internal cue is “arch your back”. Instead, athletes should learn well-functioning spine mechanics in a general format, such as gymnastic work, and then be put in situational constraints that improve their mechanics over the bar, such as two-bar setups, or jumps off of two legs)
Looking through a Frans Bosch slidedeck, I came across a motor learning study done on high level discus throwers, with two groups training over time in the following conditions:
- A coach giving them internal cues (place your hand this way, do this with your hips, etc. etc.)
- A group that simply threw with no coaching, and only knew how far they launched each throw and nothing more.
It turned out that the coached group slightly outperformed the measured/non-coached group in the short term, but in the retention test, the non-coached group threw significantly further than the throwers who were constantly being “coached up”.
In other words, the coaches’ cues were able to give the throwers temporary frontal cortex and working-memory oriented, biomechanical shortcuts to achieve the effect the coach wanted, but because the changes were mechanical, and not self-organized, they didn’t last long.
On the other hand, the group that only had the feedback of each throw distance was able to self-organize for true motor learning effects that “stuck” and allowed them to outperform their counterparts.
Nick Winkelman makes some great points to take this idea further, which he spoke about in this excellent podcast is that external cues allow for skills to be retained, as internal cues do not yield much retention after coaching sessions.
The reason why? Because internal cues never allow an athlete’s subconscious (see a pattern forming?) to self organize movement. Internal cues even can create excessive co-contractions of opposing muscle groups surrounding a joint, which is the physiological cause of the very mechanical action you often see when you cue an athlete; especially if it’s a cue that really fights against their current motor wiring.
A great book I read 4 years ago, Bounce, references an amazing story of Desmond Douglas, one of the fastest reacting table tennis players in the world, whose aggressive style of “stomach to the table” lightning play caused even the fastest Chinese players into a retreating mode. It turned out, however, that Douglas was extremely slow when it came to “raw” reaction testing in the lab with simple lights that Douglas had to touch in a “Whack-a-mole” format. What Douglas did have going for him, was that in his schoolboy days, his training ground was a claustrophobic classroom where the blackboards were only a few feet beyond the edge of the table, literally forcing a fast and reactive playing style.
Without this environmental constraint, Douglas may have never been the player he became.
I’ll share a short, but fun story here to finish this point. First off, I’m not very good at swimming (I’ve always been the I can breaststroke better than freestyle kind of guy)…. yet, I work with very high level swimmers. There was only one thing to be done in this instance, which was learn how to swim competitive strokes and turns.
(I was also told by coaches that I’m not allowed to write a book on swim dryland until I swim a 400IM long course. Right now, if I were to try, I’d need a handful of lifeguards waiting for me in the diving well area for the 100fly leg)
As a track guy with stiff ankles, and a propensity for quick turnovers and rhythms, it took a long while to adjust to the lowered frequency, not to mention position in the water and breathing of swimming.
My experience learning swimming has been both fun and challenging, and ultimately, insightful, not only with the things the athletes are encountering, but from a perspective of motor learning.
One of the biggest lessons I’ve found is that, when swimming, a big emphasis is the kick. My swim mentor, Mike Wong, would always tell me to really strengthen my kick (internal cue) during various parts of our workouts. It seemed to help a little, and I understood how it needed to be a better part of my stroke, but no real lights went off, and I would easily go back to my lazier style if un-prodded.
One day, however, things changed, and he challenged me to see how few strokes I could take to get to the other wall. I started at a pathetic 17, and worked my way down to 12-13 within a workout. Funny enough, my kicking power at “12 strokes to the wall” was light years above and beyond simply focusing on the kick in context of normal swimming. To say things another way, the internal cue (kicking harder) paled in comparison to the external cue (how many strokes to the wall) when it comes to not only my kick power, but my overall swim technique, and retention.
I’ll keep you all posted on that 400IM…
3. Don’t cue every single exercise/set/rep/attempt etc.
According to Nick Winkelman, coaches should only cue every second to third attempt or so. They should also use the extra time to focus on how they do choose to cue the athletes, and the narrative/story they use to actually instruct them, rather than being an instructional waterspout. This is a stark contrast to the way that many coaches operate.
From my time in the coaches box at the NCAA championship track meets, I was utterly blown away by how long so many coaches felt that they needed to talk with athletes after every single attempt.
You would think by that stage in the game, one simple cue or reference every few attempts would be sufficient! The problem is really, just a case of nerves on the part of the coach, combined with inexperience, and the thought that “the more I talk to my athlete about their event now, the better they will jump/throw/etc.” There is also the occasional pissing contest between coaches, as some use cueing an athlete from the coaching box as a chance to show all the other coaches in the area how many coaching DVD’s and seminars they have experienced in their lifetime.
When cueing athletes, it is truly important to create a story, or narrative, regarding what the coach is trying to communicate, and how it resonates with the athlete.
Creating a vivid story in the mind of the athlete, that is well understood by the athlete, is the key to good coaching, and yet another ideal that separates the good coach from the great coach.
In the book “Legacy”, the story of how the All-Black rugby team has been the most winning team, it is apparent that a narrative related to the Māori tribe is sewn into the team culture, giving them a rooted advantage on many competitors. One of my favorite narratives of the All-Blacks is “follow the spearhead”, a cry for selflessness, team unity and direction, with the underlying tones of battle.
If you mention “the spearhead” to most athletes, you can’t help but see their eyes perk up, and the group collective enhance itself instantly.
Follow the spearhead
One of my favorite narratives that I was able to use immediately to a quick .1 drop on my own 40 yard dash was Matt Gifford’s “picture yourself as an airplane taking off the runway”, describing the transition to upright running while sprinting. Putting a vivid picture in your mind allows a smooth execution of the skill you are trying to accomplish, rather than a mechanical one.
According to Nick Winkelman, coaches need to know what their athletes are into, their interests, and how their minds operate to find familiarity, and improved integration of the cue into an athlete’s ability to intake and express that cue.
Hypnosis experts would agree, as visualizations that have more personal meaning to clients are more powerful than general visualizations. For example, a sick person with a firefighting background could imagine the sickness in his body as a house on fire, and a rescue team spraying water to put out that fire. This imagery would be more effective to this individual vs. a general visualization track in this area.
Bottom line, cue less and spend more time thinking about how you will instruct an athlete when you choose to do so.
Conclusion
With all this in mind, please don’t be the coach that stands there, lets an athlete perform a skill, coaches/cues each attempt, and never creates a framework as to:
- What corrective movements and strength work an athlete might need to be functionally more capable of the correct form
- How to optimally create a story that resonates with the athlete regarding the skill you are teaching them
- How to change the athlete’s environment to allow the brain to self-organize the best course of movement for the given skill.
If you can get better at these cues, you’ll not only see higher jumps and faster sprints, as well as the obvious… better sport skills, but you’ll also be making the transition from an instructor…. to a coach.
Free Training Guides!
Sign up for the newsletter, get your FREE eBooks, and receive weekly updates on cutting edge training information that will help take your knowledge of athletic performance to a new level.