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What is the “success rate” of technique instruction in sport?
So often you hear cues like:
- “Run tall”
- “Hold your back elbow high” (in baseball)
- “Drive the knee”
- “Take a long penultimate step” (in jumping)
- And so on…
It is often assumed that instruction = improvement, but this is not always the case. Many times, the cues or instructions are simply inappropriate based on biomechanics and timing (such as “drive the knee” causing an athlete to over-drive, or mis-time their knee lift). The success rate of these types of cues is near 0% chance of helping an athlete, unless you get an “exaggerate the error” effect with it.
Regardless, in teaching skills, and especially “novel technical skills” (gymnastics, track field events, etc.) it’s expected to have some form of coaching or constraints present.
Even coaches who shun instruction are going to end up doing direct teaching in some way, shape or form.
In these cases, it’s been highlighted that “external cues” (cueing a response to something happening outside of the body) are superior to “internal cues” (cueing the limbs directly). Analogies are often even better.
From Wulff “Enhancing the Learning of Sport Skills Through External Focus Feedback”: Although “Internal” cues can offer some benefit to novices over time, they offer less benefit to advanced athletes
There are also some areas that need a greater level of “setup” in instruction than others. In more technical skills kids didn’t grow up doing naturally (i.e. pole vault, discus, gymnastics, etc.), more constraints generally need to be laid down to ensure a safe and effective pathway to success.
Handing poles out and saying “go” is probably not the best idea
All this to say, coaches spend a lot of time repeating the same instruction they received when they were playing, back to their athletes.
These instructions are often given without considering how much they are actually helping.
At the same time, very little time is spent observing athletes move and learn in absence of instruction.
When you watch an athlete in their natural motion, you see an adaptive human being. You see an athlete solving a movement problem to the best of their ability, with what they have available. What they have available includes pieces such as:
- Body structure, ribcage type,
- Internal/external torques layout (see below*)
- Elastic utilization
- Sport background and movement literacy
- Mental processing pattern
- Anxiety vs. Confidence
- General body control and “athletic” ability
- Proprioception/sensation
- Vision
- And more*
(*There are also constraints of the external environment that go beyond this, the running surface, the other players on the field, the motion of the play, where the ball is at, etc.)
Athletes are processing a lot when they are moving the way they are.
These methods by which they are processing internally, and from a sensory perspective can be termed “bottom up”, factors.
A “cue”, or instruction brings a conscious (top down) “extra’ problem to solve into a system already working through all of the above on a subconscious level.
In so many cases, movement issues are not found in the most “external and obvious” thing (like a young baseball player not holding their back elbow up, or a football player sprinting who is not lifting his knees like Carl Lewis). So often, the core of what an athlete needs to improve their movement skill and ability is multi-factorial, and influenced heavily by their strength, structure, movement literacy and mental processing. If there is a problem, simply bringing up factors in the internal environment can make substantial changes in addition to good cueing (external cues and analogies rooted in proper biomechanics, sensation and timing).
One of the most consistent ways the internal environment changes is athletes getting bigger and stronger through physical maturation.
Adding a good strength training program on top of can improve things even more.
Working things like proprioception in the feet, and elastic utilization… even more.
But, in tandem with those baseline abilities and strengths helping to improve movement, we can better understand the entire process via patient observation. Curiosity accelerates mastery, and it’s written into our biology. Taking time to be curious about how and why an athlete moves the way they do is critical to a mastery of coaching.
A cat is hardwired to survive through curiosity of its environment
There are many who can go through an entire coaching career, without getting just 1 hour, of observing how athletes are solving movement problems absent of coaching cues/forced adherence. Getting to know an athlete’s “problem solving” signature, an athletic history, muscle layouts, and total capabilities is an important step in that total process.
Part of observation is also noticing how elite performers found the technique they eventually landed on.
I really enjoy watching athletic basketball players jump, since they have learned the technique they have with no cueing or specific coaching.
Some of the “unique” takeoffs are particularly intriguing, seeing how athletes problem solve over time, in their own internal environment.
What if Connor Barth came up in a “coached” jumping and dunking environment? Would he still have this artistry (left arm wind)?
Watching team sport athletes run is also an important experience in observation. Watching someone like Barry Sanders, juke defenders left and right, with zero “change of direction” coaching, is a joy to watch.
How did Barry ever learn these moves without being specifically coached into all of them? (sarcasm)
I find it interesting how many coaches fight against “toe drag” in sprint acceleration. By observing elite athletes move, we can start to understand where toe drag emerged, over time. It doesn’t mean we can and should coach this into novice athletes (we shouldn’t), but learning it can help us understand sprint movement and mastery in general.
If you watch Usain Bolt’s movement tendencies, you can understand how the toe drag emerged in his starting strategy.
Ultimately, it serves us to spend more time reflecting on how and why athletes choose to solve both movement, and sport problems, the way they do before an immediate intervention, or giving out the same instruction we had ourselves as athletes.
About Joel Smith
Joel Smith is a track sports performance coach and educator. He is the founder of Just Fly Sports and hosts the Just Fly Performance podcast. Joel was formerly a strength coach at Cal and an assistant at the Diablo Valley Track and Field Club, along with coaching sprints, jumps, hurdles, javelin, and multi-events at NCAA DIII universities. A former NAIA All-American track athlete, Joel currently coaches high school track and local youth sports, along with privately training athletes and performance-minded individuals.
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