2016-10-14

John Danaher on Student Information Overload

Information overload: When I first began coaching I was anxious to pass as much detailed information as possible to students when demonstrating moves; in the belief that the more details they had, the more perfect their performance of the move would be. I soon found the opposite effect took place. The students did not have the experience to know which details ought to be given priority and so tended to emphasize the least important details over the most important. … My job then, is not dumping information – IT IS ABBREVIATING AND PRIORITIZING INFORMATION. Once I feel it is absorbed in ways that a student can utilize it under stress, I can add more. As soon as I made this adjustment…

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h/t Torin Hill of TORIS

2016-07-05

Greg Ellifritz: Coaching the Struggling Shooter

Greg Ellifritz of Active Response Training:

I’ve known for a long time that the words we use when coaching a shooting student can affect how quickly that student grasps a certain concept.

One important concept I’ve used over the years is to express all of my coaching cues as positive statements. If you use negative statements, the brain doesn’t process them well and will often focus on the very habit you are trying to eliminate. An example of this is when a coach says “Don’t jerk the trigger.” The brain tends to focus on the last part of that statement (“jerk the trigger”) and negate the negative. The student is programmed to think about jerking the trigger and the problem gets worse…

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