NICK WINKELMAN Coaching Science—Teory into Practice
I’m Nick Winkelman, the Director o raining Systems and Education or Athletes Perormance. I also oversee all o the speed development or our NFL combine development program. oday, we’re looking at the concept o coaching science—theory into practice. We can also label this a ‘skills acquisition presentation.’ We’re going to be looking at a ramework or coaching that allows us to optimize the environment and the delivery o inormation, thus allowing our athletes to retain and learn at a higher rate that ideally transers to the field o play. Even i you work with the general population, many o the principles here, in terms o how to instruct people to move and give them eedback on their movement, are going to be very important to their success even i it’s just in the weight room. When we look at the whole ramework or coaching, we have to take a look at motor control and learning. Motor control and learning really create the oundation or practice and the development o an environment that optimizes learning. I we understand how someone controls movement, we have a better understanding o how someone learns to move. I we understand how someone learns to move, we can optimize those pieces within our practice design, our instruction and our eedback. Tese are our three major objectives or today’s presentation. •
Understanding how to design environmentt for optimal learning environmen
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How to prime the system with proper instruction
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How to rene the motor system with proper feedback
I we can do these three things extremely well, we’re going to place our athletes and our clients in the best position to learn.
I we basically take the example o cloning an athlete by 10, creating the exact same program each o those cloned athletes are going to go through, but ask 10 different coaches to deliver that programming, arguably, even though the program and the athlete is unified, you’re still going to see 10 different results. We understand that while ‘Xs’ and ‘Os’ are extremely important, the biomechanics, physiology and inormation we learn over and over again in college and throughout our careers are extremely important. Te limiting actor ofentimes is the delivery o that inormation. oday, we really want to explore why certain things we do work unbelievably well, both in practice and the transer to play, but also why some things we do probably don’t work as well. Tis is especially i they practice well, but or some reason they don’t seem to transer that to the field. All o that alls into coaching science. Again, we go back and look at those motor control contr ol and learning books, because they give us the oundation or the applied inormation we’re going to discuss today. I we look at the ramework or coaching, at the bottom, or base o it, we want to discuss practice design. At a very universal level, independent o what you say to your athlete or client, you can design a specific environment that optimizes learning. Frankly, i we understand that inormation, we can immediately start having an impact, not only on how an athlete practices, but also how that inormation is retained and, more importantly, transerred to the field. While practice is important, it’s all about that transer. From there, we want to start looking at instruction. How do we actually teach an athlete to move? What are those initial words we give to a novice, an intermediate or a highly expert athlete? How can we optimize it just rom that first exposure?
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Finally, once an athlete or client moves, how can we give appropriate eedback to refine that motor system? Are there certain bits o inormation that are going to help them, and also certain bits o inormation that can hinder them? We want to know the inormation that’s going to optimize learning and immediately start retracting any statements that could be negative to that learning. We’ll start by looking at practice design and optimizing the learning environment. When we look at practice design, the first thing we want to attain is our goal. Our goal is to optimize learning and retention in an effort to reach maximum transer to the sporting environment. O course, we want our athlete to practice well. It’s all about how that practice transers to the environment. One thing we have to understand immediately is that just because someone is practicing well does not mean the inormation they’re learning is going to transer to the environment o sport or play. oday we’re going to look at why that happens and how we actually optimize practice to get transer. Within that, we have two specific terms in which we’re very interested—practice variability and the concept o contextual intererence. When we look at practice variability, we want to define it as the variety o movement and context characteristics a person experiences while practicing a skill. In looking at this, our goal initially is to create context. We want the athlete or client to understand why they’re doing what they’re doing to empower them essentially to make those changes by themselves. Tis way, when they make an error, they can look back at it and tell you what they did wrong. On the next repetition, we don’t even need to give them inormation. Tey understand how to make the fix. Tis is what we call context. Te higher the level o context our athletes have, the better it tells me how expert they are. When we introduce practice variability, essentially we’re giving them a diversity o different
contexts or a diversity o different movements within the same session. Within that, we have this concept o contextual intererence. Te goal is to give the athlete or client context, meaning they’re empowered; they understand how to do the movement, how to correct it, understand when they’re doing it right or understand it when they’re doing it wrong. Contextual intererence essentially is how I can design a session to interere with that. Te definition is the memory and perormance disruption that results rom perorming multiple skills or variations within the context o a practice. You’re probably thinking., ‘Why would we want to interere with context? Why would we want to interere with our athletes’ understanding o what they’re doing right or what they’re doing wrong?’ Essentially, i I have you do the same movement over and over again within the same session, it almost becomes automatic. You know the predictability o the pattern because you’re doing it over and over again. Your ocus—what we call your intrinsic ocus—on that movement isn’t as high. When your intrinsic ocus on the movement isn’t as high, you tend not to learn as well. I I interere with that by giving you more movements, more variations and even randomizing the order o different movements, your cognitive system undergoes greater overload. Just like the body, when we overload a certain area o the system, that system will adapt by learning and being able to deal with these higher intererence actors. Tink o sport. Sport is constantly exposing the athlete to a variety o movement or variety o stimuli. Tis is essentially the world. Our practice then needs to do the same thing in a very systematic order. Contextual intererence tries to mimic the demands o the sport environment successully in practice. I you think this does work, there’s a concept o the contextual intererence effect. Tis was essentially ound in 1979. It was defined as the learning benefit rom perorming multiple skills in a high contextual intererence practice schedule or what they call random, rather than perorming skills
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in a low contextual intererence practice schedule— what they call blocked. In one case, blocked means you do the same movement over and over again. It’s very predictable and your body basically can go into auto-pilot, whereas random means you’re doing a variety o movements against a variety o stimuli that starts to max the demands o the sport even more. You can’t get complacent. You can’t predict or anticipate what’s going to happen next. Your body constantly has to be prepared to react. It ends up being a higher load. o bring this to lie, think about a time when you’ve driven home. You’ve driven home thousands o times on the same road. I’m sure there have been times where you didn’t even realize how you got home. You’ve covered that 20 or 30 minutes, but in your mind, you’ve been going through what you did that day, what you’re going to do tonight and what you’re going to do tomorrow because your body has the auto-pilot, this autonomy. Essentially, this same thing can happen in practice when it’s a blocked practice. Your body just knows what’s going to happen. Tus, you do it over and over again. Te learning effect isn’t as high. Tis is why i we interere with contextual intererence through a random-type practice, it has been shown to drive up learning effects in transer skills and actually transerring to the sport. We look at this contextual intererence in practice. What we know is that high contextual intererence conditions match every negative effect on current perormance within a practice setting compared with low contextual intererence. Now, you’re thinking, ‘ Nick, why am I going to want to have my athletes practice in an environment where they’re not going to have as much success?’ Because it’s not predictable and because they can’t anticipate the next movement, everything is randomized. Tey’re going to undergo greater cognitive load. Anytime you’re learning a new skill, one that’s more demanding. Anytime we affect that skill
with multiple stimuli, it’s more demanding. While practice is more demanding and they may have more errors in which to accommodate, there is also greater cognitive engagement. When there is greater cognitive engagement with the practice, we see better retention. I we look at retention and learning, or essentially how they’re actually going to do on Sunday when they play the ootball game, high contextual intererence conditions can result in significantly higher retention and learning ollowing a series o practice sessions. Imagine a baseball practice when you take 100 astballs, 100 change-ups and 100 curves. Tere’s another person who gets those same 300 pitches, but they’re now completely randomized. When we wait three weeks and test them again in a normal sport or environment, which is inherently random, the person who did the random practice is going to be more prepared to handle the diversity o pitches they see, whereas the person who sees the astball is inherently going to expect a astball next. When they see the curve ball, they’re not prepared or it. Tey haven’t dealt with that random environment. Cognitively, they have not retained the ability to truly hit a astball, a curve ball and a change-up as they see it because that’s not the environment in which they learned the skill. While practice may be affected, learning and retention are optimized. Tis is essentially what we’re trying to do. Can what we’re teaching in practice actually transer to the field? I we look at this applied, you’ll see three different terms in literature use—block practice, serial practice or random practice. Tese are the three different ways you can increase contextual intererence within a practice. Blocks can be defined as multiple movements trained within a week and single movements trained in a blocked order within a day. Tis means on day one, you may only work on one movement. Te next day you work on a new movement. Te next day you work on another new movement, but in each day, you only ocus on one thing. It’s like
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doing those 100 curve balls or those 100 astballs all in one blocked session. Let’s look at the definition o serial. It’s going to be multiple movements training a pre-determined series within a session. We’re not randomized, because we’re doing movements in a very specific order, but we’re going to complete all o those movements beore moving to the next. Now instead o doing our astballs, curve balls and change-ups on different days, we’ll do 25 astballs, 25 curve balls and 25 change-ups all within the same day. Tere is greater variation, but still highly predictable. When we look at a random-type practice, it’s going to be multiple movements trained or sequenced in a randomized order within a session. In this session are the same 75 pitches, but they’re now going to be in a randomized order. Let’s look a step deeper at an actual movement skill or skills acquisition example. I I’m doing block, that means day one I may only do acceleration. On day two, I only do deceleration. On day three, I work on something like the drop step. Let’s look at serial now within one day. On day one, the first part o the session we may work on acceleration. Te second part will be deceleration. Te third part will be the drop step. We’re working on the same three movement patterns, but within one single day. Te random is the same one-day practice. Te first drill might involve acceleration to deceleration. Te second drill set might be deceleration to a drop step. Te third might be acceleration to deceleration to a drop step, all the while varying the different stimuli that are initiating those patterns. As we move rom block to serial to random, we’re increasing the amount o contextual intererence within the system. Now we look at this in terms o skill complexity and the skill o the athlete or client. Not everyone is going to be equal. Some people need to start with block. Some people need to start with random. It’s going to be how we combine block, serial and
random practice to progress an individual at the astest level to allow the person to retain inormation or movement at the highest level. I someone has a low skill level, meaning the person is a novice and the movement is low complexity, the skill level o the athlete is the limiting actor. Tereore, you’re going to want to start with a low contextual intererence environment and move to more o a high contextual intererence. You’ll start on the block-type practice moving into serial and random. How ast you move rom block to random is essentially the speed at which you see the athlete learning. I’m not going to give you strict guidelines in terms o how long you spend in each one o these. In block practice, you give them context. Now they have the innate capacity to interact with stimuli o the environment and the movement and decide i they’re doing it right or wrong. Tey can now make the changes intrinsically on their own. Once they have high context, we can interere with it. We can then give them more serial and random-type practices because they’re going to have the intrinsic ability to fix or correct themselves— what we call discovery learning—in addition to the instruction and eedback you’re giving them. Let’s look at a second example. Someone has high skill abilities or maybe has more autonomy, but is also now learning a high complex movement. We’re going to want to still do the same thing. In this case because the movement is novel, it’s highly complex. Even though the person has high abilities, we still want to start with a block practice with a new skill. Once the individual has learned that new skill, we can quickly move into more random. Tus, we have low to high contextual intererence. I the athlete has a low skill level and high complexity movement, we have to start with block practice. More than likely because the complexity o the movement is so high and the skill level o the athlete is so low, you might have to spend a bit more time in that block practice. However, you still
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Tis is the transcript o Nick Winkelman’s Coaching Science—Teory into Practice audio lecture. I you’ve received this material, do not own the audio lecture and would like to learn about it, visit www.movementlectures.com. For more rom Nick, visit him at facebook.com/nwinkelman.
eventually want to move on to higher abilities, but initially you might spend more time in block. I it’s a high skill level athlete and a low complexity movement, you can probably go right into randomtype practice. You don’t even need to do block-type work because the person already has high ability and the demand o the skill is very, very low. Tese examples display what we call the ‘challenge point hypothesis.’ Tis means you can’t just live in one camp or the other, only block or only random. It’s basically a diversity o the progression. I we think about blocked to serial to random increasing contextual intererence, children need to start with block practice whereas adults can better handle random-type practice. As a progression, we move rom block to random. I it’s a low skill level individual versus a high skill level individual, typically we want to start with block, move toward more random and then finally high skilled complexity versus low skilled complexity. With high skilled complexity, start with block moving toward more random. All o these are specific research studies that all under the challenge point hypothesis. Progress rom block to random, but as a rule o thumb, higher levels o random practice will result in better retention and learning. Tis is the reason we want to move people toward a more random environment successully afer they can handle blocked. So ar we’ve really just been discussing black and white—blocked or random, blocked or random. However, some o the modern research on this is saying that a progression might be better. I you look in the literature specifically or the terms ‘contextual intererence,’ these are the two terms people are going to use when they talk about practice. Tere are well over 1,000 published research studies. Most o those just look at block practice versus random. Te vast majority o them will tell you that random practice is always going to result in better transer and learning. However in 2010, Jared Porter looked at block versus random versus someone who progresses
rom one to the next. Te name o the study was Moderately Skilled Learners Benefit by Practicing with Systematic Increases in Contextual Interference. It had 45 participants practice three different basketball passing strategies under blocked, random or progressive practice schedules. Passing accuracy was based on a target and how close they got to the target based on the three different passing skills. What they ound was very simple. A progressive increase in contextual intererence rom a block to a random schedule improved retention o passing skills better than i they just did the random or the block alone. A random practice is better than blocked. I we look at a progressive schedule rom block to more random, we create the context with block practice, teach them the skill and teach them how to correct themselves. Ten interering with that with more random-type practice is better than starting with one or the other by itsel. Tis goes hand-in-hand with the challenge-point hypothesis. Te speed at which we progress rom block to random is highly dependent on the age, the ability and the complexity o the skill, innately allowing you to progress as their skills improve, getting eventually to random practice because that’s going to be the key to truly lock in this inormation rom a retention and transer standpoint. Te major take-homes here are to move rom block to random and get people to random practice successully and saely. Tis is what’s going to transer to the field o play. Some urther considerations when looking at practice that we have to actor in is what we call ‘regulatory’ and ‘non-regulatory’ conditions. Independent o blocked, serial or random practice, we want to then look at the environment in which the person is practicing. Regulatory conditions are actors that can affect motor skill characteristics—things like what surace you play on, how many opponents there are and the sport rules. All o these affect the type o movements. Now, we manipulate these all the time. I I’m playing soccer, maybe I make the field a bit smaller.
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Maybe I adjust the rules now and we only get one touch on the ball versus two. All o these are what they call ‘manipulation o regulatory conditions’ that inherently changes how athletes move to bias a specific skill they’re trying to learn. Whether it’s block or random, you can still optimize or change these regulatory conditions to bias out a specific movement. From there, we can look at ‘non-regulatory conditions.’ Tese are actors that indirectly affect motor skills. Tese can be things like the crowd, the game score and the game ports. I someone is shooting a ree throw in basketball, the athlete may in practice be able to do this with 95% accuracy. However, the second atheltes get into the game, especially i it’s playoffs, maybe that accuracy goes down to 75%. Even though that has no direct correlation to how they move, it’s still rom a cognitive perspective that limits them. How can we affect these non-regulatory conditions? Is it having loud music or having loud noises that sound like a crowd? You see this all the time, especially in ootball environments where they’ll blast very loud crowd-type noise. Can you have two individuals race against each other or track down a ball to then create an environment o sprinting? Tat essentially shouldn’t affect how they move, but because it increases the importance, as winning is on the line, it creates a non-regulatory demand on the body. When we look at this, we can finalize this as a considerable level o variation within the regulatory or non-regulatory conditions. Simply try to match those environments. Especially as you get closer to very important demanding games, you want to make sure the practice o regulatory and nonregulatory conditions, in addition to blocked versus random practice, is going to match what we need them to do. Some final examples would be as ollows. Closed skills are those that do not involve random or reactionary-type conditions. Sprinting would be an example. Tey’re always going to run the same
100 meters. Tey’re always going to do it in the same ashion on relatively similar tracks and in relatively similar environments. It’s a closed predictable skill. We want to vary the regulatory and non-regulatory conditions in practice based on the actual variation seen during the sport. I there’s not a lot o variation, you don’t need to vary in practice. Open skills, on the other hand, are your reaction, random, non-predictable environments. Tese are typically team or field sports. Te nature o open skills calls or variation in both regulatory and non-regulatory conditions used systematically throughout practice. Tereore, you want to vary the things that affect movement and things that indirectly affect movement, especially as a game’s importance increases. Tere are different environmental things we want to think about—block to more random, regulatory and non-regulatory conditions and creating an environment or learning. Again i you’re interested in this, you want to look up the terms ‘contextual intererence’ or ‘practice design’ in the literature. Tat alls under motor learning and motor control categories in terms o science. Here’s a big-ticket item. Increased contextual intererence is associated with a short-term perormance decrement in practice that results in significant improvements in learning retention. When we talk about decreased perormance in practice, we’re not talking about increasing movement dysunction. Rather the speed at which they move might be limited since they’re having to process more inormation because it’s more o a random environment. Tis means the more they’re exposed to that, the better they can handle it and the aster those movements will become. Te perormance decrement is still going to allow higher retention when it comes to actual sporting environments. Tat’s where this can be misleading and why it’s important or us to understand practice design and transer. Once we understand how to create an environment or learning—and I think that last
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section is very important or any kind o sport, coaches and perormance coaches who do field work—we now want to look at the second level, what we call ‘task instruction,’ or priming the motor system. For the personal trainers, those who maybe just work in the gym and are teaching movement, this starts to become increasingly important or the general population client, priming the motor system with proper task instruction. I we look at an instruction model, we basically can instruct in one o two ways—either using verbal inormation or visual inormation. Under verbal inormation, we can either give it an internal ocus or an external ocus. We’ll go into this deeper, but an internal ocus is essentially talking about body parts—talking about muscles, talking about the process o the movement. Everything between the head and the heel within the body is where you draw their attention or their ocus. Tis is why we call it internal. External ocus is less o a process o the movement, but more about the outcome. Now, all o these cues are going to have to do with everything environmentally around the body. Internal ocus during acceleration may be something like extending your knee, firing a quad or squeezing your glute. External ocus may be pushing the ground away or driving your body off o the line. One is inside o the body and one is outside o the body; hence, internal versus external ocus. As we’ll discuss, the difference between these is unbelievably massive. With visual, on the other hand, we can watch one o two models. We can watch a novice model, someone learning the movement or the first time, or we can watch an expert model. Inherently, we all try to teach in terms o an expert model. We want to show them the perect way o doing things. However, there may actually be some benefit or showing them rom a novice perspective, having them to be able to observe a novice and learn rom that. We’re going to look at both the visual and verbal model.
Let’s start by looking at verbal instruction. You want to provide one to two ocus cues to build awareness. Within this, you want to limit unnecessary inormation to avoid over-coaching. Te more inormation we give them, the more o their attentional capacity we take. Te more o their attentional capacity we take, the less attention they have to actually ocus on the movement they’re doing. A perect example is this. Have you ever had someone do a movement and then while they’re doing the movement, you say, ‘Great job. Keep that up.’ All o a sudden, they mess up. Te reason is because all o a sudden they’ve diverted their attention rom what they were doing to you now exposing their movement as having a dysunction. In all reality, their movement was fine. It’s your intererence with what they were doing or their attentional ocus that drove the movement down to go haywire. Tus, we want to avoid over-coaching both in the instruction as well as the eedback we’ll discuss here in a bit. We want to always start and finish instruction with what we want versus what we don’t want. A good riend o mine, Victor Hall, calls this, ‘the sippy cup principle.’ Tis is a great conversation he and I had. Now having my own daughter, I completely understand this. Victor gave the example o his son. Every time his son was finished with his sippy cup, he would throw it. He said, ‘Don’t throw the sippy cup.’ Instead o throwing it, his son would dump it out. He said, ‘Don’t dump your sippy cup.’ When his son was done, he would start banging it on the table. Every time Victor told his son what he didn’t want, his son chose something else to do. He finally realized this and said, ‘When you’re done drinking, I want you to put the sippy cup on the counter.’ He didn’t give him 1,000 different options o what he could do. He gave his son one option o what he wanted him to do correctly. Tis is no different than with our athletes. I we tell them not to do something or we identiy an error, there are 1,000 other things they can do. Essentially,
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Tis is the transcript o Nick Winkelman’s Coaching Science—Teory into Practice audio lecture. I you’ve received this material, do not own the audio lecture and would like to learn about it, visit www.movementlectures.com. For more rom Nick, visit him at facebook.com/nwinkelman.
we’re not ocusing their attention. We want to tell them what we want them to do correctly. Give them one option—one ocus point. It decreases their attentional demand, allowing the ocus and move to be successul. Tus, we have the ‘sippy cup principle.’ ell them what you want. ry to diminish the ocus on what you don’t want. Finally, you want to ocus their attention externally on the outcomes as opposed to internally on the process o the movements. Going back to verbal, we can either give them an internal cue or an external cue. Dr. Gabriel Wol ’s work has shown that ocusing someone externally absolutely improves perormance and efficiency as opposed to ocusing someone internally, which decreases perormance and decreases efficiency. When we look at both, external ocus improves transer and retention whereas internal ocus diminishes it. Tis is probably the most important concept or both instruction and eedback. When we cue, we want to cue with an external ocus and diminish any kind o internal cueing that drives up an internal ocus. Internal cueing is inside the system and external cueing is outside the system. Dr. Wol has a book entitled Attention and Motor Learning. Looking at attention and motor learning is essentially what we’re doing here. Every time we give inormation, we’re affecting the attention o the athlete. I we ocus the attention externally, it takes up less demand. I it takes up less attentional demand, it allows more attentional resources toward the movement. Tis is what we want. We want the cognitive load intrinsically rom the athlete to ocus on what they’re doing—not to ocus on what we’re saying. What we find is that internal cues draw too much o the attentional demand away rom the actual movement, thereby decreasing the optimal ability o the athlete or client to move. Let’s take, or example, a RDL. An internal cue would essentially be to drive your heel away rom
the top o your head. Tat cueing is keeping the ocus within the body. An external cue would be to drive the bottom o your shoe at the ence behind you. Now or all o you who use analogies and metaphors when you’re teaching people to move, that is spot on. Analogies and metaphors all into the external cueing ocus because they don’t involve internal ocus. Analogies and metaphors—or direct external cues—all into this category. I we’re teaching someone to do some type o plyometric, an internal cue might be to drive your hips through your head. It essentially keeps all o the energy inside their body, not allowing the coordination to release or finish the whole movement versus trying to touch the ceiling above you. I you’re using a Vertex, try to touch the highest rung. External cueing in this case is going to improve efficiency. One o the studies Gabriel Wol did was with jumping. In one case, she told them to try to get their fingers as high as possible. In another case, she simply told them to try to reach or the highest rung. Just by saying the word ‘fingers’ versus ‘reach or the highest rung,’ think about the difference there. It’s miniscule. One is outside o the body and one is inside the body. What they ound was staggering. Statistically, the people who just simply tried to touch the highest rung jumped significantly higher than those who ocused on the height o their fingers or getting the fingers as high as they could. Tey also ound that people who ocused on trying to touch the highest rung not only jumped higher, but they did it with lower EMG. In the people who ocused on their fingers, the EMG o the lower body went up. Tis means their muscle activation went up, but their jump height went down. o increase muscle activation, should this actually increase jump height? Yes and no. I that activation results in more co-contraction, or decreased timing and efficiency, it could be a constraint on the system.
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Tis is the transcript o Nick Winkelman’s Coaching Science—Teory into Practice audio lecture. I you’ve received this material, do not own the audio lecture and would like to learn about it, visit www.movementlectures.com. For more rom Nick, visit him at facebook.com/nwinkelman.
Tis is actually what happened. Te decreased EMG showed improved efficiency and less cocontraction, allowing the body to complete the coordination better and more effectively, thereby increasing efficiency and less energy and also increasing perormance. When they looked at a couple o retention tests, the people who ocused externally still jumped higher. When you look at this inormation, it’s staggering. What you say affects perormance. Jump height affects efficiency, timing and synchronization, as well as affects transer to the actual sporting environment. External cueing to instruction is what high random or contextual intererence is to practice design. Tis optimizes the environment within practice, but also to transer. Tis is unbelievably important. Dr. Gabriel Wol’s book, Attention and Motor Skill Learning, is the resource you’re going to want to look at to find out more. I verbal is hal the equation, visual is the other hal. Ten, we’re going to look at how they go together. I we watch an expert perormer, we understand there’s this concept o mirrored neurons. In our brain, we have the ability to mirror things we see outward. Tink o a baby boy or girl. I have a young daughter who is now six months old. When she was two to three months old, she started to smile, but she only smiled when I smiled at her. Eventually, she learned that smiling meant happiness. Now when Mommy or Daddy see her, she smiles on her own. Her mirrored neurons gave her time to create an understanding and context o what smiling meant. Now, she’s able to own the movement. Our athletes are no different. Our mirrored neurons still have the capacity to do this. When you watch an expert perormer, you can mirror what they’re doing. However, we also want to look at the benefit o watching a novice perormer because it improves problem solving and discovery. Imagine now that you started by watching an expert perormer, seeing exactly what they need to do right. Now, you draw all o your athletes’
attention to each other, meaning you do a waterall start. Every athlete chooses acceleration and does a 10-yard sprint. Now, you’ve seen how to do it right. Let’s say you’ve watched your nine other ellow athletes who are learning just like you, but who are not doing it perectly. Tat allows you to fill in the gaps o what the expert did right and what the novice did wrong, already driving your attention to what you should be ocusing. Tis is all happening subconsciously. Tus, it improves problem solving and discovery learning. In act, a combination o expert and novice could be the best way to use visual instruction. Don’t just assume it always has to be the person doing it right. Within this, it doesn’t mean you have to call attention to what the novice is doing wrong. Just by a novice watching another novice do a movement afer seeing what an expert did right, they automatically can pick up what is done wrong and ocus their attention on how to fix those things in themselves. Tereore, combining both creates context to know what the novice is doing wrong and drives learning. Tis is a great model. Have the athletes watch you or an expert do it perectly. Have them do three or our practice repetitions. Ten maybe on every third or ourth repetition, do a waterall start. Draw their attention to each other so they can learn. It’s no different than them doing visualization. Tey can learn rom watching others move, thereby eventually increasing their learning and retention. Tese are the big-ticket items. Combining visual and verbal instruction may be more beneficial than either independently, especially when teaching a novice or learning a novel task. Visual creates an image and verbal, utilizing an external ocus, can drive the outcome o that image. Tink about this. Visual creates the image in the mind and verbal drives the outcome o what that image represents. Giving them outcome externally oriented eedback takes up less attentional demand allowing them to intrinsically ocus on the movement at hand and allowing the cue to drive the outcome o the movement.
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Tis is the transcript o Nick Winkelman’s Coaching Science—Teory into Practice audio lecture. I you’ve received this material, do not own the audio lecture and would like to learn about it, visit www.movementlectures.com. For more rom Nick, visit him at facebook.com/nwinkelman.
We see theoretically that this is the reason why external cueing and the use o visual together improves not only their perormance in practic,e but also the retention and transer o the movement.
Knowledge o perormance is inormation about the movement characteristics that led to the outcome. Tese are more qualitative. Tis is where we’re actually cueing them on movement qualities.
Finally, i instruction is priming the motor system, we now want to look at eedback refining the motor system. Within this refinement, we’re still utilizing verbal inormation. Tereore, the internal versus external cue is going to all hand-in-hand with this eedback model we want to discuss. A model o eedback is going to ollow like this. Again, there are two different categories—task-intrinsic eedback and augmented eedback.
In looking at this, we typically give a lot more inormation on knowledge o perormance versus knowledge o results. Frankly, as athlete improve ability and hve the context on how to correct themselves, we tend to give them more knowledge o results—how ast they ran, i their cadence was okay and i they met the quantitative goal o what they were doing.
We look at task-intrinsic eedback as being very simple. It’s essentially the natural eedback that comes rom doing a movement. It can be visual, auditory, tactile or proprioceptively connected. Tink about people in archery. I they pull back and shoot, they can use visual eedback to understand exactly where they hit on the target. You don’t need to tell them they missed the bull’s eye. Look at auditory versus tactile versus proprioceptive. I we’re doing any type o balance work, the proprioceptive system is giving spatial awareness. I don’t need to tell the person they ell over. Just by allowing someone to do more balance tasks improves balance because it has high taskintrinsic eedback. Certain things rom a sprinting perspective— how much extension they have or how much knee drive—might not inherently increase awareness. Tereore, we need to tell them those things. Maybe the time they ran the 10-yard or 20-yard sprint and don’t inherently know that, they’re going to need that inormation. Tat’s essentially where augmented eedback comes in. Augmented eedback alls into one o two results—knowledge o results or knowledge o perormance. I we look at augmented eedback, knowledge o results is essentially defined as inormation about the outcome o a skill or the goals achieved. It’s quantitative in nature. It’s the numbers—how ast you run.
In the example o running a 40, knowledge o results would be that you ran the 40 in 4.56 seconds. Knowledge o perormance would be driving the knees during the first five yards. I you want to be highly external, draw a black dot on the end o the knee and say, ‘Drive that black dot more during the first five yards’ to drive in even more external ocus. Te big-ticket items here are very simple. Te higher the task-intrinsic eedback, the less need or augmented eedback. Te lower the task-intrinsic eedback, the greater the need or augmented eedback. Tereore, we do not want to talk just to talk. I a movement inherently gives the inormation to the athletes on what needs to be fixed, we don’t need to tell them. I we continue to give error, error and error to the athletes, they’re going to take that as a negative. o drive up sel-efficacy, we essentially want to hand over the keys to the car. As much o the environment they can sel-regulate, we want to give them that ability. At the end o the day, the coach is on the sideline. Te coach is in the box when the athletes are playing on the field. We want to give them the environment to transer. We don’t want to have a high coaching environment and a minimal-to-no-coaching environment. Allow task intrinsic eedback to do what it does or the athlete. However, i it has low task-intrinsic eedback as this section ocuses, that’s where augmented eedback is very important. Next the question becomes, ‘How much eedback?’ We tend to see this especially in new
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Tis is the transcript o Nick Winkelman’s Coaching Science—Teory into Practice audio lecture. I you’ve received this material, do not own the audio lecture and would like to learn about it, visit www.movementlectures.com. For more rom Nick, visit him at facebook.com/nwinkelman.
coaches, thinking more is always better. Tey coach every single repetition. Tey’re talking the entire time because they value themselves as coaches in terms o what they’re saying. I’m going to challenge this thought process. We should not value ourselves in terms o what we’re saying and how it sounds, but rather how the environment we create transers to the sporting environment. At the end o the day, that is what our athletes are paying us to do. Tey want to see transer. Tey want to be better at their sports. Te concept o ‘a guidance hypothesis,’ which was really first hallmarked by Salmoni in 1984, tells us that eedback guides the athlete and client toward the correct movement or toward the correct context. Tat’s very important—we need eedback and instruction. However, when given too requently, it can have detrimental effects on the movement skill and create eedback dependence. Imagine this. I athletes are having problems, rather than depending on themselves, rather than depending on their own eedback or their own long-term memory, they ocus on you as the coach. Teir dependence on you is so high that the second you remove that constant orm o eedback, they are essentially paralyzed. Tey can’t do the movement. Tese are ofentimes the athletes who practice unbelievably well and are used to having high coaching dependence. However, the second the coach is removed and play starts in an actual sport environment, they can’t transer. It makes sense. Tey are depending on you as the resource. You are almost an external hard drive or them. Te second you unplug an external hard drive rom the computer or the athlete, they no longer can access that inormation. Now, we want to look at how much eedback is appropriate. Let’s actually look at a study rom Dr. Gabriel Wol. Tis study is going to reinorce the difference between internal and external ocus, as well as how much inormation should be given. Tis study was done in 2002. It is one o the most powerul studies ever done on instruction and eedback. Te concept was enhancing the learning
o sport skills through an external ocus eedback. You know why that’s important. We know that external is going to be better than internal, so here’s what the study looked like. Fifytwo participants took part in a passing accuracy task. Tis was a kicking-type passing accuracy task. Feedback requency and internal versus external ocus was examined. Tey had our different groups. Tey had one group that received 100% eedback and there was an internal cue. Te second group received 100% eedback and there was an external cue. Te third group received 33% eedback with an internal cue. Finally, the ourth group received 33% with an external cue. As a whole, both in practice as well as a couple o days later in retention, an external ocus was superior to internal ocus. Perormance, accuracy and all o the variables improved not only in practice, but in retention as well. Tat’s what’s so important about this. Te athletes are going to eel better because they’re practicing better, whether it’s blocked or random. Even more importantly, they’re going to retain that inormation. Tere’s actual learning going on. Te interesting act is that 33% eedback was superior to 100% eedback or all internal ocus conditions. Tis makes sense. I internal ocus messes up athletes, it’s believed that giving them less o that eedback is better. Tat’s what this study shows. Tis is right in line with the guidance hypothesis that 33% eedback is better than 100% when giving internal ocus. Tis means you give them inormation every third repetition. In studies that have looked at internal and external, sometimes they actually ound controlled groups did better than internal ocusers. Tis means i you didn’t give the athletes any inormation at all, they’re going to do better than i you drive them to internally ocus on their own bodies. In looking at this 33% eedback, less is more i it’s non-externally based.
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Tis is the transcript o Nick Winkelman’s Coaching Science—Teory into Practice audio lecture. I you’ve received this material, do not own the audio lecture and would like to learn about it, visit www.movementlectures.com. For more rom Nick, visit him at facebook.com/nwinkelman.
Now, here’s the interesting act. In terms o the external ocus, 33% and 100% eedback were equally as effective. I it’s you’re working with novice athletes or they’re learning a novel task, you might want to communicate with them a bit more. Tat’s fine as long as the eedback is externally oriented. As a whole, I think we can agree that less eedback is better than more. Tat 33% to 50% eedback amount is what you see in the literature. And external is better than internal. At the end o the day, we’re trying to hand the keys to the car over to the athlete. We do not want to interere with the learning. We don’t want to plug in and unplug. Ten all o a sudden, there’s a power outage and they can’t do the movement effectively. Tis is why. Ofentimes, the heightened practice capabilities with lower play transer capabilities could be coming rom coaches not creating the right environment, instruction and eedback models to allow or learning. Tere are huge dangers in giving too much eedback. It’s what I like to call the coach dependence, the DVD player analogy. We chuck the DVD in. Tat’s practice—high coach volume. Tey’re watching that DVD. Te second we pull the DVD out and now they’re playing, that system no longer ceases to be able to play the inormation. Tey have high coach dependence. Less dependence on intrinsic processing means there’s less cognitive overload. I I’m constantly listening to a coach, the coach is giving me the answer versus me being able to implicitly or intrinsically figure out that answer or discover the answer by mysel. I I turn the lights off in a room and tell you where to go, it’s easy. However i I turn the lights off in a room and you have to figure out where the light switch is, you will orever know where the light switch is located. Tis same analogy is with coach-athlete relationships. o the best o their abilities, we want to empower them to find the answer or themselves. Discovery learning is less coach dependant. Practice well, but when eedback is removed, attentional
learning is not expressed on the field. Tink about this. Forever we’ve done a ton o block practice and we’ve given them a ton o inormation. Tis allows them to inherently practice unbelievably well. Tey become very skilled. However, the second you remove that eedback and you now take them rom a blocked environment to a random environment, which is sport, we wonder why they can’t play well. It’s because we’re creating a alse, artificial environment. We want to create an environment that most matches the demand, especially when we’re talking about field work and skills acquisition. Finally, the big one is over-coaching—paralysis by analysis. Sometimes a lot o eedback works. However, the risk is coach-dependence. Also, a lot o times too much eedback doesn’t work and we get immediate eedback rom the athlete—paralysis by analysis. You give a great, long speech and all o a sudden the athlete looks at you and says, ‘What do you want me to do, coach?’ We all have elt this. I don’t meant to just tell you what you need to do, but to reinorce probably what you’re already doing well. I want to give you a bit o the science behind what you’re doing, why it’s working and maybe why some o the things you used to do or some o the things you’re still doing today aren’t working so well. In the end, there’s this concept o terminal eedback methods. Tere are actually certain types o eedback that help to decrease the amount o eedback you give and allow you to optimize the quality o that eedback. Te first one is called ‘bandwidth eedback.’ It’s called terminal, because it’s given afer the movement, or series o movements is completed. Bandwidth eedback is given whenever it reaches a limit. Tink about it. You write the session. You’re going to do these movements in this order and you structure the whole thing. However, how ofen do you structure and plan your coaching? Tis is where you are now going to be able to tap into not only designing a session, but also how you
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Tis is the transcript o Nick Winkelman’s Coaching Science—Teory into Practice audio lecture. I you’ve received this material, do not own the audio lecture and would like to learn about it, visit www.movementlectures.com. For more rom Nick, visit him at facebook.com/nwinkelman.
are going to interact with that session. Bandwidth eedback is a way to do that. We now know or every movement you’re going to be going through, especially the high-level skill application-type thesis, you’re going to give yoursel very specific ocus points. Tis could mean in terms o i they do one error wrong, you’re going to give them a cue. Maybe there are our different things they typically do wrong. However, you know that one o those is the major thing they need to work on. So your bandwidth eedback might be on that one specific area. You’re only going to give them inormation when they’re doing that piece wrong. Tis allows you to set objectives or the session. It also allows you to interact with those objectives so you’re coaching and cueing to meet the objectives o what you’re trying to do on a given day. It also naturally decreases the volume, because when they’re doing it right, you don’t need to talk to them. You allow them to intrinsically drive what they’re doing. Ten, there’s what they call ‘summary or average eedback.’ Feedback is given afer a number o trials have been observed and average errors have been identified. It is very important that we understand this inherent idea o movement variability. With every single repetition, there are going to be differences. You will never run two repetitions exactly alike. What we need to figure out is ‘What is general movement variability?’ Is it an error that just happened to be exposed on that repetition versus a consistent movement dysunction? oo ofen, we try to coach every repetition, which means we never truly get to see what an actual consistent error looks like. We just see general movement variability. As people are learning, they’re going to be doing all sorts o things wrong. It doesn’t mean they have movement dysunction. It means they are learning. Again, we allow them to go through three to five repetitions. We give eedback maybe 33% or 50% o the time. We actually can get a summary
or an average understanding o how they move, and then give more ocused eedback on an error that’s actually reoccurring. It’s a better ocus o inormation, but less volume o inormation given. ‘Fading eedback’ goes with our block-torandom contextual intererence flow, meaning that eedback is given more requently at the beginning o a session and is progressively decreased over the course o that session—again, external eedback being the ocus. Finally, the one I really want you to think about trying, even with non-athletes, is ‘sel-selective eedback.’ Feedback is given to the athletes at their requests. ry this with both new athletes, as well as highly experienced athletes. Tis is going to give you an understanding o how they like to communicate or how they like to communicate at the stage o learning they’re in. Most o the research done in this avenue was done on non-athletes—the general population. Tink quickly: When do you think they ask or eedback? Was it when they did it right, when they weren’t sure or when they did it wrong? Tink about novice athletes or the inexperienced general population. You have the answer in your mind now. In the majority o the research, they ound that when you’re learning a new skill or you’re a novice or a general population person, you actually ask or eedback when you did it right. Tis matches with everything they’re saying. Te reason they asked or inormation when they did it right is because they’re trying to create context. I they did it right, they could capture and retain that, thereore better regulate how they move going orward. Now let’s consider an advanced athlete—and I’ve pooled the athletes I work with—when would you want eedback? Tink about what you would say or advanced individuals. Tey don’t want eedback when they’re doing it right. Tey don’t want eedback when they’re doing it wrong. Tink o a great athlete. Tey know when they’ve done it right. Tey have enough positive ego and confidence to
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Tis is the transcript o Nick Winkelman’s Coaching Science—Teory into Practice audio lecture. I you’ve received this material, do not own the audio lecture and would like to learn about it, visit www.movementlectures.com. For more rom Nick, visit him at facebook.com/nwinkelman.
say, ‘Hey. I hit that one on the head.’ Tey definitely know when they did it wrong. No great athlete likes a coach to hammer them on something they already know.
dysunction and what are simply symptoms o that. It’s no different than i I have pain at my knee, which is a symptom, but the cause may actually be coming rom my hip or my ankle.
Te athlete typically wants to know when it’s ambiguous—when they’re not quite sure. ‘Coach, that wasn’t bad, but it didn’t quite eel right.’ Tat’s when they typically want eedback.
Tese principles go rom isolated ocus all the way down to high-speed running. Within this is descriptive versus prescriptive inormation. Prescriptive is better or the beginner. We want to tell them exactly what we want them to do right to fix the problem. Putting it in a positive connotation brings us back to the sippy cup principle.
ry sel-selective eedback. It’s really going to tell you a lot about how the athlete or client wants to gain inormation. It inherently decreases the volume o inormation and it increases sel-efficacy. It empowers the athlete. It says, ‘I trust you. I’m going to hand you some ownership today.’ Especially as they get more and more automony, try to sel-select the eedback. All o these methods ocus you—less volume and a higher quality o inormation. When you look at the final ‘identiying the eedback’ content, this is where the ‘Xs’ and ‘Os’ become very important. You have to understand how the movements biomechanically and physiologically are supposed to be perormed so we can ocus our attention. We want to understand the major technical components o the movement and understand that multiple errors will ofentimes be seen, especially when we’re looking at running, linear and multidirectional movement. We then want to prioritize the multiple errors—on which ones we want to ocus. It’s no different than the Functional Movement Screen. I’m not going to try to fix all seven movements. I’m going to prioritize and fix the top one or two. It’s the same thing when it comes to movement real time on the field. We want to prioritize the multiple errors we see and give them top priority. We want to direct our eedback at the true weakest link—cause versus symptom. Tis means i I see five things going wrong, our o them are probably symptoms, but one o them is actually a cause. Te better we understand our movement on the field, the better we can understand the causes o movement
Descriptive means I can just tell the athletes what they did wrong. I they have high levels o autonomy and I tell them what they did wrong, high-level autonomist athletes can handle that because they know how to fix it. Tey don’t need you to tell them how to fix it. However, as most o us work with the novice, beginners or intermediate, we want to be prescriptive. ell them exactly what you want them to do right on the next run. Focus on that. Even i what they’re doing is wrong, is it that bad? ell them they’re doing it right to reinorce that pattern— cause over symptom. Positive, positive, positive. ake a look at Attention and Motor Skill Learning to urther understand eedback messaging. Again, the book is by Dr. Gabriel Wol. Tis is a must-have, easy-to-read resource. Dr. Gabriel Wol developed the concept o internal and external cueing when she was wind surfing. She has since done all o the research and stemmed all o the research on the concept. Reading her book is like reading a book on gravity by Isaac Newton. Tere’s a direct correlation there—an unbelievable science developed by an unbelievable woman. Many motor learning and control studies are on non-athletes. Tey do not actor in movement quality or the kinematic standpoint. Tis means I want to see that they learn and retain the inormation, but I also want to see the kinematic or movement quality inormation. Tus, more research needs to be done. Tat’s why more coaches have to get into motor
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Tis is the transcript o Nick Winkelman’s Coaching Science—Teory into Practice audio lecture. I you’ve received this material, do not own the audio lecture and would like to learn about it, visit www.movementlectures.com. For more rom Nick, visit him at facebook.com/nwinkelman.
learning and control. We need to not only look at how our athletes learn, but how they retain optimal movement patterns, meaning place it on yoursel. Don’t just be proud o practice, but look at how practice and training actually transer to the field. You have to move aster, but then does that actually results in more stolen bases? Te athletes are more powerul, but can they actually drive the ball urther and more accurately when they’re on the gol course? Look or transer. ake home a message here: Coaching is the science o creating an environment or optimal learning. We want to do this by understanding that perormance and learning are limited by attentional capacity and its constraint on coaching. Tis means the more we coach incorrectly, the more we take their attention away rom what they’re doing. Te more they become dependent on us, the less their ability to intrinsically learn. Manage attention by managing your coaching. Modiying practice instructions and eedbacks can diminish conscious thought and create a causative load that optimizes learning. Again, take our ramework. Practice, instruction and eedback create an optimal environment to optimize the cognitive load to make sure they’re guided, but can discover the right answer implicitly. Finally, understand that while the ‘Xs’ and ‘Os’ are important, the ‘Xs’ and ‘Os’ are limited by the delivery. eam, this is truly the equal sign. Tank you very much.
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Tis is the transcript o Nick Winkelman’s Coaching Science—Teory into Practice audio lecture. I you’ve received this material, do not own the audio lecture and would like to learn about it, visit www.movementlectures.com. For more rom Nick, visit him at facebook.com/nwinkelman.
