Youth-Athlete's Sport Blog

Recapping the coaching process

To maximize your coaching effectiveness and reach the different learning styles follow this process:

1. Tell the players what they are going to learn and the motivation for learning it – target audience: auditory and sequential learners
2. Have a coach or player demonstrate the activity and ask the players to break it down step by step – target audience: visual and sequential learners
3. Let the players perform the activity with constructive coaching fine tuning – target audience: auditory, visual, and kinesthetic learners
4. Recap the activity with why it is important and what are the steps in the process – target audience: all learning styles

Many times coaches implement steps 2 and 3 above, but skip step 1 and fail to follow up with step 4. More...

Sequential Learners
The sequential learning style is not as well recognized as the auditory, visual, or kinesthetic learning style, but many very talented athletes are sequential learners. Sequential learners ask the "why?" question. Sequential learners tend to gain understanding in linear steps, with each step following logically from the previous one and tend to follow logical stepwise paths in finding solutions. Sequential learners may not fully understand the activity but they can nevertheless do it since the pieces they have absorbed are logically connected.  More...

Kinesthetic (Tactile) Learners
The last of the well documented learning styles is kinesthetic learners, who learn by doing. The definition of kinesthetic is a sense mediated by receptors located in muscles, tendons, and joints and stimulated by bodily movements and tensions. Kinesthetic learners tend to retain and understand information best by doing the activity – mimicking the action, or showing it to others. They like to think out issues, ideas and problems while exercising.  More...

Visual Learners
The majority of individuals are visual processors that learn by seeing. These learners need to see the teacher's body language and facial expression to fully understand the content of a lesson. They tend to prefer standing in the front of the team to avoid visual obstructions. They may think in pictures and learn best from visual displays.  More...

Auditory Learners
Auditory processors learn by hearing. They like to read, write, and tell stories and are exceptional at memorizing names, places, dates and trivia. Auditory learners interpret the underlying meanings of speech through listening to tone of voice, pitch, speed and other nuances. They find it easy to express themselves and like playing on the meaning or sound of words, such as in tongue twisters, rhymes, and limericks.  More...

Introduction
Have you ever run out of breath trying to get a team to change their ways? You are exasperated by the player's inability to grasp what you are trying to accomplish and you are at the point where you feel they are purposely defying you. Nine times out of ten, the reality is: they do not understand what is different between what you are asking and what they are doing.

Individuals have different learning styles. That is, most people favor some particular method of interacting with, taking in, and processing information. A learning style is the method of learning particular to an individual that is presumed to allow that individual to learn best. More...