In this episode Shaun and Matt discuss the 3 most important tools they use when coaching clients for the best results and the ones they teach their coaches to use when going through their programs.
As a coach it's frustrating to have all of the knowledge about movement and exercise but without a good system of delivery you will never get good results for your clients.
01:51 So when we sort of planned this episode out we thought why don't we give one for explaining moment, or having a system around teaching someone something, and for different styles of learning. Then we look at the doing it sort of thing, and how to make people better through doing certain stuff. And then the third one we get into how to then correct it or make corrections along that line. So that's sort of where we're heading with this.
03:29 Yeah totally. And I like this topic as well because I think that any coaches, or potential coaches listening to this can think about the systems that are behind it. But even for clients as well, and athletes, they can be like, "Oh man coaches actually have systems for seeing things, and doing things. It's not just like watch someone doing something and hope for the best."
06:56 There's so many skills to go through as well. I think there's a whole bunch of them we go through in our mentorship program, probably in the vicinity of 10 or 12, and that's just the tip of the iceberg. But there's definitely three sort of big ones we identified. So let's start off with the first one. We call it, "Demonstrate, explain, practice." Or, "Demonstrate, explain, perform."
09:36 So what I mean is there's a lot of power in the silence. So if you're the one coach up at the front, and you've got 30 athletes in your class, they're all going to listen to you really intently while you do this thing, and you have to crush that demo. It has to be the best snatch you've ever done, the best muscle up you've ever done, the best push up you've ever done.
12:25 Yeah, that's a good point. Where I see it go wrong the most is when ... Let's say they made the effort to do the demonstration at the start of the snatch, but they've given the entire explanation of every single point of performance, of every single position that's under the sun to be able to complete that movement correctly.
17:00 The explanation would be like you said, just a one liner. So if you're really good with it, like you said, 10 words or less. That's also only going to take you 30 seconds. So you've basically done the first half within a minute, and then you might spend four or five minutes doing the practice stuff. Because we know that's where most people learn the most, by doing things.
20:29 So deliberate practice first of all, is a way of getting people to learn a particular task, whether it's shooting a basketball, playing golf, learning a snatch, or learning a squat, it's setting a clear stretch goal. So for this movement, as in the snatch, we've demonstrated what the clear stretch goal is. If you've done a really good demonstration, then the person knows what the intent is, and how it should look, and how explosive, and how aggressive, and all that type of stuff. There's all these subliminal things that you're giving off with a really good demonstration, and setting a clear stretch goal for that person to emulate.
35:38 Yeah, so we talk about a start, a transition, and a finish to give everyone context of the full thing. So what you've just said there is rather than looking at the whole movement we're just choosing a singular lens the look at. So when this person does their first set of 10 reps, we've set them some sort of a clear stretch goal, and some sort of feedback mechanism, and then we're giving them the 10 reps to do.
Rather than watch the whole 10 reps, the whole thing, and give feedback on the whole thing, we've just chosen as coaches to look at just the start position. So you can pretty much just look at them start, as soon as they start moving the bar off the floor, you can just close your eyes, and you've already got your feedback.
42:24 Well it's up to you as a coach to then use reps as your friend with that type of thing. So set aside, 5, 10, 15, 20, or three sets of five, or whatever the amount of reps are. But also it allows you to go back to ... You can have a lesson plan, and one of the things I did on my level two if anyone wants to go do that Crossfit level two, I highly recommend it, is you write down three points of performance for the start, three points of performance for the transition, and then for the end. And then all of those points of performance you write down one or two things that can go wrong in that. And you've just got ... what's that, five coaching cues now…
46:57 So I personally think, there's a clear difference between people who are pursuing coaching as a career, or to make ends meet. So what we wanted to do was make it so that people can't just come in and on their resume it's like, "I made the regionals in 2014. I can snatch 225. This is my Fran time, and this is what I can do." Because I'm sure that person is going to move pretty well, and they're going to be able to do all the stuff. But are they personable, can they have a conversation with someone, do they actually care about that person?
