Coaching and Learning Styles
During my high school years, ‘learning styles’ were in vogue in virtually every learning community. I took tests to see whether I was an Audio, Visual, or Kinesthetic learner. “NLP” and “PUA” gurus suggested building ‘verbal rapport’ for ‘conversational hypnosis’ by matching your language to others’ coded styles. As a strength coach, I see coaches, national certifying bodies, certificate courses, and sports psychologists encouraging me to coach to my athletes’ preferred styles.
The idea is simple: People’s brains are wired differently, and they learn better when presented with information the way they prefer. Learn how their brain works, teach them in their natural style, and they’ll learn faster. If they’re struggling to learn, it’s because you as a coach or teacher are failing to present it their way.
Learning Styles Coaching joins the ranks of the Stereotype Threat and Power Posing as ideas that intuitively make sense but, when you scratch the surface, don’t pan out.
Scratching the Surface — Categorizing Cues
When I was coaching my peers at the Naval Academy, I was interested in learning styles, tried to apply it, and ran into immediate problems.
The first was how to categorize learning styles and cues. Even at the surface level, there wasn’t clear agreement among the experts. Visual, Auditory, and Kinesthetic (VAK) was the most popular, but others included Auditory-Digital, Tactile/Kinesthetic (VAK-T), and “The Thinker.”
At a practical level, these weren’t just abstractions.
If I raise my hand for a lifter to reach and touch it with a bar, is that a visual cue (see it, reach for it) or a tactile one (establish touch contact, feeling resistance)?
What’s the difference between putting my hand up as a target (tactile, but also visual) and physically nudging a limb into position (also touch)?
What about spoken-word cues (auditory-digital) compared to a clap or shout to cue a specific moment in time (auditory)?
What about attitudinal cues: “Get mean with it!” “Don’t break Rule #1”?
One of my Coaching Academy coaches separated cues involving touching the lifter from those that draw the lifter’s attention to an internal feeling. To the lifter, both are about physical, visceral sensations. A similar distinction arises between demonstrations when compared to visualizations. Do I make a different category for each one?
As a busy college kid, I gave up on it when my head started spinning, but those who do this professionally have their own answers. One of the first proponents of Learning Styles — Professor Barbara Prashnig — identifies 49 different elements in her Learning Styles Analysis that can all be tailored to improve learning. VAK(T) methods are just one layer (sensory) out of seven on her pyramid of preferences.
Coffield et. al (2004) identified 30 different dichotomies in the literature, and sports psychologists are investigating the difference between internal and external cueing styles with some promising results.
Considering the vast array of options, why should we expect a simple, surface approach — “See style coach style” — would capture the range of human experience?
But Wait — There’s More!
Assuming we have the right set of styles to work with, we then have to identify a lifter’s learning style. Do you give them a ‘learning styles test’ and hope it applies to their sport? Do you give nothing but verbal cues for a week and see who responds best? How do you separate ‘responding better’ from each athlete’s moment-by-moment attention and skill at motor learning? Do I ask the lifter what their preferred learning style is?
Most methods offering to teach VAK learning offer solutions. Although the founders of Neuro-linguistic Programming (NLP) moved away from the idea of ‘preferred representational systems,’ some advocates still invite you to listen to word phrasing to find what ‘type’ they are. For example, if someone says “I hear what you’re saying,” — they’re more auditory. If they say “I see what you mean,” they’re more visual.
The CrossFit Kids handbook provides constellations of signs that help single out learning styles. Kinesthetic learners are fidgety, huggy, and exploratory. Visual learners prefer color and like to look directly at a speaker. Auditory learners are big talkers and ask lots of questions.
Unfortunately, there’s little evidence that these behaviors correlate to a meaningful learning preference. There’s even less evidence that these behaviors represent fixed traits instead of responses to the immediate environment or that they routinely change over a lifespan.
And assuming we solve that problem and correctly identify someone’s preferred learning style, should that change my behavior as a coach? Do I pigeonhole the lifter into receiving cues no other way? Do I sort people into small groups by learning style? What about form faults that respond better to some cues than others?
And even if people have a preferred learning style, we can correctly spot it, and develop a meaningful strategy to coach to it, does coaching to that style actually get them the best results? In a Letter to the Editor for Computers and Education (2017), Paul Kirschner systematically breaks down the idea of teaching by learning style, but the biggest ‘aha’ moment for me was this:
…Those learners who said that they preferred a particular way of learning typically did not learn better or actually even performed worse when it was used.
And there are possible risks. By drawing attention to learning styles, I could cause my lifter to overthink the input they’re receiving. They may devalue some cues and approaches because I’ve clearly identified those methods as less effective for them. Essentially, I could nocebo the process of learning.
Is It All Bull?
So let’s get this straight.
We can’t be sure how many learning styles there are and which ones matter.
We can’t be sure how to figure out a learner’s preferred style.
We can’t coach effectively within a single learning style.
We can’t be sure that preferences indicate the best way to learn.
And we might screw things up by trying to apply learning styles by shifting attention away from things that matter to irrelevant details.
So why don’t we throw out the idea altogether?
Although the ‘hard claim’ may be false, there are still lessons we can learn from the old learning styles approach:
- Inspiration: Imagine and experiment with an array of cues from different styles for each idea you’re trying to convey. Use the exercise to get you out of a coaching rut and force yourself to find new, creative solutions.
- Attention: Learning styles is a ‘meta-approach,’ getting the coach to take a step back and evaluate their own coaching methods. Taking this step back outside of ourselves is the best way to continue learning when methods get wrapped in inertia and stuck-ness.
- Break Dependency: Verbal cues are great until you get a lifter who is hard of hearing or has aphasia and doesn’t process speech well. Tactile cues are fantastic until you decide to coach online. Develop a range of cues that work in various environments to keep your options open.
- Look for Obstacles: There may not be ‘magic bullet’ preferences, but there can certainly be obstacles to learning. Go back to Dr Prashnig’s Learning Styles Analysis pyramid above: are environmental concerns like low lighting or low temperatures making a usually-successful cue flop? If a learner doesn’t understand what you’ve written, could they be dyslexic? Is it written simply enough for the 20–45% of American adults who are only functionally literate?
- Do it All: One style might not be supreme for each person, but more may be better than less. Dr. Richard Mayer calls this multimedia learning- layering multiple ‘sensory channels’ closely together and repeated over time to improve learning speed and retention. Cue it verbally while you move them. Talk through the lift while you show a video demo. Craft a multi-sensory visualization- including the sights, sounds, feelings, and even smells and tastes- of a lifter’s game day performance.
