One Cue at a Time
Giving information to young athletes in “bite” sized pieces.
As coaches we are perfectionists, fixers and sometimes a little impatient. We often forget that we deal with athletes that have next to no experience in our sport, weight room, or just in the pure aspect of life.
I am 100% guilty of taking my own personal experience and assuming my athletes have the same understanding that I do, which is a failure on my end and a disservice to the athletes.
Talking, explaining, and demonstrating are always a part of a coach’s job and they do it well, yet sometimes we are not getting the full experience and knowledge to the athletes. For high school athletes, a simple explanation and demonstration of what you are wanting from them will typically get the job done.
With younger athletes, they will try their best after you explain something to them, but will still not understand nor remember every coaching cue you gave them. Younger athletes’ minds are still very malleable and they are great at learning. They just lack the capability to piece it all together.
We all had that light bulb moment when something new just clicked and it is now a learned skill that will be stored into our long-term memory. Working with a young athlete the other morning, we both had a light bulb moment. This moment was followed by the sixth grade athlete being able to front squat with excellent technique after only learning of the existence of the lift a few moments earlier.
The old saying “Rome wasn’t built in a day” brought a new meaning to my coaching of younger athletes. Perfect lifts aren’t going to happen from one teaching.
Coaching cues can’t be all at once, the kid’s attention span and nervousness of a new unfamiliar experience are going to override everything you just taught them. They aren’t purposely throwing everything you just say out the window and going rouge! They just simply can’t retain it all yet.
We ask the athletes all the time, “How do you eat an elephant?” Their answer is, “One bite at a time.” We are not promoting eating elephants, we are just trying to get them to realize that something big has to be handled in smaller bites.
As a coach with younger athletes we have to realize the same thing.
One rep at time.
One coaching cue at a time.
For example, the front squat, which is a prerequisite for many to the back squat. Teach the athlete simple hand placement and stance, allow them to attempt a rep. They will most likely not be able to perform the rep properly. Instead of giving all the coaching cues in the world to them ask them a simple question. “Did you feel the bar roll forward?” They will nod in agreement allowing them to acknowledge the error, then give them the cue to point your elbows to the wall, mirror, etc. and let them attempt the next rep with this.
They will typically remember the feeling of their first error, apply the cue you just gave them and have their elbow in the proper placement. From there you can build with them what you believe to be the next most important cue: not collapsing the knees, keeping the head neutral with the spine, spreading pressure equally throughout the foot, sitting down to desired depth, etc.
Coaching one cue at a time takes consistency and is a process with younger athletes. However slowing down actually improves their ability to retain cues and boosts their physical performance and confidence, snowballing their abilities for future training.
