Enhancing Pedagogy Part 2: Coaching Cues

Efficacy of Cues.

It is possible to learn a skill in the short term and be unable to perform the same skill at a later date. So, in order to maximise the learning process, we have to maximise retention so they can be drawn upon and used in a variety of situations.

Previously we wrote about the types of cues you, as coaches, can use with your athletes. Internal cues focus on the body, while external cues focus the athlete’s attention on the movement and outcomes of a skill. But is one type of cue better than another in terms of skill acquisition and retention?

A substantial quantity of peer-reviewed research appears to back external cues in terms of motor learning and retention. Jumping and balance training has been studied in excess focusing on the direct comparison of learning and retaining those skills. Externally focused cues tend to yield far greater outcomes than internal cues… but why?

Some research suggests that if the athlete is focused on the movement, what it looks like and how it feels, then the athlete’s body can naturally self-organise. Focusing the athlete’s attention on one and a few areas of the body may actually interfere with the athletes’ normal automatic control processes. However, this is not to say that all internal cueing is bad, and it should be banished from coaching practice. It has its place like most things but the trick is choosing when its use is appropriate.

External Cues: The 3 Ds.

Finally, external cues are further categorised into 3 groups, distance, direction and description.

Distance: This type of external cue is associated with the distance of the cue. A common one we use with athletes is during jumping where we ask athletes to ‘Put your head through the ceiling’. This provides an aim for the athlete to try and achieve (obviously we do this in rooms with high ceilings, we do not want concussions!). But this is an example of ‘far’ distance, distance cues can also be used to focus the athlete’s attention to things close by. An example here could be keeping tension on a band during various shoulder conditioning exercises.

Direction: This type gives the athlete a directional focus, this could be the direction of themselves during jumping or bounding, or that of an implement such as a medicine ball. Again, researchers seem to enjoy their subcategories, directional cueing is further divided into 2 groups, away and towards, and both imply the direction the athlete or implement will travel relative to a target.

A good example could be during a broad jump in which the athlete much jump as far forward as possible. As the coach, standing behind them and asking them to jump away from you or placing a cone in front of them and asking them to jump towards the cone. It appears that the ‘towards’ cue may yield greater performances.  

Description: The final type provides a description or a picture of the movement to the athlete. This type of cueing appears to be particularly useful and important in learning motor skills. Keeping with tradition, this type of cue has 2 further subcategories, action verbs and analogies.

Action verbs are a verbal description of what the coach wants the athlete to do during a movement such as push, explode, pull, etc. While analogies provide an example that the athlete can connect to something they previously know and put the skill is a wider context. This is a form of elaboration; allowing the athlete to give meaning to the movement. A great example of using analogies to boost cognitive learning is thinking how a figure skater rotates faster when the arms are drawn to the chest to provide context when learning about the conservation of angular momentum. A good training example for motor skill learning could be during Bear Crawl, rather than asking the athlete to ‘keep their back flat’ you could give them the analogy that you have just put a mug of tea on their back, then give the cue of ‘don’t spill the tea’.