Using pressure to make training mean something

This is a guest post from Darren Cheesman, an ex international hockey player who is now a full time Talent Coach and Talent Coach Developer. Darren has been chirping at me on Twitter to finally write the book that I have been threatening to write which has been useful motivation and work has started.

Darren is really passionate about coaching, developing coaches and also developing talented players. The post is a really great insight into his approach which I hope you will all enjoy!

For more information about Darren you can find him at https://dc17coaching.wordpress.com/ or on twitter at @darrencheesman

Over to Darren....

It's a cold winter’s night and I’m a player for a premier league team. I turn up for training and go through the motions. I love training, always have, but tonight just didn’t do it for me and I can’t honestly think of a single thing I learned, nor did I take myself out of my comfort zone once.

This happens too often, and it happens way too often with sessions I see at all different levels. In a bid to make sure this happens as little as possible in my coaching sessions, I’ve tried to centre my philosophy around the concept of creating competition.

Why?

If there is something to win, the players tend to focus more on how to win and therefore solve the problems the session is asking.

How does it work?

Before deciding on whether to award points or not, I first need to figure out whether I want the session to be around technical shaping, increasing the pressure on the skill execution, or preparing for a match.

Technical shaping:

If I award points during a technical shaping section of training, the players will be conscientious about failing and therefore missing out on points. They will also feel a little hard done by if it takes them a little longer than others to get to grips with the concept or principle. Within technical shaping, I reinforce the effort (not the success) of the individual / unit in trying to execute, and probe about how they can improve.

Increasing pressure:

Once the players have a good understanding of the skill, principle, or concept, I award a points system that will reward players able to deliver under pressure. The competition means the opposing team are likely to be doing everything possible to stop you from gaining points and therefore you have to solve real problems in the quest to win the game.

Preparing for a match:

Skill acquisition and principle clarity sessions are about developing the player’s ability. It is about giving them the space to express themselves while developing concepts. There are times though when we are preparing for a match with specific roles and responsibilities in order to gain an advantage over our opposition. In these situations, points are rewarded to the players / units / team who can deliver those roles and responsibilities best.

This essentially means that there are parts of each session that are not for points. Players are told to make mistakes and express themselves. They are encouraged to do what they can to push themselves outside their comfort zones in order to truly master the skill, principle or concept. Then, there are other parts of the session where points are on offer and it’s time for them to focus on the execution of that development.

It’s noted down at the end of each session who has gained points and these are accumulated until the end of a given period. At school that period is end of a half term, with Futures Cup squad it was at the end of our 5 session training block, with other teams that period will be different.

The winner is then presented their prize and it’s a chance for them to be recognised as someone who focussed and works hard in training, something often overlooked.

One of the big things I learned from my time playing for Oranje Zwart in Hoofdklasse, the Dutch Premier League, was that training was made so hard and competitive that matches felt easy.

Want skills to stick? Think outside the body!

This week I had the pleasure of being asked to speak at a seminar organised by my good friends Kendal McWade and Steven Orr. The seminar was entitled 'Creating a Skills Revolution' and headline act was Professor Gabriele Wulf, a researcher from the University of Nevada who has dedicated her career to studying skill acquisition and in particular a concept called 'Attentional Focus'.

I was the 'warm up act' before the main event and I have to admit to being a little bit apprehensive. I am usually pretty confident presenting and speaking but on this occasion I was suffering from 'imposter syndrome'. I was actually listening to a brilliant podcast called 'The Art of Charm' while travelling to the seminar that morning which covered the topic of 'imposter syndrome' which is the challenge you face when you are in an uncomfortable environment where you feel out of your depth among high calibre people and you don't perform at your best as a result. Fortunately a bit of self talk and some good preperation saw me through and feedback was good. Kendal telling me i had less time than I ahd planned also helped as it focussed me in on the task at hand. I'm not sure this was on purpose or not but either way it worked!

Anyway, less about the warm up act and more about the main event...

Professor Wulf described the extensive research that she and colleagues had undertaken exploring the concept of 'Attentional focus' which she defined as being where attention is directed when performing any kind of motor skill. Essentially, a person can have an internal focus where attention is directed towards parts of the body such as the hips, knees or shoulders or you can have an external focus where the focus is directed towards something external from the body such as a target, head of a golf club, tip of a javelin etc.

Professor Wulf showed numerous studies that came up with the same outcome that being given information that directed attention to what the body was doing was no better than being told nothing when it comes to skill acquisition and retention where as when attention is directed towards something external to the body, skills are acquired much more effectively and also retained over time.

So the austrian ski instructor that shouts "bend ze knees" is actually not doing you any good whatsoever! They would be far better to suggest that you sit on an imaginary chair or something similar.

The video in this post shows a golf teacher using external focus cues to help players strike a ball much more effectively. Notice how he has the first player addressing a ball that is close to them but then striking a ball that is further away and the verbal cues around rhythm such as 'tick, tock' reference to sing the club head. The students are aware of where the club head is and have no idea of body positions or anything else and yet their swings are dramatically inproved and show real athleticism.

But how do you direct a pupil externally in a sport where they do not use an object or peice of equipement such as in athletics or swimming? Again the research showed performance improvements when using external focus cues versus internal cues. An emphasis on 'pushing in the blocks' is way more effective than 'driving the legs' and likewise 'pushing the water away' is far more impactful than 'pulling the hand back'.

So how does this work?

Professor Wulf pointed to research done by her colleague Dr Rebecca Lewthwaite which suggested that there is a neurological response to being given an internal focus cue that makes the player too consciously aware of their movement which then becomes restricted and less natural. She described this phenomenon as 'micro choking' to describe movements becoming more limited and less natural through the awareness on the body.

Dr Lewthwaite also suggested that an internal focus can lead to a player becoming more focussed on the SELF which leads to a value laden personal evaluation of themselves which can become detrimental to confidence and skill execution.

Here are a few other quick and dirty takeaways that I thought were worth sharing...

• There might be an interesting idea that the more novice the player that the closer the internal focus might be. More skilled players seem to benefit from being focus on the target or the finish line rather than something closer to them.

• Being focussed externally is actually more efficient. It uses less muscles!

• The external focus can be somehting that is actually touching the body. Using a piece of tape or a piece of clothing and focussing attention on that was preferable to an emphasis on the body part that was attached to these items.

• The results are the same even when the performer is under pressure. The research team created scenarios which pressurised the athletes but each time those that were directed externally outperformed those that were directed internally.

• Being focussed externally taps into automatic responses and reflexes which seem to be more effective in movement control.

• Being given instruction that focus's on the body is no better than not being given any instruction at all when it comes to retaining the skill.

Give this a try when you are next coaching. It is surprisingly hard to avoid providing information that directs focus internally. Try to remember that the research suggests that doing so is actually not worth the breath it takes to do so because any improvements you make in the sort term are not retained any more than they would have been if you hadn't given the information at all!

The pressure of the Twix! - a tale of developing a growth mindset.

Many of you will know that I have a little boy called Evan who is a bit of an ongoing N=1 experiment in how to develop a sportsperson with a 'growth mindset'. Evan is 7 (Evan Seven!) and he is a proper multi sport kid. The list of sports that he does is pretty long but at the moment he does gymnastics, cricket (fundamentals), golf and swimming as well as a range of informal garden games that I play with him.

He is getting pretty good at his golf, he goes to some junior coaching on a saturday afternoon and his game is getting better all the time. We are lucky to have a 3 hole academy course at the club that I am a member of and it is usually pretty deserted so we can usually play around as many times as we like. I have to say that it is a pretty special feeling being able to play golf with your little boy and I do love to watch him learn each time he goes round. He usually plays pretty happily and the experience is a lot fo fun for us both.

But our latest round was very different.... it is probably fair to say that it was quite an interesting learning experience for both of us in more ways than one!

When we play we have started having little competitions, Evan has a number of shots that he is able to complete each hole in that we call 'Evvy Par' and I have to complete the hole in the standard par to match him (this is called 'Daddy Par'). Of late I have failed to match him that many times and so Evan suggested that we change his Evvy Par to "give me a chance" (sheesh!).

Traditionally after the round we go to the club house and he has a juice and a chocolate bar (Twix is his favourite) but this time I thought I would try something and suggested that we 'play for the Twix'. If he wins he gets all of it to himself....if I win, we share it.

That's when it got really interesting...

So we are standing on the first tee and he gets out his 7 iron (he could reach the green with his fairway wood but his 7 iron is his favourite club, he is playing safe!) but he tops the ball and it goes about 2 yards in front of him, he wheels around with a the look of anguish on his face was soul destroying! He wanted me to give him a mulligan, I said that he can have 1 mulligan in the round and he could use it now if he wanted to or save it for later. He tried again and hit a low shot that went into the semi rough and started to stomp off after it with a big black cloud over his head and a face like thunder....

He ended up making 8 shots on the hole (an Evvy double bogey) where as I made 'Daddy Par' and was 1 up.

The rest of the round then saw Evan disappear into a slump of dispair with quite a few tears being shed and a number of minor tantrums when things didn't go right for him. When I asked him why he was so one stage he just shouted to me "I just really want the whole Twix why can't you just let me win"?

So I was faced with a bit of dilemma. On the one hand the coach in me was thinking that this was a brilliant learning moment for him and that I just needed to let him work through it . On the other hand the parent in me was thinking that I could or should help him out in come way otherwise he might not want to play again.

So I went into questioning mode...

Why was he so upset?

Why did he think that things were going wrong?

Was being upset helping him play better or play worse?

What could he do to get better?

I won't try and pretend that all of his reponses were entirely rational and he didnt really want to talk about things too much butI could tell that they had an effect because he did knuckle down and ended up winning the last couple of holes so that my winning margin was only hole.

We shook hands and went to the club house.

In the club house we just chatted and I said to him that he could have the rest of his Twix after dinner if he thought about what happened and told me what he had learned.

In the car on the way home he said that he had learned that getting upset doesn't help him play better and that he should try and be calmer if he wants to play well.

Bingo...one proud dad!

So what were my takeaways from this experience?

1. Be careful with incentives / rewards.

I was quite surprised at how powerful a small thing such as playing for the reward could be. He was always going to win at least half a Twix but to him that was massive! What I thought was a small amount of added interest and pressure was actually huge for him. I need to make sure that

2. Fight your instincts

Resist the temptation to wrap your arms around your struggling upset child when they are having a hard time. My instinct was screaming at me to help him by saying that it would be alright and that we didn't have to play for the Twix but I also knew that I could send a very powerful message at that point. He could be self reliamt and he could come through this...I am convinced that it will benefit him in the long term.

3. Let them struggle - that's where the learning is.

By the end of the session he had bounced back and was his usual bubbly self and he had learned something valuable. It was a bit of an unexpected experience but one that he will be able to call upon in the future.

That said it will be interesting to see of he wants to play for a Twix next time around!