Call Me Coach

Learn how to be more coachable

I. GET GOOD ERROR CORRECTION
The very best way to learn is to get regular feedback from a coach who will tell you accurately about very specific errors and then pat you on the back when you correct each one. Complex feedback is totally useless and incomprehensible to most students. That doesn’t mean you’re stupid. It means your instructor doesn’t know how to teach you. It’s easy to single out those coaches. They’re testy and irritable when you’re just “not getting it”. Of course, you don’t understand what he wants because you don’t know what he’s saying. Corrections should be simple. You should be able to think about the correction during your next attempt. As each correction sticks, it becomes incorporated into your motor program.

II. ERROR CORRECTION IS JUST LIKE SCULPTING
With each subtle change, you get better. You’ll become eager for error correction, knowing it’s the best way to learn rather than a mark of humiliation. Make certain you fully understand the correction. If you don’t know what you’ve done, there is no learning. It’s only with a “knowledge of your performance” that you will improve. That’s why some people think they can never get better. They don’t want the constant criticism of a spouse or friend or coach who points out their errors, so they don’t listen. They don’t want to be “bugged”, don’t like instructors, and so never improve. Learning takes place quickly and will really stick if you get good error correction. It is the very essence of learning. I view a good learning experience as better than psychotherapy. A psychotherapist might convince you that you’re okay when you’re really a mess. After a coaching session, you really are better than you were before! How many psychiatrists can claim the kind of success after an hour of psychotherapy?

III. FEEDBACK
Good students of learning don’t just like feedback, they love it. They’ll be motivated to try harder. So much so that it’s sometimes pretty hard to get away from a coach and play on your own. That’s why I think it’s critical to develop the next step, your own internal sense of reward for what you do.

IV. TRIAL AND ERROR
Trial and error really is the best way to learn. Get an idea of what you want to do. Do it. Then learn from errors you’ve made. Those errors won’t be hard to see. Even professional athletes make large, easy-to-see errors. Curiously, those who make big errors and have them corrected may have much better long-term learning than those who perform a skill right off the bat, because they are more likely to forger it and be unable to perform it in the future. So, if you’ve ever tried long and hard to windsurf in big seas, when you’ve finally got it, you’ve got it forever. Twenty years from now, you could head beck out and do it again.
Correcting big errors is the best way to set skills in stone. Without error correction, you’ll learn nothing.
If you think you’re setting yourself up for getting criticized, that’s not what error correction is about. Good error correction motivates students to practice longer, harder and better. It also reinforces why you’ve done right.

V. FINDING THE RIGHT COACH: THE MATCHUP SYSTEM

Learning doesn’t have to take very long at all if you can really connect with your coach or instructor. From the first minutes of a lesson, you should be able to implement each suggestion the coach makes and then refine it through error correction.