[Alex Penner is the Director of Coaching & Community at Athletic Lab] As discussed in the overview of motor learning concepts, athletes derive feedback both from within themselves (intrinsic feedback) and from their environment (extrinsic or augmented feedback) which includes interaction with coaches. In this article, we'll focus primarily on how the coach can provide feedback to enhance motor learning. Most coaches are well-meaning when giving feedback to their athletes. They see their athlete struggling with a move or a concept and the tendency is to give them the solution. The athlete will generally see significant improvement within the session thanks to the coach's help. Similarly, when your GPS gives you turn-by-turn directions, you can be very confident that you'll end up at your intended destination. However, how comfortable would you feel navigating your return trip if your GPS unexpectedly broke? Without having to figure out the route to your destination in the first place, it's unlikely you paid enough attention to what was relevant. In the case of our athletes, that's the same situation in which they find themselves on the next occasion that they have to perform. For this reason, it's crucial that we don't spoon-feed our athletes in practice as it deprives them of the opportunity to learn. Before exploring how to give feedback, let's get clear on the goals of motor learning and how feedback fits in. Over time, we want to develop competence, consistency, psychological efficiency, and independence (Freeman, 2014, p. 17). The end goal is the stage of automaticity, in which the athlete is able to perform movement skills correctly & consistently with minimal mental-effort, while having the ability to self-correct mistakes (Statler & Dubois, 2015, p. 156). As [...]

[Alex Penner is the Director of Coaching & Community at Athletic Lab] For coaches, P.E. teachers, and sports-medicine professionals alike, it's crucial to understand the factors that influence the process of motor learning in the populations that you serve. In this article, my intention is to provide you with a basic understanding of the fundamental concepts that influence motor learning, and in subsequent articles we'll explore these concepts and their applications in further depth. Although I'll be referring to training athletes throughout this article, these concepts will be relevant to any population where movement and learning are concerned. Motor learning is the process of acquiring and retaining movement skills. For clarity, we'll define skill as the coordinated movement of the limbs or body in order to accomplish a task or goal. There are two main criteria for evaluating motor learning and the effectiveness of practice design. Retention is the measurement of whether the practice made the skill "stick." Improvements within a training session are not indicative of retention as it can only be assessed after a break from practice. Transfer is the degree to which the task performed in practice leads to improvements in performance of a different task. For athletes, the retention test and the transfer test are the same thing. It's the competition. Since practice and competition take place on separate occasions, and practice also differs in structure from the competition, coaches must take into account the impact on retention and transfer when designing practices and interacting with athletes. What Does Learning Look Like Many people are familiar with the quote from Vince Lombardi 'Practice does not make perfect. Only perfect practice makes perfect.' It highlights a commonly-held belief that the better the [...]