Demonstrate - Explain - Practice!

This is a coaching tool Matt and I learnt during our time in the Military. For those who haven’t served in the Military it is a place which has great systems in place for doing things because if you think about it they have to teach predominantly young men weapons training, how to fly aircraft and also to drive tanks and heavy machinery…

All of which are high risk activities with severe consequences attached if they aren’t done correctly…

So how does this method work?

Demonstrate:

Don’t just get up and do a half assed demonstration of the thing you’re teaching. Do it to the best of your ability and with the intensity or control you want the person you’re teaching to display. If you want them to stomp their feet stomp your feet loudly, if you want them to move fast you need to move fast and so on… The other important aspect of the demonstration is to remain silent. You are trying to appeal to the visual learners here and by talking as you demonstrate you’re distracting them from that.

Explain:

As a coach it’s important we don’t give a university thesis level explanation of what we want the person to perform. Too much talking here is what confuses people and is the point we see most coaches come unstuck and lose the attention of clients. Just because we love the intricacies of all the movements this doesn’t mean our clients do too. Most of the time they just want to start moving…

Remembering we have just completed a great demonstration we should only need to explain 1 - 2 coaching cues or points of performance we want the person to focus on as they perform the movement. This is where we are appealing the the auditory learners.

Practice:

This is where we let our clients/class move. We like to assign them a certain amount of reps here and allow them time to practice what we’ve just demonstrated and explained. For example give them 10 reps to perform and while they’re doing this we can work the room and give specific cues or corrections to individuals as we go. This is where we appeal to the kinesthetic learners. The ones who like to do!

If you want to learn more about his method and 2 other coaching tools we use in the gym click the link below to one of our recent Podcasts which gives an in depth explanation to them all…

https://podcasts.apple.com/au/podcast/episode-76-3-tools-you-can-use-for-better-coaching/id1457276056?i=1000448657844