Feedback should be Immediate and Specific…Really?

We may not exactly know why but many coaches have figured out intuitively that immediate feedback may not always be effective, even for beginners. I was recently reminded about this when I came across news that Dr. Peter Vint left Everton as the academy’s director. Many years back, a PE teacher showed me Peter Vint’s study explaining how frequent feedback may not necessarily be better for skill development. Only then did I realize that there were many studies since the 90s with similar findings.

“There are exactly two things which contribute more to the development of skill and human performance than anything else. These two things are practice and feedback. Without one, the other is ineffective and in some cases can be completely useless.” Dr. Peter Vint

This may sound familiar to other coaches too – I am correcting my player’s backswing but as soon as his backswing was high enough, other parts of the skill (such as the follow through and bent knee) breaks down. Mistakes that he didn’t commit initially will surface as he brings his attention to that one thing or cue that you tried to enforce. And when I leave the player to practice alone (usually when I get frustrated), he suddenly gets it, seemingly miraculously.

Promote Introspection and Avoid Dependency

A possible explanation would be that immediate feedback causes the athlete to constantly react to different cues without fully understanding the “whole” skill. For example, my player could be doing multiple throws and after each throw I will be barking “higher back swing”, “lower release”, “faster approach” etc. etc…This may also cause anxiety which has implications on the ability to learn too.

Meanwhile, in the absence of extrinsic feedback, the learner is forced to rely on intrinsic feedback instead, i.e., he begins to recognize his errors and feel what the correct execution is like through a process of testing, feeling and introspection. He begins to feel and understand why he has to execute the skill in a certain way instead of just being told how to. Other instructional approaches such as Games for Understanding, process based feedback and peer learning (through vicarious observation and discussion) also promotes introspection, independent decision making and ultimately self-directed learners (instead of having to rely on external feedback all the time).

Ultimately, we want our athletes to be able to learn on their own without being overly reliant on us.

Here are some pointer for giving feedback that I’ve jotted down from these studies…

Wait a few seconds or tolerate some mistakes first before giving feedback .
Ask learner to self-evaluate before providing feedback
Positive – Instead of “Stop gripping so tightly”, say “Relax your grip” (Golf)
Make use of bandwidth feedback – for beginners feedback should be frequent and general, i.e., “ball park info” such as “reach and glide further (swimming)”, since they are still unable to make use of detailed information.
As skills improve, reduce the frequency and use specific cues instead (refer to Gentile’s Model to understand this better).
It’s NOT necessary to give feedback when the outcome of the skill is easily detectable, e.g., whether the shot is on target or otherwise.
ASK the learner when best she would like to have feedback.
Make use of processed based feedback, or even stories and summaries that encourage introspection during the review of the lesson.

We’ve got to be flexible and take the stage of learning (The 4 Stages of Competence) into consideration when applying these pointers.

p.s. Let’s remember that we are coaches and NOT Kiasu mothers who are persistently reminding their kids what to do and what not to do!

Coach Hansen

Why it is NOT wrong to stereotype…

“Indians cannot swim lah”,

“Chinese don’t play football”

“Golf is for the rich!”

Try saying these statements out loud and chances are some fella will remind you not to stereotype.

“With some exceptions, stereotypes are in fact NOT inaccurate when assessed against objective benchmarks such as census figures or the reports of the stereotyped people themselves.” Steven Pinker

A stereotype is a generalized statement or belief applied to everyone in a group. Obviously you can’t generalize and there are going to be exceptions within every group. However, we forget that stereotypes are generally consistent with statistics, and that’s precisely why we are uncomfortable with stereotyping, especially if it involves undesirable traits and socially sensitive topics such as social economic status, race and religion. We are uncomfortable with the possibility that these “undesirable” traits might be statistically true of the group.

In Singapore, it is certainly factual that the majority race here, i.e., Chinese, shun soccer as a professional career. Our current national team has only one Chinese player – Gabriel Quak, while the rest of the team is made up of members from the minority races. Author and Journalist Neil Humphreys has wrote extensively about this phenomenon.

“The Chinese do not take football seriously as a professional career. Football doesn’t pay the bills. Football doesn’t impress the aunties at reunion dinners. Football loses face.” Neil Humphreys

The good news is that facts and stereotypes can change but first, we need to honest and acknowledge these stereotypes. If we don’t, how are we going to create the necessary narratives to overcome this “Chinese bias”? How are we going to take measures to encourage Indians to swim (this has implications on drown prevention too), or to remove the barriers that make Golf an exclusive sport?

Now, I’m not saying that the accuracy of stereotypes means that racism, sexism or whatever “…ism” is acceptable. What I am saying is that it is ok to stereotype but NOT ok to discriminate based on stereotypes.

So let’s not be too quick to take offense against stereotyping. If stereotyping was really that bad, our government would not be making use of it to validate the criteria for the upcoming presidential election liao, tio boh 😉 ?

Coach Hansen

Joan’s story…

Joan’s visually impaired (VI) and is a Goalball player from TeamSG. Over the weekend, she was invited by IC2, a prep school for low vision kids, to share about the critical development role of sport participation, and the obstacles preventing kids from being active.

Joan went to a mainstream school, and shared that she was lucky to have parents (both visually impaired) who would call up the school to complain whenever she was excluded from PE lessons or sports. This was in contrast to most of her peers whose parents would call the school to excuse them from “dangerous” physical activities. Joan shared that many of her peers were physically awkward, and were sometimes even mistaken to be both visually and physically impaired! She feels that overprotective parents and a risk adverse environment are to be blame for their lack of co-ordination and balance.

Some of my players have also shared with me that they have never learnt a sport (but they learnt how to play several types of musical instruments) during their school years at schools for the visually impaired. They were also not allowed to run around even in schools due to “safety reasons”.

Just in case that you reckon Joan’s experience is simply anecdotal evidence, there has been rigorous studies to suggest that kids who are deprived of play during critical periods of development will miss out on important milestones, and will never fully realize their genetic potential – physically, affectively and cognitively. Consequently, they are less likely to be active and will more likely suffer from obesity and other health related issues. As they get older, their risk of falling and suffering from a physical impairments is also higher. They end up with more than one impairment!

I hope overprotective aka Kiasu parents realize that if their kids grow up to be “psychomotor idiots”, they are largely to blame. Also, I don’t reckon this relates only to kids with VI. Increasingly, able-bodied kids have also been found to miss out on important developmental milestones due to the lack of play.

Coach Hansen