Learning How to Learn

Teaching presents many unique challenges, one of which is teaching a student how to duplicate someone else’s movement or posture. At a young age children are often taught how to repeat what someone says, or follow instruction but they are not commonly taught how to look for detail in someone’s movement and posture or how to physically copy what someone else does. I consider this skill set the physical equivalent of a gifted musician’s ability to playback something he has heard only once. Some gifted athletes develop this skill naturally; others learn this skill through hard work and persistence. As an instructor I consider it my responsibility to reverse engineer this ability and learn to teach it to my students. Teaching a student how to learn is a skill that can applied nearly every area of life. Teaching this skill takes patience and means that progress can seem slow at times, but in the end, students that have mastered this skill will become fast learners making the instructor’s job easier and more enjoyable.

I’ve broken this skill down into several parts

- Skilled Observation

- Body Awareness

- Identifying Mistakes

- Self-Correction

Skilled Observation

First, students must be taught how to observe and look for detail in someone else’s movement. To do this in a class setting have a single student demonstrate a technique and the instructor will then ask, what did you notice about X? Have the students list off as many details about the demonstrated technique as possible.  Inevitably there will be some wrong answers. At this point the instructor will be more specific and tell them more specifically what to look for and then resume the demonstration. 

Body Awareness

Second, students must learn how to sense how their body positioned at all times. One obvious method of teaching this skill is through having students practice their techniques in front of a mirror. A disadvantage to using a mirror is that it can be distracting at inappropriate moments. A great technique borrowed from world class strength coaches is to practice a technique blindfolded, this forces you to pay greater attention to how the technique feels instead of how it looks, this technique has been used successfully by powerlifters.  A third method is to hold a correct position with maximum muscular tension for about 10 seconds or so. An assistant can then lightly strike the part of student’s musculature that should be tense. 

Identifying Mistakes

This is the ability to either see or feel the difference between you and your model.

Either the instructor or a student will perform a movement or hold a pose and then other students are asked identify and verbalize what was done differently from the ideal movement.  Eventually students are asked to identify and verbalize the differences between their own movements and the model. 

Self-Correction

Once students can identify and verbalize their own mistakes the next step is to correct and eliminate the mistakes. This takes the role of a coach to help the student correct the movement efficiently. Without experience students and coaches will often choose inefficient or inappropriate methods. Only an experienced coach will know the right physical drills and verbal cues that produce the correct result quickly. For example inexperienced coaches might ask a student to simply kick faster, stronger, or higher with telling them how to do so. On the other hand an experienced coach will know that telling someone to tense their glutes will allow the hips flexors to move into a certain position more easily and turning the hips at the correct angle will allow femur to move to a higher angle. After putting in enough time with an experienced coach or instructor the student will learn the right mental cues to help them correct their own movements. Eventually, students will learn how to devise their own drills that enforce correct movement.