Effective Coaching Feedback to Enhance Sport Learning

Coaches can harness the power of effective feedback by using simple techniques. Providing relevant, quality information to athletes after practice or competition can accelerate learning and performance.

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Athletes have built-in mechanisms that tell them how well they did. They can see the results, sense movements that caused the results, and form perceptions about how they think they performed.

Coaches can provide additional information to give athletes more detail about their performances. This helps them narrow the gap between what they perceived about what they did, what actually happened, and how they can improve.

Coaching Feedback Tips

2. Provide meaningful verbal information about what happened to supplement an athlete's perception of performance. Attempt to bridge the gap between what an athlete perceives he or she did, and what actually occurred.

3. When using videos, point out specific features that you want athletes to notice. This prevents overwhelming them with too much information to process and keeps them focused on the most relevant points.

4. Rely most on positive reinforcement about performances. Negative reinforcement and punishment are less effective.

5. Offer reinforcement intermittently, rather than after each attempt. Allow athletes time to learn and process independently at times to avoid dependence on coaching.

6. Avoid critiquing performances too frequently or infrequently. Early in learning, provide more information; later, when athletes acquire greater skill, provide it less frequently.

7. At times, offer no information so that athletes learn to generate their methods of problem solving.

8. Prescribe exactly what it will take for an athlete to improve performance, particularly in early stages of learning. Help them identify key errors and offer cues for how to correct them. When one error is corrected, transition to the next level with the appropriate cues.

9. Allow athletes to describe positive and negative aspects of their performances. Open communication promotes problem solving when athletes' perceptions differ from coaching directions and strategies.

10. Offer summary information after a series of attempts at a skill or at the end of a game. Point out what is consistent or typical.

For guidelines for sound technique, see Mechanical Principles.

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Magill, R.A. (2001). Motor learning: Concepts and applications (6th ed.). New York: McGraw-Hill.

Schmidt, R.A. & Wrisberg, C.A. (2000). Motor learning and performance: A problem-based learning approach (2nd ed.). Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics.

Wrisberg, C.A. (2007). Sport skill instruction for coaches. Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics.