The Sweet Spot of Athlete Learning
Coaching is an art that is not ever meant to be mastered. The daily discipline of attempting to master the art of coaching primes those who are seeking this mastery to increase their effectiveness in the coaching-player relationship by striving to reach the “sweet spot of athlete learning”. The “sweet spot of athlete learning” refers to the ability of the coach to challenge both the athlete’s skill level and the athletes motivation to learn a skill. If the skill challenge is too easy the athlete will have low intrinsic value and will either be bored or show apathy during learning. If the skill challenge is too difficult the athlete will show anxiety and will also approach learning with low intrinsic value (Gilbert p.132) The “sweet spot of athlete learning” will be challenging to reach unless there is a strong coach-player relationship built on trust. During the process of developing a player, there will be multiple setbacks and failures, and the player must deeply trust that the coach exclusively has the best interest of him or her in mind. We must be mindful of the demands we place on our players and balance those demands with incentives and measurable target outcomes in an error-positive learning environment.
Attainment Value
Understanding player motivation and how athletes learn is essential in reaching the “sweet spot of athlete learning”. Wade Gilbert in Coaching Better Every Season discusses three phases of athlete value that will occur during the process of their learning and skill acquisition: attainment value, intrinsic value, and instrumental value. (Gilbert p.131) Attainment value refers to the athlete cognitively understanding that they are improving in their learning or skill acquisition based off the feedback we are providing them during the practice process. Our athletes desire and need personal and specific instruction to help them as an individual player to master their skill. Although basketball is a team sport with multiple individuals, individual player improvement will boost team performance. Attainment value can be attained when we incorporate concepts within our practice framework that have a high success rate. These concepts are usually done “on-air” in block format with no defender to ensure the athlete succeeds in executing the skill correctly and converting the shot at a higher percentage. Practically, these “on-air” concepts could take place the first few minutes of practice and should directly translate to the concepts that will be taught in the remainder of practice. An example of this in a basketball practice would be working on different footwork for finishes at the rim “on-air”. With no defender, the player will incorporate the footwork for a 1,2 finish at the rim, a stride-stop finish at the rim, jump-stop finish at the rim, or a counter change-of-direction finish at the rim in block format to ensure a high success rate. While striving to help the athlete’s skill acquisition, it’s imperative the coach provides an opportunity for the athlete to achieve high attainment value through success in the early stages of the practice process.
Intrinsic Value
Intrinsic value refers to the athlete cognitively linking the importance of the challenge to the execution of the skill. The two areas we must focus on to ignite player intrinsic value is enhancing and building their skill acquisition and decision-making through constraints. A skill is not mastered until the athlete can execute the skill with the correct decision against a variable or in this case, a defender. Building off the high success rate drills such as finishing at the rim “on-air” that is done at the beginning of practice, we must now challenge the athlete’s skill by forcing them into applying a decision on which footwork to use against a defender while executing the finish at the rim. We should add a live defender 1v1, possibly with a constraint, to test the athlete’s decision making to determine whether or not the task is too difficult, too easy or an adequate challenge that will lead to their skill mastery and correct decision making. The diagram below can give us an idea on how to create learning outcomes 1v1 for different levels of skill to best build the athletes skill and decision making while finishing with different footwork at the rim.
“The purpose of these learning zones is to provide athletes with guided opportunities for purposeful struggle that increase the rate of learning” (Gilbert p.132). In the practice process if we do not use constraints such advantage/disadvantage there is no way to correctly shape athlete learning and understanding on why they do what they do in decision-making situations. When there is a correct balance of challenge vs. success, the athlete will begin to trust the coach’s ability to lead them, thus creating intrinsic value in their own desire for skill mastery.
Instrumental Value
Lastly, instrumental value can aid in enabling the athlete to reach the learning sweet spot. There are many types of incentives that will deeply motivate an athlete to seek skill mastery. Instrumental aid in the game of basketball can be something as simple as “recognizing the passer” after your teammate has assisted your basket, to receiving a Gatorade for grabbing the most offensive rebounds during a game. These little incentives place value on the little details that need to be learned for the athlete to reach skill mastery. Every basketball player loves to shoot the basketball as it is the arguably the highest praised skill in the game. Requiring the athlete to earn a “shooter’s license” before they can have a green light to shoot will challenge the player to master the skill of shooting thus leading to higher level of athlete success (Williams 2019). The University of Arkansas Woman’s Basketball Coach, Mike Neighbors, requires his team to earn this “shooter’s license” with the Green Light shooting drill. Green Light Shooting was very influential in equipping his team with instrumental value to become better shooters which will translate to better shooting during competition.
The best example of a coach getting his players to the “sweet spot of player learning” is Coach John Wooden. In their book You Haven’t Taught Until They Have Learned authors Swen Nater and Ronald Gallimore stress that as coaches we might be offering instructions every day to our players but are our players learning the information we are providing for them? During the coaching process we must have an athlete-centered learning environment by placing complete focus on how the athlete is learning through different teaching methods. Simply delivering information and expecting the athlete to retain the information does not constitute athlete learning. As coaches we must study each player individually, take notes on them, work with them individually apart from the team, teach and re-teach with patience knowing each player will learn differently and through different methods. As Nater and Gillamore observed, “the end is student learning; the means is teaching (Nater & Gillamore p. 105).
Becoming Facilitators of Their Own Learning
How do we know our players are reaching the “sweet spot of athlete learning?” When our players become facilitators of their own learning, we see the evidence of what we have taught them. In “Student-Centered Classrooms” authors Dee Hanson and Leslie Imse provide three levels of learning that their music students will encounter: 1. What Students Know (Facts and Concepts) 2. What Students Can Do (Procedural Skills) 3. What Students Think about Their Learning (Metacognition). “By actively generating their own learning, students must be able to perform musical tasks as well as demonstrate their conceptual understanding of the music and self-awareness of performance quality” (Hamse & Imse 2016). This idea directly translates to coaching basketball in that we want our players to be empowered to think for themselves by self-correcting their mistakes. When players start self-regulating in this way and being a leader in facilitating their teammates learning, the “sweet spot in athlete learning” has commenced. Arriving at this destination of athlete learning is the daily challenge us coaches must be passionate about!
References
Gilbert, W. (2017). Coaching better every season: a year-round system for athlete development and program success. Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics.
Hansen, D., & Imse, L. A. (2016). Student-Centered Classrooms. Music Educators Journal, 103(2), 20–26. https://proxy.ussa.edu:2160/10.1177/0027432116671785
Nater, S., & Gallimore, R. (2010). You havent taught until they have learned John Woodens teaching principles and practices. Morgantown, MV: FiT, Fitness Information Technology.
Williams, B. (2019, November 7). Green Light Shooting License. Retrieved from https://coachingtoolbox.net/green-light-shooting-license.
