Guidance

• Verbal guidance


  Often given along with visual guidance, used to describe the action and explain how to perform the activity, thought to be the least useful style of guidance when used in isolation, can be an effective source of verbal guidance for associative and autonomous learners to improve skill learning and development
• Visual guidance


  The most common type of guidance when teaching movement skills, during the cognitive phase of learning helps the learner create a mental image of the skill and its performance, use of a demonstration/videos and other visual aids to help guide the performer to form a mental picture and reproduce the movement
• Manual and mechanical guidance

  Can come from another person or an object to help the performer learn a movement whilst building confidence and getting a sense of how it should feel, examples include a teacher supporting learners vault over the vault box in gymnastics, a coach physically directing a learner, and the use of a back float to support swimmers who are in the cognitive stage of learning
• Characteristics of Verbal Guidance

  • Can reinforce good movements and errors can be corrected
  • Can hold the attention of the performer
  • Can be used to motivate
  • Good for tactics
  • Gives information to improve performance
• Disadvantages of Verbal Guidance

  • Can lead to information overload
  • If guidance is incorrect, learning of skills will be negatively affected
• Characteristics of Visual Guidance

  • Helps to create a mental picture
  • Skill can be seen at different stages
  • Encourages observational learning
• Disadvantages of Visual Guidance

  • If demo is incorrect, bad habits could form
  • Coach may not be able to show accurate demo
  • Visual representation may be unclear or too quick
• Characteristics of Manual & Mechanical Guidance


  • Helps with confidence and sense of safety
  • Can be used to isolate a skill action, e.g. holding a float to only practice leg kick in swimming- can then concentrate on this aspect
• Disadvantages of Manual & Mechanical Guidance

  • Performer can become over-reliant on aid
  • Can lead to false/no kinesthesis