The term VAK was a big buzz word in teaching a few years ago and teachers started teaching lessons that catered to visual, auditory and kinaesthetic learners. As PE teachers we could not understand what all the fuss was about as we had always taught this way and were always coached in our respective sports in this way. We just called it something different:
- Visual Guidance
- Verbal Guidance
- Manual Guidance
Visual Guidance
This is the use of a demonstration to help guide the performer to form a mental picture and reproduce the movement. The demonstration, or model, must be as perfect as possible and must be realistic. Forms of demonstration other than live models can be used, for example photos, diagrams (although very static) and video. The display can also be enhanced by increasing the visual stimulus, for example placing targets on the floor for the jumping/landing phases of an Olympic lift.
Verbal Guidance
This is thought to be the least useful style of guidance when used in isolation. It is most often used in conjunction with visual guidance. The teacher/coach provides cues for the athlete to remind them of parts of the skill, for example, saying "elbows up" to a athlete performing a front squat. It is important to consider, when using verbal guidance, if the performer understands what is being said, if they can remember the information being given and if they can translate this into an action.
Manual Guidance
Manual 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 of guidance are a teacher/coach moving an athletes knees out so they track over the toes through the required motion in a squat, and using bands when learning to do a pull up or handstand. The kind of guidance where the teacher/coach guides the athlete through a movement is known as forced response. This is useful to give the athlete a feel for the movement although if it is used continuously they may become dependant on it or lose motivation.
Gardners multiple intellegences can largely be catagorised in one of the three forms of guidance. Liguistic = verbal etc. It is in the form of "guidance" coaches tend to be most comfortable with.
In the post Differentiation in CrossFit I talked about the need for individualsied programming and how some coaches may be relucatant to do this as they may feel the athlete is not getting the coaching / attention they are paying for. Consider the use of coaching cue cards and video clips in your everyday coaching.
The coaching cue cards are nothing more than a few pictures and some written coaching points. The CrossFit Journal is an obvious source to create them from. The issue on the squat for example contains some great pictures of good and bad technique as well as some clear easily understood coaching points (eventually you may want to create your own with the help of your members). These will be great for linguistic/visual learners etc
The video clips are simply clips of certain movements that can be paused, analysed etc. Set up a laptop with a bank of clips (again the mainsite/journal is a great source) or if you want to go gangsta hook up a laptop to a projector. Athletes can then study movement over and over which will be a big benefit to visual learners. These days everyone has a camera phone with video capabilities encourage your athletes to film each other so they can get instant visual feedback and correct faults accordingly.
Imagine your class, athletes working on movements programmed for them, coaching themselves via learning styles that best suit them. This allows you to get around everyone in the class and give them some of your specific expertese safe in the knowledge that everyone is benefiting from excellent coaching just in a format you may not be used to!!
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