How Dog Training Can Improve Your Coaching
When I start with George MacGill's tweets, it’s going to be good.
Connecting ideas from disciplines outside of coaching is where most of my improvement as a coach has come from during this time off. I’ve learned more valuable things looking where most coaches don’t go. Outside of “coaching.”
Once you start to make idea connections outside of your sport, they start to happen everywhere.
What’s up Dog?
My girlfriend, Tiffany, is a few months into a new position as an animal behavior consultant. She teaches dogs everything from basic obedience to correcting aggression and helping dogs that have a bite history.
She coaches dogs. But the dogs can’t communicate their lack of understanding in the English language.
If I give feedback that isn’t clear, a player can ask me to clarify. A dog cannot.
Feedback is a common conversation piece between the two of us. And I’ve uncovered a few lessons that I want to share with you.
Live Feedback: Reinforce Immediately
What does immediate reinforcement do for dogs?
When you want to tell a dog, “good” for sitting down on command. You want to say, “good” and reward them with a treat as soon as their back end hits the ground. This accomplishes 2 things:
You are marking the behavior by saying “good” at the appropriate time. This lets the dog know exactly which behavior was the correct one to choose.
You are increasing the likelihood they will comply with the instruction in the future. The treat encourages repeated behavior.
Now let’s talk about live feedback for humans. Let’s say you brief the players on the next activity. You then explain to them you’ll be looking to see one key behavior from them at first.
Let’s use changing direction on the first touch as our example.
You’ll communicate, “yes” if it is done well by the player and “no” if it is not quite right.
So like the two points above, this immediate feedback creates both clarity and motivation to keep doing it. With people, we often time skip the “treat” part. We still mark the behavior with yes and then after the full rep or drill we might “praise the model.” Which would further drive repeat behavior and create habits.
Shorten the Application Time
Every bit of feedback Tiffany gets from the training mentor is seen as a split test. Tiffany will instruct the dog one way and if she doesn’t get the correct response or there is a better way, the mentor asks her to “experiment” with a different way.
A/B Testing or running experiments might be a better way to preface feedback to players. Sometimes they think you’re coming at their life so framing it as an experiment is worth a shot.
Let’s use another example.
Say you’re working on NZ long counters/regrouping.
One of your defensemen is throwing the puck away a lot.
After asking some specific questions you find out he’s progressing the wrong way with his eyes and he’s moving through the wrong progressions like a Quarterback surveying the field for receivers.
You cue him to look “long to short” like a quarterback would. Checkdowns and throwaways are the last resorts for both on the gridiron and ice.
After this quick 30-second discovery process, you set the play up exactly how it was. Instruct play to begin from there so he can apply the right progression you suggested right away. Don’t send him back to the bench until the next rotation or to the back of the line. Play with the feedback right away.
Your Order Matters
We have the order wrong in most cases. Dog training calls for feedback-rep-reflect instead of feedback-reflect-rep.
The latter is less effective because the more space there is between feedback and trying again, the more players can have an internal dialogue about if that feedback even has value to them. Doug Lemov calls it, “explaining your coaching away.”It’s human nature to get a little defensive. Fight that process by going against it. Shorten the space and make them try again immediately.
Try it first, then have a conversation about it together.
P.S. Get the coaching course that is changing the lives of NHL, AHL, NCAA, junior and youth coaches: