Coaching With Working Memory In Mind

Often times when it comes to coaching instruction players can easily become overwhelmed. This might situation might happen many times during the day without us coaches even noticing this. When it comes to instruction we need to work from the view point that players are not able to hold many pieces of information in their working memory. On average players can only hold roughly 7 things in the their working memory. But we need to assume that it will probably be closer to 4–5 when we are working with them. With everything going on in a session we should honestly probably assume that number be 2–3 pieces of information.

First let us dig into working memory a little bit more. Working memory is essentially the short term memory that players and coaches are working with at a given moment. I like the analogy of a glass of water. The glass can only hold so much water, and once it is full the water ends up spilling on the floor. Working Memory is the first stop for instructions, while long term memory is where we want to get our coaching instruction to end up. Think of long term memory like a library with the dewy decimal system, everything is organized and you know where and when to find that particular information. Working memory is much more fallible.

The same thing happens when it comes to coaching. Too many pieces of information or too many points of emphasis leads the players to ‘spill water all over the floor’. Being conscious of this while we work with players should be in the front of our minds. Yes some players are going to have the ability to hold more in their mind but I think focusing our instruction in a way that limits what we are asking of players is going to be our best bet. This is where we need to shift our instruction.

Having a focused goal for each player for each day for each repetition should be where we aim. This needs to start before we get out onto the practice field. We need to have this planned out what each player is going to be focused on for a particular session. Without this we are going to try to improve things that we see on the fly. One way that I suggest that you should look to is through the use of paper and pen. Having a written plan for each player allows you to be anchored onto what the real goal is, while also taking note on what you could look to for next time. Essentially we are keeping track of what we want to focus on. This seems very easy to do as a coach but staying true to our goal is much more difficult especially in the face of other issues that we are going to observe.

I’ve covered Tracking in a previous article but here is what I think is most useful for coaches who are trying to focus their instruction:

Tracking information helps us to disciplined with what we do. This is the key point I am trying to get across. If you are trying to catch 5 rabbits you don’t catch any. Tracking information during practice helps us to focus on the one rabbit that we set out catch.

When tracking information we are looking for one piece of information as opposed to seeking to collect millions of pieces of information which can distract us from the main point. Tracking keeps us focused on what we are trying to teach.

By being focused on the goals that you have set before practice you are allowing yourself to direct the athletes attention in a controlled way. If you are Tracking or Keeping Track of what you are working on with an athlete you will be much less likely to overwhelm them with different goals, directions, and words.

Really working memory is about holding focus on what you want to work on, while not allowing yourself to veer too far off of that. Everyone has been in a situation where you are working with a player on a particular skill, but all of a sudden the player shows a deficiency in a different area and you FEEL compelled to try to adjust that. So then you go and try to improve that area of a players game. The issue with this is now the player and negated the previous instruction on what you wanted to work on, and now you have put both your attention and THEIR attention on this other skill.

Being disciplined with what you instruct I would say might be more important than what you actually teach. The person who jumps around endlessly without sustaining a players attention on the one goal that they have is not going to see shifts to performance in games. Or if the athlete does they will have taken more time to get to that point.