How to give effective feedback

One of the most beneficial things you can do for your athletes' performance is giving feedback. But, unfortunately, for most coaches, giving feedback looks like telling athletes what they're doing wrong and then teaching them how to do it correctly. But, I will let you in on a secret: there's a better way to provide feedback. In fact, there's a whole body of research on the most effective ways to give feedback.

The good news about feedback is that it can improve performance when an athlete learns a new skill. For example, providing frequent feedback on stroke technique to a beginner triathlete figuring out the swim will be helpful. The not so great news is giving frequent feedback often leads athletes to become dependent on that feedback. For example, when you're not there to tell them they aren't rotating on their freestyle, they can't recognize this themselves because they got so used to you being there to let them know every little thing.

So now I've told you that feedback is good but shouldn't be given too frequently, and there are specific ways to provide it.

Here's what you need to know to give more effective feedback:

Use more frequent feedback for newer skill development.

When an athlete is learning a skill for the first time, or it is a skill they are a beginner at, more frequent feedback will help them perform the skill. Think about it-- they don't know if what they're doing is right or wrong. In their minds, they think they're swimming like Michael Phelps, but in reality, their freestyle more resembles the doggie paddle. It is your job to help them understand what is right and what is wrong, so they can develop the skill of assessing their performances themselves. Something to note, however, is that this will put a dependency on you. As they become more advanced, you'll want to decrease the frequency at which you provide feedback.

Set performance ranges

One thing you can do is give your athletes performance ranges to hit in practice or training. Sticking with our swimming example, you could only give feedback if the individual breaks streamline before the flags. If they push off the wall in a tight streamline, do their three to four butterfly kicks off the wall, and then take their first stroke at or past the flags, you let them keep swimming. If they come up short, you give them feedback on how they can improve. This helps reduce their dependency on you since coaches can't give feedback during races most of the time.

Let your athlete choose how often you give them feedback

Work 1:1 with an athlete and can let them decide how often you provide feedback. You can help increase autonomy (which in turn increases motivation. Win-win!). The idea here is by letting them set the feedback schedule, their own individual needs are met. This also prompts them to start with their own assessment of their performance before turning immediately to you.