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Rapid Technique Improvement Rapid action modules now available for all coaches, athletes and players. On CD (Windows only) or a Flash-based online course (Win & Mac). AU$59 
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Sports coaches and players try to get it right the first time but invariably end up spending a lot of time trying to correct technique faults and bad habits that somehow develop.
Once established, habit pattern errors like technique faults are notoriously hard to correct because they actually disable learning of correct technique and slow down or completely block improvement. This makes an athlete uncompetitive and can lead to a career-threatening performance slump.
The typical advice to practice skill drills and train hard is usually not very effective. The athlete may appear to improve during training but repeatedly falls back to old ways under pressure of competition.
Transfer of training from skills coaching sessions and practice drills to competition is consequently poor.
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Transition training, required when the athlete has to change over to a new code, new equipment, new techniques or new rules, presents similar adjustment difficulties. Old habits die hard.
Fortunately, a coaching science discovery called Old Way/New Way® Sports Coaching offers:
1. A new perspective on the transfer of training problem.
2. A cost-effective and user-friendly method for rapid skill and technique correction, and habit correction.
3. A fast and practical method of sports transition training.
This sports page describes the main features of Old Way/New Way® sports coaching, including technique correction, transfer of learning, problems with skill and drill coaching, habit pattern errors, the basic theory underpinning the method and available training programs in this international award winning approach to coaching sport.
Here is a video preview showing how the method was used to correct a persistent technique problem in golf.
| Coaching Clinics Last ones were in Holland. More ... |
Professor Yuri Hanin from the Research Institute for Olympic Sports, Jyväskylä, (Finland) relates his experiences with the application of Old Way/New Way® in his work with elite Finnish Olympic athletes and coaches.
This ground breaking work with coaches and their athletes was published in The Sport Psychologist, 2002, 16, 1, 79-99.
This research won second prize in the 4th EAA [Coaching] Science Awards, out of a record entry of 28 projects from 13 European countries.
"I heard about the system two years ago when I was in Australia as an invited visiting international scholar. The idea of rapid correction of technique was very appealing since my practical work with athletes and coaches focuses on performance enhancement, optimal performance states, and preparation for important international competitions.
Persistent errors in technique, especially under competitive stress, are very common among elite athletes and are perhaps among the major factors that can cause underperformance. Moreover, the major problem with a conventional approach to error correction is that it takes a long time and the change is often not permanent.
Therefore, I started over a year ago by taking the Personal Best Academy online sports coaching skills course conducted by Dr Paul Baxter who uses and teaches Old Way/New Way® in Brisbane, Australia.
As part of this practical course, Paul and I communicated via email on specific performance enhancement problems I wanted to work on. I've been using Old Way/New Way® for rapid correction of consistent errors in technique with track and field athletes (javelin, hammer throwing and sprinting), with a pro-tour female golfer, and also with a soccer team. All nine interventions were very successful. At the same time, we collaborated with Paul to advance our research into skill development and correction with elite athletes and still do.
There are several benefits that I have experienced using Old Way/New Way. It is very practical; the technical problem is solved quickly and completely in just one single session; the results are immediate, there is no adaptation period as with conventional skill development and correction.
Moreover, the observed technique improvement is permanent and extends into psychological benefits such as feelings of empowerment, enhanced self-confidence, satisfaction with the elimination of errors, better understanding, higher motivation and a desire to engage in more high quality training of this kind. A single learning trial lasting from one to two hours, including an half hour warm up, usually results in 80% or better improvement in performance. The new way (corrected skill) is consistently performed and spontaneous recovery of errors, if any, is easily handled. Skill improvement also directly transfers to competitive performance, as shown in our case studies. Under conventional skill correction methods, technique difficulties still resisted correction after months and, in some cases, years of effort. Without Old Way/New Way, as one coach said, it would have required up to 2000 repetitions or four years of practicing the correct starting technique before the performance would have improved.
I think Old Way/New Way® greatly extends the sport psychologist's potential area of applied work with athletes and coaches. Up till now applied sports psychologists worked almost exclusively in the domain of mental skills training as a means to performance enhancement. Now they can work in both domains.
Perhaps, the greatest benefit for me professionally is that I can see how I can extend my own work - the Individual Zones of Optimal Functioning (IZOF) model. For instance, from a general focus on optimal (or dysfunctional) emotional subjective experiences I have moved further to kinaesthetic awareness and now can appreciate more the role of individually relevant technique. Thus to enhance performance I can focus not only on optimal emotional states but on optimal technique which, if not developed, can be a serious barrier to performance improvement.
Finally, Old Way/New Way® is based on a sound theoretical and methodological framework. It has been empirically validated in non-sports settings (educational). The underpinning theory offers a high degree of predictability of performance errors and their likely resolution. The 4-step correction procedure itself is well structured and provides an opportunity for a well-planned intervention with a very clear focus. But what's more, the whole thing is a real cooperative effort between the athlete, the coach and the sport psychologist and this is a mutually beneficial experience usually resulting in the development of high quality working (partnership) relationships.
The program can be used solely or in conjunction with another. For instance, I incorporated it into my own IZOF model as skill correction with movement patterns was missing from my applied perspective.
Finally, team consulting with Paul via Internet in working with athletes and coaches was professionally and personally an outstanding and exceptionally enriching experience. Thanks Paul!"
Here is a list of sports corporations, sports coaching organisations, schools, colleges, universities, institutes of sport and small businesses who have purchased our Old Way/New Way® sports coaching courses.
Technique correction is one of the most time consuming and frustrating tasks in sports coaching. This critical coaching skill involves trying to correct an athlete's or player's sports technique difficulties and other established sport performance problems that make the athlete uncompetitive.
Coaches find that, despite quality coaching, training and skill drills, elite athletes and players as well as beginners tend to develop their own way of doing things. Sometimes an athlete's "own way" is suitable for the athlete's physique, performance level and temperament but more often it isn't. You can't watch all of them all the time so, for one reason or another, imperfections develop and technique errors inevitably creep in. If not detected and corrected early, these technique faults soon develop into bad habits and are then much harder to correct. Consequently, even though you try to get it right the first time you inevitably end up spending a lot of time trying to undo technique problems that have developed.
Sometimes, when players join a new team or change coaches they bring with them or later develop minor or major performance problems that have become entrenched because they were not picked up and corrected early enough. This makes them less competitive.
Sports technique problems can follow a sports injury because the athlete is unable or reluctant to resume correct form for fear of re-injury. Sometimes the original injury is itself caused by poor or incorrect form. Sports technique problems and sports injury problems are often closely linked.
Professional players transitioning from one sport to another, e.g., changing from American football to rugby league or to Australian Rules football, often have great difficulty changing over to new rules, new strategies, new techniques and new skills. In addition to such technical difficulties, decision making can also suffer, making the player uncompetitive and unable to function well in a team situation.
What all this means is that for one reason or another, the athlete sooner or later has to change what he or she is doing. Although most of the discussion here concerns sports technique difficulties and mental barriers to performance as being the reason to change, the athlete does not necessarily have to be doing something "wrong" before the time comes to change. What was perfectly OK one day can, with the introduction of new rules or new equipment, become outdated and no longer leading edge performance and make the athlete uncompetitive. Importantly then, we are talking about any kind of change, whether it be
Sports technique problems lead to a prolonged and frustrating adaptation period during which old concepts and skills first have to be unlearned before new understanding and skills can be developed.
You, as an experienced or aspiring coach, know that special coaching sessions, skill drills and practice does not fix established technique problems quickly. Sometimes it can take a full off season before an established technique difficulty is overcome. Sometimes it does not fix the technique problem at all.
This, then, is the coach's dilemma. Athletes and players know that there is no gain without some pain. But sometimes there is just too much pain and very little gain.
Technique correction takes up a lot of your coaching time. You've tried different coaching courses and seminars over the years, picked up a few useful ideas but none of it was really "new" to you because you've been around the coaching scene for quite a while. If there was anything really valuable around, you'd have heard of it by now, wouldn't you?
You're busy and don't have time to spend on things that don't work.
You've found that most coaching science research is not very practical, requires specialised knowledge, equipment or facilities to make it work, is too involved and takes too long to implement and is manipulative (carrot and stick) stuff that oversimplifies human motivation and learning powers.
You've found that most sports psychology methods and ideas require the athlete to spend a lot of time practicing such mental skills before they become a normal part of the athlete's performance routine. Unfortunately perhaps, some coaches and athletes disregard mental skills training as being impractical for this very reason.
You know from bitter experience that players and athletes often fall back to old ways, despite quality coaching and being highly motivated to improve.
You use skill drills to try to improve skill development and correction but you're looking for something more.
You're looking for a better way but it has to be supported by evidence, be affordable and it must be cost-effective
Your own approach to skill development and correction, refined over the years with elite and promising athletes and highly professional players, goes something like this. You:
This is quality coaching at work. However, there comes a time when even the best coaching is not enough to help an athlete or player overcome an established sport technique problem.
You can easily recognise established sports technique problems and other sport performance problems because they just refuse to go away. The typical sequence of events is something like this:
You also realise what the athlete is going through, during all this intensive and prolonged skill correction and development work, i.e.,
Those unique individuals who have the inner strength and enough support may persevere and after many months and sometimes years of frustrating drill, practice and training they will eventually improve and regain their lost glory. Like Lazarus, they will rise from defeat and once again be competitive in their chosen sport. Their journey back to greatness is the stuff of legend and has produced many bestsellers.
For many athletes, though, the onset of technique difficulties and other performance problems, especially once they become established and resistant to change, spells the end of a promising career. They fade from the competitive scene, never to be heard of again. Sometimes they re-emerge to adopt a non-competitive role so they can continue to contribute to their chosen sport. Sometimes their coach's reputation dies with them.
This familiar scenario is played out every day all over the world in every sport you can think of. Sports technique problems strike athletes and players at all levels of achievement, from the beginner to the elite athlete. The repeated inability of conventional sports coaching methods to deal quickly and permanently with established sports technique problems represents a monumental lost opportunity and a terrible waste of talent.
But isn't this is how it's always been? Aren't we supposed to, "Do the hard yard". After all, we all share the universal suspicion of anything that comes, "Too easy". After all, "If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is." Above all, there is the work ethic that says, "By the sweat of thy brow ...." We are supposed to struggle in order to achieve.
Perseverance in athletes as in other achievers is highly valued and admired. Life is meant to be a struggle. And even if you don't subscribe to all these beliefs, we all know that old habits die hard - that's how it's always been since time began, so why should we expect anything different?
In short, accumulated conventional wisdom tells us that improvement and change are supposed to come slowly, after lots of effort, frustration and expense. Athletes, like other people, understand this and while they do not like the fact, they still accept it as being a normal part of life's struggle.
Fortunately, it really does not have to be that way. Sports technique problems and other sports performance problems have an alternative explanation along with a corresponding practical and user friendly solution that comes to us from new research into the psychology of learning, sports psychology and coaching science.
The alternative explanation for the persistence of technique problems and other performance difficulties is based on the well researched brain mechanism of proactive habit interference and the phenomenon of learned errors or habit errors. A detailed reading list of published research into new methods for accelerating skill development and correction is located in this web site.
To fully understand and appreciate how old knowledge and skills can interfere with and slow down the learning of new knowledge and skills, you should now do the following activity which demonstrates this powerful, universal and involuntary obstacle to learning.
This simple but intriguing activity is a demonstration of the powerful interference effect caused by prior learning.
Exactly what it means for you personally will become clearer after you have done the two short tasks and you interpret your scores.
Now, please proceed to the activity.
The first task is quite simple. Everyone is good at reading words and most people take around 30 seconds to finish this task. Reading words is a well established skill that requires little if any conscious effort on our part. We have practised reading for a long time and have become quite good at it. It happens almost automatically and effortlessly, without having to exert our powers of concentration. You make few if any mistakes and there is no mental conflict involved.
The second task is very different. People say they have to consciously suppress the tendency to want to read the word, to revert back to their old habit (Task 1). The old habit ("green") tries to interfere with the new learning ("pink"). But today the old habit is "wrong" - "green" is wrong and "pink" is right. Times are very changeable, as we all know. You now have to quickly change your knowledge, your skills and that is very difficult.
Old habits die hard, as we all know. The interference effect slows down our learning of the new information, the new skill. Because we all differ in how much interference we experience on this task, the time it takes can vary from 40 seconds to 150 seconds or more. Clearly, people differ in the strength of interference from prior knowledge but everyone takes longer on this task than the first task and some people take very much longer. Most people take from 2 to 3 times longer. The important point is that we all have this problem and this is why we all dislike and resist change. It is the reason why old habits die hard.
Apart from taking longer to complete, the second task also generates mental conflict and emotions in people. Over many years of doing this demonstration with all kinds of people and occupations, we get comments like these, "It's really hard", "I really had to concentrate hard", "Noisy people around me made it even harder to concentrate - I tried to screen them out but there was more interference", "I got really frustrated by not being able to do what appeared to be a simple and easy task", "I had to actively stop myself from saying "green" when I knew I should be saying, "pink", "I got angry and frustrated at my inability to change quickly to the right answer".
This emotional reaction is the same reaction we experience whenever we try to change what we already know and what we can do. It is a universal response to change in human beings. It helps to explain why people resist change and why old habits die hard.
While you are welcome to try this test on your family and friends, please resist the temptation to compare your scores with those of others. All that really matters is how your score on the second task compares with your score on the first task - the greater the difference, the more likely you are to experience interference from your prior learning and the longer it takes you to change and adapt to new things and ideas.
In case you were wondering, performance on this demonstration seems to have nothing to do with intelligence as measured by IQ tests. The interference effect seems to be independent of other abilities although if you have a big difference between task 1 and 2 it is possible that you have a more retentive memory. It also means that you may find it harder to change your established ways.
In your brain you have an inbuilt, hard-wired mechanism that protects and preserves everything you know - all your knowledge, skills, beliefs, understandings, and so on. Once you have practised, i.e., repeated, and learned something, it starts to becomes instinctive and automatic for you. At that point you can perform the skill effortlessly, without having to concentrate on each step. Your brain mechanism protects and preserves what you have just learned and this saves you having to re-learn it all over again the next time. In this way, the brain mechanism is a real bonus.
But when time comes to change what you know, this same mechanism still tries to preserve all your prior knowledge. It does not matter whether what you know is "right" or "wrong" for you; everything is preserved. Even when you have no further use for this knowledge and you really need and want to change, that knowledge is still protected from all attempts to change it. To your dismay, you then discover what it means when we say that "old habits die hard."
All this happens unconsciously, behind the scenes, inside your head and unintentionally. And you have no control over it. The knowledge protection mechanism is activated automatically, instantly, and fully, whenever what you are trying to learn differs from and conflicts with what you already know. You want to change but your brain won't let you change quickly. The conflict between the new knowledge or skill, and your old established knowledge or skill, generates massive interference with learning. This is known in the psychological research as proactive habit interference or proactive inhibition. This interference affects your ability to recall the new knowledge or skill you just tried to learn. Within minutes or hours, you forget what you have just learned and fall back to old ways. This is called accelerated forgetting. Together, proactive inhibition and accelerated forgetting explain why old habits die hard, and why change is so slow, frustrating and expensive.
Proactive interference, i.e., when old learning interferes with new learning, accelerated forgetting, and the associated reversion to old ways are familiar to us all. If you have ever tried to change your golf swing you know how hard that is. You have to concentrate hard on every step. The new way feels strange, having done it the other way for so long. You get confused, frustrated, performance slows dramatically, and your error rate goes up. You appear to forget what you've learned from the coach and fall back to those old, wrong, ways. You can do it correctly during coaching sessions and appear to improve. But, as soon as you are left to your own devices or have to perform under the stress of competition, your game falls apart and you revert to those old, wrong, ways. This roller coaster ride may continue for weeks, months, or even years. It is called the "adaptation period" and is well documented.
In our new theory of human learning, the adaptation period is seen as symptomatic of mental interference with learning. It is a sign that the brain is experiencing conflict between the old and the new learning. Proactive inhibition and accelerated forgetting are the result - that is what produces the adaptation period and slows down change and improvement.
It follows that the adaptation period is an indicator of a brain in trouble. The person is no longer learning efficiently and effectively but is struggling to cope with change. Currently available teaching, training and learning methods, and change methodologies, result in a prolonged and resource expensive adaptation period. This suggests that most coaching, teaching, training, therapeutic and other behaviour change and concept change methodologies are working against the brain; not with the brain. These approaches inadvertently activate the brain's knowledge protection mechanism and make it harder for the person to adapt to new ideas, new skills, new techniques, and new procedures. Clearly, we need a better way.
Old Way/New Way® overcomes the brain's knowledge protection and maintenance system, greatly reduces the interference from prior conflicting learning. It empowers individuals to adapt more quickly to change, improve and become more flexible. It virtually eliminates the typically prolonged period of adaptation to change that accompanies more conventional teaching, coaching, training, therapeutic and other behaviour change methods, making it possible for individuals, groups, teams and enterprises to truly achieve continuous improvement and more cost-effective change management.
All this has clear implications for improving all human learning and performance, including sports performance.
You have now experienced proactive habit interference, also known as the proactive inhibition (PI) effect, through the colour chart activity and therefore better understand the powerful effects of prior learning on new learning.
From the point of view of the player or athlete who is trying to improve, the explanation of how proactive habit interference blocks or slows down learning and change is like this:
Proactive habit interference is a major cause of a wide range of sports performance problems including:
Now you know what the problem is and what it feels like, you are ready for the solution. Being aware of PI and it's effects, however, is not enough to overcome it. Simply re-teaching a skill or action, even when supported by specific videotaped feedback to improve awareness, is unlikely to work quickly, if at all. You need an alternative coaching method that bypasses habit interference altogether in order to accelerate learning and skill development. This coaching method is called Old Way/New Way®.
Old Way/New Way® can overcome sports performance difficulties permanently and more quickly than conventional, i.e., currently available, coaching methods.
Personal Best Academy uses and teaches Old Way/New Way® to sport coaches, players, athletes, physiotherapists, sport medicine practitioners, sport psychologists and other individuals seeking to improve performance in sport.
Old Way/New Way® has been taught to sport psychologists and coaches at the South Australian Sports Institute (SASI). SASI coaches are using Old Way/New Way® to coach soccer, hockey, basketball, squash, kayaking, baseball and other sports.
It is used at the Research Institute for Olympic Sports in Finland to improve performance of Olympic athletes in individual and team sports such as hammer throwing, soccer, javelin and sprinting. Technique correction research with Olympic athletes was published in The Sport Psychologist.
Swimming coaches have used Old Way/New Way® for technique correction in swimming, cutting six seconds off the best 100 metre time of promising young athletes, and to correct a wide range of technique faults.
Old Way/New Way® is not like behaviour modification, brainwashing or hypnosis, nor is it like NLP or psychological conditioning.
It is readily incorporated into what coaches and trainers normally do and is well-accepted by players and athletes - it is very user-friendly.
Based on a novel interpretation and synthesis of well researched and accepted learning principles, Old Way/New Way® is far superior to conventional approaches to correcting technique problems and developing new skills.
Old Way/New Way® is done in practical, hands-on situations where the facilitator works with the athlete and the coach.
With Old Way/New Way® there is no need for special equipment, although the use of video feedback, stop-motion analysis and kinaesthetic feedback can be helpful with complicated performance skills.
Old Way/New Way® works with the brain, not against it, to accelerate the natural process of change.
Old Way/New Way® can help whenever long established automated skill routines need to be changed or improved, i.e., in all areas of sport and athletics.
All kinds of technique difficulties can be corrected, including physical skills as well as mental skills.
We have successfully corrected errors and faulty technique, unlearned habits and developed skills in a wide range of sports, some of which are listed below.
Full technical details of a wide range of technique correction case studies can be found here.
Training in Old Way/New Way® Learning is available on CD or as an online course, the latter with or without email support, or in a training workshop for small groups.
The course is designed by professional educators and follows modern instructional design principles. The Flash based course is self-paced, interactive and self contained. Step by step instructions, examples and case studies teach you all about Old Way/New Way® Learning and how to apply it to a wide range of human performance problems in your sport. The course includes four video segments that show Old Way/New Way being used in different sports. Online courses that come with with email support cost more but are tailor made and provide step by step solutions for your own selection of specific sport performance problems.
Choose from these four rapid technique correction routines covering all sports.
This Flash based course covers all sports, with specific step-by-step examples of how to correct technique faults in a range of Olympic and other sports, including elite and recreational. Contains four video segments showing how specific technique problems were corrected. AU$59. Currency conversion | Order form.
Self paced online coach development course includes all the course materials in CD course. AU$59. Currency conversion | Order form.
Customised online coach development course includes all the course materials in the online course, plus step-by-step guidance and email support in a course that is customised just for you. AU$395. Currency conversion | Order form.
One-day rapid technique correction workshop tailor made for sports, athletics and track and field coaches, skills coaches, martial arts instructors and others providing technique correction, skill transition training, breaking bad habits in any sport, from beginner to advanced level including Olympic. Email us for more information.
"The problem is not learning the new; it's forgetting the old." Flight Instructor
"Old habits die hard." Proverb
"Practice makes permanent, not perfect." Warren Buffett
"Practising differences makes perfect." Harry Lyndon
Trainers, teachers, instructors and sports coaches try to get it right the first time with their students, trainees and athletes but invariably end up spending a lot of time trying to correct errors, misconceptions, non-compliance, technique faults and bad habits that somehow develop.
Because these errors were not corrected early, and were inadvertently repeated over and over (i.e., practised), many error patterns are actually learned, habitual and automatic and therefore much harder to eradicate.
For example, John always writes "recieve" instead of "receive"; Mike always has to be reminded to wear his safety goggles; Mary always slices her golf swing; Susan always follow cars too closely when driving; and Geoff is mentally still following the previous aircraft’s pre-flight checklist even though he's converted to another aircraft.
We all know that old habits die hard and many habit patterns are resistant to conventional change methods.
These limitations of traditional teaching and training programs are apparent in all settings including sport, workplace training, education, therapy and personal development.
Re-training or re-education, the typical solution to these problems, improves things only slowly, if at all.
Although learners may appear to pay attention during instruction and practice their new, correct, skills and knowledge over and over, the next day when placed under pressure or when unsupervised and left to their own devices, they seem to have forgotten what they’ve learned and the same habit pattern errors (old entrenched attitudes, beliefs, misunderstandings, work practices and routines, faulty procedures, poor techniques and unsafe behaviours) resurface.
A prolonged adjustment period and poor transfer of learning are the two most typical outcomes of education, training and coaching efforts worldwide.
All this wastes talent and resources and makes change and transition programs so much less cost-effective. There’s got to be a better way.
Fortunately, a cognitive science discovery called Old Way/New Way Learning offers:
1. A new perspective on the transfer of training problem.
2. A fast and practical method of transition training.
3. A cost-effective and user-friendly method for rapid skill and technique correction, and habit eradication.
This website introduces Old Way/New Way® Learning, including the basic theory underpinning the method, and available training programs in this unique approach to behaviour change and continuous improvement.
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Updated Thursday 1 July, 2010