How athletes learn
Practice make Perfect ! Learning is a relatively permanent improvement in performance arising practice. There are 3 stages of learning - mental stage - practice stage - automatic stage It is very important to understand these 3 stages of learning because each requires different instructional strategy. Mental stage When a technique is first being learnt the objective for the participant is to understand what is required to perform the skill correctly. To achieve this requires a great deal of mental plan of the correct technique and strategy. The best way for the athlete to understand the sequence required for the skill is through demonstration and explanation. Care must be taken not to overload the athletes learning circuits by too much teaching at this stage as the human brain can not handle too much information at one time. The goal at this stage is to help the athlete form a good plan for what they need to do. Practice stage The emphasis in this s