Feedback - giving feedback in Sport and fitness disciplines
Giving feedback to learners is a crucial learning aid in any session, and it is important as a tutor not only that you do it, but that you do it well. Learners assume you are an expert, and will look to you for reassurance and leadership, but above all for direction on how to improve.
Here are some tips for giving feedback to learners to help them improve.
- Be constructive. Look for strengths as well as weaknesses or areas for improvement.
- Be brief and to the point.
- Do not deluge the learner with all the faults. Try to target key points which, once corrected, will quickly enable other problems to be resolved. For example, in martial arts, correcting foot positions will lead to improved balance, while correct hip positions will allow full movement and in yoga, aligning and establishing the base of each pose will mean that other parts of the body can be brought into alignment or encouraged to perform at their optimum.
- Explain why the fault or problem needs addressing - show how to improve.
- Encourage the learner to do the movement/technique correctly with you.
- Adapt the way you give feedback to the different types of individual and their experience.
- Try to visualise what you're doing - imagine what it looks like from the learner's perspective so that you can explain things clearly.
- Help the learner see/measure the distance s/he has travelled to this point.