If you think about how a baby learns how to walk–they learn through watching. No one stands over them telling them to engage their quads and glutes, shift their weight onto their left leg, bend the right leg 35 degrees, bring the right foot forward, extend the right leg, place the right heel on the ground, shift the weight forward to the right leg rolling through the foot, and repeat on the left side. No, they just watch the world around them and start to play with standing, then stumbling, then walking, then running. Babies certainly get encouragement from the world around them, but their brains are doing processing and learning–sans walking lessons. 

The human brain is exceptionally good at self-teaching. Just as babies learn to walk by watching other people walk, sailors can learn the same way. But we need what babies have–a good model. This is where video comes into play. 

Recently Omer sat down with Paul Swan, who is, quite literally, an expert in learning. Paul has a PhD in Instructional Design and had an impressive career in building training programs in the corporate world. Today, Paul applies his extensive knowledge of how human beings learn to sailing as part of the coaching team at the International Sailing Academy in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico. 

As Omer and Paul discuss, video and the internet (yay YouTube!) can give sailors the model they need to watch and rewatch what “good” looks like. 

As Grant points out, using video in your coaching can create a powerful combination that helps accelerate your sailors’ progress.

Traditionally, coaching looked something like this: a sailor does a bad tack. The coach points it out to them after the fact. The sailor tries to remember what they felt during that tack. The sailor goes to do another tack, trying to remember what their coach said, what they felt last time, and what they’re feeling now. 

This feedback method relies on:

1. Opinion (the coach’s)

2. Feeling (the sailor’s)

3. Memory (the sailor’s and coach’s)

Memory is a big one here. Memory is limited to what we were paying attention to in the moment. A sailor may have oversteered coming out of a tack, but in the moment, they were paying attention to where their head was in relation to the boom or where their boat was in relation to a competitor. As a result, they’re not fully aware of where their hands and tiller were in space at that moment.

Likewise, a coach is limited by their point of view. If you’re coaching from a coach boat, your point of view is limited by distance. If you’re coaching from the boat, you have 7 other sailors to pay attention to simultaneously (plus other boats on the course, plus yourself–it’s awkward if the coach falls overboard).

Video takes the reliance off of memory, and it takes the opinion out of the equation because it presents the sailor with facts. Most importantly it marries what the sailor felt in the moment with these facts. Tuning the sailor’s feeling to the facts is an essential part of their skills development.