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. 

Here’s the scenario: you’re a Farr 40 with a crew of 8. You go into a gybe, the bow person takes too long to get the new guy in the jaws of the pole. The gybe ends up being too slow, the boat decelerates and your competition pulls a boat length ahead of you. 

What happens next? 

Likely some yelling. 

The skipper yells from the back of the boat that the bow person needs to move faster to get the pole attached. (It’s always the bow’s fault!) 

The bow person gets frustrated and yells back that something was stuck. (It’s fantasy land’s fault!)

Two hours later, when you’re back at the dock, you’re sitting around the cockpit discussing the gybe, trying to remember exactly what happened and why. 

The bow person had too much resistance and couldn’t get the guy into the jaws, but where did that resistance come from? Was someone standing on the guy? Did the guy trimmer pull it in too soon? Did the bow person just not pull enough slack forward before the maneuver? 

So much happened that day, and now you’re trying to piece together the sequence of events from two hours earlier with 8 different points of view. The bow person feels put on the spot and gets defensive. Everyone’s just a little frustrated and the skipper wants to keep the peace, so you say screw it and go into the club for a drink.

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.