As a coach dedicated to nurturing well-rounded athletes equipped to tackle life's challenges, I understand the importance of empowering athletes to lead their own journey to success. This means equipping them with the skills to lead themselves and each other in a safe and supportive environment. One effective approach I use is the EDGE method, which breaks down the coaching process into four key steps: Educate, Demonstrate, Guide, and Enable.
Educate- Explain what exactly we are learning and how it works.
e.x. "When doing a backward roll you'll start standing up. Next, you'll sit and start to pull your knees and hips over your shoulders. As you feel your hands touch the mat I want you to SHOVE* the floor away while keeping your knees to your chest and your toes flexed. Once you feel your feet touch the ground simply stand up! And voila that is a backward roll!!"
Demonstrate- Either have yourself or someone else show how this is done.
e.x. Step up and do a backward roll. Whenever possible I try to refer back to my explanation during this demonstration step to point out as I do each specific piece. So I would start standing; "Remember start standing". Then as I sit and start rolling back; "See my knees and hips pulling over my shoulders?". Once my hands touch the floor the skill doesn't allow enough time to explain so I would exclaim; "SHOVE!!".* Finally as my feet came around to the floor I would say; "And STAND." This way of demonstrating allows the one learning to have a visual guide and hear my explanation multiple times reinforcing their myelin structure in building these skills.
Guide- Give more control to the one learning but be there supporting them.
e.x. Here is where I would have the athlete do a backward roll with a spot. As each piece of the roll happened I would call back to the explanation I gave earlier and support the understanding of when they need to do each piece.
Enable- Take all your hands off and allow them to learn and experience on their own. Still being there as a resource they can come to if they so desire.
e.x. Finally, once I see that they're able to do the skill without my assistance I would enable them to do it and switch to asking questions about how they felt the skill went. "Did you pull your knees AND hips?" "Did you SHOVE* the ground early, late, or on time?" "When you stood did you fall back or forward? and why?" The goal of these questions is to guide what they are thinking about and improving but make them think to find the answer. I avoid giving questions that imply the right answer and instead try to make it so the athlete will only get the answer when they understand that piece of the skill. I also make sure to ask if they did something when they did. The less they believe in their success when they've achieved it the more I celebrate that they did it. This helps teach them that they're capable of learning and build their confidence as they learn.
*By emphasizing the word shove in my explanation and re-addressing it over and over I am creating a cue word. These cues can be used while the athlete is doing a skill or task to give them a series of commands with a single word. This is commonly used in cheer as "Hit, Pull, Push, Squeeze, etc." I try to use unique ones for specific actions and call back to them in future skills when the same actions are needed. e.x. For handstand snap downs I would create a cue for the snap part and then use the same cue when teaching their back-handspring. An important note of cues is that they are only effective if you teach exactly what steps are supposed to be done and drill it until it is a habit.
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