Delayed activation coaching - good or bad?

[Warren J. Dew]

A few days ago, I finally figured out what a random bit of advice from a coaching session a number of years ago probably actually meant. I tried it out today, and it worked - unexpectedly well. There were a few subtleties to work out, but it really made the hold significantly easier.

So, here's my question. Is the coach brilliant for having mentioned something that could result in a noticeable improvement years later? Or, although that's far better than never having transmitted that information at all, would a really brilliant coach have figured out a way to transmit the information immediately, rather than years later?

 

[DL]

I think you're further along in dancing than I, but nonetheless here's my $0.02:

My primary teacher constantly drops little tidbits. Some of them seem to make more sense in retrospect than they did initially -- sometimes, when repeated years later. None were useless initially.

Sometimes pieces of a large puzzle don't really fit in place until many more are acquired. Dancing is full of deceptively simple and intuitive bits of information. It seems to me that none are terribly strange and mysterious in isolation, but finding places for them in a larger whole requires amassing them in large quantities. The order in which the pieces are acquired is probably in many ways incidental.

Maybe your coach was brilliant. But it seems more likely to me that you're describing a characteristic of the problem space, than a characteristic of the coach.

 

[SDsalsaguy]

While each individual case is different, I think that there is always a limit to what a student can understand no matter the level of the teacher.... and that as one grows as a student, one is ready to understand more. So, for me, I think your coach ultimately imparted more than you were ready to make sense of at that time, but like all quality information, the knowledge itself was timeless and thus ready for you when you were ready for it.

 

[fascination]

thing is...people are different and unpredictable...sometimes the simplest concept will fly over their heads and be elusive while a generally considered advanced concept will click...a coach only has their their best judgement on that based upon years of experience but they still have no real way of being certain as to when someone is going to be able to absorb something..

additionally, I have had coaching where a concept was completely elusive on day one and by day two of slogging through it grasped it well enough to create marked improvement over the next few weeks...

I think also it is probably too tempting for someone who really loves dance and sees that a dancer's primary issue is to fix a difficult problem the complexity of which they may not have been accustomed yet to addressing...I imagine that they would still feel a need to drop a hint so to speak...

and lastly, I think all of us, as the years roll by, in most of the venues of our lives, come to reflect upon and more fully grasp the wisdom that the people in our past have tried to impart... and it only blooms because of the growth in btwn the two points in time

 

[Lady Jemima]

Last week in practice I found myself giving advice to my partner which had been told to me by a teacher six months previously. I had listened but hadn't really understood at the time but it suddenly made sense half a year later.

A good teacher will review, instruct and inspire - it's important to leave clues to how the dance will come together. And, as has been said previously, you never know what will stick.

 

[latingal]

Welcome to DF Lady Jemima!

 

[danceronice]

I thought my first "serious" hunter/jumper trainer, whom I started riding with ca. 1990, was crazy. There are still things about her methods of which I do NOT approve. But starting my new horse, I realize that there were some things she was doing for very valid reasons, and I only now understand what she meant. She wasn't a good trainer for a variety of reasons (not least among them, throwing tools and equipment at a twelve-year-old kid when said kid was NOT capable of using them) but there WERE things about it that were good and useful, I just didn't know how to apply them. Twenty years and lots of other horses later, I know how to use them.

Sometimes it just takes a while.

 

[Nik]

This will happen more and more as you progress... There are many things that could be thought about or focused on while creating a movement, I think that at different times you are focusing on different things. And its when you look back at something you have already understood, you can view it in a different perspective, or isolate a certain idea.

 

[waltzgirl]

My guess would be that something--either a physical habit or a mental one--prevented you from absorbing the information at the time. Now, something has changed and it makes sense. You can feel and use the information now in a way that you couldn't then (assuming you did make an attempt to follow his advice at the time).

I think it says more about you (not in a bad way, just information about how your mind/body worked/works) than about the coach. If he was worth paying, he had tons more information potentially to give you than there was time for/you could possibly absorb in the session. So he had to prioritize. If he saw that you weren't getting it at the time, he had to decide whether your time was better spent continuing to focus on that until you did or on whatever else you were working on at the time. He chose the other thing.

So his brilliance (if he is brilliant) is in making that choice. If you can remember what you did work on and get from that session, did he make the right choice? Did it improve your dancing at least as much as understanding the tip on the hold would have done *at that time*?

 

[Warren J. Dew]

My guess would be that something--either a physical habit or a mental one--prevented you from absorbing the information at the time. Now, something has changed and it makes sense. You can feel and use the information now in a way that you couldn't then (assuming you did make an attempt to follow his advice at the time).

Close. I think what I needed to realize was that it was an adjustment that makes sense only for a couple close in height in shoes, which is true of my wife and myself, and was true of this coach and his competitive partner. That's probably also why it was contrary to what pretty much every other coach said, as a greater height difference is more normal. I did try it at the time, but without knowing the reasons for it, didn't persist in it long enough to discover all the aspects of the adjustment that were necessary to make it work for me.

So his brilliance (if he is brilliant) is in making that choice. If you can remember what you did work on and get from that session, did he make the right choice? Did it improve your dancing at least as much as understanding the tip on the hold would have done *at that time*?

I think this, if fully explained, would have done us more good than what we actually got out of that time in the lesson, mostly because he was a visiting coach and a lot of the rest of the stuff was hard to get ingrained without frequent reinforcement. However, I don't think it would have been easy for him to realize what we could get on our own and what would take more reinforcement.

 

[waltzgirl]

Close. I think what I needed to realize was that it was an adjustment that makes sense only for a couple close in height in shoes, which is true of my wife and myself, and was true of this coach and his competitive partner. That's probably also why it was contrary to what pretty much every other coach said, as a greater height difference is more normal. I did try it at the time, but without knowing the reasons for it, didn't persist in it long enough to discover all the aspects of the adjustment that were necessary to make it work for me.

I'd be interested to know what the advice was then, since I'm tall and often dance with partners about my height.

 

[tangotime]

, I think that there is always a limit to what a student can understand no matter the level of the teacher.... and that as one grows as a student, one is ready to understand more.

That also applies to the Prof....