In the past year I've had many conversations with my athletes as they have attempted to learn new things. We have discussed how difficult it is to pick things up quickly and how frustration quickly becomes a roadblock to skill acquisition. I've attempted to explain the phases that each of them will go through in an effort to make it clear where we were going and just what it would take to get there.
Recently I was reading an article about Loren Seagrave, former coach at Tennessee, LSU and Wisconsin and current coach of Dwight Phillips, that addressed the very issues that I was discussing.
I have included the phases below. I hope that this will assist you in leading your athletes through the skill acquisition phases.
1st Stage: Unconscious Incompetence
The athlete is not thinking because they have never been told to think about anything, and is not very good at new skills. He said that he tells the football players that it is better to look foolish in front of your teammates in practice and get better at the skills than to get embarrassed on Sunday in front of 80,000 people and a TV audience! In this stage, the coach must convince the athlete to lose the inhibitions to looking foolish.
2nd Stage: Conscious Incompetence
The athlete knows what to do but has not mastered the skill; they consciously try to execute it, but are not very good at it yet.
3rd Stage: Conscious Competence
Athletes very quickly progress to conscious competence, where they are skilled but only with conscious effort; they cannot do it automatically and mindlessly. In this stage, unconscious action returns one to previous bad habits. The example Seagrave gave was someone trained in the martial arts would, when confronted by an attacker, most likely revert to ugly, unskilled fighting habits when in this 3rd stage.
4th Stage: Unconscious Competence
The skill is automatic and performed perfectly with no conscious effort. Attainment of this level takes not only practice, but mental imagery and rehearsal. It can take up to 500 hours of practice to achieve unconscious competence with a skill!
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