Manual/ Mechanical Guidance - the coach physically moves the student through the motions of the technique, which they are practicing. .
Massed Practice - Continuous drilling.
Distributed Practice - drills with rest periods.
Variable Practice - Varied drills, constantly changing.
This section will be looking at coaching methods for a beginner. A common style associated with coaching beginners is a command style as it is a safe, efficient and allows the coach to be in full control of there students. It also allows the beginner to learn the exact technique or performance that is required. However, as a fully qualified coach, I argue against this as "teaching a student in command style can get boring for them and does not allow them to explore what they can do, consequently putting them off the sport. Also it is all right to know the shots in cricket, but putting them to practice is a completely different concept. It is important to teach the correct technique but you do not want all of your learners/ students to adopt the same style as you they should adopt there own style! -. Coaching beginners using a guided discovery style is considered to be dangerous and unhelpful as giving them too much "freedom- can mean them picking up the wrong technique. A reciprocal style allows learners to practice the skill while being closely monitored by the coach. All coaches I spoke to prefer to use this style along with Manual/ Mechanical Guidance, " its better to use manual guidance, especially with beginners. This allows us to monitor them closely and iron out any faults they may have - (Interview with Karl Brown - Willington CC). The coaches that I interviewed tend not too favour variable or massed practice for beginners as this gives them too much to work on, resulting in them getting bored, confused and not pay enough attention, which is vital for beginners. However it is argued by some coaches that using variable practice keeps students attending lessons/sessions as they have some variety in their training regime, but when actually performing it is unknown if this kind of training would actually pay of as it is unclear how much of the skill will be picked up by the learner.
