Video analysis is an ever developing part of skills coaching, especially with the ready availability of high speed cameras and analysis software on modern phones and tablets. This blog is going to take a quick look at some different ways to use video (before, during or after a lifting session) and try to put together some recommendations for video use.
Before.
Anybody who has ever worked with rugby will be familiar with the scene of a coach taking a video session before training - he’ll have seen a mistake, come up with a new move or have analysed next week’s opponents and will present his ideas before the team goes out onto the pitch to work on them. Something similar can be done with weightlifting - using video to help set a session’s goals, identifying things to work on or ensure the athlete’s understanding of what the movement looks like.
There is a continuum between a novice and an experienced lifter, and where the athlete sits can affect what is the best video strategy to use in such a video analysis session. Using video to help develop a novice athlete’s understanding of a lift may work well, but if I were to walk into a gym full of experienced lifters and then played a video explaining what a clean is I’d be laughed out of the room.
At the lower levels of experience showing an athlete a video of an expert lifter performing a lift can help to develop their understanding of what the lift is, and how it should look. This is called using an ‘expert model’. Rucci & Tomporowski (2010) did this whilst performing a study looking at the use of video whilst coaching the hang power clean. The athletes were all soccer and volleyball players and whilst they had some experience with the Olympic lifts the first session used an expert video to ensure that everybody had a clear understanding of the lift to be performed.
A benefit of video over live demonstration is that the performance can be slowed down, paused and replayed. Handing over the controls to the athlete can be really beneficial as it involves them in the process and allows them to focus on parts they don’t understand, replay them and ask questions, further enhancing the development of understanding.
At the other end of the spectrum an expert lifter can benefit from using a ‘self model’. This is where the athlete reviews footage of himself lifting, trying to identify errors which will then be worked on during the training session.
Whether using an expert or self model it is important to involve the athlete, (rather than just lecturing to a large group), but equally we can’t forget the role of the coaching in guiding the athlete towards key points they should be paying attention to. Hazan (1990) summarises this by saying that:
“A coach cannot simply expect an athlete to improve solely on the basis of viewing an error on videotape.”
During.
One of the training halls in Leimen, with the biomechanist’s station in the background and the athlete’s screens above the platforms.
There are purpose built training centres that have amazing video set-ups. The German Olympic Weightlifting centre in Leimen for example has a dedicated station for a biomechanist, from where replays of lifts can be overlaid with bar paths and velocities to be replayed to the athletes on screen above the platforms. The set-up there is rather old though, relying on firewire cameras with a low frame rate that have to be hard-wired to the computers. With your phone or tablet and a small sensor (such as the Vmax Pro) you can achieve a very similar system, which may not cover such a number of platforms but is much more portable and has far higher frame rates (the small lenses on a phone may struggle with the lighting, but if you can overcome this an iPhone/iPad can run at 240fps).
The massive amount of information generated by such systems can be very valuable to a coach, especially in a movement that happens as quickly as an Olympic lift, but does the athlete need to see the output? Again the answer to this depends on the level of the athlete. In the training centre above the athletes are Olympic standard and should have a good understanding of the lifts they are performing. Winchester et al. (2009) did a study with collegiate American Football players (basically pro athletes) who all had at least 18 months experience in the power snatch exercise and found that the ground which received augmented feedback regarding the bar paths improved peak power, peak force and bar path kinemetatics over the group which didn’t receive the feedback.
For athletes who aren’t so experienced coaches can take the approach of Boyer’s group (2009) who used mixture of self and expert modelling in their video feedback. Basically they showed a video of the athlete performing a movement synchronised with an expert performing it, in order for the athlete to be able to identify the differences. Unfortunately in this study the athletes were gymnasts performing an gymnastic skill rather than a weightlifting movement, but I believe there to be some correlation in the findings as it is an equally complex physical skill. This is an important point as there can be some conflicting results when looking at the literature regarding feedback during physical and cognitive, simple and complex tasks.
Whether we choose to show an expert or self model, data or not, it's important not to forget the input of the coach, the Rucci & Tomporowski study I mentioned earlier had three groups - those that received video replays, those that had video replays plus verbal coaching and those that only had verbal coaching. The video only group didn’t improve, and there was no difference between the other two groups, which suggests that it was the coaches’ feedback which made the difference.
The results of the present study corroborate those obtained in several other studies showing that simply providing a learner with video feedback without additional cues has little effect on skill acquisition.
Strength and conditioning professionals should be aware that regardless of whether knowledge ofperformance feedback is administered verbally, visually, or in combination, it is important that the feedback does not simply direct an individual’s attention to the aspect of the movement that is in error but also that the feedback provides information concerning how movement error can be reduced.
After.
Another popular use of video is providing reviews after training. It’s something that I’ve done using Hudl Performance with the cyclists that I’ve remote coached. The downside here is that they can practise bad technique and whilst they do receive feedback after, they've already gone through an entire session practising poor motor patterns.
Screen grab from a Hudl analysis of myself performing power clean.
As in the above quote from Rucci & Tomporowski though, it’s very easy when doing this to generate a long list of problems, without offering solutions. This is something Cassidy, Stanley & Bartlett (2006) called “Paralysis by Analysis”.
Feedback Quality/quantity.
So how do we avoid paralysis by analysis? According to Winkleman (2018, talking about sprinting) the role of a coach is to identify and target the primary skill or capacity deficit:
First, it is necessary to identify the primary limitation associated with the movement skill being taught. If the primary limitation is coordinative in nature, then effective cueing is likely to make a distinct impact; however, if the problem lies within a lack of physical strength, or some other underpinning physical quality, then the effectiveness of the cue will be limited until the underpinning problem is resolved. Second, once the primary coordinative limitations have been identified and prioritized, then the coach will provide the athlete with an individualized external focus cue.
Similarly Wulf et al (1999) were looking at a slalom ski simulator and found that blocked feedback was more effective than serial feedback - i.e. in a complex task then focus on one thing a time.
Cutting down on feedback can also be important to make sure the athletes don’t become over reliant on it - they need to develop their internal feedback mechanisms (Schooler, 1990). There are also other strategies to cut down on feedback overload including bandwidth feedback where there’s an acceptable amount of error, which narrows as the athlete becomes more proficient (Sadowski, 2013) and allowing the athletes to decide themselves when they see videos. Wrisberg (badminton) and Wulf (basketball) have shown good results with this athlete led approach on retention tests, though it's interesting that the learners only asked to see the expert model 5% and 9% of the time, mainly at the early stages of the exercises, which fits with the cognitive stage of learning as described by Fitts & Posner’s model.
Conclusions.
Focus attention on key points and provide solutions (or lead towards if using a constraints led coaching approach) – avoid paralysis by analysis
Individualise feedback - pay attention to the level of the athlete when deciding on how much information to show and whether to use an expert or self model. Athletes also respond best to information directly relevant to themselves, rather than group averages.
Give the athletes time to think for themselves - they need to build their internal feedback mechanisms. Giving them control of the video playback can also help with this.
Video is just a tool – it doesn’t replace good coaching
Some useful references:
Boyer, E., Miltenberger, R. G., Batsche, C., & Fogel, V. (2009). Video modelling by experts with video feedback to enhance gymnastics skills. Journal of Applied Behaviour Analysis, 42, 855-860.
Cassidy, T., Stanley, S., & Bartlett, R. (2006). Reflecting on video feedback as a tool for learning skilled movement. International Journal of Sports Science & Coaching, 1(3), 279-288.
Giannousi, M., Mountaki, F., & Kioumourtzoglou, E. (2017). The effects of verbal and visual feedback on performance and learning freestyle swimming in novice swimmers. Kinesiology, 49, 65-73.
Hazan, A., Johnstone, C., Martin, G. L., & Srikameswaran, S. (1990). A videotaping feedback package for improving skills of youth competitive swimmers. The Sports Psychologist, 4, 213-227.
Rucci, J. A., & Tomporowski, P. D. (2010). Three types of kinematic feedback and the execution of the hang power clean. Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research, 24(3), 771-778.
Sadowski, J., Mastalerz, A., & Niznikowski, T. (2013). Benefits of bandwidth feedback in learning a complex gymnastics skill. Journal of Human Kinetics, 37, 183-193.
Schooler, L. J., & Anderson, J. R. (1990). The disruptive potential of immediate feedback. In Proceedings of the twelfth annual conference of the Cognitive Science Society (p. 702-708).
Winkelman, N. C. (2018). Attentional focus and cueing for speed development. Strength & Conditioning Journal, 40(1), 13-25.
Wrisberg, C. A., & Plein, R. L. (2002). Note on learners’ control of the frequency of model presentation during skill acquisition. Pereceptual and Motor Skills, 94, 792-794.
Wulf, G., Hörger, M., & Shea, C. H. (1999). Benefits of blocked over serial feedback on complex motor skill learning. Journal of Motor Behaviour, 31(1), 95-103.
Wulf, G., Raupach, M., & Pfeiffer, F. (2012). Self-controlled observational practise enhances learning. Research Quarterly for Exercise and Sport, 76(1), 107-111.
Zabala, M., Sánchez-Muñoz, C., & Mateo, M. (2009). Effects of the administration of feedback on performance of the BMX cycling gate start. Journal of Sports Science and Medicine, 8, 393-400.
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