Communication & Feedback
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Ep. 305: Common Coaching Language, feat. Rob Biernacki & Island Top Team (BJJ Mental Models)
Building a unified coaching vocabulary across your team. Why consistent language matters.
Ep. 305: Common Coaching Language, feat. Rob Biernacki & Island Top Team
Listen on Apple Podcasts
Training Athletes' Perception
Give a man a fish, he eats for a day. Teach a man to fish, he eats for a lifetime.
When athletes perform, they perceive their environment and act on it. They perceive an opportunity for a guard pass and go for it. They perceive a lack of post and attempt a sweep. They perceive someone passing and throw up preemptive frames.
Above all else, we want to train these perception-action linkages.
Games do this well, but our cues should train perception too. One of the best ways to give feedback is not to tell a student what to do, but to start by asking what they see.
Maybe you see someone playing a sweeping game and notice the top player is off balance in the backwards direction. Instead of saying "sweep them backwards now," pause them and ask the guard player what they see about the top player's balance and their hips' relationship to the guard player's hips. Guide them toward perceiving the top player's inability to stop backwards off-balancing. Ask them what that means. Help them build the link between perception and action.
This is a core idea in ecological dynamics and is discussed in Rob Gray's How We Learn to Move and Doug Lemov's The Coach's Guide to Teaching.
Language of Feedback: Internal vs External vs Metaphor
This is from Doug Lemov's The Coach's Guide to Teaching. He studied many coaches and found a clear pattern in the language they used and its effect on athlete performance.
Internal language has the least value. It tells a student how to move their body:
- "Put your hand on their shoulder"
- "Backstep with your right leg"
- "Move your weight down their body"
This is how most coaches give instruction. There's conclusive evidence it doesn't work well, not in the moment and not long-term.
External language is much more effective. It tells an athlete how to manipulate their environment. In our sport, that means their opponent's body:
- "Don't let their head touch the mat"
- "Keep their weight on that arm"
- "Don't let their chest touch your chest"
Metaphors abstractly convey information without concrete directions:
- "T-Rexes don't tap"
- "Pass like an inchworm"
- "Wreck their posture"
These give athletes autonomy in figuring out how to solve a problem.
We use concepts heavily at GJJ because they're more effective. In many ways, concepts function like metaphors. They give students insight into how to play without telling them exactly what to do. Use concepts first. When they aren't working, try external language. Resort to internal language only when nothing else lands.
Avoid internal language like the plague with beginners. It won't work. They'll be frustrated and feel too dumb to learn. You'll be frustrated by their performance. Nobody benefits.
Speaking in a Common Language
This is incredibly important. We need coaches to speak in a relatively unified language, especially around core concepts and models.
The most important is alignment:
- Base
- Posture
- Structure (aka the frame-lever battle)
Information and definitions for alignment are covered in the Alignment curriculum article.
The second most important are the base mechanical models:
- Frames
- Levers
- Wedges (blocking & prying)
- Clamps (aka closed wedges)
- Hooks
- Posts
In-depth descriptions are covered in the Core Mechanics curriculum article.
When a student asks you a question, we should always strive to answer using these terms. The importance of this cannot be overstated.
Giving Feedback
All unsolicited feedback that isn't positive is criticism.
That's a powerful statement to keep in mind while coaching. Constructive criticism is one of the most powerful tools we have, but any time you tell a student to change something, you are criticizing them. Some people don't handle that well, especially adults who didn't play sports growing up.
Part of being a good coach is learning who you can help in the moment. If a student gets defensive and argues every time you give feedback, I have no expectation that you keep trying. We have students I don't give constructive feedback to because of how they react. They won't improve as quickly, but forcing it doesn't help either. Focus your energy where it's productive and revisit when the relationship is stronger.
Positive feedback is incredibly valuable. It doesn't directly improve grappling skill as much, but it makes the experience fun. If grappling isn't fun, nobody keeps coming.
Go around at least once per class and give every person positive feedback. With beginners, the most common things I hope to say are "that's a good pace" or "that's a good level of playfulness." We want students out of fight-or-flight mode as quickly as possible.
Beyond that, reinforce perception-action links ("good decision to try that sweep when you saw his elbow cross your centerline"), good movement, and playfulness.
What makes positive feedback land
Not all positive feedback functions the same way. "Good job" said while walking past is different from "good pace, I see you adjusting for your partner, that's exactly what we want." The first is filler. The second communicates three things simultaneously: you belong here, we have standards, and I see you meeting them.
Coyle's research on Gregg Popovich found this pattern consistently: effective feedback combines personal connection (body language that says "I care about you"), performance specificity (honest coaching that signals "we have real standards"), and individualization (treating the person as unique rather than generic). When positive feedback hits all three, it functions as a belonging cue. When it's just a quick "nice" in passing, it doesn't register.
The practical version: when you give positive feedback, name what you saw and why it matters. "That was a good frame" is okay. "That frame was good because you read the pass coming and got there early" is better. It tells the student you were watching, you noticed something specific, and you understand what they're working on.
Build bonds. A coach's job isn't just to make better grapplers. We want the whole experience to be fun, productive, and sparking curiosity.
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