99 External Cues Pt2

Where we start sticking stuff onto our players...

Let’s keep it going with this 99 External Cues series.

Part 1
Part 3: Analogies

The twist here is that we’re going to use cloth and tape cues.

Huh?

Quick refresher: one of the main themes of TLoC is that cues that promote an external focus of attention are generally superior to cues that promote an internal focus of attention. There’s some nuance to this (read the book people!), but, for the most part, we want to avoid a cue that references, “your hand,” or, “your foot.”

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Sidebar: remember, this is for Cueing. A cue is the last thought in your mind before you perform the action. This is different from a Discussion. Talk about body parts all you want when you discuss the skill with a player. But Discussion is more for pre and post practice to help players gain knowledge of that part of the game. So you might Discuss how the ball hitting a different part of your hand will produce different types of spin, or lack of spin, on the ball when serving. That’s great. But when you Cue that player (or when they cue themselves), you want to avoid talking about the hand and create a cue that focuses attention on the effect of the action not on an internal body part.

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Here’s the problem though: sometimes it’s REALLY hard to describe an action without referencing body parts. This is especially true when the action is a postural adjustment. Again, read the book, but Winkleman shares the story of working with an NFL player preparing for his NFL Draft testing where he’s going to run the 40 yard dash. He keeps rounding his back and slouching over in his acceleration phase. Apparently that’s bad when you run.

So Winkleman is saying what you can imagine, “keep your back straight,” “don’t round your back,” etc. Not working. He knows the research behind external cues but how do you cue that? So what he does is stick a piece of tape on the bottom of the guy’s shirt (just above his butt) and on the middle-top of his shirt, between his shoulder blades.

Discussion

Coach: “Show me how you would change your posture to put those pieces of tape far away from each other.”

Player: (Rounds back)

Coach: “Show me how you would change your posture to put those pieces of tape close together.”

Player: (Straightens back with chest up)

Coach: “Okay, when you’re coming out of your acceleration phase, keep those two pieces of tape as close together as possible.”

Cue: “Keep the tape together.”

And this proved so effective that Winkleman started using cueing tape (aka a little piece of athletic or floor tape) in lots of other situations.

You can also cue the cloth as well. Instead of referencing a foot, reference “shoe laces” or “pointing your shoe.” Instead of referencing the hips, tell the athlete to “point their belt buckle,” somewhere.

When I first heard of this concept, I had a resistance to it. It almost seems unfair to us as coaches.

Wtf is wrong with these players? You can’t just tell them to point their foot somewhere? You know what, that probably applies to other players or other coaches, but that might not apply to me! If you told me to point my foot somewhere, I would just point my foot there and it wouldn’t mess me up.

Well, unfortunately, it does seem to be the case. Winkleman didn’t make this stuff up. External focus of attention vs Internal focus of attention was brought to prominence in the sporting world by Dr. Gabby Wulf, but the concept has been replicated time and time again. I am leery of the words, “studies show that…” because, especially in psychology or social science, replication is a problem. So I’m not changing a whole coaching paradigm because one study showed something.

But Winkleman isn’t a lab geek. At one point he was running one of the biggest NFL Combine prep training centers. There’s big stakes on the line; the difference between a guy running 4.5 and 4.4 could be millions of dollars on their contract. He was convinced of the effectiveness of external cueing because it made a difference, even with elite performers¹.

And I’ve seen the effectiveness in my own coaching. Do I ever reference a body part? Sure, all the time. But I try to put that into the Discussion phase of practice. Recently at club clinic I was demonstrating pancake technique and I talked a bunch about what your hand needs to do and like. But then when it comes to Cueing that skill… that’s when I’m going to switch to all external.

I Believe You Just Tell Me The Cues Already!

Alright alright, here we go. 33 more External Cues; 10 for free and 23 behind the paywall. All of these cues are going to use a piece of tape or an article of clothing to help you use external focus of attention for movements that are sometimes hard to cue.

Starting with some setting cues…

(1) Put a couple small pieces of tape on the back of their hands. “See the tape after you set.” (For setters who flick out instead of finishing big and open.)

(2) Put a small piece of tape on each hand. “Show the hitter (not the floor) the tape.”

(3) Put a small piece of tape on each wrist. “Tape stays above your numbers when you draw.” (For setters who drop and flare or twirl their hands up to the contact point instead of using a simple draw.) Alternatively:

(4) Small pieces of blue tape on each wrist. Piece of red tape on their shirt on their upper stomach. “Blue never drops below red / blue stays above red.”

(5) “Point your shoe to the target as you finish your set.”

(6) Put a piece of tape on the front of her right shoe and draw an arrow on it. “Point the arrow to the target as you finish your set.” (“Arrow to the target / arrow to the hitter.”)

Some hitting cues:

(7) “Shoes to the setter as you step-close.”

(8) Put a piece of tape on the front of both shoes. “Point your arrows at the setter as you step-close.”

(9) Put a piece of red tape on her right shoe and a piece of blue tape on her left shoe. “Blue crosses past red.”

One day you tell your players that “blue crosses past red” and the next day they all can hit like Aaron Russell. Scientific facts.

(10) “Belt buckle leads” (when teaching players to rotate into the ball)