Interestingly, video analysis can be useful or useless, depending on how it is used. Just showing videos to developing athletes might not be helpful unless skills of analysis are developed. There is little research support to simply showing videos to developing athletes.
However, if the video is accompanied by questioning and/or analysis, critical thinking and analysis skills can be developed that will carry over to other situations. To develop analytical skills, first use video modeling, where you watch a video of a champion athlete. Point out aspects of his technique, strokes, boat position, etc. Then, show the athlete a video of himself. Ask questions. Ask the athlete to compare his boat position, technique, etc. to the model.
Then, start applying the analysis to other boaters. Watch different videos and ask the athlete questions to raise his level of analysis. Soon, the athlete will apply this level of analysis when he is observing at every race, watching the other boaters.
Notice the steps to this approach. First, the athlete sees a champion racer with very good technique and this image is implanted in his mind. Then, the champion's technique is analyzed, so the athlete learns more detail about the champion's techniques.
Next, the athlete sees his own performance and compares it to the champion's so he learns the differences between his technique and the champion's. He develops his own ability to analyze at this point by the questioning. At this point, further analysis of other boaters deepens his ability to analyze and criticize the technique of all boaters.
The athlete has gone from not really understanding much about his sport to where he understands completely what is happening and then develops a habit of analyzing every run he sees at a very high level. This type of structured video learning is very helpful to developing athletes. You can do it in a coach-led process as described above, or if no coach is available, an athlete can go through the process on his own to deepen his understanding of the sport.
Comments