When practice doesn't make perfect

A proven intervention presented in a self-help book for the first time, supported by published academic research and industry workplace trials. Now available through PersonalBest Publishing.

App screenshot Overcoming Performance Roadblocks Book Cover
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We're all prisoners of habit

Matthew always follows too closely when driving; John has a very flat golf swing which affects contact with the ball; Brad has converted to a different aircraft but mentally he's still flying his old one; Paul underwent retraining but still risks injury every time he lifts a load incorrectly; Mary always writes 'accomadation'; Tony has difficulty adapting to a new gait prescribed by his physiotherapist; Jeff, a promising young pianist, always tenses up before a difficult passage; Mara, an Olympic javelin thrower has difficulty adapting to a new javelin.

The Solution: Old Way New Way

Inspirational case studies like these reveal how Old Way New Way, a new higher order learning strategy, can reprogram your brain and empower you to unlearn old, unsafe or inefficient ways of thinking and performing. When practice doesn't make perfect, take back control, break those chains of habit and achieve your personal best with Old Way New Way.

The evidence

Proof of Concept

“The problem is not learning the new; it's unlearning the old.”

In the world of skill development, skills coaching, mental skills training, and practice drills are the typical treatments for overcoming habit pattern errors. Fortunately, quality coaching, training and mental skills clearly improve technique and individuals can perform in the correct way while working with their coach, trainer or sport psychologist. However, the next day when they have to perform independently or when placed under the stress of competition, they seem to have forgotten what they have learned and the same old entrenched misunderstandings, bad habits and technique faults resurface. Even where the individual improves, the improvement is often only temporary or takes a long time to appear.

What coaches and trainers strive to achieve is that the improved knowledge and skills that were learned during training and reinforced by practice will quickly transfer to the real world. Unfortunately, this rarely occurs, or it occurs only slowly, so we have a “transfer of training problem.”

Frequently encountered in sports coaching, the training transfer problem is not restricted to sport. As our case studies show, poor transfer is an obstacle to learning wherever automated skill, knowledge, or behavioural routines are involved, e.g., the learning of mathematics, science, and spelling; athletic and sports performance; artistic performance; driving a motor vehicle; working with computers; speech therapy; overuse and sports injuries; postural problems; foreign language learning; and in management training and organisational change. The key element in all these situations is that the person faces having to change their existing knowledge and skills.

Having to change one's own ways in the face of new and conflicting knowledge is the root cause of the problem. As an old coach once said, “The problem is not learning the new; it's unlearning the old.”

Consistent, habitual errors show the presence, rather than the absence, of learning. Here, what the person knows is how to do it incorrectly. What matters then is not what the person does not know, but what he or she already knows. The first task is to help the person “unlearn” the incorrect information or skill, rather than persist with getting them to practice the “right” way, over and over.

When new information or ideas imparted during coaching disagree or conflict with what the person already knows, this conflict generates habit pattern interference with learning. This interference causes “accelerated forgetting” (Underwood, 1966) of the new knowledge or skill and within minutes or hours, the player forgets what he or she has learned. This accelerated rate of forgetting is much faster than normal forgetting, which normally takes weeks, months or sometimes years. Habit pattern interference does not prevent learning from occurring, it merely prevents the association of conflicting ideas (Underwood, 1966). If there is no conflict between the new and the old, then there is no interference and no barrier to learning. However, a person's mind is seldom a blank slate and the potential for conflict between old and new knowledge is usually high.

Habit pattern interference does not distinguish between what is “right” and what is “wrong”. It protects all prior knowledge and skills from change. It preserves incorrect or unsafe habits just as strongly as it protects correct skills and knowledge. This underscores the importance of getting it right the first time. Performance becomes cue-dependent, and the player falls back to old incorrect ways when the coach's or trainer's presence is withdrawn, inhibiting transfer of learning (Postman & Gray, 1977). This ensures that the faulty knowledge and skills continue to resist correction.

Unfortunately, although conventional coaching, training and education is very useful when teaching a person new skills, these methods are far less effective in eradicating established performance errors. Clearly, we need a better way—Old Way New Way.

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What you get

Book Contents

A learning method developed by an Australian psychologist empowers any coach, trainer, educator and therapist to achieve rapid change in an individual's knowledge and skills. Approximate length 143 pages.

CHAPTER 1 Case Studies

The following case studies reveal the actual skill correction and behaviour change protocols that were implemented with individuals and teams.

  • Driver training
  • Therapy
  • Psychology
  • Physiotherapy
  • Spelling
  • Personal habits - nail biting
  • Transition training - firearms safety training
  • Musical performance
  • Piano
  • Violin
  • Science teaching
  • Workplace training
  • Nuclear control room communication
  • Workplace safety
  • Technical education
  • Sport
  • Elite sports coaching at the South Australian Sports Institute: Soccer players (kicking technique)
  • Mental skills in golf
  • Golf putting
  • Golf swing
  • Lawn bowls
  • Lacrosse team skills
  • Rowing
  • Martial arts
  • Swimming
  • Baseball
  • Olympic javelin
  • Olympic sprinting
  • Flight training
  • type conversion
  • transition to digital instrumentation.
CHAPTER 2 History of an Innovation

History of an Innovation reveals the birth, development and achievements of Old Way New Way over time.

CHAPTER 3 Old Way New Way Unboxed

Old Way New Way Unboxed explains the theoretical foundation of Old Way New Way, underpinning research, and uses and limitations of the method.

CHAPTER 4 Delivery Modes

Delivery Modes offers flexible implementation which is an important feature of Old Way New Way. Equally effective approaches include direct face-to-face instruction and intervention; instruction in the procedure via email, by telephone and online, all with no significant loss of effectiveness. Individuals can also self-administer, i.e., follow the protocol to correct their own performance problems, without the coach or trainer being present. However, self-administration should not be undertaken without expert advice.

CHAPTER 5 Integrating Old Way New Way

Integrating Old Way New Way explains how to make Old Way New Way a part of your coaching, training or professional toolkit. The Old Way New Way protocol offers an entirely new model for performance improvement. However, old coaching, training and teaching habits die hard and intending facilitators often find it extremely difficult to change their own established ways of coaching and training. Guidelines are offered.

CHAPTER 6 Old Way New Way Protocol

A step-by-step demonstration of how to apply the generic Old Way New Way protocol to an athlete's technique problem. The protocol can be easily adapted to deal with any kind of performance problem.

Disclaimer

Here you will find additional information to the reader. Clarifies some issues and limits liability. Guidance for readers intending to try Old Way New Way.

Bibliography

We don't want the book to be a scholarly tome. After all, it is a handbook for coaches, athletes, players, sport psychologists, educators and therapists. However, there is a lot of underpinning published research for this change management method that provides credibility, as shown in the bibliography.

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What's being said

Book Endorsements

Enthusiastic support from an Olympic Gold Medalist, and an internationally renowned sport psychologist.

Tapio Korjus, Olympic Gold Medalist & Coach. President of the Board, Association of Sport Performance Centres.

"Overcoming Performance Roadblocks takes skill development into an entirely new world of rapid improvement. My coaching experience proves that, despite quality coaching and highly motivated athletes, technique difficulties resist correction after months and, in some cases, years of effort. Old entrenched technique habits die hard. This made our elite athletes at the Finish Institute of High Performance Sport (KIHU) uncompetitive and prone to injury. I needed a better way, so I tried Old Way New Way, an award-winning coaching science method.

"Improvement came immediately, after one session, and without the customary adaptation period. Equally impressive, the observed technique improvement during training transferred fully and permanently to competition. Without Old Way/New Way I believe it would have required up to 2000 repetitions or four years of practicing the correct technique before the performance would have improved. My elite athletes said they felt empowered by Old Way New Way, they became more self-confident and encouraged by the degree and speed of improvement, were more motivated and wanted to engage in more high quality training like this.

"I see Old Way New Way as a practical coaching tool that is readily incorporated into what we as coaches normally do. Mind you, Old Way New Way is not just a "quick fix"; it is an "intelligent" fix because it is based on how the brain learns. My sport psychology colleagues report that Old Way New Way also makes traditional sports psychology interventions like mental skills training more effective, because athletes learn these new skills faster.

"The inspirational case studies and step-by-step instructions in this book reveal the fascinating underpinnings of this unique self-help method and make it available to all coaches, athletes, sport psychologists, trainers, therepists, educators and individuals in every walk of life." Tapio Korjus' signature

Tapio Korjus

Internationally renowned sport psychologist Emeritus Professor Yuri Hanin, Research Institute for Olympic Sports (KIHU), Finland, is very enthusiastic about the method.

"I have been using Old Way New Way for rapid correction of consistent errors in technique with Finnish elite and Olympic athletes and coaches, with a pro-tour female golfer and also with a soccer team. The method is very practical and all eight interventions were completely successful. I quickly managed to completely solve the technical problem in just one single session. Results are immediate and there is no adaptation period with poor transfer of improvement to competitions, as experienced with conventional skill correction. A single learning trial lasting from one to two hours, including an half hour warm up, usually results in 80% or better improvement in performance. The new way (corrected skill) is consistently performed and spontaneous recovery of errors, if any, is easily handled. Most importantly, the observed technique improvement is permanent and skill improvement directly transfers to performance in competitions, as shown in our case studies."

Testimonials

Reviews and user feedback

"For the first time ever, this methodology offers practitioners a non-behavioural, user-friendly and cost-effective means of getting directly involved in physical skill development and correction. This is completely different from what is currently known about psychological skills training."

Yuri Hanin
Research Institute for Olympic Sports in Finland

"Old Way New Way offers a new theory and a new method for skill correction, transition training, and performance enhancement in sport. Old Way New Way is a very useful addition to a coach's professional toolkit."

ABC Televison New Dimensions

"This project has a high applicability and clear implications to the coaching of techniques and to coach education."

European Athletics Association

"On the Year 12 examination results, the [Old Way New Way] students outperformed both the school and state norms."

Science Education

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