Are you taking lessons to improve your technical and performance skills? Having a coach can be invaluable to helping you achieve your goals. The cost of taking lessons from a good coach can actually be very cost effective – you can waste a lot of shotshells and targets honing bad habits that a good coach could pick up on and help you correct quickly! More than likely, you will achieve your goals much more efficiently with the help of a coach. If you are taking lessons, what do you do with the information after each lesson?
Consider taking notes either during or as soon as possible after each lesson is complete. I learned this technique some 40 years ago (ouch) when a freshman at NCSU.
I noticed that during my classes, most of my classmates were busy scribbling down every word the professor would utter or write down on the blackboard. What they were not doing was paying real attention to what the professor was trying to say. I learned that it was much more effective to listen carefully with a focus on comprehension – and then to take brief notes on the essence of what the instructor’s key points were. As I mentioned in my post on New Year’s Resolutions HERE, writing down the key notes were like etching them directly into my brain. Many times, I would never even refer back to the notes – the simply act of writing then down was enough to remember the information.
I do the same thing now after a session with my coach. I find it difficult to break the rhythm of a lesson to take notes, but immediately after I get home, I hand write my notes using pen and paper. For me, the act of actually manually writing down the notes is much more effective than typing them as far as having recall of the information. I do keep a notebook and pen handy during a lesson in case there is some compelling information that I feel is important to capture immediately.
Later (within the next day or so), I enter the notes into a Word file which becomes part of my performance log. This reinforces the information another time. I toss the original hand written notes away at this point. My performance log consists of both my lesson notes as well as my notes from practices and competitions. I do refer back to these notes frequently to detect patterns and themes. Don’t hesitate to share your notes with your coach! Doing so can help to correct any misunderstandings immediately!
So, if you aren’t working with a coach, consider doing so. If you are, make sure you are getting the best bang for your buck by keeping notes from your sessions!
