National Strength & Conditioning Association

Volume 23, Number 4, pages 1719

Strength Conditioning:
Developing Your Teaching Technique
Mark Mullineaux, MA
School of Sciences
University of Sunderland
Keywords: safety; effectiveness; teaching points; primacy;
recency; chunking.

Introduction
The study of how people learn is
crucial to understanding how best
to teach them (1). For strength
conditioners, applying learning
principles to the improvement of
education and training can seem a
daunting task, because mystery
surrounds a good deal of the underpinning theory. This article
aims to consider first, some of
these key principles, and second,
how the practitioner can employ
them on the floor to develop his or
her teaching technique.

Safety and Effectiveness:

The Cornerstones of Technique
This article is built around 2 key
premises of the role of strength
conditioners. First, of paramount
importance is that the conditioner
is safenothing is of greater importance than this. Following from
this, the conditioner must be able
to teach effective technique so that
fitness goals can be achieved.
These cornerstones of safety and
effectiveness frequently overlap.
The depth of knowledge a

August 2001

strength conditioner requires is extensive; the deadlift technique alone

has some 24 separate teaching
points to which the strength conditioner could refer (2). Knowledge of
these points is crucial to the effectiveness of instruction. However, it
is the judicious use of this knowledge that can make the difference
between effective and ineffective instruction. The inexperienced conditioner may be tempted to blind the
client or athlete with knowledge by
referring to all of these points. Conditioners are correct to believe that,
as the professionals, they need to
know all of the teaching points.
However, the methods they use to
get this information across to
clients and athletes are crucial.
Through the application of some
basic learning principles, there are
techniques that conditioners can
use to develop the effectiveness of
their teaching.

The Typical Teaching

Sequence
Fitness training organizations
tend to use an exercise teaching
sequence of one form or another.
Strength and Conditioning Journal

These generally use a format

closely related to the following:
Phase 1: Inform the client or
athlete of the name of the exercise and the areas and/or
muscles that it works.
Phase 2: Give a silent demonstration.
Phase 3: Give a demonstration accompanied by teaching
points.
Phase 4: Begin the teaching
phase.
How can the conditioner improve on this basic model?
As a teaching sequence, this
model gives the inexperienced
strength conditioner an example
to follow that will serve as a valuable teaching aid. However, as
conditioners grow in experience,
they may want to develop their
teaching skills to apply some basic
learning principles. The areas
under consideration in this article
refer to the following:
How many teaching points
should a strength conditioner
consider using for an exercise?
Which teaching points should
they use (e.g., out of the possi17

ble 24 for the deadlift, which

do they choose when teaching
the exercise to a novice)?
How can they place emphasis
on particular teaching points?
When should they use specific
teaching points?

How Many Teaching Points?

Careful use of your array of teaching points is crucial. Choosing
which points to use can sometimes be difficult, but it is not possible to use them all when teaching an exercise to a novice,
because everyone has information
processing limits. As a general
rule, most clients will have a
short-term memory capable of
storing between 5 and 9 pieces of
information. The magical number, according to early research, is
7 pieces of information (4). Using
more teaching points than this
may cause the client confusion,
particularly if the teaching points
are unrelated or carry no theme to
them. The long-term memory,
however, can store a huge amount
of information, and information is
stored best in this type of memory
through practice and feedback. It
is in supplementary sessions,
therefore, that a wider variety of
teaching points can be given.

Deciding on Which Teaching

Points to Use
Given that most clients have a
short-term memory capacity of between 5 and 9 pieces of information, how does the inexperienced
strength conditioner decide which
of the teaching points to give? This
will depend on 2 things: First, as
alluded to above, all of the
strength conditioners teaching
should be based on the 2 cornerstone principles of safety and effectiveness. The use of your teaching points will, therefore, be
determined first by safety. Which

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teaching points emphasize safety

first, and which can be left until
later? If we consider the deadlift,
we are teaching clients this exercise so that (a) they can lift and replace weights safely without injury
to their backs, and (b) so that we
can lead them into the power
clean at a later date if desired.
The first consideration in the
deadlift is to protect the back;
therefore, all of the teaching points
we give as part of our first teaching
of the exercise should revolve
around this. Most consideration is
devoted to ensuring first, that the
weight is kept close to the body to
reduce the torque and pressure on
the back, and second, that the
weight is taken predominantly by
the leg muscles. Therefore, the key
points to put across to the client
are the following:
Stand so that the barbell is
over the balls of the feet.
Keep the head up or slightly
extended.
Keep the back rigid and flat.
Keep the shoulders slightly in
front of the barbell.
Initiate the deadlift by extending the hips and knees.
Ensure that the shoulders rise
faster than the hips.
Keep the bar as close to the
body as possible during the
exercise.
Return the bar to the floor by
flexing the hips (2).
To teach the exercise in the
initial stages, use of a light barbell
or even a broom handle is particularly useful, because it means we
can focus on the key safety aspect
of protecting the back. Some debate over the chosen teaching
points is welcome and inevitable,
but the process of emphasizing
those that you believe will enhance the safety of the execution
does not change. Note that there
are 8 teaching points, which is
within our range of 5 to 9 pieces of
Strength and Conditioning Journal

information, and that the emphasis is on protection of the back.

When and How to Use Your

Teaching Points: Chunking
It is important to use your teaching points from an appropriate
angle. During the teaching phase,
encourage clients to view the exercise from 2 different angles. They
can then be given teaching points
that are appropriate to the angle
they are viewing from. This enables the conditioner to chunk
the information, which makes it
easier to process. Chunking information means that teaching
points are provided in meaningful
groups of information rather than
in discrete, individual elements.
These chunks are designed to
achieve the emphasis on the protection of the back. Psychologists
have concluded that chunking information aids significantly in the
learning process (4).
For example, from the front,
the client will be able to see and/
or be informed that the balls of the
feet are under the bar and that the
head is up or slightly extended (1
chunk of information). When the
client moves to the side view, you
can then emphasize that the back
is rigid and flat and that the
shoulders are slightly in advance
of the barbell (a second chunk of
information). This type of chunking of information may assist the
performer to retain more of the
pieces of information, thereby allowing you to extend the range of
teaching points you give.

Emphasizing Particular
Points: Primacy and Recency
In terms of safety and effectiveness, the concepts of primacy and
recency are especially valuable to
the strength conditioner. In general, the first information we receive
has the greatest impact on our

August 2001

overall impressions. This is referred to as the primacy effect. Interestingly, however, recall is particularly good for the most recently
presented items of information (recency) (3). This suggests that
clients are more likely to remember the first teaching points you
give (primacy) and the last teaching points you give (recency).
The implication of this fact is
that you could consider giving
your key safety teaching point first
and reiterate it as your last teaching point. Note the order of teaching points in our example: Telling
the client to keep the arches of the
feet under the bar comes first, a
main teaching point that, when
linked to shoulder in advance of
the bar, means the torque is reduced because the distance of the
force from the body is reduced.
The impact is that one of the main
safety points is emphasized first
(primacy), and you can then reiterate it later (recency).

Some Conclusions

themes, which aids in information processing.

The key safety teaching points
can be used first and last (primacy and recency).
The conditioner will intimately
know the other teaching points
and give them to the client in
follow-up sessions, relying on
the long-term memory, which
has a much greater capacity
than the short-term memory.

References
1. Glaser, R., and M. Bassok.
Learning theory and the
study of instruction. Annu.
Rev. Psychol. 40:631666.
1989.
2. Graham, J.F. Exercise: Deadlift. Strength Cond. J. 22:18
20. 2000.
3. Luchins, A. Primacy-recency
in impression formulation.
In: The Order of Presentation
in Persuasion. C.I. Hovland,
ed. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1957.
4. Miller, G.A. The magical
number seven plus or minus
two: Some limits on our capacity for processing information. Psychol. Rev. 63:81
97. 1956.

Knowing how to do an exercise

and knowing the associated teaching points are both very valuable.
Use of these teaching points can
be developed and enhanced over
time by carefully considering the
learning process. Occasionally,
psychological research can seem
at best daunting and at worst inapplicable to the strength conditioner. There are, however, some
relatively simple guidelines that
may be derived from the research
that strength conditioners may
want to implement:
Teaching is based on the cornerstones of safety and effectiveness, with the 2 frequently
overlapping.
The research suggests the use
of between 5 and 9 teaching
points per exercise.
The teaching points can be
chunked into related

Mark Mullineaux, MA, is a Senior

Lecturer in Exercise Leadership at
the University of Sunderland in
the United Kingdom. He is also an
assessor in gym instruction at the
YMCA Center of Excellence.

August 2001

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