Coaching Foundations Pt. 4: Feedback That Refines Learning

Refinement is never an accident. It comes from the right environment, the right intentions, and the right feedback at the right time. Technique becomes effortless only when the body knows exactly what it’s trying to create—and feedback is the bridge between intention and execution.

The Two Kinds of Feedback

When you train, you’re always receiving information. Some comes naturally from the movement. Some comes from your coach. Both matter, but for different reasons.

1. Task-Intrinsic Feedback

This is the information you get directly from the movement itself.

• You feel whether your weight is heavy in top half guard.

• You sense whether your timing was late on a guard retention.

Your body constantly sends visual, tactile, and proprioceptive signals—if you’re paying attention.

In many situations, this natural feedback is obvious. You either “hit the target” or you didn’t.

2. Augmented Feedback

Some movements don’t give enough natural information. It’s hard to feel the efficiency of your hip rotation on a berimbolo or the quality of your frames during a fast passing exchange. This is where augmented feedback helps.

There are two types:

• Knowledge of Results – the outcome.

“You recovered guard three out of five times.”

• Knowledge of Performance – the qualities of the movement that produced that outcome.

“Your shin dropped below parallel, so you couldn’t get your knee back in front of their hip.”

Both help the athlete understand not just what happened, but why it happened.

Using External Focus

External cues simplify learning. Instead of “bridge harder” or “get your knee in,” try:

• “Point your foot to the sky” to create the shin angle that makes knee insertion easier.

Anchors like this allow the body to self-organize without overthinking.

As athletes develop more context and autonomy, feedback naturally shifts toward results—the athlete begins correcting their own performance.