4 Tips For Coaching A Class With A Broad Spectrum Of Skill Level

Written By: Kirtsen Ahrendt

It’s lovely when most of your class is around the same skill and experience level, it allows us to narrow our coaching focus to the group in front of us. More often than not, our classes look like a giant smorgasborg of skills and capacities. You might have a total newbie and a 10-year OG member in the same class; a 23 YO quarterfinals athlete and a weekend warrior with the mobility of the tinman (it’s me. I’m the tinman). How do you provide value to a wide range of athletic abilities while keeping people safe and avoid getting sucked into glaringly obvious faults? Here’s 4 tips on coaching your class with a broad spectrum of skill levels while keeping your classes cohesive and high-value:

Fundamentals Benefit Everyone:

When we have beginners or less-capable movers in class, a main priority is to dial in fundamental positions and strength. But if we also have experienced athletes in class, will they be bored or receive less value? The answer is: No. Beginners use fundamentals to learn movement; Mid-to-experienced athletes use fundamentals to refine movement. Fundamentals aren’t easy, they’re the foundation. We don’t get to a certain level and the fundamentals aren’t applicable anymore.

In actuality, as we advance, we return to the fundamentals with new understanding, greater awareness and ability to execute on them, rather than moving beyond them. Go ahead and dig into the fundamentals. Each member of your class can derive value from this. *For consideration: Also remember that “experienced” movers may not be “advanced” in their movement quality or efficacy; They just seem so comparatively to novice members. This can build a false narrative in their own head. They see that they’re moving some of the heavier weight or performing higher technical skills compared to their classmates, but may not recognize the opportunities for refinement, efficiency, and skill volume development. Help this athlete progress by dialing in on simple, singular and executable cues.

Identify YOUR Coaching Focus:

Write it on the whiteboard and introduce it in your whiteboard brief.

Snatch day? Patience to achieve full extension
Back squat day? Establish and maintaining a good brace
Bench press day? Creating tension in your setup.

These are just examples. It’s more important that you set a coaching point-of-performance rather than WHAT you choose; As long as the intention has good value and carryover to executing the skill, each class member now has a focal point. Members are often overwhelmed by the sheer number of technical things they COULD focus on, leading them to focus on nothing at all or too many things at once. Everyone derives value from narrowing their focus. The more experienced members will use your focal point to dig deeper into their individual area of opportunity, while your novice members will use it as the sole focus as they move and reflect.

Use Your Warm-Up To Teach & Evaluate (Double Duty):

Pull the ninja of all ninja double-duty coaching decisions, structure your warmup so that it allows you to both evaluate and to teach movement. What do I mean by this? In your warm-up, utilize exercises that are movement regressions for the upcoming prescribed exercise that you’re concerned about being appropriate for the various skill levels in your class. Doing so, allows you to screen for athletes that may struggle to execute the more technical movement that is coming later on while simultaneously warming-up and teaching the entire class the foundations required. The earlier you know this, the more effective you can be as a coach. It may guide a movement customization, a coaching focus you cue, or an additional drill that you give them to prepare.

By utilizing appropriate movement regressions in your warm-up you’ll accomplish both physically preparing the class for work and teaching them an exercise that they could perform in place of the prescribed exercise later on.

The thing that makes this tactic so effective is that in the event you have a member(s) who may need to regress or make a movement swap, they are 10x more likely to choose it because they already know what they’re swapping for and how to perform it. You’ll rarely get buy-in from a member to make a movement customization if you’re asking them to choose something they are unfamiliar with or have never done. Worse, if you do want them to perform a movement they are unfamiliar with, you now have to teach it to an individual within the flow of the group class.

Here’s an example of this in action:

The workout prescribes 8 x 2 split jerk with a :03 hold in receiving position, but you want a member to perform a single arm dumbbell complex instead or a less dynamic barbell pressing movement, you’ll save coaching time and see more effective movement by having utilized those exercises and highlighting key positions in the warmup.

Here’s another example:

Ring dips are prescribed in class. Utilize static and ring support isometric holds in your warmups to not only physically prepare the joints and tissues, but to identify who the rings may be inappropriate for and to help members self-assess their own skill. Building agency and awareness in your members is helpful in their long term development.

The takeaway – the more that your warmup selections can teach, demonstrate, and prepare, the more value and flexibility to adapt you will have in your class.

Open-Ended Questions To Narrow Your Coaching Focus:

Open-ended questions are a great coaching tool to use with novice and experienced athletes. They are questions that start with “what/how” and allow for a range of answers. They might sound like:

“What are you focused on in this lift?”
“How does your bar path feel during the lift?”

What/how questions inform us of what an experienced lifter is focused on so that we can direct our coaching eye and cues towards that. They have enough knowledge and experience to know what they need to work on, let them tell you about it so you can give them feedback correlated to that. Conversely, open ended questions with a novice athlete informs us of their knowledge on the lift. If they don’t understand that the bar should stay close to them, cueing lats on or high-elbows in a turnover will not resonate.

Bonus Tip: Partner Up:

Whether you have enough equipment for everyone to go solo or not, partnering up is a great tool to utilize on technical programming days. Logistically, fewer people will be performing lifts at any one time, allowing you to scan a smaller group. In addition, partnering people up allows the non-working partner to learn by observing their peer. When you give a coaching cue to one of the partners, both should be listening.

Coaches, want to dig deeper into topics like this? Join the upcoming 5-week July cohort of Invictus University Coaches Development course.