ProFormance Chief Instructor Don Kitch, Jr. explains how two different types of teaching are part of the journey to become a successful High-Performance and Competition driver.
Drivers who want to learn more and develop their skills in high performance driving or competition will take a path that goes through two stages: instruction and coaching. Both types of teaching require experience and knowledge, and both are essential to a driver’s progress.
Instruction: transmitting the fundamentals
With instruction, the student learns from the outside in. An instructor uses verbal input — they tell students what they need to know. They also use other teaching aids, but this is what defines the instruction model for human learning: the student is unconsciously incompetent. In other words, they don’t know what they don’t know. This is how most drivers approach their first performance driving session.
Coaching: taking instruction further
The first task of an instructor is to make the student consciously incompetent — in other words, tactfully make them aware that they are not as good as they thought they were.
The next step is to become consciously competent: by reading books, talking to experts, and perhaps attending a school, they become aware of how to do things better.
Finally, they become unconsciously competent. This means they’re good at what they do, and they do it subconsciously. In performance driving, being unconsciously competent means that they can employ the skills they’ve learned from the instructor without thinking. Once they’ve reached this level, drivers can use their newly-gained mental bandwidth to explore higher levels.
In other words, when students become unconsciously competent, they are ready to move beyond instruction and can be coached.
Moving beyond words
As I noted, the instructor teaches from the outside in. Coaches promote learning from the inside. How do they do this?
and Don Kitch, Jr.
It’s not through a lot of talk. Coaches are not as verbal as instructors are; they tend to use fewer words, but ones that say a lot. All coaches can be instructors, but all instructors cannot be coaches. For one thing, some instructors have trouble knowing when to be quiet — they struggle with those long periods of silence that can ensue when the driver is absorbing new information, or possibly, re-playing the previous drive in an attempt to respond to the coach’s questions. A good coach will have taken some time at the outset of the session to observe and interview their driver, to better identify and understand the driver’s protocols, in order to define and identify their needs.
Planning is essential
Coaches should be prepared for whatever it takes to help their driver accomplish their goals. They should establish a protocol: plan your work, and work your plan. This means encouraging the driver not to get into the driver’s seat without having three things to work on during each session. It also means taking a very objective approach to their path forward.
“The instructor teaches from the outside in. The coach promotes learning from the inside.”
Don Kitch, Jr.
The coach’s toolbox has a number of tools, such as data systems and sensory input sessions, that help make the driver strongly aware of what they are doing. Coaches use mental imagery to develop drivers to better understand what they are trying to accomplish, and to clarify what their end goal looks like.
The goal: independence
One problem that can arise is when a driver develops a dependency on the coach: they must have their coach with them at all times. Good coaches will sense this, and will maintain a certain distance to support their driver’s independence and ability to self-coach.
In fact, good driver coaches can and should literally coach themselves right out of a job, by instilling a self-coaching protocol in their driver. At some point their driver should say, “I don’t need you anymore; I can do this now on my own.” That is the mark of a coach’s success”