Learn by doing

I recently started coaching Touch Football to some Grade 7 and 8 students at a school here in Taipei. It's a wild experience, the first time I've properly coached kids, and boy do I have a heap of added respect for how teachers manage to do work with them five days a week!

I've been doing it for a few weeks now, and one thing I've come to notice is just how much the kids learn from playing actual games of Touch. We can do all the drills and exercises in the world and they'll make small amounts of progress. But throw them into a game and they seem to pick up on so much more, so much faster too. Sure, they might not do everything right at the start (follow best practice in business speak) but after a while with a referee helping control the game they're executing skills that took an age to get right in our practice drills.

It's made me reflect on how I learn as well. Like the kids I'm coaching, I find that I too pick things up a lot faster when I'm hacking away at stuff. Yes, I still go through tutorials and guides but I don't feel I absorb as much through those means of learning.

I understand everyone their own learning styles and ways of absorbing knowledge, and maybe I've just got lucky with the group of kids I got to coach this year. Regardless, I'll be trying to get them as much game time as possible for the rest of this season, and keep drills light and focused on those best practices they really need a hand with.