One of the most valuable skills/tools for a weightlifting coach is the coaching eye. A coach with a well developed eye can watch a lift and immediately provide feedback as to technical errors and proficiencies. With the current ready availability of video, coaches can review a lift immediately after it takes place and then provide advice to a lifter, but this can still be too slow if it’s in the heat of battle and the coach doesn’t have the coaching eye to quickly analyze the video being watched. The obvious solution is to develop that eye, but how?
We Are All Affected by History
In so many aspects of life we are affected by the available technology. Since video is currently so easy to implement there is an overwhelming amount of lifting video available online. New coaches are able to watch this, frequently do and may feel that they are becoming skilled at evaluating lifting technique.
When my generation was coming of age as lifting coaches back in the 1970’s and 1980’s, the latest easily available technology was the motor drive on an SLR camera. This was able to provide back and white still shots at the rate of 6 to 8 per second. What happened was that we were able to study each position during the course of a lift and burn it into our brains. If the photos were of an especially skilled technician, we were able to learn those optimal joint angles and then to try and see them in the athletes we were coaching. Repeating the process over and over enabled us to develop our coaching eyes.
So Try This
For you newer coaches, you might want to attend a quality weightlifting meet and video some of the better lifts from the side.
You can easily convert the footage into sequence photos. I use a free program, Kinovea, which is easily downloadable but you can use whichever one you prefer.
Select the photos that show optimal positioning and keep them in sequence in a file. Spend some time going over them, ideally with a more experienced coach who can point out the critical positions.
Do this often enough and you should be able to develop an ideal clip in your mind of the snatch and clean & jerk.
Watch your own lifters and see how they conform to your ideal clip. Coach them on the points where they deviate.
This is how you can develop yourself as a self-contained coaching unit. Good luck in your coaching development!