Explicit and Implicit Learning

I believe that we both have the same ideas when it comes to coaching young children, this has helped me to understand both learning methods better as well as my own research that I have done.
Younger children do need the freedom to learn freely rather than in a structured environment but they also need a structure to ensure that they are performing the skill correctly. Both learning methods enhance each other and could be throughout any age group but especially younger children as they are learning motor skills and not sport related skills which is important for not only sport but every day life too.

James Taylor Blog

Explicit learning is characterised by:

• A large set of rules and knowledge of how to perform a skill
• Conscious processing of these rules by the athlete
• The athlete is able to explain, when questioned, how a skill is performed

Implicit learning is characterised by:

• Subconscious learning of skills
• Lack of verbal instructions
• The athlete is unable to explain, when questioned, how a skill is performed

The methods used in every coaching course I have attended sit heavily in the explicit learning style and on first glance this appears the sensible approach as it provides a methodical approach to teaching and subsequently checking for understanding or learning by the athlete.

Implicit learning is far more difficult to implement as it requires critical and creative thinking to shape the training environment in order to produce the desired movement outcome and makes it hard for the coach to assess how much the athlete…

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Implicit V Explicit Learning

Which do you think works best? & which is more important for a coach to know & exactly how can this change the way a coach teach’s their participants?

I’m going to tell you exactly what I think.

Implicit learning – individuals with impaired movement dynamics may benefit from implicit learning methods when acquiring sports-related motor skills. Individuals with altered movement dynamics and compromised working memory can benefit from implicit motor learning. (Steenbergen Et al, 2010)

Explicit Learning – Explicit learning places high demands on working memory capacity, but engagement of working memory is largely circumvented when skills are learned implicitly. Older people, whose movement dynamics deteriorate, can implicitly learn sports-related motor skills and that this results in more durable performance gains than explicit learning. (Steenbergen Et al, 2010)

What’s the difference?

Implicit learning methods typically contain no formal instruction about how to perform the skill yet result in a learner being able to perform the skill despite being unable to verbally describe how they do it. Explicit learning can be related to traditional coaching approaches where verbal instruction is used to coach a learner about how to perform a skill. This process typically results in the learner being able to verbalise how to perform the skill, although it does not guarantee the learner can physically execute the skill (Farrow, 2015).

In theory Implicit learning could lead into explicit learning, for example a child with an born ability at a particular sport would be able to perform well in that sport however when questioned about it he/she would not be able to explain oneself. However if the child was to research and study the motor skills, the child would then be able to explain clearer or fully at a later point.

How can this affect my coaching style?

For myself, explicit learning would be a more effective way of coaching as I am working with younger children, so this would mean that I would be able to explain in better detail to the children as well as enabling them to fully understand that motor skill themselves so that they could explain it themselves, and how they are performing that skill. This would benefit the children I coach as when I coach, I ask a lot of questions to them to see if they understand what I have demonstrated. This would be obvious to me as they will all be able to respond to my questions with the correct answers.

Implicit learning is better for informal structures, for example at a skate park, children are being coached but they do not need to reiterate what they have learnt and how they have learnt that skill. They are just able to do that skill and keep doing that skill without people questioning them so they are more likely to learn more because they are not being hassled to do better.