How to ask your players the right questions

Key benefits of pre-questions include:

• Allowing athletes to preview some of the skills and tactics they will learn in the training session.
• Helping reduce players’ overconfidence, making them more open to learning new information.
• Helping players become more curious about the topic, which helps them stay attentive in training sessions.

It is key to ask yourself whether pre-questions are appropriate in certain situations. 

These types of questions are most beneficial when athletes have some prior knowledge of the skill or topic being taught. However, they may not be as useful if your players are completely new to the topic.

Hinge questions

These types of questions are asked during the actual teaching of a skill or method, and allow you to check for misunderstanding with your athletes.

You can use hinge questions as a midpoint to assess if you can move on with the skill or if you need to recap some key points.

Hinge questions should be used as ’quick checks’ and should take no more than two minutes for your athletes to respond, and around 30 seconds to collect and interpret their answer.

For example, when going though a game plan, you could simply use finger voting to check understanding after asking a question.

Hinge questions are every coach’s dream, as they help you plan what to do next.

If most of your players understand what is being taught, then you can simply move on with the session. 
However, you may spend time individually with athletes who struggled with it.

If many of your athletes misunderstood the topic, then it might be worth reviewing the skills and addressing these misconceptions. 

Here are examples of questions you can use to do so:

• How do you successfully perform the skill?
• What do you still not understand about this skill?
• Where should your body be during this movement

Elaborative interrogation
These are “Why?” questions, and can be used at the end of the session to help your players think more deeply about what they have just learned.

Elaborative interrogation is beneficial, as it helps your players to gain a greater understanding of what you are teaching, which will enhance their ability to remember information and cement this knowledge into their long-term memory.

Try asking questions such as: 

• Which part of the foot is best to use when striking and why?
• Why should you scan before you receive the ball?
• Why is it important to get into space when the midfield have the ball?

Although it may seem incredibly simple, the magic behind asking the right questions is truly something special. It gives your coaching and edge and enhances your players learning during training sessions. 

Learning new skills and techniques can be very hard but by asking the right, psychologically rich questions, this lightens the load.