External Cues > Internal Cues
As a young player, I heard something like, “hit the mitt,” as a guide for pitching. Being an aggressive child, I thought, “that’s not enough… Imma throw through the mitt.” Being an obsessive child, my brain didn’t settle there, so I thought, “and throw through the mitt and through the catcher’s body… throw through the umpire’s body too… throw it so it goes through them all and still keeps going through the fence behind them.”
What I’d unwittingly stumbled upon was an ideal external cue: An external cue laden with aggressive intent. Performance study, neurology science, and zen buddhism all align to confirm this conclusion. (See: the upcoming book, Behavioral Approach by Al Coleman)
The body organizes around your attention and intent. Your conscious mind sets the goals, orients your attention, and then becomes a passive observer of the performing mechanisms you are biologically capable of, the biologic subsystems to your conscious mind.
This is why we avoid providing a player internal cues—e.g. “Keep your hands in,” “stride longer,” or, “drop and drive.” It’s not about whether, if performed, the mechanics would be right or wrong. It’s about what the player needs to do mentally to learn and execute the movement. Internal cues move attention toward the body, which distracts from performing the task. The conscious mind is too slow; neurologic studies have established the conscious mind’s activity takes place after performance.
Instead, we use external cues and constraints to teach new movements. Let’s say a right-handed hitter is stepping toward third when they swing. First, we need to address the mental landscape of the player. In young players, this often means they are afraid of getting hit by the ball. Not always and, even when it is true, it isn’t always a conscious thought. Either way, we need to address the mentality of the player first.
After addressing that mentality, then we need to retrain the body. Even a player who has faced his fears is subject to ingrained habits. So, we move to the next step which is to create constraints and feedback for the body to reorganize itself neurologically and habituate a new movement. For example, it’s often enough for a player to hit off a tee with a bat on the ground behind their lead leg. If they step back, they make contact with the bat and fail the rep. Try again, and repeat.
Finally, we identify an external cue for the player’s conscious mind to attend to. With the example above, it might be, “drive the ball to right field.”
Caveat #1: Setup is different. Internal cues can be useful when getting into your stance or grip before the movement begins.
Caveat #2: Understanding ≠ Cueing. We still teach the why behind movements to help athletes become their own best coach. But when it’s time to actually perform, we shift to external cues and let the body do what it’s wired to do.