When staring at yourself in the mirror is a good thing

In the gym & fitness world, the mirror has long been associated with narcissistic tendencies & intense bicep flexing. You’ll be hard pressed to find a single one in functional fitness facilities, with coaches believing in mentoring the ability for someone to ‘feel’ the movement.

Well, I’m here to tell you, functional fitness pro’s, the mirror deserves a place in your gym and we’re going to break down why it’s useful & when it’s best used & when to face away

You vs the majority

1 It’s well known that there are 3 main styles of learning that most people fall into:

• Visual

• Audio

• Kinetic

As coaches, we’ve often focused on Audio & Kinetic to teach people movements. We provide the all important coaching cue and proceed to help our students ‘feel’ the movement. A subtle touch here, a gentle nudge here to help them achieve them the correct position.

However, we live in a wonderful ae where the majority of people consume information via the eyes. We start out reading books in school (now Ipads in some case) and move forward to screening emails on the laptop. We consume our news, media and knowledge through a screen or paper more than anything. This is also known as visual learning…

Imagine how we could help our students if we could provide visual cues instantly for them to see and learn from. I’ve got the perfect solution for you. The next time you’re teaching a snatch or squat, try showing your student the difference in what is better vs what is not in the mirror and watch them catch on much faster. Don’t cut out a possible way for someone to learn, provide more.

Extra eyes

The mirror will always provide a set of eyes while you’re away. A student may watch their form in the mirror and work on the coaching cues you’ve given them to focus on, with instant direct feedback.

Yes, of course we want our students to be able to execute and feel the movement; but practice makes permanent and allowing our students instant visual feedback to make corrections means more movements can be done closer to perfect than before

Use it wisely

The Babushi coaches have a system where the further away we our students are from a competition or peaking phase the more we use the mirror. As we gradually progress into competition or in season we slowly phase out the mirror totally.

Let’s look at a real example:

A Babushi Team 3X Weightlifter has an issue where there bum tends to shoot up on the snatch right as they begin the lift. Without going into too much detail on why this is a no-no (although that’s a great idea for the next article) this is a less than desirable movement we want in a high level lifter.

So, we put them in front of a mirror and provide them visual cues (how it should look) and allow them to practice. Forcing them to make it look as it should while we provide cues and guide them. We’re providing stimulus in all 3 ways. Visually, Auditory & Kinetically. The lifter is allowed to move into the correct positions slowly and gradually. Eventually, the desired improvements become automatic & natural over time and as we see the desired outcome become consistent we slowly start turning around and allowing the movement to become natural and thoughtless.

By the time competition comes around, our Babushi 3X lifter can face into a crowd and stand on the platform and perform the Snatch without their bum shooting up.

References:

1) https://www.missouristate.edu/assets/busadv/p.30.pdf