Personal Best Academy™
Personal Best Academy™ is focused on the improvement of human performance.
Spelling is one aspect of performance that we deal with because
the way words are spelled in English can present problems
for people of all ages.
We have developed a fresh approach to improving learning and transfer
of learning; eradicating bad or
unsafe habits; accelerating transition and conversion training;
and correcting technique faults, misconceptions and other persistent
errors.
We maintain that the main reason why motivated people have difficulty
changing their skilled performance, behaviour, thoughts and beliefs is
because they are the prisoners of habit.
Emerging research in cognitive psychology indicates that learned habit
patterns influence and direct what we think and do every day
of our lives. This includes our performance in sport or at work,
our conceptual framework including any misconceptions; our ability
to learn; how we interact with others; and the thoughts and beliefs
that guide our daily lives. All these learned behaviours, whether
right or wrong, safe or unsafe, suitable or unsuitable, effective
or ineffective, well adjusted or maladjusted, are under the powerful
influence of habit forces.
Habit patterns automatically develop during practice, i.e, repeated conscious recall of a thought, word or deed. Practicing recall soon lays down neural networks in the brain that, when the same situation arises next time, are triggered automatically so that we can respond instinctively and appropriately, doing exactly what we learned or trained to do. The brain is built to work this way; to easily and automatically develop habit patterns.
Habit patterns are useful because they require less mental energy than conscious thought. The brain finds it more efficient to work this way. Good habits, developed from conscious practice and effort, help us function better during our daily lives.
As long as those good habits are suitable reactions to what we encounter, they remain beneficial. But when circumstances change and a different response is required to a familiar situation, that habit we have developed can be a real handicap.
As we all know from bitter experience, habit patterns are notoriously
hard to change. Anyone who tries to change their established routines
soon comes up against a powerful mental resistance which interferes, slows
down, and sometimes even disables the desired change and improvement in
performance and behaviour. The better someone has practiced, learned and
therefore habituated the thought, performance or behaviour; the harder it is to
change.
Currently available coaching, teaching, training and therapeutic methods can be very effective when dealing with a blank slate, i.e., when the person has no prior experience or preconceptions that might get in the way of correct performance. However, coaching, teaching, training and therapeutic methods find it very difficult to deal with maladaptive habit patterns.
Eventually, after much time and effort, change does come and the person improves but there is a typically extended period of adaptation during which coaching, teaching, training and therapeutic efforts have to be re-applied. This problem is known as the transfer of learning/training/therapy problem.
The adaptation period to change and the associated transfer problems make coaching, teaching, training and therapy less time- and cost-effective. There has to be a better way.
Personal Best Academy™ uses and teaches Old Way/New Way® to
help free people from the chains of habit and empower them to achieve
their personal best.
From the description below, we can see that Old Way/New Way® is
a powerful, cost- and time-effective yet very user friendly learning method
that can change habit patterns quickly and permanently. Old Way/New Way® greatly
reduces the typically extended and often risky adaptation period during
which people try to adjust to change.
Since its inception in 1986, Personal Best Academy™ has provided training
courses in Old Way/New Way® Learning to individuals, groups,
organisations and corporations striving to achieve their personal best.
Recipients of Old Way/New Way® training include Olympic
athletes and coaches; players and coaches of elite and recreational sports;
pilots and flight instructors; drivers and driving instructors; firearms
trainees and instructors; police departments; mining machinery operators
and instructors; workplace operators and supervisors; employees and managers;
musicians and music teachers; dancers and teachers of dance; school, college
and university students and teachers; and children and parents.
The Academy offers training modules which are delivered as interactive
self-paced online courses, or face-to-face training workshops
for small groups.
Personal Best Academy™ operates from Brisbane, Australia. Our customers are
mostly from English speaking countries but include individuals, groups
and organisations from many other nations across the globe.
Old Way/New Way® Learning
Old Way/New Way® relies on well known learning
principles. It is officially endorsed and gazetted by
the South Australian Department of Education as a recognised
and approved learning method (The Education Gazette,
1983, Vol. 11, No. 11, week ending 29 April, p. 289. Department
of Education, South Australia.)
Basically, Old Way/New Way® Learning is a special
way of practicing that greatly reduces the mental interference
from established habit patterns and consequently accelerates
learning and improves performance.
Old Way/New Way® is a novel synthesis and interpretation
of existing and newly emerging cognitive science concepts and
principles, including automaticity in behaviour (Bargh & Chartrand,
1999); learned errors (Reason, 1990); the influence of prior
learning (Ausubel, 1968); metacognition (Flavell, 1987); and
proactive inhibition and accelerated forgetting (Underwood, 1957;
1966).
Developed by Dr Harry Lyndon in the 1970's and later trademarked,
Old Way/New Way® consists of a protocol or set
of instructions. Much more than just a remedial method, this
protocol accelerates cognitive and behavioural change within
individuals, greatly reduces the typically prolonged adaptation
period to the adoption of change and consequently improves learning transfer.
Experienced Old Way/New Way® practitioners have
adapted the original Old Way/New Way® protocol
to a wide variety of learning and training situations, environments
and individuals.
Why is Old Way/New Way® necessary? What's wrong
with currently available methods of teaching, training, coaching
and behaviour change?
Current teaching, training, coaching and behaviour change methods
can be quite effective when learning something new but
are much less effective when changing something that
is already established. Examples are an established work routine
that is unsafe or has become inefficient; changing your faulty
golf swing; or having to undergo type conversion training to
change to a new aircraft. In such change situations Old Way/New
Way® comes into its own and gets better results
than other learning, training, coaching and behaviour change
methods.
Whenever we want or have to change our beliefs, understanding
and performance this presents special learning and training problems
because old habits of thought and deed die hard. As an old flight
instructor once said,
"The problem is not learning the new, it's
forgetting [unlearning] the old."
Conventional learning, training and behaviour change methods
typically come up against force of habit. This conflict between
the old and the new produces a typically extended adaptation
period. Even highly skilled and motivated people who diligently
practice their new way despair when they find themselves repeatedly
falling back to old ways and they struggle to adapt.
During this adaptation period, their performance slows, concentration
demands rise, errors increase, risk exposure increases and frustration
levels rise. These are all signs of a brain in conflict; an all
too familiar but completely unnecessary conflict.
Read an in-depth discussion of the adaptation period in response
to change; its effects on transfer of learning and training;
and what kind of practice does make perfect.
Old Way/New Way® bypasses the brain mechanisms
that preserve old learning and that make old habits die hard.
This learning method greatly accelerates change and improvement.
So, conventional learning, training and behaviour change methods
should be used when learning something new and unfamiliar.
Old Way/New Way® should be used when changing
over to something that conflicts, or is likely to conflict,
with what we already know and do, as in the correction of errors
(technique/skill correction, poor or unsafe work habits, misconconceptions,
behaviour change) and in conversion/transition training.
Does it work?
Published research, workplace trials and case studies over the
last thirty years indicate that an individual who undergoes Old
Way/New Way® training when trying to learn something
new or change something already established, is able to make
the change change after one or two brief learning sessions, provided
that the problem was correctly diagnosed prior to the intervention and he
or she follows the prescribed post-intervention self-correction
routine.
Typically, after one successful correction session with Old
Way/New Way®, an individual, group or team has
an 80% or higher probability of performing in the new way; a
20% or lower probability of still performing in the old way;
and a 90% probability of self-detecting an old way if and when
it occurs and then self-correcting it.
The success of this change method and subsequent performance
improvement or behaviour change depend very much on a correct
diagnosis or identification of the "old" and "new" ways, i.e.,
what is the person doing now that has to change and what should
they be doing instead?
Although the Old Way/New Way® protocol itself
is not complicated to administer or follow, what comes before
the intervention (i.e., the identification of the old and new
ways) and what comes after (i.e., self-correction and follow-up)
both require experience and expert knowledge of the change area
concerned.
An example of habit pattern error correction. Correcting poor
technique in the javelin throw requires expert input from both
the athlete and his or her experienced coach. Athlete and coach
have to identify exactly what things are wrong with the athlete's
technique. They then have to identify the optimal technique for
that particular athlete at his or her stage of development. These
preliminary tasks precede the application of the change protocol
and require sufficient knowledge and time.
Although the athlete will be enabled by the Old Way/New Way® protocol
to change over to the "new" way, failure to correctly identify
the "old" and "new" ways can compromise the entire change session
and result in no improvement or, even worse, a drop in performance
as measured by accuracy and length of the throw.
Another example, this time of transition training. An experienced
aircraft pilot has to transition from an aircraft with analogue
instrumentation to one with digital instrumentation. This is
known as glass cockpit transition training.
Both examples illustrate the two situations where Old Way/New
Way® can produce rapid and permanent change, namely
when correcting established, habitual errors (habit pattern errors)
and when changing over to a "new" way where
The "error" can be a performance error or misconception.
These two are typically related because many performance errors
start with a "wrong" idea or a faulty or incomplete
mental model. In some situations, correcting the misconception
is enough to also correct the associated performance error. In
other situations, both the performance or action and its underlying
wrong idea have to be corrected. This again illustrates the wide
usefulness of Old Way/New Way® but also explains
why practitioners need to be experienced interventionists and
be mindful of all the possible complications. There are many
traps for young players.
Old Way/New Way® is not only effective but also
a flexible change tool because it can be used with individuals,
groups or teams. There are important differences in the protocols
when working with more than one individual at a time but the
results are the same.
Another useful feature of Old Way/New Way® is
that change and improvement can be achieved incrementally. Sometimes,
an individual or group cannot make a big change all at once.
For example, a young athlete may not have the physical capability
or lack the readiness to adopt the "ideal" technique
for his or her sport, so smaller, incremental improvements in
technique can be made sequentially over several Old Way/New Way® sessions.
All this makes Old Way/New Way® a very useful
and effective tool for change in all areas of human performance
and behaviour.
