Have you ever found yourself at a fork in the road with your technique? A time when it feels like you’ve gone as far as you can go with your current approach, and that in order to go to the next level, you have to make a change of some kind?
Based on the relevant research findings that do exist, they put together a 5-stage model of change. Named the “Five-A Model,” it is a framework for understanding how best to refine skills in performers whose technique is already highly automatized.
Photograph. (via)]]>Stage 1: Analysis
The first, and perhaps most important step in the process, is to ask whether a substantive change to technique is really necessary.Is the inconsistency of our sound under pressure due to some funky bow arm technique? Or simply because we haven’t figured out how to deal more effectively with nerves? Maybe both?
Is our thumb injury due to the questionable mechanics of our playing? Or because we didn’t warm up properly? Or played way too much when we shouldn’t have?
Stage 2: Awareness
One of the great things about having done something for a long time is that we don’t have to think about the details. Complex skills can operate automatically, out of conscious awareness, at an extremely high level. You don’t have to think about what your thumb does when you shift to 5thposition any more than you think about what your mouth is doing when you eat a quesadilla. You just do it.
Stage 3: Adjustment
If Stage 2 was about making the unconscious conscious, and developing some level of comfort with the new way of doing things, Stage 3 is about flipping things. In other words, internalizing the new way, and being able to execute with greater accuracy and consistency. To the point where the oldway starts feeling awkward and the new way feels more comfortable.
Stage 4: Re-automation
So by Stage 4, we’re feeling pretty good about the new way. But, wait! We’re not done yet!This is kind of a precarious stage, because the new way is comfortable, but isn’t really “pressure-proofed” yet. Under pressure, we’re liable to default back to our old technique. Or, we might be tempted to think too much about specific technical elements instead of executing the whole movement in a holistic way.
Stage 5: Assurance
The last stage is about building confidence and trust in our new approach. Where we practice letting go of conscious control, and prove to ourselves that our new technique has been so deeply ingrained that it works on autopilot (or reveal that it doesn’t quite yet).