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For those of you that read this whole entry I would appreciate your feed back very much. I am considering blogging more often.
I was on the WellPlayed.org forums the other day reading a post about someone that purchased a lesson from iNcontroL. I love iNcontroL, I think he is an amazing player, I watch his stream and listen to him on State of the Game every chance I get. The post then went over what he learned, the structure of the lesson, and the pros and cons of buying lessons. He did not explain how to get the most out of your lessons however and I think that is an important part of buying them.
In my opinion I think that you don't require coaching until the Diamond level. I am not saying that the problems of lower level players are all the same but I think that if you focus hard on good mechanics and one safe build order you can offered to make those mistakes and still get to the Diamond level. I say this because I did it myself. Before playing Starcraft 2 I had almost no RTS experience or skill. I played all other genres well but RTS logic just did not make sense to me at all. I was resistant to buy Starcraft 2 but I wanted to play it with my friends. I lost every game I played against them. I tried making my own build orders and getting as many units as I could but they always had more.
However you cannot teach yourself something that you have no knowledge of. You can't pick up a guitar and teach yourself chords without having a list of the chords you need to learn. You cannot teach yourself Starcraft without watching professional players, reading guides, etc. You need an example to go off of. That year I attended BlizzCon mostly for World of Warcraft. I checked out some of the Starcraft panels as well and went to watch the finals. Day9 was casting and I heard him mention his show so I checked it out when I returned home. One of the first dailies I watched was featuring Protoss games and Day9 focused on building Pylons and Probes. Instantly my play improved and I could win. Games against the bots didn't take me hours anymore and I finally had my first piece of the puzzle. I watched every daily from then on and read all the guides I could in forums. One day it all clicked together and I was promoted twice in the same week from Silver to Platinum, then a month later to Diamond and I am very proud of my improvement.
I read a couple weeks ago a forum post by CecilSunkure. You can read it here. In "[2.03] Thoughts on different ways of learning" it mentions that you learn ten times better when you teach yourself, then someone that was taught. So my point here is that when you go through that lengthy process of your own trial and error you not only know what to do, you know why you're doing it. You can transfer the knowledge you have over to other builds, put things together by yourself, adjust other peoples builds to be more efficient. You get a deeper understanding then having someone tell you what to do. For example, I took everyones advice and picked one build, the 3gate Sentry expand, a very safe build to do every single game. Through trial and error I knew where to place my units on each map, what units to build when I scout my opponent, how to rearrange it in order to account for certain things. That is knowledge that a coach cannot teach you in a few hours. In my opinion (and this is all just my opinion) a coach can be used to show you problems that you cannot see in yourself. It is always better to have a second set of eyes if you are lost. They could watch you play and tell you where you are weak and what you can improve on, and they can show you how to improve. Then you grab a practice partner and work on it.
The mistake that some people make is using the coach as a practice partner. You don't want to pay money to do the exact same build over and over while your coach watches. You want to get the advice, tips, what ever knowledge they have to offer, and go and work on it yourself. To me that sounds like the most efficient way to use a coach. A good example of this is that I used to take drum lessons. They would be 20 minutes long, I would come in, warm-up, the teacher would check my progress from the last lesson, and then he would give me further information on how to practice. He wasn't teaching me how to play a song, he was teaching me the skills i needed to learn a song myself. Coaches shouldn't teach you how to play Starcraft, they should teach you how to teach yourself Starcraft.
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Nice post I completely agree 100%. It is probably also worth mentioning that not all great starcraft players make great coaches and not all great coaches are great starcraft players.
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any coach who doesn't learn something from coaching others just isn't a good coach. or so my track coach says :p
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I agree with this post for the most part.
I think most coaches really try to do whats best for you.
ex: i'll give you an example of what we do in a typical lesson
We start by just maybe chatting about the latest sc2 stuff, while we are both getting sc2 loaded and ready. usually i will have sent him a rep pack containing matches. then what happens is that we go over each replay on x2 and he checks my progress and offers little tips to see what i could have done to do better. we go over different matchups, or maybe a certain matchup i might need work on (usually pvz). some cases if he sees a need for it, he will play a match with me, and helping me remember certain timings and trying to get me to get used to being on a backfoot. then after he wins, we go over the replay and he shows me what i did right and wrong.
If i get more than one hour. usually we will do that for an hour and then do 2v2's. reason for 2v2's is so he can see my macro in realtime and help me improve on when i need to be macroing in a realgame scenerio. also its a nice way to relax and have some fun. some of my favourite moments of getting coaching would be doing the 2v2's with him, cause i never know what will happen.
during all this though he really gives me insight into my own gameplay, and does what he can to try to help me with tatical problems and help identify what i may be missing.
He doesn't tell me to do this and that and do this build in all mu, or do this build in this mu etc. he looks at what i am doing and helps me improve on it.
i find that for me, its like geting a second pair of more experinced eyes on the replay. it helps me find out what i'm doing right and wrong, i'm not improving at a rapid pace like some expect with coaching, but its gradual, i may not see huge improvement in one week, but if i look back 3 months and look at my gameplay, i can see i've improved by miles.
the coach i have now i've had for almost 7 months now. i must say he is worth the money i pay.
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+1
This is the core of my mindset as a coach.
I see so much streams of ppl coaching... and the 90% of them tend to focus on things like "X build is good in XvX, so use it". Then they start to talk about the specifics of the build... and never talk about the thoughts behind that build. It usually makes me close the stream instantly 
In any 1v1 game, anyone can reach the top alone. Ppl dont "require" coaching if they have the self-analysis skills required to reach it. The path is just a bit longer (enjoyable, painful, or whatever, everybody sees it differently), but the fact is that there isn't any kind of "coach requirement" at any level to get there.
A coach is there to see and analyse your gameplay, and use that information to help you understand yourself better. The method of doing this is what makes some coaches suck so much, but this is also what makes others shine so much.
Learn to teach is the most necessary lesson for any coach out there. Passion about teaching is the key to suceed at coaching.
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This works well with having the theme of initiative. Without initiative, there is little to be learned from your lessons. The coach is there to guide you on your journey, not create it. It doesn't matter if you are bronze, silver or diamond. If you have the initiative and strong willingness to improve with a clear defined set of goals, then you will benefit from coaching. If you don't have direction and just want to purchase lessons to get better then you will benefit substantially less.
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+ Show Spoiler +On April 14 2011 02:10 masterbreti wrote:
I agree with this post for the most part.
I think most coaches really try to do whats best for you.
ex: i'll give you an example of what we do in a typical lesson
We start by just maybe chatting about the latest sc2 stuff, while we are both getting sc2 loaded and ready. usually i will have sent him a rep pack containing matches. then what happens is that we go over each replay on x2 and he checks my progress and offers little tips to see what i could have done to do better. we go over different matchups, or maybe a certain matchup i might need work on (usually pvz). some cases if he sees a need for it, he will play a match with me, and helping me remember certain timings and trying to get me to get used to being on a backfoot. then after he wins, we go over the replay and he shows me what i did right and wrong.
If i get more than one hour. usually we will do that for an hour and then do 2v2's. reason for 2v2's is so he can see my macro in realtime and help me improve on when i need to be macroing in a realgame scenerio. also its a nice way to relax and have some fun. some of my favourite moments of getting coaching would be doing the 2v2's with him, cause i never know what will happen.
during all this though he really gives me insight into my own gameplay, and does what he can to try to help me with tatical problems and help identify what i may be missing.
He doesn't tell me to do this and that and do this build in all mu, or do this build in this mu etc. he looks at what i am doing and helps me improve on it.
i find that for me, its like geting a second pair of more experinced eyes on the replay. it helps me find out what i'm doing right and wrong, i'm not improving at a rapid pace like some expect with coaching, but its gradual, i may not see huge improvement in one week, but if i look back 3 months and look at my gameplay, i can see i've improved by miles.
the coach i have now i've had for almost 7 months now. i must say he is worth the money i pay.
There was a Day9 Daily I had watched where Day9 was coaching DJWheat while he was playing Zerg. Day9 was not saying anything at all about his build or the matchup, he was just that voice inside Wheat's head that told him to inject and macro while in a battle. Having that can show you where you can improve and it's a very effective method.
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EPT
