TAG Notes - Why The Tagger?

Human speech is heavily layered and complicated, wonderful for creative expression but unacceptably slow as a neurological marker or a cue.  That is why there are so few people yelling, “Go!” at the start of track meets and horse racing events.  The necessity of the tagger lays in its bare acoustics and ability to provide a language free communication system, a binary message that does not need the complex evaluation and interpretation that an emotional verbal message does.

The sharp tinny sounding 'click' creates what the students describe as a mental picture – which they 'look' back to when performing elements on their own.

The tagger will enable you to teach with:  

Precision – Place an acoustical TAG on a response, action or position as the athlete/student is performing it and create an acoustically generated mental snapshot of that instant for them to refer back to.

Clarity – During practice a coach may say “good” during an athlete’s skill.  Good could be interpreted any of a hundred ways from,

“GOOD!” – (Fabulous, don’t change a thing), to

“Good” – (That stunk, but at least you tried)

The sound of the TAG has a singular conditioned meaning of “Yes”…unconditionally.

Reduced Social Responses – People respond to the spoken word with certain social responses.  They turn their head and look at the person speaking, blush or feel the need to respond verbally. None of these are desired responses when an athlete is performing a difficult or dangerous skill.  Athletes have actually shouted, “thank-you” during a skill in response to a verbal compliment from a coach. When you TAG a student, the tagger becomes separate from the person controlling it, as if the tagger is responding on its own. Students don’t feel a human emotional attachment to the sound of the TAG (or the human merely holding the tagger) or the need for a social response.