I always teach hand signals with OB commands, right from the start. Hand signals are vital in my line of work and suit my lifestyle well at home. I also believe that dogs communicate through body language more naturally than through vocal commands. My dogs learn hand signals first, then I pair a vocal command.

Does anyone else do this?

Could this be counter productive later in the sport world?

Any thoughts on dogs learning through body language versus verbal commands?

I will be interested to read the answers, because now that I have two deaf dogs (one very, one getting there), I am relying heavily on hand signals.

I taught hand signals to Mercy since in the beginning she was noise sensitive and even talking to her would cause her to panic. They came in handy (pun intended) many times. She's the only dog I did that with and she was a pet.

I also teach hand signals first in OB. In my experience, the dogs seem to relate better (more natural?) to body language. The verbal naming of the behavior only comes later, after they understand the hand cues. It also seems to reduce the problem with saying the name of the behavior and the dog not responding correctly. In the end, it is always about communicating effectively. Giving the dog what he/she needs to understand what is being asked, helps them to accomplish the goal. When I am alone training or just working with my dog, it is usually very, very quiet.

I also agree about dog learning visually easier then verbally. Our body language often creates problems with our teaching obedience.
I teach verbally but in the upper level of AKC competition (UD) the dogs have to go through a series of exercises on hand signal alone.
When my UD Kerry Blues lost his hearing with age he was much easier to control as long as he was watching me. In the house it was easy to get his attention by stomping on the floor. Outside he was committed to a leash. Even though he was super reliable he was also a dog that loved to cover territory. In the woods or an open field he always wanted to see what was over the next horizon. That was previously controlled with a whistle to get his attention. I had a whistle for look at me and one for come here.
One of my daughters is a sign language interpreter and her hearing JRT/Border terrier learned most of her commands with sign. Admittedly they were adjusted for simple commands but the dog caught on extremely fast.

My first experience in dog training came from a former army and state police K9 instructor. He taught me and my first shepherd to use hand signals and I've been doing it ever since. It's a great conversation piece when I'm inside, my dog is outside looking at me through a window, and I can get her to sit and down without saying a word.
I recall ME saying that the physical will always override the verbal. I always keep that in mind when teaching obedience.

Sometimes I do entire training sessions with all hand signals, and rotate some sessions with only voice commands. I find she is much cleaner, snappier, and less likely to offer lots of behaviors from her bag of tricks with hand signals.
Hand signals are also useful in high noise situations, distance, and if I want to train indoors and not wake my husband. A side benefit is it promotes increased eye contact/looking at me.

Way back in the olden days, when I took my very first obedience classes, I was taught to give both a hand signal and a verbal command at the same time. It became an ingrained habit, and that is more or less how I have trained all my dogs since.

Fast-forward a couple of decades and I decide I want to compete in AKC obedience events. As Bob mentioned, in Utility, there is a hand-signal only portion. But for the rest of the exercises, at every level, you are allowed to use a hand signal or a verbal command, but not both. The only exception that comes to mind is leaving your dog on a stay, when you are allowed to do both. In any other portion, using both will be considered an extra command and will lose you a lot of points.

It's been a challenge for me to retrain both myself and my dogs. I spend a lot of time teaching them to respond to both, meaning one or the other, but not at the same time. I definitely find they are more visually oriented and, in general, will respond much more quickly to a hand signal than a verbal command.

So I think it's great to teach both, but just keep in mind any future competition plans. I can't speak to any other venues, only AKC, and then only obedience. There are no such rules for rally or agility. I hope someone will post and tell us the rules for Schutzhund/IPO, ringsports, and other events. I'd be interested to know.

I use hand signals but not as much as I used to. I used to be able to move my female around with my eyes. Now that she is getting older I am starting to use them more again.

I think that I am going to get a real whistle to use for recall. I do have a whistle that I do that my dogs recall with...but I can't always get it out. I don't whistle all that well. LOL

We do both hand signals and verbal, sometimes at the same time during our drills, sometimes just one or the other. It's nice to be able to be talking with neighbors, either close by or from a distance from our dog, and be able to just direct her without talking or shouting.

As for the thoughts on what our dog picks up on more, whether its verbal direction or hand signals, I can answer that from our little bit of experience with agility training. Near the end of the first round of agility training with Bailey, we finally got to do an entire course in a competition-like setting. We did three runs. The first was full of mistakes and slow. Second, much better, no mistakes. For the third run, our instructor had us run the entire course in perfect silence. We could only use hand signals and body positioning. Not only she have a clean run, no mistakes, but we shaved over 20 seconds off our previous time. With each course we took, the experience was the same, better times and results with no verbal commands. No doubt in my mind our dogs are much more attentive to our body language.