Perfect Practice Makes Perfect
Perfect practice makes perfect. But you may have heard that “practice makes perfect”. So which is it? In today’s article Coach Edwards breaks down just what you need to understand about developing skills and having a perfect practice.
You see, practice doesn’t make perfect. Perfect practice makes perfect. Let me explain.
Let’s say I taught you how to sing Jingle Bells. We spent some time together and I made sure you got all the words down and all the music and then I sent you home. And along the way, as you were practicing the song, you ended up switching some of the words. Maybe you weren’t paying attention or maybe you just made a mistake or maybe you were rushing things…doesn’t really matter how it happened, but along the way instead of Jingle Bells you started singing “Tinkle Balls.”
(Would probably be a pretty catchy tune actually. “Tinkle balls. Tinkle balls. Tinkle all the way!”
Stay with me here.
So, off you go practicing. Every day. Twice a day. You even think about it before you go to sleep at night in your head. But instead of Jingle Bells it’s Tinkle Balls.
A couple weeks later you come back to see me and I say, “Sing me Jingle Bells.”
And you sing, “Tinkle Balls! Tinkle Balls! Tinkle all the way!!!” (Tinkle balls are actually a thing.)
Now I know you’re laughing a little bit right now but let’s look at this seriously. After you sang your version of Tinkle Balls I would look at you funny and think, “What the hell has this kid been doing the last two weeks?” And you’d tell me, in all seriousness that you’d been practicing!
Now We Have To Teach You…Again
So now I’d have to teach you how to sing Jingle Bells…again. We’re two weeks later and we have to re-teach the song. In this example you may have the music right but the words are off. Some of them are ok but the main ones are just plain wrong. So you learn Jingle Bells again and off you go.
You go home and you’re thinking to yourself, “Man, Jingle Bells sounds a little weird. Tinkle Balls sounded so much better! Instead of having two solid weeks of practice under your belt you’re now confused, and you still need to fix the song. Jingle Bells now sounds awkward and strange and it really shouldn’t.
Now you’re stuck thinking, “Ok, here goes…Tinkle Bells. Tinkle Bells. Tinkle All The Way!”
Sheesh.
Getting It Right The First Time
When you are first taught a skill of any kind there is a critical transfer of information. Your teacher, whether that’s your coach, your parent, a friend, needs to explain how to do what you need to do in a way that you:
- Get it right.
- Are able to replicate it.
- Are able to remember it so you can do it on your own correctly.
- Have the ability to get feedback if you need it.
We have one window to “get it right the first time” so you’re not wasting time trying to fix bad mistakes.
Every Rep, Every Attempt, Every Experience, Counts
Each time you practice a skill you are basically creating a pathway in your brain. The more repetitions you have the thicker that pathway becomes and the harder it is to change.
Sometimes coaches will ask me, “Jonathan, I know you want them to be perfect in practice but they’re just playing around. They’ve got to have some fun, right?”
This is lazy coaching in my opinion. Sure, kids need to have fun, and a one-off bad repetition won’t kill anyone, but it could put it could be the beginning of a detour on that pathway and we don’t need that.
What might first start out as a casual mistake can then get entrenched.
The Difference Between a Tier 1 Athlete and a Tier 5 Athlete
I had the opportunity to watch a European soccer coach teach a ball striking skill to a group of 15 year old Tier 1 soccer players. The drill required a very small tempo focusing on the contact the foot had with the ball. Rep after rep, the Tier 1 boys spent forty-five minutes working both feet and focusing on tempo and contact of the foot striking the ball.
After the drill, the boys played a game and you could see the new skills being executed in a game setting.
The Tier 5 boys couldn’t be bothered. They couldn’t focus, for one thing. And they couldn’t slow down and make the contact. This was the simplest of drills and they just wanted to rush to playing a game. Once in the game, there was no skill to be seen even though they had just spent forty-five minutes working on the technique that would have helped them in the game.
What Matters Is An Athlete’s Intention
There have been numerous studies over the years that discuss just how long it takes to break a bad habit.
Now these are habits like smoking, or eating an entire apple pie for breakfast. Those sorts of things.
In 1960 Dr. Maxwell Malz wrote in his book Psycho Cybernetics that it took his patients about 21 days to get used to a new habit. 21 days was the shortest and everyone else was longer than that.
In 2009 the University College London did a study that suggested the average person dropped a bad habit in 76 days.
But what if our athletes thought about acquiring the habits they needed in this time frame? What if we asked them…
How would you like to be really good at this in 21-76 days?
That would completely change the way our athletes looked at acquiring their new skills. Instead of saying, “Ok girls we’re going to be doing this drill today. Blah. Blah” . What if we said, “Alright, I’ve got 21-76 days to make you awesome. Who is with me!?”
They’d all cheer! They’d think, “Heck yeah I’m going to be awesome in two months! Totally. What do I have to do? Tell me and I’ll do it!”
Do you feel how the focus would be completely different?
And it would probably keep them from “just messing around”. Instead, they would be dialed in and ready to get better each and every day and most importantly not ruin their hard work!
When an athlete comes to practice everyday with the intention of getting better, great things happen.
It’s the athlete’s who just, kinda, maybe-sorta, puts in the time who takes forever and develops nasty habits along the way.
What Matters Is An Athlete’s Awareness
Wait, didn’t you just say it was Intention?
Yes, and an athlete who is aware of what it is he or she is doing is an athlete who is going to accelerate their learning. If they have awareness they can notice mistakes and fix them when they arise. And an athlete who is aware is more likely to have a perfect practice.
What Perfect Practice Is and What Perfect Practice Isn’t
When we talk about “perfect” we’re not talking about not making mistakes.
There is, after all, three zones of practice:
- Practice that is too hard
- Practice that is just right
- Practice that is too easy.
For my goalies, we talk about using save percentage as a gauge to just how hard they are working in practice. If a goalie saves 50% of their shots on game day they’d be wasting their time in practice if they only saved 60% of the shots. Likewise, practice might be too difficult if they are only saving 30% of the shots.
If practice is too easy they might be executing too slow, or too sloppy. If practice is too hard they might be trying to move too quickly and lose their technique and get sloppy.
It all depends.
We just want them to have the intention to make practice as perfect as they can make it and the awareness to know if they are being sloppy or are trying to do things properly.
Be Deliberate About Making Mistakes
Just in case you’re worried about not being perfect enough at practice, you can implement what I call “Junk Time”. It’s time when you know that what you’re doing is probably not going to be perfect. You’re going to be a little sloppy.
One of those times is when you do any sort of rapid-fire drill or a read and react drill. Things like tennis balls fired at you with a tennis racquet, or shots against a brick wall over your shoulder drills. These are fun and are a great way to break up the monotony of practice, but they are really high on the OMG-my-technique-is-horrible scale.
But that’s ok, as long as you recognize, “Wow, I didn’t move my feet at all on that drill.” Or, “My legs are so tired I can’t feel my feet.”
A drill like that can be totally allowed as long as the Intention is there and the Awareness is there.
You can even take a drill that gives you bad technique and turn it into a learning experience. But you have to be intentional and you have to have awareness about what is happening.
When Hiding In Perfect Practice Can Be Bad
Most athletes are incredibly impatient. They want to be good right now and once they have something mastered they hold onto that and resist trying anything new that might make them look bad in the short term.
There are times when looking bad in the short term will give you the skills to excel in the long term and an athlete needs to be open to that.
I’ve worked with athletes who were so afraid of looking stupid whether it was in front of a coach or their teammates that they just stalled developmentally. They never got any better. They missed the opportunities to push themselves and to surprise themselves at what they were capable of doing. Instead of pushing the boundaries of technique or speed or strength they hid in their current abilities. They feared being imperfect and it cost them dearly.
Many of the athletes I work with are hiding in things they already do well. They spend incredible amounts of time in practice doing things they do well and avoiding things they don’t do well. It’s one thing to work on your strengths, but there is a point where your large gains will come from bringing up your weaknesses and not getting miniscule improvements on the things you’re already good at.
Dedicating some time time to deliberately work on your weaknesses, knowing that you might look silly doing them, is quality time spent.
Remember, It’s Harder to Fix a Bad Habit Than To Get It Right the First Time
When learning a new skill it’s imperative that you learn it right the first time. Because learning the wrong skill is so hard to correct.
We are most worried about the technique of what it is you are learning. The strength and the speed will come later. But for now, we need to focus on that technique that will stay with you forever.
Most athletes are really impatient. They want it all, right now, and they tend to rush things. Heck, even coaches will rush things and will put their athletes into situations where technique goes out the window and bad habits form. We want to avoid that as much as possible.
Conclusion:
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