Coaching Better Every Season, Chapter 7: Design Effective Practice Environments PDF

Chapter 7 Design Effective Practice Environments Key Concepts...

Chapter 7 Design Effective Practice Environments Key Concepts Mastery practice goals Growth mind-set Learning scorecards Eight principles of practice design General motor programs Random versus blocked practice Autonomy-supportive coaching Functional variability Gamelike approach Maximum individual participation D esigning quality practice sessions is the most basic of all coaching activities. According to five-time national collegiate baseball championship coach Augie Garrido, “Games and championships are won in practice first.”1 (p. 139) How a coach designs practices determines how much athletes will learn because Copyright © 2016. Human Kinetics. All rights reserved. practice design directly influences athlete commitment to practice. Great athletes naturally see the value in practice and will not only eagerly attend coach-led practice sessions but also train on their own. Muhammed Ali, one of the greatest athletes of all time, summed it up well in his often quoted statement: “The fight is won or lost far away from witnesses—behind the lines, in the gym, and out there on the road, long before I dance under those lights.”2 But anyone who has coached knows that not all athletes automatically see the value in practice or commit to giving full effort in every practice session. The most motivated athletes appreciate that they get to practice, whereas less motivated athletes complain of having to practice. Nothing is more frustrating for a coach than watching athletes give poor effort or complaining about having to practice. Perhaps the most renowned example of this is the “We talkin’ ’bout practice” press conference held by former league Most Valuable Player and 11-time NBA 143 Gilbert, Wade. Coaching Better Every Season : A Year-Round System for Athlete Development and Program Success, Human Kinetics, 2016. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/mtroyal-ebooks/detail.action?docID=4746925. Created from mtroyal-ebooks on 2024-12-06 17:28:55.  144  Coaching Better Every Season All-Star Allen Iverson.3, 4 Although much has been written about his state of mind (and sobriety) while giving the press conference, his famous rant has come to symbolize a lack of motivation to give 100 percent in practice sessions. Some athletes mistakenly believe they should save their energy for competitions, when it really matters. Yet the most successful coaches and athletes know that competition success comes only through focused and effortful practice. Two-time Super Bowl championship football coach Tom Coughlin said it best: The three words that I absolutely guarantee have never been said at one of my practices are “It’s only practice.”... A quality performance is the natural extension of practice. The harder you work in practice, the easier the performance will be.5 (p. 173) One of the primary causes of athletes’ devaluing practice is their experience with poorly designed practice sessions. Well-intentioned but ill-designed practices not only hurt player development but also erode team culture and confidence in the coach. Research on coaching, along with my own observations and discus- sions with coaches and athletes around the world, shows that coaches are rarely taught how to design quality practice sessions. Although great coaches have always made time to watch how other successful coaches run their practices, the science of quality practice design is relatively new. In 2000 renowned sport expertise researcher Janet Starkes coined the term Copyright © 2016. Human Kinetics. All rights reserved. AP Photo/Bill Kostroun New York Giants’ coach Tom Coughlin was notorious for planning detailed and efficient practice sessions. Gilbert, Wade. Coaching Better Every Season : A Year-Round System for Athlete Development and Program Success, Human Kinetics, 2016. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/mtroyal-ebooks/detail.action?docID=4746925. Created from mtroyal-ebooks on 2024-12-06 17:28:55.  Design Effective Practice Environments  145 practice microstructures to describe what expert athletes do in practice and how their practice differs from those of less skilled athletes.6 The results of her research on practice sessions across sport with coaches from high school to Olympic level were consistent and sobering; quality practices are the exception, not the norm. In general, her research showed that athletes were inactive nearly half of every practice and spent much of their time practicing skills they had already mastered. This profile of a typical practice leads to boredom, off-task behavior, and discipline issues. It stunts athlete development because most time is spent on proving what they can already do as opposed to the more difficult task of improving weaknesses. A quality practice nurtures athlete motivation and maximizes athlete skill devel- opment. Coaches must keep this in mind when selecting each activity to include in a practice session. Learning how to design quality practices is the surest way to increase coaching effectiveness and athlete success. The purpose of this chapter is to describe the common design features of quality practices. Quality practice design includes four features: Feature 1: Set challenging and specific practice goals. Feature 2: Keep athletes physically and mentally active throughout the practice. Feature 3: Give athletes choices and ask them for input on practice design. Feature 4: Create competitive gamelike practice activities. SETTING CHALLENGING AND SPECIFIC PRACTICE GOALS Coaches and athletes typically have no problem setting long-term goals for the season, such as winning a championship. But coaches less commonly set clear and specific goals for each practice session. To maximize athlete learning through efficient use of time, coaches must also set goals for every practice. Champion- ship coaches, like seven-time national collegiate champion volleyball coach Russ Rose, meticulously plan their practice sessions to ensure that “every practice has a goal and every drill has a specific purpose.”7 (p. 47) Athlete learning will be optimized when the practice goals stretch the athletes Copyright © 2016. Human Kinetics. All rights reserved. just outside their comfort zone. In The Little Book of Talent, author Daniel Coyle refers to this talent development principle as reachfulness.8 Practice goals that challenge athletes but are realistically attainable create practice environments of high engagement and maximize learning by inspiring athletes to reach forward to achieve the goals.9, 10 Creating reach or stretch practice goals has the added benefit of keeping athletes focused on practice by creating the right conditions for optimal, or flow, experiences (see discussion on flow and optimal experiences in chapter 6). Athletes are competitive by nature and respond enthusiastically to practice activities that are just beyond their current abilities yet possible to accomplish with full focus, concentration, and appropriate support from the coach. For example, outstanding high school coaches report that communicating high expectations for athletes is one of the best ways to avoid wasting precious practice time deal- ing with discipline issues.11 Gilbert, Wade. Coaching Better Every Season : A Year-Round System for Athlete Development and Program Success, Human Kinetics, 2016. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/mtroyal-ebooks/detail.action?docID=4746925. Created from mtroyal-ebooks on 2024-12-06 17:28:55.  146  Coaching Better Every Season World champion volleyball coach Karch Kiraly shared that he sets challenging practice goals by designing what he refers to as ugly practices. When practice activities force athletes to stretch just beyond their current skill level, they make many mistakes, resulting in what will look to an outsider like an ugly practice. The mistakes, when appropriately framed as learning opportunities, are simply stepping-stones to higher levels of performance. Besides being set at the right level of challenge, practice goals should be worded in a way that emphasizes that effort and success are within the athlete’s control.12 These types of goals are referred to as mastery goals. Athletes rate coaches who adopt a mastery approach to coaching as better teachers, are more satisfied with their sport experience, and are less anxious.13, 14 Mastery goals are contrasted with ego goals, in which the emphasis is on not making mistakes and judging success as defeating someone else (or being the best at a practice activity).15 When setting mastery practice goals, coaches can benefit from using the CARS goal-setting acronym: challenging, attainable, realistic, and specific.16 By regularly reviewing athlete progress, coaches will be able to determine what is challenging, attainable, and realistic for their particular athletes. In terms of being specific, coaches should write practice goals that clearly specify the behaviors and conditions that must be met if the performance is to be considered successful. Examples of mastery practice goals for common technical skills in basket- ball are provided in table 7.1. The mastery goals in this case are based on the recommended cues and steps for learning how to perform the technical skills successfully.17 When coaches set mastery practice goals and design their practices from a mastery approach, they are also helping athletes develop a growth mind-set.18 Renowned psychologist Carol Dweck has shown through decades of research that people with a growth mind-set approach learning and challenges with more enthusiasm and view mistakes as opportunities to get better. Failures are fertilizer for deeper learning and improved performance. People with a growth mind-set Table 7.1 Sample Mastery Practice Goals for Basketball Technical Skills Practice activity Mastery goal Copyright © 2016. Human Kinetics. All rights reserved. Speed dribbling Complete each run through the activity in less than 10 seconds while keeping the ball under control and the eyes up. Layup Improve the number of layups made from the last practice from both sides of the basket by focusing on driving up off one leg with both hands up, gently releasing the ball with one hand, and banking the ball off the backboard. Jump shot Make at least 50 percent of uncontested shots taken from specific spots on the floor, remembering to start from a balanced position, jump with both feet, straighten the arm, and wave good-bye to the ball. Chest pass Place each chest pass in such a way that it is easily retrievable by a mov- ing teammate by keeping two hands on the ball, stepping forward, and pushing the ball out at chest level. Gilbert, Wade. Coaching Better Every Season : A Year-Round System for Athlete Development and Program Success, Human Kinetics, 2016. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/mtroyal-ebooks/detail.action?docID=4746925. Created from mtroyal-ebooks on 2024-12-06 17:28:55.  Design Effective Practice Environments  147 view their ability as something that can be improved and controlled through effort- ful and deliberate practice. A simple cue that coaches can use to help athletes develop a growth mind-set is the acronym FAIL, which means first attempt in learning.19 Coaches can help athletes understand that mistakes are a normal and needed part of the learning process. To help build a growth mind-set, coaches can teach athletes to add the word yet to the end of self-critical statements that are commonly used when learn- ing new skills.20 For example, when an athlete who is struggling to learn how to play defense states in frustration, “I’m no good at defense,” he or she should be reminded to restate it as, “I’m no good at defense... yet.” This simple strategy, when used consistently and combined with quality practices, will increase athlete persistence and willingness to learn from failures. When coaches set mastery goals for their athletes, they are teaching them to focus more on improving their ability as opposed to proving their ability. This subtle but critical difference will have a long-lasting and profound effect on how athletes approach practice and performance setbacks. A prime example of an athlete who embodies a growth mind-set is tennis great Rafael Nadal. During his career he suffered what most athletes would consider a crippling defeat. At the 2012 Australian Open tennis tournament he lost in the final in the longest match in history for a major tennis tournament—5 hours and 53 minutes.21 When asked about his emotions after the match, he stated that it was a special match he would remember forever, not because of the loss but because of how hard each athlete played right until the end. Nadal did not let the loss define or deter him even though it was the seventh straight champion- ship final he had lost to the same opponent. Nadal continued to take a mastery approach to his practice, and he beat his rival late that same year and six of the next seven times they met. The challenge practice goals and an associated rationale should always be communicated before the practice. Athlete motivation, from youth to Olympic levels, increases when coaches explain why practice activities are important and specifically how they will improve specific aspects of their performance.12 For example, a soccer coach might tell her or his athletes that the reason they are going to play a 3v3 small-sided possession game is because it will help them Copyright © 2016. Human Kinetics. All rights reserved. improve their spacing and passing during matches. I also use this strategy when coaching. One of the most popular practice activi- ties I designed for my youth baseball team is a game that requires athletes to field and throw a ball to a pyramid of targets at home plate. We use two upside-down buckets for the first level (1 point), a water jug for the second level (2 points), and a stuffed toy for the third level (3 points). I make a point of explaining the rationale of the activity every time we play it. I tell the athletes that we do this activity because it will help us improve our throwing accuracy to our catcher when an opponent is trying to steal home. Without providing the rationale the coach is assuming that the athletes will make the connection between a fun practice game and actual game situations. Telling athletes the why behind what they will do is an effective coaching strat- egy for several reasons.22 First, athletes value the activities more if the rationale Gilbert, Wade. Coaching Better Every Season : A Year-Round System for Athlete Development and Program Success, Human Kinetics, 2016. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/mtroyal-ebooks/detail.action?docID=4746925. Created from mtroyal-ebooks on 2024-12-06 17:28:55.  148  Coaching Better Every Season is clear, and they therefore invest more effort into the activities. Second, when coaches share the rationale for practice activities, they are building trust and strengthening the coach-athlete relationship. Ideally, coaches will share the practice goals with athletes even before the athletes arrive at practice. For example, coaches can share goals for the next practice at the end of the previous practice, much as Coach John Wooden did during his tenure as basketball coach at UCLA. Sharing the practice goals in advance serves multiple purposes. First, it gives athletes time to mentally prepare for the practice challenge. Second, it connects the practices and the practice goals to one another across a season. With the availability of multiple electronic communication options, some coaches may prefer to share practice goals with the athletes between practice sessions. The practice goals can then be reinforced at the start of the practice, and athletes can be given an opportunity to ask questions about the goals before starting the practice. However, setting challenging practice goals is not enough. Quality coaches design goal evaluation systems to track each athlete’s progress toward the goals.9 For example, five-time national college football championship coach Jim Tressel attributed much of his success to the daily goal evaluation system he used with his athletes. For each day of training Coach Tressel and his staff graded each athlete’s practice performance on a scale of 1 to 5. The results were posted after every practice, and players were encouraged to discuss their grades with the coaches. A summary of the goal evaluation grading scale that Coach Tressel shared with me is provided in table 7.2. These types of grading systems, sometimes referred to as scorecards for learning, serve as reminders that we are what we count.8 Perhaps one of the most detailed and well-known examples of tracking practice goals in coaching is the competitive cauldron system developed by University of North Carolina women’s soccer coach Anson Dorrance, who has lead his teams to 22 national championships. Coach Dorrance, who also coached the U.S. national team to the inaugural women’s World Cup championship, has learned that “players do what you inspect, not what you expect.”23 With the competitive cauldron, every aspect of an athlete’s performance in a practice is graded, from effort to fitness to small-sided game outcomes to techni- Copyright © 2016. Human Kinetics. All rights reserved. Table 7.2 Sample Practice Goal Evaluation Grading Scale Grade Description 1 Performed like a national champion today. 2 Performed like a conference champion today. 3 Performed average today. You were present but didn’t perform to your potential. 4 Performed below average today. If you perform like this in a game, you likely will lose. 5 Performed poorly today. If you perform like this in a game, you will be helping the competition defeat us. Gilbert, Wade. Coaching Better Every Season : A Year-Round System for Athlete Development and Program Success, Human Kinetics, 2016. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/mtroyal-ebooks/detail.action?docID=4746925. Created from mtroyal-ebooks on 2024-12-06 17:28:55.  Design Effective Practice Environments  149 cal and tactical skill attempts.24, 25 Coach Dorrance shared with me that the first version of his competitive cauldron included 9 practice performance metrics, but it has evolved over decades of coaching to include 19 performance indicators. At the end of practice the athletes’ grades are reported to the team, and athletes earn rewards or punishments based on their scores. The system works well for Coach Dorrance’s teams because he has found that it motivates athletes to com- pete and focus at the highest levels in every practice activity. Because of the considerable time and resources needed to adopt a competi- tive cauldron practice goal-tracking system, this approach has received mixed reviews and is not recommended for all coaches.26 It is presented here because it is a well-known system, and it reinforces the need for coaches to create some type of practice goal feedback system. Just as Coach Dorrance adapted what he learned from observing legendary basketball coach Dean Smith run his practices, other coaches should create their own practice goal feedback systems that are meaningful and practical for their particular settings. Although the value of setting challenging practice goals is clear, one cautionary note should not be overlooked. High expectations without the appropriate support and guidance from the coach can severely demoralize an athlete.9 For example, if coaches set challenging practice goals and fail to help the athletes when they struggle or punish them with extra running or other penalties if they don’t achieve the goals, then coaches are sending a mixed message. The high expectations communicate that the coach believes in the athlete, but the lack of guidance and fear of being punished erode trust and harm the coach-athlete relationship. KEEPING ATHLETES MENTALLY AND PHYSICALLY ACTIVE One of the most common errors that coaches make is scheduling practice ses- sions that are too long. When asked about practice design, legendary profes- sional soccer coach Sir Alex Ferguson responded, “Every training session was about quality. We didn’t allow a lack of focus. It was about intensity, concentration, speed—a high level of performance.”27 (p. 6) When coaches overextend practices, athletes inevitably lose focus and are more likely to get injured. Copyright © 2016. Human Kinetics. All rights reserved. In the United States nearly 500,000 injuries are estimated to occur annually in high school sport practices.28 Nearly 70 percent of those injuries occur in the second (60 percent) or third (9 percent) hour of practice. Furthermore, over 70 percent of the injuries incurred in practice cause athletes to miss three or more days of valuable training. The prevailing overemphasis on excessively long prac- tices has surely contributed to these high injury rates in practice. Well-organized and efficient practices should be designed to maximize skill development in a safe and controlled setting where the risk of injury should be low. Coaches should aim for short, high-intensity practice sessions. Many school-based sports typically schedule practices for a set time in the afternoon, such as 3:00 to 5:00 p.m., resulting in 8 to 10 hours of practice time per week depending on when games are played. Coaches should replace the question “How will I fill the practice time I’m given” with the more fundamental Gilbert, Wade. Coaching Better Every Season : A Year-Round System for Athlete Development and Program Success, Human Kinetics, 2016. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/mtroyal-ebooks/detail.action?docID=4746925. Created from mtroyal-ebooks on 2024-12-06 17:28:55.  150  Coaching Better Every Season question “How can I use the least amount of practice time possible in the most efficient way?” Even at the highest levels of professional sport in which athletes are paid to train, the most successful coaches understand that the best practices are the most efficient practices. Championship coach Tom Coughlin, reflecting on more than 45 years of college and professional football coaching, said, “Con- trary to a common belief, long practices are neither desirable nor particularly beneficial.”5 (p. 176) Anyone who has coached will tell you that there is never enough time to accomplish all your teaching goals. This reality is another reason why coaches need to familiarize themselves with the long-term athlete development frameworks discussed in chapter 5. A long-term view of athlete development eliminates the need for coaches to feel as if they have to cover everything in a single season of practices. Many factors need to be considered when determining the optimal length of a practice session, such as athlete age and skill level. Most sport governing bodies provide guidance for coaches on what is considered appropriate in their particular sport. For example, USA Football recommends no more than two or three prac- tices per week of no more than 90 minutes for athletes up to 14 years of age and then no more than 120 minutes for older adolescents.29 These guidelines are fairly consistent with what is recommended in other sports and coaching research.30–32 Based on a review of sport organization guidelines and athlete development literature, recommendations for the optimal number of practice sessions per week and practice length are provided in table 7.3. Limiting practice sessions to 90 to 120 minutes might seem counterintuitive to popular cultural depictions of what it takes to succeed in sport (e.g., We have to train longer and harder than our opponents!). Regrettably, many coaches early in their careers subscribe to this misguided view, much to the detriment of their athletes. By being mindful of evidence-based guidelines for practice length, coaches can learn this lesson early in their careers instead of painfully coming to this realization later. A perfect example is Bill Cleary, who coached the Har- vard men’s ice hockey team to their only national championship at the end of his 19-year coaching career: Copyright © 2016. Human Kinetics. All rights reserved. Table 7.3 Recommend Number of Weekly Practices and Practice Length Athlete age group Number of practices Duration of each practice Under 6 years old 1–2 days per week 45–60 minutes Under 8 years old 2 days per week 60–75 minutes Under 10 years old 2 days per week 60–90 minutes Under 12 years old 2–3 days per week 75–90 minutes Under 14 years old 3 days per week 75–90 minutes Under 16 years old 3–4 days per week 90–120 minutes 17 years old and older 4–5 days per week 90–120 minutes Gilbert, Wade. Coaching Better Every Season : A Year-Round System for Athlete Development and Program Success, Human Kinetics, 2016. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/mtroyal-ebooks/detail.action?docID=4746925. Created from mtroyal-ebooks on 2024-12-06 17:28:55.  Design Effective Practice Environments  151 During the latter half of my coaching career, I came to the conclusion that no student would sit through a two- or three-hour class without nod- ding off or becoming bored. Why should it be any different for a sports class? It was then that I cut my practice time in half and instituted one fun day of practice each week, which in turn gave my athletes extra time for their schoolwork. You should be able to accomplish all you need to do in a high-tempo 90-minute practice.33 (p. 4) After the ideal number of practice sessions and practice length have been determined, coaches can focus on how to structure a practice to maximize athlete engagement and learning. As a rule, serious coaches should expect to spend almost as much time designing a practice as running the practice. Former college baseball coach Keith Madison, who coached teams to over 730 wins in his 25-year career, liked to say, “Successful people invest their time, average people spend time, and underachievers waste time.”34 (p. 17) Showing up to practice without a formal and detailed practice plan is a waste of time because it is a recipe for failure. The best coaches invest their time by planning every minute of their practice sessions. Each practice has a logical sequence and flow based on the coach’s observations of player performance and skill development needs. Coach of the 20th Century John Wooden created eight principles of practice plan design that he used as a guide when planning practices.35 (p. 75–82) Fundamentals before creativity. Use variety. Teach new material at the start of practice. Quick transitions between activities. Increase complexity from practice to practice. Conditioning for learning. End on a positive note. Avoid altering a plan during the lesson. These principles have stood the test of time and are as valuable today as they Copyright © 2016. Human Kinetics. All rights reserved. were when Coach Wooden created them many decades ago. The principles are described in detail in the following section with supporting examples from other coaches and coaching research. 1. Fundamentals before creativity. Basic skills of the sport must be learned before complex skills and strategies can be practiced. Basic skills provide the foundation for athlete creativity.36 Repeatedly practicing fundamental skills helps athletes build what are referred to as general motor programs—a sort of mental blueprint that contains information about how to perform basic skills.16 For example, through quality practice athletes develop motor programs for basic skills such as shooting a basketball, catching a football pass, or hitting a pitched ball. Athletes rely on these general motor programs to perform quick and decisive actions that require them to improvise or adjust their movements while Gilbert, Wade. Coaching Better Every Season : A Year-Round System for Athlete Development and Program Success, Human Kinetics, 2016. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/mtroyal-ebooks/detail.action?docID=4746925. Created from mtroyal-ebooks on 2024-12-06 17:28:55.  152  Coaching Better Every Season in action. Therefore, developing general motor programs will greatly increase an athlete’s ability to perform successfully across various competitive situations. For this reason, regardless of the age or skill level of the athlete, some practice time should always be set aside for learning or reinforcing basic skills. For example, championship football coach Pete Carroll believes that disciplined, repetitive practice of fundamental skills is critical for performing at a championship level not only because it strengthens general motor programs but also because it builds athletes’ confidence in their ability.37 2. Use variety. Practice activities should be regularly changed to keep athletes’ engagement and interest high, and new practice activities should be introduced frequently. Variety can also be accomplished by simply rearranging the order in which activities are practiced. Yet another option is to vary the sequence of skill attempts. This method is referred to as random or varied practice.16 For example, instead of having golf athletes practice blocks of 10 putts from a set distance, they could be required to attempt each of the 10 putts from a different spot on the green. Likewise, instead of hitting a block of shots with one specific club, they could be required to hit the same number of shots with a random sequence of different clubs. This routine promotes what is known as perceptual attunement, which develops the ability to make adjustments based on changes in the performance environment. Although short-term gains in performance may not be evident with this approach, it appears to be more effective than blocked practice for long-term performance improvements.38, 39 (p. 184) Another way to add variety to practices is to select a theme for each practice and design activities that all connect to the theme. Successful coaches often add an inspirational quotation to their practice plan, which they share with their athletes at the start of practice as a way to reinforce the practice theme. In addition to books such as Inspirational Quotes for Sport Coaches40 inspiring quotations can easily be found through a quick online search. Two websites that coaches may find particularly helpful are the sport quotations pages of the University of North Texas Center for Sport Psychology and Performance Excellence (https://sportpsych.unt.edu/ resources/athletes/31) and Keepinspiring.me (www.keepinspiring.me/100-most- inspirational-sports-quotes-of-all-time/). Coaches who use social media will also find Twitter accounts such as @Sports_Greats (Sports Quotes) and @SportsMotto (Great Sports Quotes) to be valuable sources of inspirational quotations to use Copyright © 2016. Human Kinetics. All rights reserved. at practices. 3. Teach new material at the start of practice. Coaches can use the first part of the practice to introduce and teach new skills or strategies. After a proper warm-up that includes light movement and stretching, athletes are most recep- tive to learning new things because (a) they have had a chance to socialize with their teammates for a few minutes and (b) they are more physically and mentally ready to learn than later in the practice when they have less energy. An active warm-up that includes some type of aerobic activity such as a game of soccer on a small field, perhaps with multiple balls, primes the brain for learning. Aerobic exercise stimulates the release of chemicals in the brain, referred to as neurotransmitters, that increase focus and strengthen the learning of new concepts.41 Gilbert, Wade. Coaching Better Every Season : A Year-Round System for Athlete Development and Program Success, Human Kinetics, 2016. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/mtroyal-ebooks/detail.action?docID=4746925. Created from mtroyal-ebooks on 2024-12-06 17:28:55.  Design Effective Practice Environments  153 4. Quick transitions between activities. Coaches must also pay careful attention to the flow and sequence of practice activities to ensure that time spent moving from one activity to the next is minimized. Transition time can be minimized by thinking about how equipment will be set up and moved from one activity to the next and by sharing practice plans in advance with assistant coaches. Tran- sition time can also be minimized by arriving early to practice and making sure that the required equipment is in place for each activity before practice starts. Coach Wooden required his athletes to sprint from one activity to the next, but this strategy works only if the next station or activity is set up in advance. A simple way to ensure quick transitions is to send athletes for water breaks individually or in small groups, rather than using the common practice of scheduling full-team water breaks at regular intervals throughout a practice. When large groups of athletes break for water at the same time, off-task behavior is more likely to occur and it takes more time to bring the athletes back on task for the next activity. 5. Increase complexity from practice to practice. Early season practices should be designed with an emphasis on fundamental skills, often practiced in repetitive blocks of time. Blocked practice is generally considered more effective when an athlete is first learning a new skill or concept.16 But after athletes become comfortable performing the skill, the complexity of the practice activities should be increased. For example, after athletes have learned the fundamentals of shoot- ing a basketball, coaches can add complexity to shooting activities by varying the distance of the shots, adding a pass before the shot, or adding defenders. Soccer coach Tony DiCicco believes that this approach to practice design was instrumental in his leading teams to Olympic and World Cup titles. In his words, he layered the design of practices by continually adding small variations to the way they practiced set plays such as free kicks and corner kicks. After winning the 1999 World Cup of soccer, in which his team won many games with corner kicks, the media assumed that his team must have devoted massive blocks of practice time to repeating corner kicks. He explained that although they did practice corner kicks on a regular basis, “It was a continual layering to imprint the basic, subtle nuances of each free-kick opportunity. We imprinted layers rather than attempting to rush perfection.” 42 (p. 288) 6. Conditioning for learning. Coaches cannot expect athletes to show up Copyright © 2016. Human Kinetics. All rights reserved. to the first practice in top physical and mental condition. Just as each practice session should have a proper warm-up period, the first few weeks of practice each season should be approached as a time to warm up athletes for increasingly complex and high-intensity practice sessions. Contrary to what people might think, for Coach Wooden this guideline meant scheduling longer practices early in the year. The practice sessions for the first two weeks of the season were 30 minutes longer than normal, but the intensity of the practices was relatively low. Coach Wooden used the extra time to give longer explanations, more detailed demon- strations, and more frequent rest breaks to allow the athletes to get into practice condition. As the season progresses, practices should become shorter and more intense, requiring athletes to be in better mental and physical condition than they were for early season practices. After conditioning has been developed, coaches such as championship wrestling coach Dan Gable also recommend shortening Gilbert, Wade. Coaching Better Every Season : A Year-Round System for Athlete Development and Program Success, Human Kinetics, 2016. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/mtroyal-ebooks/detail.action?docID=4746925. Created from mtroyal-ebooks on 2024-12-06 17:28:55.  154  Coaching Better Every Season late-season practices as a way to keep athletes fresh.43 Shorter practices and extra rest between practices may be required to combat fatigue from a long season. Practice sessions still need to be run at high intensity so that conditioning can be maintained leading into the postseason. 7. End on a positive note. Although his former players describe his practices as electric and fast paced, Coach Wooden routinely set aside the last five minutes of practice for a fun or silly activity. Former player Swen Nater recalls one practice in particular when Coach Wooden let the players hold a dunk contest, even though dunking was normally forbidden in practices because it was not allowed in games at that time. Coaches must not lose sight of the fact that fun is one of the primary motives for participating in sport. Quality coaches understand and nurture this basic need, regardless of their athletes’ age and competitive level. Training to become a champion requires many thousands of hours of physically and mentally intense practice. Deliberate practice must be counterbalanced with fun and playful activities to sustain athletes’ motivation and passion for the sport. One effective strategy for ensuring that athletes finish each practice on a positive note is to allow them to select the final activity at each practice. When given the choice, athletes will always select fun and competitive activities. Coaches should ensure that every athlete gets to select the fun activity at least once during the season. Coaches might also decide to award the selection of the fun activity to an athlete who exemplified a certain characteristic during the practice, such as hardest worker or best teammate. Two-time national high school football Coach of the Year Charles “Chuck” Kyle used a different kind of strategy to ensure that every practice ended on a positive note. He created a 10-second tradition whereby time was set aside at the end of every practice for each player to visualize himself correcting an error he made in practice that day.44 The goal was for each athlete to leave the practice with a positive image of himself per- forming successfully. 8. Avoid altering a plan during the lesson. Coaches often make changes in the midst of a practice based on things they are noticing. For example, if ath- letes are struggling with an activity, a coach may to want to spend more time on the activity. But veering off the carefully prepared practice plan disrupts the intended flow of the practice and negatively affects remaining activities. For Copyright © 2016. Human Kinetics. All rights reserved. example, if a coach extends one activity by 10 minutes, then either the next activities will have to be shortened or the practice will have to be extended. Neither of these scenarios is desirable or conducive for effective learning and skill development. If subsequent practice activities are shortened or eliminated, then the athletes are losing the opportunity to practice things that the coach believed were critical for individual and team improvement. If the practice is simply extended, athletes may conserve energy or lose focus because they don’t know how long they will be practicing. When practices are extended beyond the time initially deemed optimal and athletes tire and begin to lose focus, they become most susceptible to injury. Elements of Coach John Wooden’s practice design principles will be evident in the practices of any successful coach. The principles serve as a timeless guide Gilbert, Wade. Coaching Better Every Season : A Year-Round System for Athlete Development and Program Success, Human Kinetics, 2016. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/mtroyal-ebooks/detail.action?docID=4746925. Created from mtroyal-ebooks on 2024-12-06 17:28:55.  Design Effective Practice Environments  155 for helping coaches design quality practices. One of the most comprehensive examples of how a coach applied these design principles to his practices is a study I collaborated on with high school basketball coach Hank Bias.45 After several difficult losing seasons, Coach Bias decided to study and apply Coach Wooden’s practice design principles. Some of the changes he made included (a) never extending a practice beyond the scheduled time, (b) never scheduling practices beyond two hours, (c) limiting each practice activity to eight minutes, (d) integrating water breaks into drills, and (e) cutting down transition time between activities by distributing detailed written practice plans to assis- tant coaches so that everyone would know where and when to place equipment needed for each activity. Coach Bias enjoyed a long and successful coaching career for many years following his discovery and implementation of Wooden’s practice design principles. For example, the winning percentage for his teams rose from 29 percent in the three years before implementing the practice design changes to 62 percent in the five years following full implementation, representing the best 5-year winning record for the boys’ basketball program in nearly 90 years. GIVING ATHLETES A SAY ON PRACTICE DESIGN Although it should be clear by now that successful coaches meticulously plan every minute of their practices, this does not mean that athletes have no input into the selection of practice activities. Quality coaches understand that athletes will enjoy practice more and show greater commitment to practices when they have some choice and input on practice design. For example, the system for practice and performance designed by cham- pionship football coach Pete Carroll provides athletes with many opportunities to celebrate their individuality and creativity.46 He believes that this element is particularly important when coaching large teams, such as in football, because athletes need to have space to express their individuality. The same commitment to finding a balance between coach-imposed structure and athlete freedom was also the foundation for golf coach Paul McGinley, who led the European team to the 2014 Ryder Cup championship. The Ryder Cup, Copyright © 2016. Human Kinetics. All rights reserved. considered one of the world’s biggest sporting events, is held every two years. The competition pits America’s best golfers against the top golfers from Europe. When asked about his leadership approach, Coach McGinley said, “There has to be structure but space within it for players to be themselves and allow the flair to come out.”47 Balancing coach-designed structure with athlete choice has been found to be the most effective way to develop athletes’ talent. This balanced approach is referred to as an autonomy-supportive approach to coaching.23, 48–50 Athlete motivation and coach-athlete relationships are enhanced when coaches create sport environments that help athletes meet three basic needs: (a) the need for choice and autonomy, (b) the need to learn and feel competent, and (c) the need to feel connected to others. Athletes consistently report that playing for coaches who allow and encourage them to share in decision making and give Gilbert, Wade. Coaching Better Every Season : A Year-Round System for Athlete Development and Program Success, Human Kinetics, 2016. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/mtroyal-ebooks/detail.action?docID=4746925. Created from mtroyal-ebooks on 2024-12-06 17:28:55.  156  Coaching Better Every Season them choices during practices is more enjoyable and fuels athlete initiative and motivation to improve.48–52 The opposite of autonomy-supportive coaching is an approach that focuses on controlling and directing athletes as a way to motivate and teach them. Although some short-term performance gains may result from a controlling approach, reli- ance on this approach dampens athlete motivation, initiative and risk taking, and overall emotional and mental well-being.53 USA Football designed a simple self-assessment tool to help coaches distin- guish between autonomy-supportive and controlling approaches (see figure 7.1). A coach’s use of autonomy-supportive behaviors is referred to as a pull-and-ask approach. The pull-and-ask approach is characterized by frequent questioning, listening, and paraphrasing. At the other end of the spectrum is the push-and-tell approach that emphasizes direct instruction and coach advice. Note that both approaches can be effective at times, but coaches should strive to use a pull- and-ask approach as much as reasonably possible. One often-cited example of how a coach helped athletes reach their poten- tial by using an autonomy-supportive approach to practice design is the study completed by coaching scientist and former Olympic track and field coach Cliff Mallett.54 At the time of the study Coach Mallett was coaching the Australian men’s Nondirective Pull Action plan Helping someone solve Use of styles his or her own problem 1 all the time, 10 not at all Listening to understand 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Reflecting 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Paraphrasing 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Summarizing 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Asking questions 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 that raise awareness Making suggestions 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Copyright © 2016. Human Kinetics. All rights reserved. Giving feedback 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Offering guidance 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Giving advice 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Instructing 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Push Solving someone’s problem for them Look at each approach. On a scale of 1 to 10 identify how much you use this approach, with 1 being all the time and 10 being never. Figure 7.1 Pull-and-ask approach versus push-and-tell approach to coaching. Courtesy of USA Football (www.usafootball.com). E6528/Gilbert/F07.01/556978/mh-R2 Gilbert, Wade. Coaching Better Every Season : A Year-Round System for Athlete Development and Program Success, Human Kinetics, 2016. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/mtroyal-ebooks/detail.action?docID=4746925. Created from mtroyal-ebooks on 2024-12-06 17:28:55.  Design Effective Practice Environments  157 sprint relay teams, who were ranked 14th (4 × 100) and 13th (4 × 400) in the world. Coach Mallett decided to experiment with ways to give the athletes more input into practice design and training decisions. For example, he held formal team meetings with the athletes to ask them for their input into the training and competition approaches that would be used in preparation for the Olympics. Counter to the prevailing approach to relay sprint training at the time, the athletes and the coach jointly decided that focusing solely on relay training would be more valuable and that none of the athletes would enter individual sprint events. Also, during training sessions Coach Mallett moved his coaching to the background55 and acted more in a facilitative, rather than directive, role. During practices the athletes were always first asked for their perceptions of their training efforts before the coach gave feedback. These training strategies proved successful; both teams reached the Olympic finals, and the 4 × 400 team won a silver medal. According to Coach Mallett, these strategies were effective primarily because athletes were active participants in designing and evaluating the training activities, thereby helping them meet their basic needs and increase their perceptions of the relevance and value of the practice activities. An autonomy-supportive approach to practice design has been shown to be effective with adolescent and youth sport athletes as well. For example, in a unique study comparing the behaviors of successful and unsuccessful high school soccer coaches, researchers found that winning coaches offered athletes more choices and accepted athlete input more often during practices.56 When they give athletes choice and some freedom to experiment with novel ways of performing skills, coaches are adding functional variability to their practice design. Emerging research shows the value of allowing athletes to experiment with unique and multiple ways to perform a skill.57 For example, instead of requiring athletes to perform a skill with the same movement pattern repeatedly, coaches should consider allowing athletes to introduce their own variations into the movement pattern. Athletes should be given opportunities to perform skills in a way that feels right to them. Then the coach and the athlete can jointly determine the most efficient way to perform the skill, or the athlete can be allowed to keep multiple options open for performing Copyright © 2016. Human Kinetics. All rights reserved. the skill. Table 7.4 provides a summary of sample autonomy-supportive coaching behaviors and the way in which they can be integrated into practice design. For example, setting aside the first 5 or 10 minutes of each practice for athlete free play is recommended because it serves as a mental and physical transition to practice while allowing athletes to reconnect with their teammates.58 One of my favorite examples of creating an autonomy-supportive practice design strategy comes from professional rugby coach Gregor Townsend.59 Draw- ing from his observations of championship teams, Coach Townsend committed to creating an autonomy-supportive practice environment that includes time for a “great by choice” activity in every practice. Time is scheduled into every practice session for athletes to identify which skills they want to work on and how they want to practice those skills. Athletes are not forced into participating in the “great by Gilbert, Wade. Coaching Better Every Season : A Year-Round System for Athlete Development and Program Success, Human Kinetics, 2016. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/mtroyal-ebooks/detail.action?docID=4746925. Created from mtroyal-ebooks on 2024-12-06 17:28:55.  158  Coaching Better Every Season Table 7.4 Autonomy-Supportive Coaching Behaviors and Application to Practice Design Autonomy-supportive coaching behaviors Practice design example Provide opportunities for initiative Schedule free time during practice to allow athletes to and independent work. work on self-determined areas of strength or weakness. Provide choice within boundaries. Allow athletes to choose a practice activity from a coach- prepared list of activities. Give rationale for tasks. Explain the advantages of adopting a particular training approach or using a specific practice activity. Acknowledge feelings and Listen openly and nondefensively to athlete feedback dur- perspectives. ing practices and use this feedback to make adjustments to future practices. Solicit athlete input. Actively seek athlete feedback on practice activities to learn how athletes view practice activities. Avoid controlling behaviors. Recognize that a skill or practice activity can be executed in several ways; do not use ultimatums or coerce or shame athletes into performing the skill your way. choice” training time. Instead, they are given freedom to practice the skills they believe are most important to helping them improve their performance. One final note must be made about this practice design feature. Some of the most successful coaches in history did not provide athletes with any input into practice design. Legendary basketball coaches John Wooden and Phil Jackson are two such examples. For example, Coach Jackson borrowed a ritual from renowned football coach Vince Lombardi and occasionally required his athletes to line up across the baseline before practice and recite an oath demonstrating their commitment to embracing the coach’s structure before being allowed to practice that day.60 But closer inspection of these coaching approaches shows that the coaches did in fact provide their athletes with many opportunities to express themselves Copyright © 2016. Human Kinetics. All rights reserved. and contribute to team decisions. For Wooden and Jackson, athlete input and autonomy were typically reserved for the games. Coach Wooden, for example, always looked forward to being surprised by his athletes and their creativity during games, whereas Coach Jackson preferred to let his players work through tough game situations on their own. Therefore, the principle of balancing athlete choice with coach-implemented structure was still part of their coaching approach, although it wasn’t necessar- ily evident in their practice design. Given the advances in coaching science and athlete talent development, however, it is clear that optimal practice design includes at least some opportunities for athlete input and autonomy. For example, when the c