FEATURED ARTICLE
I’m here to tell you that technique is super important. Very, very important if you’re trying to be a high level performer. In any sport technique is very, very important. But there is something we need to realize. This “doing” or technique part of a skill is only one third of the equation.
John Kessel: “It’s so much more than just the technique. It’s this planning and reading. We say in our sport the most important skill is reading.”
He continued, “I was joking about your mom that she could sit on the bench and when the opposing team tips a soft shot, she could stand up and walk out and get the darn ball and the players on the court just watch it hit the floor. Is it the walking technique of your mother? No, it’s not her walking technique. It’s that she could read and anticipate and knew before the ball got tipped that it was probably going to be a tip. Every sport has that reading.”
The Three Parts of A Game Skill
Every time you do a skill in a game, you have to “do” which is the technique part but you also have to do two other things. We call it “reading” and “planning”.
So every time you do a skill in a game you have to Read, you have to Plan and you have to Do.
Let’s look at how this idea applies to golf. Before every single shot in a round a player has to read, plan and do. An example would be before a put. The player has to read the break. He has to recognize how far he is away from the hole. He has to plan accordingly – exactly where he’s going to aim and how hard he’s going to hit the put. Then the doing and execution comes into play.
Let’s look at a three point shot in basketball. The player has to catch the ball and read and recognize where the defense is. He has to understand how far he is away from the hoop and then he has to plan accordingly. He has to plan
defense is. He has to understand how far he is away from the hoop and then he has to plan accordingly. He has to plan how hard to shoot the ball, how fast to shoot the ball, how high to shoot the ball among a thousand other things and then the execution comes into play.
Every single player is reading, planning and doing
You see technique is huge and it’s very important in the process but it’s only one third of the equation. Every time we do a skill in a game regardless of the sport or the position we play, we have to Read, Plan and Do. In many sports all three of those things are happening in a split second.
Two Different Practice Strategies
So now that we understand exactly how complex a game skill actually is, I want to talk about two different practice strategies and show you how making a few minor adjustments to the way that we design our practice will have a major impact on that transfer and help us maximize the transfer so the improvements we see during practice show up on game day.
Let’s take a closer look at these two practice strategies.:
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