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The Baseball Observer - Jan/ Feb 2017
get better. They really care about the kids so it’s hard for them to let go of that.
I think if some coaches know ‘Hey, you are being a good coach…just find a different way to track improvement.’
What’s it about? Is it about you’re seeing that growth in the 15 minutes? Is it about the fact that you want to control it? Is it the fact that you won the state championship when you did this drill? I’m serious. I think if they (a coach) can answer the ‘why’, then it’s a lot easier to let it go.”
That’s some incredible insight from Coach Black. One thing I think we really need to take away from that is the idea of finding better ways to track progress. What he means by this is focus more on the transfer and retention test as opposed to the practice improvements that we see.
The Why
Now what I want to talk about is the “Why” behind this. Why do we see these results? Why do we see the jump happen when we do random practice? Why do we see the dip occur if we choose to do block practice?
What we need to realize is this. When we do block practice, when we do a bunch of reps in a row in the same place we are eliminating the reading and planning from the equation. All we are doing is executing the technique.
When we do random practice we are forced to read and plan before every single rep because we’re doing something new. We can still get a ton of reps but now we’re doing the reading and planning as well and they are just as important as the doing.
John Kessel: “And the reason random is so important is because it’s like the game. I bet no basketball play, no volleyball play, no football play is the same as before. They’re similar…but they’re not the same. And yet we drill and never move the ball cart and we wanna look good and we let the brain kinda, for lack of a better term, go on idle and not have to figure out what to do for a while. Versus having to work and create a new or solve a new problem over and over and over and over again which is the way the game is played.
So we have all these skills we developed in “drills” where they look good in the drill and the narrowness of it and then in the chaos and ugliness of the game they don’t know how to get to the right place in time because they’ve only done one thing to look good “technically” and they don’t know how to play volleyball.
You play volleyball you don’t drill volleyball.”
There’s no doubt about it, getting a ton of reps is very, very important. Knowing the technique and proper execution is extremely important. But so is reading and so is planning.
If we are just doing block practice all you’re focusing on is the execution or technique. When we do random practice, we’re working on the execution and technique but we’re also working on the reading and the planning. So we are working on the total skill.