Perfect practice Pub

The idea, reflected in many modern texts is that the brain gets better at doing one thing, the more you repeat that thing, the better the brain gets at doing it the same way. If you do it wrong, you'll get better at doing it wrong.

Practice does not make perfect. Only perfect practice makes perfect.

Vince Lombardi

We talked about the concept of deliberate practice - the kind of very focused practice, at the edge of ability, when you fail and repeat, break the skill into parts, slow down and master each part, then put them together. This is how the brain learns most effectively and anything else is more wasted time than efficient practice.

Using external cues is great for creating feedback loops that speed up learning and we should certainly always keep practice at the edge of ability, say 80% success rate, but what else can we do? How we can conduct training in the most effective way. How do we make a U12 or a U16 train this way?

Hard skills

A good application of this principle is in the concept of "hard skills", from The Little Book of Talent⁺⁺, see Soft skills versus hard skills and becoming a better skier.

The fundamental movements are the hard skills - those that require repeatable precision. These are the basic movements and techniques you master with slow drills repeated ad-nauseam.

These skills are built like a "careful carpenter", carefully building each individual skills and composing them, to obtain the ultimate repeatable precision in execution. Nothing left to chance, a focus on positive results versus mistakes etc.

Soft skills

Soft skills on the other hand are the tactics - these you learn by "playing like a snowboarder". There are basic tactics decisions which you can learn and repeat, but overall, these skills are developed by playing. Trying out different paths to success and failing. Learning from failures.

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