Too often I have made the mistake of not being willing to regress practice drills. Starting out with drills way to difficult for the players to master & then progressed the drills only to blame the players for not being able to master the drills instead of thinking about what environment I created for them to learn within.

Now a days I start out with almost laughable easy drills no matter what level I’m working with in order to engineer early wins.

I believe the players need to experience early wins to overcome initial fear of failure & insecurities. So instead of only doing a couple of progressions of a drill, I now do multiple short progressive drills with young players in order for them to experience mastery & have the self-belief to dare failing when the going gets tougher.

Before deciding on what drills to do I ask myself:

1) What is the most important learning principle in order to master the skill

2) What are the most common failure points?

3) What is the easiest drill with guaranteed succes?

Recommended Posts