Athletic Development – Defining the Field
Practice Breaker – Laps
Here are two of my favorites: “Let’s go – take two laps and then we will get started with training.” “If you miss this shot then you will have to run.” Think about it, you see this all the time ...
Practice Maker – Refinement
Refinement is fine tuning the practice after the basic technical model has been mastered. When that is robust then and only then should you think about attending to the finer points in a skill. Often ...
Practice Maker – Repetition
Repetition is the mother of learning. We are what we repeatedly do. I doubt anyone would argue with those points. The task then becomes to carefully choose what we repeat. It is necessary to have a cl...
Practice Maker – Routine
The first consideration in effective practice is routine. A set routine is the basis for consistent practice. Great athletes and great teams have set routines for training that do not vary. In fact wi...
Practice
The key to getting better is practice. Up to a point when an athlete is beginning their career virtually anything they do will make them better, in fact the more they do the better they get. Then ther...
It’s Not About The Coffee
I am a big fan of Starbucks and believe me it is not about the coffee because I am not much of a coffee drinker. I could not tell Sumatra Plus from instant coffee, but I do know one thing about Starbu...
Failure – A viable option?
I find it interesting how popular failure has become. Experts are writing books about how important failure is. There are blog post and comments galore. Hate to say I told so, but I discovered how imp...
Periodization and the Systematic Sport Development Process – Part Three
Periodization is a viable concept that certainly will help improve our sport development system, but we also need trained coaches to plan and then implement the plan. A productive sport development sy...
Periodization and the Systematic Sport Development Process – Part Two
Matveyev was one of many who formalized the concept. Because he was Russian, and the Soviet Union was the dominant geopolitical force in the communist bloc, Soviet ideology tended to prevail even in s...