Four Stages of Skill Acquisition

February 18th, 2010

The following article originally appeared in Hard 2 Guard 2009 Player Development Newsletter Volume 3, Issue 37 and is included in Brian McCormick’s Player Development Newsletters, Volume 3.

While running a clinic for an organization last weekend, the head coach reminded the group (and me) of the four stages of skill acquisition:

* Unskilled, Unconscious
* Unskilled, Conscious
* Skilled, Conscious
* Skilled, Unconscious

The beginner player is unaware of his mistake and the proper execution. Next, he learns the proper execution, but he cannot consistently repeat the skill. For instance, many young players understand the basics of shooting – they can recite BEEF and show you where to start your shot, where to place your hand on the ball, etc. – but they cannot execute the skill perfectly and consistently.

Eventually, they execute with correct technique. However, they consciously control their shooting technique. When they step to the free throw line, they tell themselves to bend their knees. A lot of players get stuck in this stage where they mentally control their skill execution.

The final stage is to forget: the player masters the skill and forgets the technical instructions. He does not need to think about his foot placement, hand placement, etc. – he simply catches and shoots.

Many players waffle in-between the 3rd and final step. When things are good and they are thinking positively, they catch and shoot without any conscious control. However, when they miss a shot, feel fatigued, feel pressure, etc., their mind attempts to wrest control of the physical process. Once a player reaches the Skilled-Unconscious Stage, thinking interferes with skill execution.

Is there a way to go from Unskilled-Unconscious to Skilled-Unconscious? After all, if the goal is to return to unconscious skill execution, why add the conscious element? That is the basis for the school of thought which favors implicit learning:

Considerable evidence now exists in the scientific literature to show that excessive conscious control of one’s skills (reinvestment) is avoidable if the skills are learned implicitly, without recourse to hypothesis testing (e.g. bent knees = more power) or accumulation of explicit knowledge,” (Farrow, et. al).

How can a coach teach the required skills without explicit instructions? Many coaches already use many implicit learning techniques: (1) analogies; (2) errorless learning; (3) subliminal learning; and discovery learning/play.

Analogies can be used to present the key coaching points of a to-be learned skill as a simple biomechanical metaphor that can be reproduced by the learner without reference to, or manipulation of, large amounts of explicit knowledge (Farrow, et. al).

In 180 Shooter, I list several cues that I use with shooters that are similar to analogies. The most common basketball analogy is the “hand in the cookie jar.” This type of analogy allows “many bits of information about a skill to be presented to the learner in one manageable chunk,” (Farrow, et. al).

When I learned to swim last winter, I thought about one instruction – reaching on each stroke like I was reaching to touch the wall – and one image – the hull of a boat. In the Total Immersion philosophy, the goal is to be more efficient with each stroke, not to work harder. By reaching for the wall, you lengthen each stroke (made sense based on my rowing experience and the difference between stroke rate and stroke length), and by picturing the hull of the boat, I forced my head and chest down to create a more streamlined position. There were no details to remember about exact hand position or precise stroke length.

Errorless Learning
When I begin a shooting session, I start with form shooting close to the basket. This is a form of errorless learning. Rather than instruct step-by-step, the player shoots in an area where it is easy for him to make shots. He grooves his technique or gets a rhythm. Through the successful execution, he learns the right way to shoot with minimal instruction. The longer that I coach, the less that I say, especially in individual workouts because I want to minimize the thinking.

If the player starts in the right position and finishes in the right position, everything in between takes care of itself. While there are many details that one can teach, every detail gives the player another thing to analyze or another reason to think too much.

I show the right starting position and emphasize shooting the ball high: start small and finish tall. If there are mistakes that consistently result in missed shots, I tweak the technique and instruct as needed. However, when starting with the errorless learning and a basic picture of the goal, the need for detailed instructions lessens.

Subliminal Learning
In Developing Sport Expertise, Neil Craig, Head Coach of the Adelaide Crows Football Club, cites a study published in Malcolm Gladwell’s Blink as provoking subliminal implicit learning. In the study, people memorized groups of words and then walked down a hallway. Those who memorized words subtly referencing old age – gray, Florida, old – walked with a stooped, slow fashion like an older person.

Craig puts posters on the wall which emphasize the importance of precise skill execution like focus, attention, concentration, etc. He figures that reading these words in the locker room on a daily basis contributes to subliminal learning.

Discovery Learning/Play
When I work with a new team, I present situations and allow the players to devise solutions rather than telling players exactly what to do. As I conducted several clinics last weekend, I realized that coaches skip over generalities and move straight to specifics – in a sense, they skip the perceptual and conceptual elements and move straight to movement.

I worked with a junior college coach once who moved straight into out of bounds plays – she never taught or challenged players to get open, use space appropriately or anything pertaining to spacing and getting open. Instead, it was straight to set plays. She wanted Skilled-Conscious players because she wanted to control their actions through her verbal instructions.

For instance, last night, my directions centered on this: Basketball is a game of time and space – the offense aims to create time and space and the defense attempts to take away time and space or to protect space. I did not tell the players how to play, where to go, what to do. I want to see how they learn and develop within general ideas.

Last night, we concentrated on 1v2 and 2v2 because most teams at this level press. Therefore, I want players who can handle the ball under pressure. We have no press break; there is no “right” way to get open. There is no rigid way to attack 2v1.

Instead, I aim to create challenges that give players an opportunity to discover the right play or the right decision. My job as a coach is to create the challenges and then offer occasional instruction based on the execution.

For instance, after watching several missed lay-ups, and remembering a study conducted by my friend Lindell, I stopped the game and taught a two-foot lay-up rather than the one-foot take-off which resulted in many missed lay-ups and off-balance shots.

The goal, then, is to move to a Skilled-Unconscious performer as quickly as possible. In a sense, coaches use set plays because it is quicker to memorize an A-B-C plan (set play) than to teach and develop players into Skilled-Unconscious players.

The goal is unconscious execution where players react immediately to defensive cues. My practices and clinics often look ugly because the players are not there yet. However, the ugliness precedes the Skilled-Unconscious level because too much instruction or structure inhibits the players’ learning.

Therefore, to move to the Skilled-Unconscious performer, coaches either need to give players more time and repetitions so they think about the right decisions and learn in the traditional four-step method, or they need to focus on implicit learning and developing players who move from Unskilled-Unconscious to Skilled-Unconscious.

Players need the time and opportunity to learn the game through exploration and discovery with minimal interference, as opposed to the constant structure and explicit instructions in today’s game.

By Brian McCormick
Director of Coaching, Playmakers Basketball Development League

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Skill Acquisition and Drill Design

February 14th, 2010

Each week, I write a free weekly newsletter which I send to thousands of subscribers. During the year, I interview experts with my own questions and share the interviews in the newsletters. In 2009, I interviewed a sports medicine specialist at one of the leading hospitals for ACL injury research; a popular strength & conditioning coach and a sports nutritionist. However, my favorite interview was with Adam Gorman, a Skill Acquisition Specialist at the Australian Institute of Sport (AIS) in Canberra, Australia.

Gorman’s role at the AIS is diverse and includes drill design and implementation, as well as the development of research initiatives and interventions including video-based training and perceptual skill development.

Here is one of the questions that I asked Gorman:

BM: How does your presence change the way that a basketball coach approaches skill development? What do you add or do differently?

Gorman: Basically, I think I provide a different way of viewing skill acquisition and the ways in which a training session or drill can be structured. My approach is often a little different to the “traditional” methods that have been applied in the past. I try to create a learning environment where players are able to explore their own, unique movement solutions to problems.

That is, I don’t overly constrain players in the ways in which they attempt to achieve success in a drill or activity. Instead, I simply manipulate the environmental demands (number of defenders, aim of the task, etc.) and allow the players to explore what works and what doesn’t work. Through questioning and drill design, the players learn the broad principles of play so that they can apply those same principles to new situations.

Wherever possible, I include the normal perception-action coupling of the skills and link the solutions to the problems. For example, a player who learns how to perform a certain defensive movement, without also learning how that movement is linked to the movements of an offensive player or other defenders, is really learning a solution that is isolated from the problem. In a constrained situation, the solution may be performed extremely accurately but when that same solution is then applied to a situation that is more representative of the game, the solution can decompose because it was never performed and mapped to the relevant information in the environment.

Brian McCormick writes the free weekly newsletter, Hard2Guard Player Development Newsletters. To subscribe, go here. To read the compilation of newsletters from 2009, including the rest of the interview with Adam Gorman, purchase Brian McCormick’s Hard2Guard Player Development Newsletter, Volume 3.

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Pressing and Skill Development in Youth Basketball

January 23rd, 2010

On another site, coaches discussed the merit of a no-press rule for pre-high school players with many different suggestions. The argument against pressing was the lack of skill development to handle the press (something that continues to the high school level).

This is true. But, I do not understand how it is true.

Now, at younger ages, when players cannot throw the ball the length of the court, teams can cheat and put five defenders in the back court to take away space and make it more difficult to break the press. For this reason, when I coached u9 boys and u10 girls, we used our bigger players to break the press because the smaller guards lacked the strength to throw over the top and relieve the pressure.

At younger ages, I understand the struggles to break the press to a certain degree. However, the discussion centered largely around 6th – 8th graders.

When I played, our league only allowed man2man defense. However, teams could use a zone press in the back court, so many teams pressed. We ran two different presses. I played point guard and I never felt overwhelmed by pressure. We had players who could dribble with both hands with their eyes up and players who could pass the ball, and we generally had no more trouble with a press than with half-court defense (incidentally, in our recent blowout victories, we’ve given up more points with our press than our half-court defense, as most teams cannot get off a good shot against half-court man defense).

I never played organized basketball until 5th grade, and we played only 20-24 games per season from 5th – 8th grade. However, we were able to handle a press. Today, children start organized basketball at 6-years-old and cannot handle a press by 8th grade. What is wrong with this picture? Why the rush to organized basketball if skill development appears to be receding, not improving?

There are reasons to explain this: defenses are  more sophisticated, children are more athletic, etc. However, at the high school level, we run one press and teams struggle against it. When I was in 6th grade, we ran two different presses plus played full-court man, so my high school team is less sophisticated than my 6th grade team.

I am not a huge proponent of pressing at early ages because the defense is ahead of the offense, and it does hurt some players’ confidence and make for some uneven contests. Of course, I also believe young players should play 3v3 and not 5v5 for the same reasons – younger less experienced players need more space to make moves and play the game and 3v3 offers the space and more touches for all players, not just the star.

Also, some teams that press spend all their time practicing their press, engaging in the Peak by Friday mentality rather than preparing their players, teaching them how to play and developing well-rounded skills.

However, the coaches who complain about the pressing teams need to focus more on developing their players’ skills. Now, in tournaments, sometimes there is a big discrepancy in ability levels. Playing half-court defense does little to solve these discrepancies. If competitive balance is the goal, tournament directors and coaches need to do a better job of creating more equitable competitive levels. Once within the same ability level, coaches need to teach skills so players can handle a press.

In our last game, our opponent called timeout and went to a 2-2-1 press, a press that we have not faced or practiced against all season. I had to get two players’ attention because they had set up in our half-court offense. Once I told them to look down court, they filled the right spots. We broke the press with four passes and two dribbles and finished with a lay-up and a 15-foot jump shot. Our opponent quickly took off the press.

We were not bigger and faster than the other team. We work on passing, cutting and pivoting every day in practice in general drills so that players can adapt to any defense. We talk about spacing and angles every day because most of the top teams rely on presses to win at this level. We are prepared for a press because we develop these fundamental skills in every single practice (in our first scrimmage in October, we could barely get the ball across half-court against a press because we had practiced only 4-5 times before we scrimmaged a top team).

I have mixed feeling about the no-press rule. However, if the argument is that we cannot press because it impedes fundamental development, as some argued, I disagree. With beginners and very young/small players (who should be playing 3v3 anyway), I would disallow a press. However, by 8th grade, players should have enough strength to handle a press if they have developed their fundamentals.

The argument should not be whether or not to press, but how to eliminate the Peak by Friday mentality in the league, whether a team presses or not.

By Brian McCormick
Director of Coaching, Playmakers Basketball Development League

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High School Basketball, Periodization & Player Development

December 13th, 2009

hs game
The high school schedule is not designed to develop better basketball players. Intuitively, we have always known this: we lived by the adage, “Teams are made in the winter, players are made during the summer.” However, somewhere we lost sight of the difference between competition and training.

I coach some relatively inexperienced high school players. Since the Monday before Thanksgiving, we have had one scrimmage, eight games and four practices with four more games and two practices this week. We are in a stretch of five games in six days with no practices.

If player development was the goal, the schedule would be far different. We will have played 13 games and one scrimmage before we break for Christmas. When I coached in a professional league, our first game was the first weekend of October, and we played eight games before Christmas.

The high school schedule crams 13 games into one month for developing players while a professional league spaces eight games through three months. While we have had twice as many games as practices this month, when I coached in Europe, we had 4-6 practices per game (and we only practiced once per day because it was not one of the top leagues which often practice twice per day).

In which schedule will a player develop his or her skills?

We have adopted a mentality that believes that players only improve or develop during games. But, this is far from true.

In competitive situations, players play to their strengths: they do what they already can do. If I do not dribble well with my left hand, I dribble only with my right hand. If I cannot make a lay-up with my left hand, I shoot with my right hand. If I cannot guard a good player, I pick the player who looks like the worst player on the other team to guard.

How does this help a player improve or develop new skills?

In practice, players try new things. A practice lacks performance pressure, so a player can practice shooting left-hand lay-ups or dribbling the ball with his left hand without the fear of failure. A mistake in practice does not let down his or her teammates or cause the coach to take the player out of the game. By practicing new or undeveloped skills, a player expands his or her game and improves.

Unfortunately, off-season teams have adopted a similar schedule, often practicing once or twice per week and playing 3-5 games on the weekends. When do players improve if they spend the entire year engaged in a competitive environment? When is the time to develop new skills? When do players add strength or develop quickness?

By Brian McCormick
Director of Coaching, Playmakers Basketball Development League

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Thinking Out Loud: Two Thoughts about Youth Basketball

October 24th, 2009

I played in an old junior high school gym this week. It is easy to forget how small those courts are. The major change from youth basketball to the NBA is the length and width of the court. Most of the rules and other measurements (basket height, free throw line) remain the same, but the court gets bigger.

From a physical perspective, this seems logical. As players grow, they need more space, and they have a greater ability to run up and down a longer court.

However, from a skills and learning perspective, young players need the bigger court. Younger and beginner players need more space to make their moves and more time and space to feel open for a shot. Older, more experienced players require less time and space to make a move or attempt a shot.

While the size and athleticism of adult players compensates for the bigger court, I think we ignore the needs of young or inexperienced players. When we played on the junior high school court, we played 4v4 because of the lack of space. Why do we make young players – players who need more space and time than adults – play 5v5 in the same area?

Second, I was thinking about a modern day, basketball version of the chick-and-egg argument:

Do young players travel all the time because officials do not call it or do officials not call traveling because the players travel so often?

It is hard to know which came first: the terrible footwork or the blind eye turned toward the terrible footwork.

Coaches and parents yell at the officials for not making the call, but if they make all the calls, the coaches and parents tell the officials to let the children play. Therefore, officials grow more and more lenient with their interpretation of a traveling violation, and consequently, coaches spend less time focused on footwork.

If officials whistled every traveling violation in a game, regardless of the coaches’ and parents’ outcries, would coaches spend more time focused on footwork in practice? Would coaches reward the players with good footwork with playing time ahead of those players who frequently travel and currently get away with it?

By Brian McCormick
Director of Coaching, Playmakers Basketball Development League

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How Fascinating! A Different Approach to Skill Development

September 14th, 2009

Originally published in Los Angeles Sports & Fitness.

uclaI attended the UCLA football game Saturday. One couple brought their young toddler. As we tailgated, the boy ran all over the place. He tried to play with other young kids or he played with his dad, running after his ball and hiking it to his mom.

One time, he ran toward our group and picked up speed. All of a sudden, he face planted. He got to his knees, giggled and said, “I fell.” Then he got up and started again. He did not slow down. He was not embarrassed. He did not think twice about running again. He laughed and continued moving.

kidsAuthor Timothy Gallwey argues that this is the natural learning process. Falling is a part of the process, and it is not good or bad. The natural learning process removes the evaluative aspect. In The Inner Game of Tennis, he argues that the natural way of learning is best for mastering sports skills.

If our tailgate party had been a practice, a coach would have stopped the child and described the proper running technique. After hearing these instructions, the child would concentrate on the instructions rather than the action. Rather than allowing his body to work without interference from his mind, he would try to control his actions to prevent another fall, ultimately inhibiting his performance.

These instructions tell the child that he made a mistake. At our tailgate party, he had no idea that he made a mistake. One minute he was running; then he wasn’t. Then he was running again. He did not judge himself or worry about falling. The fall did not cause embarrassment. In his mind, there was no evaluation, no mistake. As Gallwey explains:

“The first skill to learn is the art of letting go the human inclination to judge ourselves and our performance as either good or bad.”

As the child illustrated, we possess this skill.

In The Art of Possibility, Benjamin Zander writes about an orchestra rehearsal. Someone made a mistake, and he stopped and said, “How fascinating!” There was no judgment or negative reaction.

In competitive athletics, coaches concentrate on mistakes and view their role as fixing or eliminating mistakes. In the process, we learn that mistakes are bad, and we judge ourselves harshly when we make one.

Rather than giggling and returning to the action or saying, “How fascinating!” our shoulders slump, our eyes fall and our minds concentrate on the mistake. Rather than stay in the moment, we focus on the mistake, which hinders our next opportunity.

Adults need to un-learn their judgment-based behavior to unlock their best performances and enjoy their activities. We must nurture this skill in children rather than forcing adult judgments on them.

swingingWhen a boy strikes out and looks to the stands, he sees his father’s head slump and senses his disappointment even if his father quickly perks up and cheers his effort. He learns that swinging and missing leads to disappointment. Maybe this teaches him not to swing, especially if he coaxes a walk in his next at-bat and sees his father cheering. Rather than concentrate on learning to swing, his focus changes to getting on base.

However, when is he supposed to learn to hit live pitching? If he never takes a chance, how is he supposed to learn? Because he judges a swing and a miss negatively, he avoids the result by not trying. Rather than giggling at a swinging strike and swinging again, he falls and does not get up.

During the learning process, players must embrace and learn from mistakes (“How fascinating!”) rather than worry or criticize mistakes.  As a coach or parent, celebrate a swinging strike for the effort rather than criticizing the child for missing the ball.

A child naturally views the swing and miss as part of the learning process. However, after being socialized into competitive athletics, he learns that a swinging strike is a mistake.

If youth sports are about learning and development, we must structure comments as instructions, not criticism because mistakes provide the best learning experiences. Unfortunately, our actions and our words do not align, as we say youth sports are about learning until we are in a tight contest and the parents’ and coach’s actions show that winning is more important.

To have the most impact, our actions and philosophy must align in tight games, as well as practices, so we teach and train players about the sport and competitiveness, while allowing young players to maintain the childlike attitude toward mistakes with a giggle, an acknowledgement (“I fell”) and a return to the activity with blissful ignorance.

Brian McCormick is the Director of Coaching for Playmakers Basketball Development League.

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Is Perfect Practice Really Perfect?

September 1st, 2009

Originally published in Los Angeles Sport & Fitness.

Everyone has heard the popular coachism, “Perfect practice makes perfect.” Nobody questions this logic. Intuitively, it makes sense: to learn something new requires practice and the execution in the practice should be the same as the desired execution.

tennis2When you learn to hit a tennis ball, you hit hundreds of balls attempting to use the perfect technique so when you play a match, your forehand technique is perfect. You develop the proper habits so that when you play a match, and performance is important, you do not have to think about the execution; you rely on your habits. However, is that how we learn? Do we learn perfectly?

When a child learns to walk, nobody teaches him. Nobody insists on perfect practice. The child crawls and tries to stand up to mimic others around him. He intuitively notices that other people move much faster, and they move on two legs, so he copies them. Inevitably, he falls. So, he tries again. He falls again. Eventually, he takes a couple steps before falling. Before too long, the child is walking.

Did he learn through perfect practice? Heck no. He learned through a series of mistakes.

In many sports, parents and coaches insist on perfect skill execution before the player plays the actual game. Golfers hit at the driving range until their stroke is perfect; tennis players hit thousands of ground strokes before they play a match; basketball players shoot thousands of shots before they play a game. Is this necessary? Is this the best way to learn a skill? Or, are we better off learning by doing, much like when we learned to walk?

When you learn to hit a tennis ball, you hit hundreds of forehands in a row. As you begin, the ball machine, your partner or an instructor hits balls directly to you so you concentrate strictly on the technique. This is called block practice.

During block practice, your practice performance improves. After hitting hundreds of balls, your technique is better. You see the improvement and you feel like you spent your time wisely. After hundreds of shots, your practice is perfect. Now that you have learned your technique, you believe that by engaging in more of the same practice, you will continue to improve and improve.

However, the demands of tennis differ from a block practice session. The forehand is a different shot when running to get to a ball that is slicing away from you.

The same is true in golf. Players hit hundreds of drives on the practice range and believe they have fixed their stroke. Then they shank a drive on the second hole. Their practice performance improves as they hit hundreds of shots in a row, but during a round of golf, the performance changes. The demands of a tennis match or a round of golf are variable or random.

Because the game is random, random training transfers better from practice to games. However, when players engage in random training, their practice performance does not improve as quickly.

Rather than hit hundreds of forehands from center court, random training would mimic a game and force you to hit different shots at different speeds and with different spins. While engaged in this practice, your performance likely will not be perfect. You will make mistakes.

However, just as we learned to walk, mistakes, in the right frame of mind, present learning experiences. A baby does not judge himself poorly when he falls down. He does not know that he made a mistake. We view the fall as a normal experience. Nobody tells the baby to stop and wait until he can walk perfectly before trying again.

As the baby gets older, he learns to avoid mistakes. Making a mistake in class means a giant red mark and a bad grade. Mistakes amongst other kids elicit laughter. Mistakes in organized sports translate to less playing time. We hear coachisms like “Perfect practice makes perfect,” so we try to practice perfectly.

The problem is that, like the baby, we have to make mistakes to improve. If the baby feared mistakes, he would never learn to walk. He would feel content to crawl forever. Fortunately, our fear of failure does not occur until later in our maturation.

However, when we learn a sports skill, this fear of failure is often present. Many baseball players aim the ball rather than throwing it because they fear the result. Tennis players try so hard to get the ball in the court that they do not take a hard swing through the ball. Basketball players short arm shots because they try to place the ball in the basket rather than shooting it.

little leagueRather than fearing mistakes, we need to encourage these mistakes. There is a time for perfect practice but down the road. At the beginning, players have to make mistakes. Without mistakes, players stay the same.

When I train young players, I encourage mistakes. I tell players that if they are not making mistakes, they are not working hard enough. They may be able to do a ball handling drill at a slow speed without making a mistake, but does that perfect practice help them improve?

The key, however, is the player’s mindset. Before a player can learn a new skill or improve a skill, he must overcome his fear of failure. This means changing his outlook.

Rather than emphasizing perfection or the execution, emphasize the effort and the process. After watching your son play, comment on his effort and improvement, not just his result. If you congratulate a Little League player for a great game because he had four hits in four at-bats, and you say something like, “Wow, you’re quite a talented player,” he develops what Stanford psychologist Carol Dweck calls a Fixed Mindset. However, if you say, “You had a great game. All your practice is paying off!” he develops a Growth Mindset.

With the Fixed Mindset, he protects his talent. He fears making a mistake because it might expose his lack of talent. With a Growth Mindset, he learns that success is a product of his effort, so he is encouraged to work harder. When he makes a mistake, he sees it as part of the learning process, not as an indictment of his skills or talent.

When players have the confidence to make mistakes as part of the learning process, they move more quickly to perfect practice. They concentrate on the process, not the result.

When learning to hit a forehand, they concentrate on the perfect execution of the skill, not the perfect result. You may use the proper technique and hit the ball into net, but during the learning process, that is preferable to using a strategy to hit the ball in the court without the best technique. Some players rely on a slice to keep the ball in play rather than learning a proper swing. They concentrate on the result, not the skill execution or the process.

Aiming for perfection often hinders skill development. Instead, aim for small improvements day by day and accept mistakes as a part of the learning process and without judgment, just as a baby learning to walk.

Brian McCormick is the Performance Director of Train for Hoops.

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Punishing a Lack of Talent

August 23rd, 2009

vballLast season, our volleyball team had an opinionated senior captain. We also had a number of junior varsity players who could not get their serves over the net.

Now, a high school player should be able to get her serve over the net, but we had several first-year players and smaller than average players.

When we discussed our serving woes, the captain suggested that we make the players run if they missed a serve. This is a common coaching tool. Many times, a coach assumes that players make mistakes due to a lack of concentration and use sprints as a punishment.

However, this mindset errs in three ways:

  1. None of our players intentionally missed her serve. They wanted to serve well. Therefore, their misses were not due to a lack of effort or desire. Punishing a player for missing her serve would be punishing a lack of skill.
  2. The players who miss their serves need to spend more time practicing their serves. What happens when they run as punishment? They take fewer practice serves.
  3. When a player serves, if she worries about running rather than serving properly, the fear of punishment steals her concentration. For a player struggling with her serve, a loss of concentration is not going to help her serve better.

For the varsity players who serve pretty well, the captain’s suggestion may have some merit. When varsity players miss their serves in practice, it is often a lack of concentration. A punishment for a missed serve would not be a punishment for lack of skill or a skill error, but a punishment for not concentrating or focusing on the task.

For the junior varsity, punishing missed serves is punishing a lack of skill. These players need more practice, not fewer repetitions. While the captain meant well and offered a suggestion based on her club volleyball experience, one must think about the purpose of the punishment and if it meets the objective.

Will making players run because they cannot get the serve over the net suddenly make them get the ball over the net?

Lack of skill does not deserve a punishment – it requires more instruction. For some, it took guts to try a new game at a competitive level as a high school sophomore. Do we want to discourage them?

Brian McCormick is the Performance Director for Train for Hoops.

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