The Planning

Originally Published in: Coaching Better Every Season

Provided by: Human Kinetics

The best coaches invest their time by planning every minute of their practice sessions. Each practice has a logical sequence and “flow” based on the coach’s experience and observations of player performance for skill development needs. Coach of the 20th Century John Wooden created eight principles of practice plan design that he used as a guide when planning practices.

1. Fundamentals before creativity.
2. Use variety.
3. Teach new material at the start of practice.
4. Quick transitions between activities.
5. Increase complexity from practice to practice.
6. Conditioning for learning.
7. End on a positive note.
8. Avoid altering a plan during the lesson.

These principles have stood the test of time and are as valuable today as they were when Coach Wooden created them many decades ago. The principles are described in detail in the following section with supporting examples from other coaches and coaching research.

Fundamentals before creativity

1. Fundamentals before creativity. Basic skills of the sport must be learned before complex skills and strategies can be practiced. Basic skills provide the foundation for athlete creativity. Repeatedly practicing fundamental skills helps athletes build what are referred to as general motor programs – a sort of mental blueprint that contains information about how to perform basic skills. For example, through quality practice athletes develop motor programs for basic skills such as shooting a basketball, catching a football pass, or hitting a pitched ball. Athletes rely on these general motor programs to perform quick and decisive actions that require them to improvise or adjust their movements while in action. Therefore, developing general motor programs will greatly increase an athlete’s ability to perform successfully across various competitive situations. For this reason, regardless of the age or skill level of the athlete, some practice time should always be set aside for learning or reinforcing basic skills. For example, championship football coach Pete Carroll believes that disciplined, repetitive practice of fundamental skills is critical for performing at a championship level not only because it strengthens general motor programs but also because it builds athletes’ confidence in their ability. 

Use variety.

2. Use variety. Practice activities should be regularly changed to keep athletes’ engagement and interest high, and new practice activities should be introduced frequently. Variety can also be accomplished by simply rearranging the order in which activities are practiced. Yet another option is to vary the sequence of skill attempts. This method is referred to as random or varied practice. For example, instead of having golf athletes practice blocks of 10 putts from a set distance, they could be required to attempt each of the 10 putts from a different spot on the green. Likewise, instead of hitting a block of shots with one specific club, they could be required to hit the same number of shots with a random sequence of different clubs. This routine promotes what is known as perceptual attunement, which develops the ability to make adjustments based on changes in the performance environment. Although short-term gains in performance may not be evident with this approach, it appears to be more effective than blocked practice for long-term performance improvements. Another way to add variety to practices is to select a theme for each practice and design activities that all connect to the theme. Successful coaches often add an inspirational quotation to their practice plan, which they share with their athletes at the start of practice as a way to reinforce the practice theme. In addition to books such as Inspirational Quotes for Sport Coaches inspiring quotations can easily be found through a quick online search. Two websites that coaches may find particularly helpful are the sport quotations pages of the University of North Texas Center for Sport Psychology and Performance Excellence (https://sportpsych.unt.edu/ resources/athletes/31) and Keepinspiring.me (www.keepinspiring.me/100-most-inspirational-sports-quotes-of-all-time/). Coaches who use social media will also find Twitter accounts such as @Sports_Greats (Sports Quotes) and @SportsMotto (Great Sports Quotes) to be valuable sources of inspirational quotations to use at practices.

Teach new material at the start of practice. 

3. Teach new material at the start of practice. Coaches can use the first part of the practice to introduce and teach new skills or strategies. After a proper warm-up that includes light movement and stretching, athletes are most receptive to learning new things because (a) they have had a chance to socialize with their teammates for a few minutes and (b) they are more physically and mentally ready to learn than later in the practice when they have less energy. An active warm-up that includes some type of aerobic activity such as a game of soccer on a small field, perhaps with multiple balls, primes the brain for learning. Aerobic exercise stimulates the release of chemicals in the brain, referred to as neurotransmitters, that increase focus and strengthen the learning of new concepts.

Quick transitions between activities

4. Quick transitions between activities. Coaches must also pay careful attention to the flow and sequence of practice activities to ensure that time spent moving from one activity to the next is minimized. Transition time can be minimized by thinking about how equipment will be set up and moved from one activity to the next and by sharing practice plans in advance with assistant coaches. Transition time can also be minimized by arriving early to practice and making sure that the required equipment is in place for each activity before practice starts. Coach Wooden required his athletes to sprint from one activity to the next, but this strategy works only if the next station or activity is set up in advance. A simple way to ensure quick transitions is to send athletes for water breaks individually or in small groups, rather than using the common practice of scheduling full-team water breaks at regular intervals throughout a practice. When large groups of athletes break for water at the same time, off-task behavior is more likely to occur and it takes more time to bring the athletes back on task for the next activity.

Increase complexity from practice to practice. (and inside of practice)

5. Increase complexity from practice to practice. Early season practices should be designed with an emphasis on fundamental skills, often practiced in repetitive blocks of time. Blocked practice is generally considered more effective when an athlete is first learning a new skill or concept.16 But after athletes become comfortable performing the skill, the complexity of the practice activities should be increased. For example, after athletes have learned the fundamentals of shooting a basketball, coaches can add complexity to shooting activities by varying the distance of the shots, adding a pass before the shot, or adding defenders. Soccer coach Tony DiCicco believes that this approach to practice design was instrumental in his leading teams to Olympic and World Cup titles. In his words, he layered the design of practices by continually adding small variations to the way they practiced set plays such as free kicks and corner kicks. After winning the 1999 World Cup of soccer, in which his team won many games with corner kicks, the media assumed that his team must have devoted massive blocks of practice time to repeating corner kicks. He explained that although they did practice corner kicks on a regular basis, “It was a continual layering to imprint the basic, subtle nuances of each free-kick opportunity. We imprinted layers rather than attempting to rush perfection.”

Conditioning for learning

6. Conditioning for learning. Coaches cannot expect athletes to show up to the first practice in top physical and mental condition. Just as each practice session should have a proper warm-up period, the first few weeks of practice each season should be approached as a time to warm up athletes for increasingly complex and high-intensity practice sessions. Contrary to what people might think, for Coach Wooden this guideline meant scheduling longer practices early in the year. The practice sessions for the first two weeks of the season were 30 minutes longer than normal, but the intensity of the practices was relatively low. Coach Wooden used the extra time to give longer explanations, more detailed demonstrations, and more frequent rest breaks to allow the athletes to get into practice condition. As the season progresses, practices should become shorter and more intense, requiring athletes to be in better mental and physical condition than they were for early season practices. After conditioning has been developed, coaches such as championship wrestling coach Dan Gable also recommend shortening late-season practices as a way to keep athletes fresh.43 Shorter practices and extra rest between practices may be required to combat fatigue from a long season. Practice sessions still need to be run at high intensity so that conditioning can be maintained leading into the postseason.

End on a positive note

7. End on a positive note. Although his former players describe his practices as electric and fast paced, Coach Wooden routinely set aside the last five minutes of practice for a fun or silly activity. Former player Swen Nater recalls one practice in particular when Coach Wooden let the players hold a dunk contest, even though dunking was normally forbidden in practices because it was not allowed in games at that time. Coaches must not lose sight of the fact that fun is one of the primary motives for participating in sport. Quality coaches understand and nurture this basic need, regardless of their athletes’ age and competitive level. Training to become a champion requires many thousands of hours of physically and mentally intense practice. Deliberate practice must be counterbalanced with fun and playful activities to sustain athletes’ motivation and passion for the sport. One effective strategy for ensuring that athletes finish each practice on a positive note is to allow them to select the final activity at each practice. When given the choice, athletes will always select fun and competitive activities. Coaches should ensure that every athlete gets to select the fun activity at least once during the season. Coaches might also decide to award the selection of the fun activity to an athlete who exemplified a certain characteristic during the practice, such as hardest worker or best teammate. Two-time national high school football Coach of the Year Charles “Chuck” Kyle used a different kind of strategy to ensure that every practice ended on a positive note. He created a 10-second tradition whereby time was set aside at the end of every practice for each player to visualize himself correcting an error he made in practice that day. The goal was for each athlete to leave the practice with a positive image of himself performing successfully.

Avoid altering a plan during the lesson

8. Avoid altering a plan during the lesson. Coaches often make changes in the midst of a practice based on things they are noticing. For example, if athletes are struggling with an activity, a coach may to want to spend more time on the activity. But veering off the carefully prepared practice plan disrupts the intended flow of the practice and negatively affects remaining activities. For example, if a coach extends one activity by 10 minutes, then either the next activities will have to be shortened or the practice will have to be extended. Neither of these scenarios is desirable or conducive for effective learning and skill development. If subsequent practice activities are shortened or eliminated, then the athletes are losing the opportunity to practice things that the coach believed were critical for individual and team improvement. If the practice is simply extended, athletes may conserve energy or lose focus because they don’t know how long they will be practicing. When practices are extended beyond the time initially deemed optimal and athletes tire and begin to lose focus, they become most susceptible to injury.