Mind Map Your Practice For Improved Organization and Learning

It isn’t unusual for coaches to write down practice activities focusing on the activity itself, not the activity’s objectives. It’s not the drill or the game facilitating improvement; it’s the players’ focus, feedback quality (from the coach or self-feedback from the player), and the criteria for success. Inside any activity, it is essential for there to be learning objectives. How will the feedback be focused on accomplishing the objectives? How will the activity be evaluated? Where will my focus be as a coach? What do I want the players to focus on? With all that occurs during a practice, sometimes organizing and prioritizing your thoughts can be challenging.

Coaches of all levels might consider using a mind map to focus players and coaches on specific aspects of a practice activity. Mind maps have significant potential to assist in organizing practice activities, involve the players in establishing a cognitive path (or map) for improvement, and provide a greater understanding of the components of quality skill execution and team play. A mind map also allows the coach to examine whether a drill or activity accomplishes what the coach desires.

Below is a sample of implementing a mind map to take a practice plan and detail the focus areas for the players and the coach.

So, the map goes from left to right. I begin with the practice focus with four components: 1) Defend to attack, 2) Vary the depth of the serve, 3) Work on backrow attack, 4) Consistency in the sideout offense. Then, within each focus area, I organize the instructional components the coach and player will focus on. For example, if I’m looking at sideout consistency, what are the building blocks for that? First, the focus is on the serve-receive contact. Within that, the focus will be on platform management and being “dialed in” on the visual cues from the server. Then, a building block for sideout consistency is the accuracy of the set. The setter will focus on a consistent contact point on the ball release, resulting from getting their feet to the ball, and lastly, focusing on “low error attack,” where the attackers are encouraged to make intelligent attacking choices.

You proceed with each area of focus for the practice. I plan the practice activities to accomplish each of the four focus areas. Have your players join in constructing the mind map, as it will encourage them to know the game better, provide a structure for their focus, and self-feedback. As a coach, you want to get to the point in player development where the player provides appropriate feedback to themselves. This can happen if the coach provides direction and allows the player to problem-solve inside the activity. The coach can pose specific questions that are components of the mind map, such as ” Did you get your feet to the ball?” or a five-second quiz on “What are the three priorities on the serve?” or “What shot can you hit next time?” A coach using a Q & A format encourages the player to analyze the situation and develop their self-feedback.

Additionally, a mind map encourages the coach to focus their feedback on the listed objectives for the activity. For example, it is counterproductive for the coach to establish objectives for the serve but not provide feedback relating to those objectives. The coach can always change the objectives in the following practice session.

With all the happenings inside a practice session, using the mind map tool to focus the players and coaches on specific improvement items could prove beneficial. The coach can change the areas of focus daily. Research demonstrates that students (players) retain information 10% to 15% more effectively using a mind map. A mind map can streamline your practice sessions by focusing on specific aspects of the game instead of providing an activity and hoping the players figure out the smaller components. Although there is software to produce mind maps quickly, it will be just as productive to develop your map on a legal pad or a whiteboard.

If you’ve never tried a mind map to organize your training sessions, give it a go! I’d be interested in your conclusions from your mini-experiment.