Practice Like Skateboarders

On a recent sunny, warm day in Fort Collins, I sat for an hour watching a crew of skateboarders doing their thing at a local park. They were all stretching their limits, trying new skills, helping one another with tips, and were focused on performing cool stuff. I wondered, “why can’t volleyball players practice like this.” There were plenty of mistakes as they reached beyond their current skill set, but they jumped back onto their boards and went again. Unbeknownst to them, they were incorporating the learning concepts of Deliberate Practice.

The late Dr. Anders Ericsson was an expert on the study of experts. He researched the commonalities of top performers and called these common factors “Deliberate Practice.” Research has demonstrated that Deliberate Practice is a primary key to skill development.

The first component of Deliberate Practice is a clearly defined objective. The skateboarders were focused on a specific skill or an aspect of a skill they were attempting to execute.

The second component is repetition. The attempted skills were challenging and produced failure, but these athletes kept repeating the skill to refine it and create success. The skateboarders would fall off, get back on the board and go again.

The third skill development component of Deliberate Practice is pushing yourself to the edge of your abilities. The skateboarders were not doing tricks they could already do; they were trying new things, dealing with failure, and, undeterred, trying again. The environment at the skateboard park was that if one wasn’t failing, they weren’t challenging themselves sufficiently.

The final component of the Deliberate Practice is feedback. The skateboarders gave themselves feedback based on the results of their efforts and received tips from their mates (coaches).

These athletes incorporated all of these Deliberate Practice components into the practice sessions. Most coaches know and understand these concepts. Yet, despite knowing these building blocks of skill development, volleyball coaches hesitate to incorporate them into their sessions. As I watch volleyball practice sessions unfold, the coaches don’t push the athletes to the edges of their current skill set, the feedback is sparse and lacks specificity, the focused repetitions are lacking, and the athletes are not giving full attention to what they are practicing. Merely playing the game without focus will not lead to improvement.

The question becomes why the volleyball coach does not connect the dots between knowing what is essential for skill improvement and incorporating these components into the practice routine.

Some possible reasons might be:

• There are no immediate results. Deliberate Practice is a meticulous process in which the details of a skill are given significant focus and practiced. Approaching skill development this way can be challenging and frustrating to all involved.
• A fear of failure. Deliberate Practice pushes the boundaries of current skill abilities, and similar to skateboarders, athletes will sometimes struggle with execution.
• Deliberate Practice is very challenging for both players and coaches. The coaches must plan the practice sessions to foster improvement, and the athletes must embrace the challenges of mastering a game as complex as volleyball.
• Practicing in a deliberate, focused manner is not always “fun.”

Developing an Action Plan

If your practices currently entail endless “Queen of the Court” games or unfocused 6v6 scrimmaging, here are some ideas for incorporating Deliberate Practice concepts into your sessions.

1. Focus on the process, not the result. So often, coaches and players focus on whether the attack scored, the serve went in-bounds, did we score a point, etc. Focus on specific aspects of the skill without regard for the result. Was the service toss good? Did we use good footwork on the attack?
2. Start Small – pick out one skill aspect that will be focused upon during a practice session. For example, in all serve-receive contacts, the players will complete the skill with the platform facing the target area and “freeze” for a count of one to examine their passing platform for correctness.
3. Specific feedback on the area of focus—first, coaches must make an effort to provide feedback. Then, make sure the feedback is specific and timely.
4. Embrace the discomfort- players and coaches should understand that improving skills is hard work. It requires welcoming failure and trusting that, over time, those small efforts will compound into progress. Coaches must instill an atmosphere in their practices that embraces the expansion of the players’ comfort zones. Like skateboarders, players can handle failure and struggle if they understand the final goal.

The coach’s first goal is to instill the concepts of Deliberate Practice into their practices in the most positive way possible. It works for skateboarders, so it can also work for the volleyball crowd.