Strategy #3 / Repetition - Correct practice creates a stable base and leads to improved performance.

Coach Garcia is in center field helping Paula catch flies and throwing directly to the plate. She noticed last game that Paula caught a fly ball flat footed and threw too late to catch the runner on third who tagged up and scored. Coach Garcia has a parent, Geno Pacetti, hitting nice, soft fly balls into short center field and she is demonstrating how to set up a couple of steps back and then move in to catch the ball and throw in one fluid motion. She is verbally describing what she’s doing, and she is asking Paula to verbalize what she’s seeing.

Now Coach Garcia has Paula doing some dry runs, moving forward and pretending to catch the ball and throwing to the plate. After five attempts, Coach Garcia sees what she wants; a really good attempt; so, she anchors it. “Looks good, Paula. Now let’s take some real flies.” Geno hits some more flies and Paula handles them all very well. Coach Garcia taps Paula on the left shoulder and says, “Good work. Now walk back to the fence and take a few minutes to think about what you just did and get into the good feelings – like that smile you had when you caught that last one and threw a one-hop strike to the plate.”

Coach Garcia made sure that Paula handled the task well at the close. Then she gave her a verbal reward on her most recent attempt, and the time and space to do a full visualization on sensory memory and positive feelings.

The younger the player, the sooner she becomes bored with or just plain tired of repetitive actions. When your kids are practicing, they must be as focused as they are in the game.

Practice doesn’t make Perfect – Practice makes Semi-Permanent or Permanent.

Practice Session – Sam is at the foul line getting in the last few of his 25 shots and all he’s doing is throwing the ball up there and Herb and Jason are rebounding his shots and “having fun” with the ball before getting it back to him.

This activity is not non-productive; it’s counterproductive. Sam is actually practicing poor shooting and he will probably get very good at poor shooting – he is internalizing bad habits that will be present when the game situation is at hand. Practice creates stability and if Sam isn’t careful, bad foul shooting will become the default condition. Every practice shot has to be made as if it’s in a real competitive situation. Sam must go through all of the steps on each practice shot so that in the game his subconscious mind will take over and he will be operating in the performance mode. And his partners have to help him.

One of the bad effects of this is that the latest attempts will be stored in the memory banks with more intensity than the earlier, better attempts. Fewer focused attempts are much better than more unfocused attempts.