By David Hoff and Brad Strand
(December 7, 2021)

Each day in this country, thousands of parents take their children to practice sessions for a variety of sports. The obvious expectation is that the practice sessions will have prepared each child to play as best he or she can in the games and competitions in which they participate.  However, as we strive to improve and conduct better practice sessions, the question then becomes: are we conducting practice sessions that will help each participant to play as best he or she can when competing in the games or competitions associated with that sport?

So, what are the important characteristics of a good practice session?  While each coach could create one’s own list, we are going to focus on what we believe are two important keys to a good practice session.

1. Does the practice session include fun?
2. Is the practice session game-like?

The answers to each of these questions should guide coaches in designing practice sessions that will help athletes perform at their absolute best.

Include Fun

First, there is no substitute for FUN! It must be present in every practice, and it cannot be saved for the end of a practice session as a reward for good behavior. Kids come to practices for many reasons, and having fun is one of the most important reasons they participate. Today’s youth have so many options when it comes to activities or sports in which they might participate.  If coaches fail to recognize the value of fun, then they very well might be helping a young boy or girl to make the decision to quit the sport.

I (David) am reminded of a young high school hockey player I coached who suggested we start the practice session that day with a game we played from time to time. After hearing my plan for a different, more traditional start to practice, and not necessarily liking my plan, he simply said, “Come on coach, don’t be the FUN SPONGE!”  His message to me was very simple – don’t be the guy who goes around and mops up all the FUN the players are trying to have. Even these 16-, 17-, and 18-year old players were expected to have fun in each practice session they attended.

Practice Session Effectiveness

The second question to be asked when designing a good practice session is, “Is the practice session game-like?” About 20 years ago I (David) attended an educational class with other mathematics teachers to examine whether the work we were assigned each day to our students daily was improving their performance in “real-world” math situations. While our investigation yielded different results depending on the mathematics topic, there was something that stuck out to us as we looked at many different types of problems. It seemed obvious to us that we had “covered” many of the mathematics topics and skills needed to solve the real-world math problems our students encountered, but that our students had failed to connect the classroom work with the real-world situation. A simple example of this was finding the volume of a three-dimensional shape. Each of us had covered volume problems in our classes, and our students even verified that by scoring well when asked to find the volume in given problems. However, when they were asked to find the number of yards of concrete needed for a driveway with given dimensions, they struggled to connect this type of problem to the volume problems they had seemed to master. Students consistently missed problems of this nature.

We recognized that while there were some terminology differences that might have caused confusion for the students, the real issue was that we, as teachers, had failed to connect our practice sessions to the real-world problems our students encountered. We had taught them what to do when they were asked to find volume, we taught them which numbers to multiply when calculating volume, but we failed to connect those skills with real-world problems our students encountered. We taught them what to do, but we never allowed them the opportunity to analyze the problems they might encounter and decide what to do based on what they encountered. In simpler terms, they knew how to find volume when they were told to do so, but they really needed to be put in situations in which they had to decide what type of problem they were dealing with, what mathematics skills needed to be used to solve the problem, and if appropriate, apply the skills needed to find the volume.

This story illustrates a common problem that also exists between youth sports practice sessions and the games, or competitions, in each of those sports. Coaches of those youth sports teams run a lot of practice sessions that really do not look like the games, or competitions, for each of those sports. A typical practice might consist of several traditional drills. Many of those traditional drills have the participants starting in a certain spot and ending in another pre-determined spot, with the instructions as to what to do in between the beginning and end told to the players ahead of time. In other words, coaches run many drills where they tell their players where to start, where to end, and what to do in the middle of the drill.

How does this type of drill represent the game for which players are practicing? What happens in a game could be classified as very random. Neither the players nor the coach knows ahead of time what the players are going to have to do to be successful. While coaches certainly know the skills needed to be a good player in each sport, they don’t know what the player will encounter in each game and that is what makes it random. Each player must react appropriately based on what other players do during the game. Even the most highly trained players do not necessarily know exactly what their teammates or opposing players are going to do during a game. Explained differently, coaches run practice sessions in which there is a high level of structure – the drills are blocked so everyone knows what to do; however, the games our athletes play require them to react to many different situations. So, how does a very structured practice prepare players for the randomness of a game? It seems these two things are very much opposite. Coaches must spend time replicating the randomness of game situations in the practice environment. An excellent way to do this is with small-sided games.

Small-Sided Games

Each sport is different in how it is played, and the skills needed to play it successfully might also vary, but there are many similarities as to how coaches can best prepare their players for the games in which they compete. Small-area Games (SAGs) have been used for a long time, but over the course of the last 15 years, USA Hockey and other sports governing bodies have made a push for these SAGs to be more widely used in practice sessions.

While SAGs can be played many ways in many different situations, two of the basic ideas behind them involve 1) decreasing the space in which the game is played and 2) decreasing the number of players playing the game. In hockey, that might mean that instead of playing full-ice 5 v 5, athletes could play 3 v 3 in a cross-ice setting. Any coach can search for small area game ideas. The SAG’s found in those searches might be for a different sport but with a little ingenuity, those games can be adapted to fit one’s sport.

Remember the opening story in which a group of mathematics teachers failed to connect the mathematics practice that was occurring in the classroom each day with the problems the students were encountering in the real world? The real value of SAG’s is they allow coaches to provide players an opportunity to consistently practice in a game-like setting, thus what occurs in these practice sessions will be more transferrable to the games teams play. SAGs connect what goes on in practices to what occurs in a game.

What does, “a practice needs to be more game-like” mean? In hockey, that does not mean that practices must include 5 v 5 scrimmages on a full sheet of ice because that is what the game looks like. Instead, being more game-like means two things – players must play against other players and each player needs to practice making decisions throughout the practice. When stating that players need to play against other players, what is meant is they need to face resistance during practices. In a game setting, players must avoid, outnumber, and deceive opponents to be successful during the game. The key for coaches is to create practice sessions where players practice those basic ideas in a game-like environment. Coaches cannot consistently put their players through practice sessions where they simply skate through a bunch of cones. While there may be a place for some of these types of drills in practice sessions, coaches must recognize the importance of creating a game-like setting for their players in which to practice.

Decision-Making

The second concept of practicing game-like involves putting players in situations where they must practice making decisions. In sports where decisions must be made in a split second, coaches often fail to put their athletes in situations in which they practice making these important decisions. If coaches recognize decision-making as a crucial part of being successful in a game, then practice sessions should be full of decision-making opportunities for players. Players should encounter many decision-making opportunities in a practice session and be given the flexibility to learn by making plenty of wrong decisions throughout those practices. Whether the decisions made by players are right or wrong, both are opportunities for coaches to visit with players; not for the purpose of telling them what to do, but instead for the purpose of helping the players to reflect on what they saw, what other options were available, and why they made the decisions they made. These decision-making opportunities will pay off over time as players get more and more opportunities to practice this crucial process. It is important to remember that even the players at the highest level in each sport make wrong decisions throughout the course of a game.

The speed at which the games are played is so fast so if coaches fail to allow their players to practice this important part of the game, there is no way coaches should expect them to reach their full potential. Karch Kiraly, head coach of USA Women’s Volleyball said, “Science has shaped everything we do in the gym in terms of developing players. We are training to perform not to drill. All of the science tells us that we do the most learning when practice looks like an actual game – Which is really random and not just super controlled. That governs just about everything we do in the gym. We’re trying to make every second in our gym count as much as possible to make the most transfer that we can get (Ragan, na).” Coaches must strive to connect their practice sessions to the game environment and recognizing the value of practicing making decisions is an important component in this process.

3 v 3 Scenario

Think about a 3 v 3 cross-ice hockey game that might be played within a practice session. A standard sheet of ice is 85’ x 200’. Because it is only 85 feet from one side of the ice surface to the other when a player gets possession of the puck it does not take an opponent very long to get close to the puck carrier. If the puck carrier can avoid the initial defender there will most certainly be a second defender who is close and able to force the puck carrier to do something very quickly. For example, suppose you are one of the players in the game. You get possession of the puck in the cross-ice game. As soon as you get the puck, you must decide whether to keep the puck and skate with it, pass it to a teammate, or shoot the puck at the opposing net – three choices to make very quickly. If you choose to keep the puck and can beat my defender, you are now faced with those same three choices as you approach the 2^nd defender. You might choose to pass the puck to a teammate. So now what do you do? You must decide how you can help your teammate out now that he or she has the puck. How do you get open to get a pass back? Or if you think my teammate is going to shoot the puck, you must find a way to get to the net for a rebound opportunity. What happens if we lose possession of the puck to our opposition? Now your teammates and you must become the defenders very quickly and make the appropriate decisions that go with defending.

What was just described has players in a very game-like setting. It is a 3 v 3 game in a small ice setting so there is resistance, and players are forced to make many decisions throughout the course of this game. As mentioned earlier, these are the two most important parts of a game-like practice setting. Coaches can continue to create practices in which their players what to do, and that will look good in the short-term, but is of no help in the long term. Think of this mathematics analogy:

If I tell you what to do to complete a set of problems, will it help you complete that assignment? Yes, for sure. But will it be of value to you later in your mathematics career when you not only have to use the correct computational skills, but also must decide what type of problem it is, what you are being asked to do, and what skills you will need to apply to solve it? All of this is done before applying the appropriate computational skills.

The decision-making skills needed in a classroom and on any sports field or arena take a lot of time to develop. Coaches often take a shortcut and tell the players or students what to do. It sure looks and feels good at the time when they do what their coaches say, but coaches are failing them in their long-term development. Athletes must practice making decisions every day in practice. We challenge each coach to figure out what the SAGs are for their sport and start using them in every practice session. We also challenge coaches to look at the “traditional drills” that are used in practices and encourage them to make them more game-like. How can you add resistance to the drill and how does decision-making get incorporated? Not every “traditional drill” will be perfect, but coaches need to think about how they can improve every drill in these two areas.

Conclusion

Let’s finish with a quick story from a coaching clinic David attended long ago. The presenter was from the Czech Republic, and upon finishing his presentation he and Dave had the opportunity to visit as they had a common friend. He had spent his entire presentation giving his thoughts on the importance of incorporating decision-making into the drills and games used in practices. As the conversation continued and included discussions about several sports, he said something, “If the Olympics ever changes its format and includes games where we tell the participants where to start and where to finish and then have them go through a bunch of cones, the United States will be champions in many sports (Bukac, personal conversation).” While he was also very complimentary of the teams and players in our country, he believed we could do better if we changed some of our practice ideas and he recognized that practicing in a game-like environment was a crucial part of that change. Coaches provide lots of great opportunities for children and youth in the U.S. Our desire is that all coaches work to make these opportunities even better by continuing to improve their practice sessions.

Reference

Ragan, T (na). Train Ugly. https://trainugly.com/karch-kiraly/