The Skill Behind the Skill: Why How Kids Practice Matters More Than How Much

Insert famous Allen Iverson quote... "We are talking about practice?". Yes Mr. Iverson (the original AI), we are. I believe that one of my secret sauces as a coach has always been an instinct if not an intention to make sure all things fun and play and games are central to a learning experience. I see different kinds of players lined up on a driving range tee line. Some spend an entire session with alignment sticks focused for hour on end working on a few technical aspects, aiming to "perfect a swing" without much other variation. I see others playing best 3 out of 5 games of "call your shot" against a friend, where creativity, problem solving and camaraderie amongst friends are all valuable ingredients in an afternoon of play. I most certainly believe that there is value in both approaches. Call me old school, but I grew up in an era when "practicing my sports" was predominantly achieved playing in the backyard and at the local field with a few buddies. We made up rules for games based on the dimensions of the field. We mostly got better because we played all the time and that's what happens when you play all the time. I'm sure my elbow angle could have been tweaked to gain a few mph on my fastball when I was 8... But even today, as a coach far more than as a player, my love of play and ability to create games is a super power that drives much of the results my players achieve.

The skill behind the skill is less about how many repetitions a kid logs. It is how those repetitions are designed. Sport science has been remarkably consistent on this point. Practice that feels messy, varied, and a little frustrating tends to be the kind that actually sticks. Practice that feels neat, repetitive, and predictable produces good practice players, but not necessarily good game-day performers.

The team at ICOACHKIDS lays out three practice modes coaches choose from: blocked, where one skill is repeated without variation; variable, where one skill is performed under shifting conditions; and random, where skills are mixed together in game-like settings. Blocked practice produces fast short-term gains. Random and variable practice produce slower-looking gains that transfer to actual competition. The classic Shea and Morgan study from the 1980s found random practice yielded retention results 36% better than blocked. That gap has been replicated for decades. Motor learning research goes further. Kids who have some autonomy over how they practice, when they get feedback, and what challenges they set themselves learn faster and retain more.

Adam Grant calls this deliberate play in his book Hidden Potential. The combination of practice and play, where you take the skill you are trying to build, break it down into core elements, and make those elements fun. It is the model every kid who got really good at sandlot baseball or pickup basketball already lived. The skill was hidden inside the game. The game made the skill stick.

Here is what this means for the adults in a young athlete's life. The hours your kid spends inventing rules with a wiffle ball in the backyard are not throwaway hours. A coach that allows players to help design a practice every so often might not be as lazy as you think. The creating hours in fact might be the most valuable hours of their week. A quality practice environment, designed by a coach who understands how kids actually learn, will outperform a stack of repetition-only drills every single time. Trust the design, not just the dose.

(Article, 5 min read)

The American Development Model from USA Hockey is one of the better blueprints in the country for what age-appropriate development should look like. The 10U piece zeroes in on what they call the Golden Age of Skill Development, the window between ages 8 and 12 when movement competency is most trainable. The framework is built around the ABCs (agility, balance, coordination), multi-sport participation, and the idea that physical literacy is the foundation for everything that comes later. A great resource for parents and coaches across any sport, not just hockey, and a fitting read alongside this week's theme on how kids actually learn.

(Article + Downloadable PDF, 4 min read)

Positive Coaching Alliance reframes growth mindset for the sports context with one simple move: redefine FAIL as First Attempt In Learning. The downloadable resource is built for parents and coaches to actually use, with sample language cues and modeling ideas. It connects to something we believe deeply at GSH. Mistakes are not the obstacle to skill development. They are the path. Two pages, worth printing, and worth keeping handy for the season.

(Article, 6 min read)

Nate Daniels lays out a case parents need to hear. When you make a kid's sports experience about results, you take away the very thing that produces them. He breaks down the three ways outcome-thinking backfires (performance anxiety, external motivation, short-term thinking) and gives parents concrete language to use instead. The questions and praise cues at the end of this piece are worth keeping in your pocket for the car ride home. Process creates the player. Process creates the confidence. The results follow.

If this newsletter helped you see a young athlete's practice differently, forward it to a parent or coach who would want the same lens.

See you next week.

The EDGE Playbook | Good Swings Happen | Josh Alpert