Isolated Practice: How important is it?

Recently I’ve been asked my opinion about the value of ‘isolated practice’ so I’d like to share a few thoughts with you.  If you have ever been asked to do something that you haven’t tried before, it’s always a challenge. The first thing you ask is, ‘show me what I have to do?’ Whereupon somebody will show you what you have to do, or they might show you a video of somebody doing what you have to attempt. You may have seen enough from one demonstration and you will have a go at doing the task but you might need more than one look, it depends on the complexity of the task.

Try this.
Let’s consider something simple, like flipping a beer mat on the edge of a table. Try it if you have not already done so. If you haven’t got a beer mat cut out a piece of cardboard and have a go. The task is to flip a beer mat, which is half on the table and half off the table and catch it. You either catch it or you don’t, so you have immediate ‘knowledge of results’ about how successful your attempt was. If you are successful, you will immediately try to do it again, to convince yourself and the challenger that it wasn’t a lucky experience, that you can really do it.  If you dropped the beer mat, you’ll immediately try to do it again because you have been challenged, you’ve failed at the first attempt and want to try again.  If you drop it again, you might ask for another demonstration because maybe there was something that you missed in the first demonstration that might help you be successful the next time you try. You might ask for some help or a tip to improve your chances, this is where ‘feedback’ becomes important.

Feedback
An experienced performer, who knows the keys to performing the task ahead might direct your attention to the position of your hand, (or his, if he’s giving another demonstration), just below the beer mat, where it’s virtually touching the beer mat.  He might also show how the hand can be brought up slowly to make contact with the beer mat, or start in a position where the back of the fingers are touching the beer mat, so it gets ‘lifted’ rather than ‘flicked’ upwards into the air. The ‘coach’ has given you some clues to improve your chances of achieving the task, what you need is some immediate practice and lots of it, if you are to master the challenge and get a ‘feel’ for what you are doing. So you can’t wait to have another go at flipping the beer mat, which you do and manage to keep hold of it. Success, smiles all round! This process of learning keeps repeating until you master the task or give up.  If you master the task quickly, it’s normal to add more beer mats to the pile to see if you can do it with ten mats. If you fail but you know what to focus on you need repetition to improve your success rate.  You might succeed without feedback after a few attempts if you can work out what it was that led to your success? If you can, that’s great, it’s referred to as ‘Learning by Discovery’.

What is ‘isolated Practice’?
What I have described with the beer mat experience is ‘isolated practice’, which can be applied to a technique, just like chipping a ball to hit the cross bar of the goal. You will get knowledge of results because you either hit the cross bar or miss it and mostly you will miss the cross bar because it is only four inches wide. Another measure of how well you are doing is how close you get to hitting the cross bar with each attempt. This will drive you to practice more to improve your success rate, if you are motivated enough. Once your technique is sound, you need to develop the ‘touch’ to be more successful and that only comes with massive doses of repetition from different distances. Hitting the cross bar is a challenge to the individual. Players do it for fun all over the world, to see how good they are, some even have bets to see who will win.

The Importance of Repetition 
The reality is that without massive doses of repetition at the right time you might never develop the mechanics of the technique or the feeling to master the task. When you are in the stages of refining ‘touch’ you need lots of repetition because you are trying to hit the ball just a little bit harder than last time, or a bit softer, so the next attempt needs to be fairly soon after the last one or you’ll forget that ‘feeling’ that you had on the previous attempt. I know, because I’ve done it so many times over the years to refine technique and I’ve spent hours with players who have wanted to be able to perform techniques under pressure at the highest level.  As a coach, you can teach a technique action but you can’t teach ‘touch’, that has to be developed by the player.

Isolated Practice and Training Sessions
The next question is ‘where does isolated training fit into the training session?’ The answer in my opinion is that it isn’t part of the session, most of the time. That’s not because it isn’t beneficial, it’s because you will not be able to get enough repetition for everybody in the group for most of the time and it should only be done in small doses within a group session. The downside of trying to do this is that players have to wait for ’turns’ to perform a task; feedback from the coach may not be available to improve performance, the time between the last and the next attempt may be too long for any ‘feeling’ to be developed so learning may not take place, failure may result and boredom can set in quickly.  That’s a reason why coaches are encouraged to organize practices that provide the maximum amount of repetition, rather than having players waiting in line for a ‘turn’. If you ever have players waiting for long periods, re-think your organization of the practice.

Drills v Opposed Practices
I’ve never been a fan of drills throughout my whole coaching career and have used them sparingly, even in warm-ups. I’m a strong advocate of opposed practice, even in warm ups and in 39 years of coaching I can honestly say I can’t remember a player being injured in a warm-up. My attitude in developing players has always been to develop decision-making, which is synonymous with opposed practice in my opinion.

What you can do to get a lot of repetition is to organize the players to practice in small numbers e.g., with one ball between four or six players. That way they have constant involvement and lots of attempts to practice and refine technique. Feedback can be given and acted on, without interfering with the other groups. The technique of chipping can be taught and practiced but in small groups where passing and receiving are also required in the practice.

Repetition and Game Type Activities
If you think that players will get enough repetition by playing game type activities in groups of ten or more players I suggest you do some simple analysis for yourself and count how many times any player in the group repeats a task like chipping the ball or dribbling in a 1v1 situation.  The game situation is very different to a practice involving say eight players in a 1v1 activity, where the rest to work ratio may be 1:3 due to the high intensity of the activity. Another question to ask is, ‘how do you provide feedback for a player to act on during a game?’  The truth is you can’t do it without interfering with the player’s involvement in the game, or without stopping all the other players. Feedback is useful if you can act on it fairly quickly after the previous attempt, especially when you are in the learning stages.  Delayed feedback can be given and acted on when technique has been developed to a high standard, so a lot of theory associated with learning or improving performance needs to be applied at the right time.

Conclusion
‘Isolated practice’ is fundamental to developing ‘touch’; players will not develop a high level of technique without it. It is important in the learning stages and equally as important for top professional players who want to refine their technique or feel comfortable they can reproduce it whenever they are required to in the game. David Beckham and Ronaldo are often used as examples of players who have spent a lot of time in isolation, practicing free kicks. At the elite level, knowledge of results may be enough for the player to refine technique because he/she is at the performance stage, not in the learning stage. Repetition with knowledge of results and appropriate feedback is the key to learning technique and developing ‘touch’, so encourage players to do ‘isolated’ or small group practice on a daily basis and help them do that in any way possible. You might encourage players to turn up for training thirty minutes earlier than usual if there is space and equipment available.

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