Coaches Resources
Week 2: Repetition is the key to becoming a good player.
For some players it is a dirty word, but let us look at it in a different perspective. When your coach yells and shouts “again, repeat it!”, and you cringe, it is because you know you have made an error.
No coach wants you to make mistakes or execute poorly. Their goal, and yours as well is to be able to execute skills and decisions at critical times in matches. To accomplish this, you as a player, are going to have to accept the concept of repetition. Repetition is the key to you becoming a good player.
Repetition learning is one of the most fundamental elements for reaching another level in almost anything that you do.
Repetition leads you down the path towards automation (executing something without consciously thinking about it) of your skills, and it reduces the time your brain needs to attend to details of a skill during its execution. With repetition and practice your basketball skills become automatic functions and less time is required to “think” before acting. The more you automate your skills the faster you will be able to react and move in executing a crucially needed skill at a critical time.
This is why coaches use “key phrases or labels” to describe plays. You do not have to attend to all the details because one “call” alerts you to a change in how you must be thinking.
Coaches use build up drills to teach you how to perform a skill or execute patterns as one “chunk of information”. This frees up your attention capacity making you more flexible in thinking and seeing the game on the court, and substantially quickening your decision making ability. Automation does not occur without repetition.
In order to be a successful player, you must do two things: (a) accept that repetition is necessary to improve, and (b) understand that when you do not maintain repetition of your skills and team patterns you will forget them. Repetition not only allows you to reach a higher level, but to sustain that high level.
Repetition is more important to understand and work at than just practicing a skill over and over. It allows you to demonstrate to your coach that you have the ability to listen and “repeat it” without your coach having to re-teach a skill to you. The less you have to be re-taught, the faster you progress to a higher level of the game.
This is true for teams as well. When players do not listen and cannot repeat their skills, their on-court development halts. As a result the drills become boring for the players, the coaches get frustrated as well, and there is little progress all round.
A smart player understands this cycle and “strives” to learn a drill correctly and repeat it correctly immediately. The best players I have coached had the ability to listen or to observe how a skill should be performed, then change to incorporate that skill into their game and then perform it consistently without going backwards.
That my young (and old) friends is what I look for in a player as they develop. Granted, it is easier for some than others, but if you attend to the detail, change your skill, and repeat it consistently, you are on the way to being a better player.
Remember this as well - players who cannot listen, change and repeat it immediately, have longer learning curves. The longer the learning curve, the increased number of correct repetitions you will have to execute, before reaching the same level as the player who can listen, change and repeat. So my smart young (and old) friends, who do you think is going to get more playing time?
Eric Lowe,
Coaching & Development Officer.
