motor learning is the study of how people acquire skill through practice there's a massive Gap though between what this science says and the way that we coach our mission at train ugly is to change that so today we're going to be talking about Block versus random practice and how to apply some scientifically proven principles to improve the effectiveness of practice let's do [Music] it he [Applause] so there are a few motor learning terms we need to understand as we work through this essay first practice performance these are the short-term improvements you see during a particular drill or during a particular day of practice real learning refers to the improvements that we see the next day or during the actual game motor learning scientists use the terms retention and transfer to describe this real learning this is simply describing the amount of improvements that we see during practice ice that show up the next day or show up during the game I think one of the most important things that the motor learning science has come up with isn't about how you look and practice but it's how you perform later and performance which is always after practice by a day or a week or whatever is best because you do things that have higher levels of retention so that's a pretty key word does it promote better retention because it's not what they can do in practice it's what they can do later on so as coaches one of our main jobs should be to look at ways to maximize this retention and transfer so the improvements we see during practice show up on game day when the lights are on and your grandma's in the stands so we have a couple things to think about first what is a skill now if I asked that question to most coaches and if I would to asked myself this same question a couple months ago my answer would have been very technique focused I would have talked a lot about doing if I was talking about shooting a basketball I'd be talking about my follow through or bending my knees if you talk to a golf coach about um sort of what is the skill of of hitting a drive they would talk about their hips and Rhythm and all of these technique based things I'm here to tell you that technique is super important very very important if we're trying to become a highlevel performer we need great technique is a shooter a golfer volleyball player any any sport technique is very very important but there's something that we need to realize that this doing or this technique part of a skill is only onethird of the equation it's so much more than just the technique it's this planning and and reading that is we say in our sport the most important skill in our sport is reading um I was joking with you Trevor about your mom who could could sit on the bench and when the opposing team tips a soft shot she could stand up and walk out and get the darn ball and the players in the court go and it hits the floor is it your walking technique of your mother you know no it's not Janet's walking technique it's that she could read and anticipate and knew before the ball got tipped that it was going to probably be a tip and every sport has that reading every time you do a skill in a game you have to do which is the technique part but you also have to do two other things and we call it reading and planning so every time you do a skill in a game you have to read you have to plan and you have to do let's look at how this idea applies to golf before every single shot and a round a player has to read and plan and do so before this putt this guy has to recognize the break he has to recognize how far he is from the from the hole he has to plan accordingly exactly where he's going to aim and exactly how hard he's going to hit this putt then the doing and execution comes into play and he's cash money let's look at a three-point shot in basketball the player has to catch the ball and read and recognize where the defense is he has to understand how far he is away from the hoop and then he has to plan accordingly he has to plan how hard to shoot the ball how fast to shoot the ball how high to shoot the ball among a thousand other things and then the execution comes into play during every every single play of a game all of the players on a football team are reading and planning and doing I bet you're watching the quarterback and receiver on this Play and No Doubt there are tons of reads and tons of planning opportunities that they each have to do but let's take a closer look at this offensive lineman he has to recognize where the defense is at he knows the play that his team is running but then he has to read okay where is my guy going and then plan accordingly how am I going to stop him how am I going to keep this guy away from the quarterback to give him enough time to execute the play tons of reading and planning opportunities even for a offensive lineman the same goes for volleyball every single player is constantly reading and planning and doing this Defender has to read The Hitter read the trajectory and fly to the ball she has to plan accordingly and then the execution comes into play you see technique is huge it's very important in the process but it's only onethird of the equation every time we do a skill in in a game regardless of sport regardless of the position we play we have to read and plan and do and in many sports all three of those things are happening in a split second so now that we understand exactly how complex a a game skill actually is I want to talk about two different practice strategies and show you how making a few minor adjustments to the way that we design our practice will have a major impact on that transfer and help us maximize the transfer so the improvements we see during practice ice show up on game day so let's take a closer look at these two practice strategies block practice is the more traditional approach where you get a ton of reps doing the same thing over and over and over in golf this is hitting a bunch of shots from the same spot watch as this player works on his putting stroke notice how each shot is the same and all he has to do is simply repeat his stroke each time block practice is super common in basketball we see this all the time when people practice shooting a ball they'll shoot 10 or 15 shots from one spot before moving to another one an example of block practice in volleyball is the coach hitting ball after ball at the defender so she can work on her passing and digging technique we've all seen this one before too the lineman getting rep after rep working on his blocking technique against a sled random practice is a little different you can also get a ton of reps but the reps are randomized you're never doing the same thing twice if you were going to take a more random approach to shooting a basketball you would simply vary the location and the distance of each shot notice how every single rep is from a different place on the court a random approach on the putting green would be to scatter balls out around the hole so no two shots are exactly the same one of the most important studies in the Block versus random research was actually done in 1979 by Shay and Morgan check this out they divided the participants up into two groups one group was taught a series of arm movements using block practice and the other group was taught the same movements using random practice they tracked each group's performance during this practice or acquisition stage as you can see both groups improved over this practice or acquisition stage and the block group outperformed the random group however when they did this transfer test to measure the real learning they discovered something important the block group lost all of the gains and improvements they made during practice but the random group retained those gains look at the massive gap between the two trials a similar Block versus random study was done in baseball where they spent 6 weeks training players with either the block approach or random approach as you can see the results were similar to the Shay and Morgan study during this practice or acquisition stage the block group outperformed the random group yet when they did the transfer test to measure the real learning we saw almost double the improvements in the random group as compared to the block group a similar study was done in basketball and again we see this massive difference between the random group and the block group during the transfer test so the research shows that when you train randomly which is a chaotic to the skill um the training ugly variations what what comes to pass is that the retention is superior than if you did things blocked the results of these studies and many more point to a better way to schedule our practice so why isn't this a thing I think some coaches do block practice because they want to control everything because it's about them and that's that's like ego and all that stuff but I think there's a lot of block practice coaches that they just really want to help and when they do block practice you can actually see the kid get better you know within those 15 minutes it's hard for them because they do random practice and the results are slower even though the retentions higher but it's it's really hard for them to let go of that but I think like if they if at least my experience like if if it's an ego thing that's that's going to be a hard change but if it's like there are some coaches who like genuinely want to help their kids and like when they when they stand in a single file line and the and in the level of difficult is really easy they can see the kid get better and they really care about the kids so it's just hard for them to let go of that and it you know so I think I know I think if some coach just know like hey like you are being a good coach you are caring about him like you know just like find a different way to track Improvement I think that would help a lot of coaches like like what's it about is it about like you're you're seeing the growth in that 15 minutes is it about the fact that you want to control is it the fact that you won the state championship when you did this drill is that why you're no I'm Ser you know like it's I think like if they can answer the why then it's a lot easier to let it go that's some incredible Insight by coach black and one thing I think we really need to take away from that is the idea of finding better ways to track progress what he means by this is focus more on the transfer and retention tests as opposed to the practice improvements that we see now what I want to talk about is sort of the why behind this why do we see these results why do we see that jump happen when we when we do random practice and why do we see the dip occur if we if we choose to do block practice what we need to realize is this when we do block practice when we do a bunch of reps in a row from the same place we're eliminating the reading and planning from the equation all we're doing is executing the technique [Music] [Music] when we do random practice we're forced to read and plan before every single rep because we're doing something new we can still get a ton of reps but now we're doing the reading and planning as well and those are just as important as the [Music] doing and the reason random is so important is because ay that's like the game I bet no basketball play no volleyball Play No football play is the same as before any other play that's ever existed they're similar but they're not the same and yet we drill and and never move the ball card and we want to look good and we let the brain kind of for lack of a better term go on idol and not have to figure out what to do for a while versus having to work and and create a new and solve a new problem over and over and over and over and over again which is the way the game is played so we have all these skills that are developed in drills where they look good in the drill and the narrowness of it and in the chaos and the ugliness of the sport in the game they don't know how to get to the right place in time because they've only done one thing to look good technically and they don't know how to play volleyball because you play volleyball you don't drill volleyball there's no doubt about it getting a ton of reps is very very important knowing the technique and proper execution is extremely important but so is reading and so is planning if we're just doing block practice all you're focusing on is the execution or the technique when we do random practice we're working on those the the execution and technique but we're also working on the reading and the planning so we're working on the total skill so a few things to keep in mind first we need to approach practice with a growth mindset we need to understand that taking the random approach is harder we will mess up more we will make more mistakes it will be uglier but it's better for us it's preparing us to perform in a game second no matter what sport we're playing or what skill we're practicing never do the same thing twice make sure you're reading and planning before every single rep and I guess this all boils down to one question do you want to look good in practice if so block practice is for you or do you want to prepare yourself to perform in a game when it really really matters and if that's the case there's no doubt about it random practice is more effective so there you go that's our first VSA from train.com there's a little more to the motor learning equation and we're going to cover that next time we're going to talk about specificity and how to even get more transfer from our practice thank you so much for following along I'm so excited to make this something special for people like you have a great day [Music]