I recently saw a question in a Facebook group from a parent trying to decide if he/she should change private instructors. While the question was about pitching in particular, I think it can also be applied to hitting, fielding, throwing, and other individual aspects as well as activities team coaches do.
The parent in question said that their daughter’s instructor always uses the same drills. Yet the parent sees all these other drills being promote on the Internet and seemed to be under the impression that performing a wider variety of drills would be better for their daughter.
(TECHNICAL WRITING NOTE: I know right now there are English language purists saying I am using a plural pronoun to reference an individual parent. That usage has actually been acceptable in many areas of grammar for centuries, and was changed in the AP Stylebook {which I generally follow} in March of 2017. So there – defensive rant over.)
There is certainly a case to be made that using a wider variety of drills helps break up the boredom or the so-called “grind” of instruction or practicing. There is also a case to be made that if one particular drill, no matter how well it is designed, isn’t working that you should try something else.
Let’s address those two points. The first is that coaches and instructors are not in the entertainment business – they are in the performance business.
Coaches’ main responsibility is to make sure that players’ skills are at a level where, when gametime comes, the players are able to perform those skills as effortlessly and flawlessly as possible. And that takes repetition.
There’s a reason certain close-in fielding drills are called “dailies” or “every days.” They are meant to be performed not just until players get them right but until they can’t do them wrong.
So yes, they may be mindless and routine, but that’s the goal. The objective is to make the most common plays mindless and routine so when they come up in a game players can perform them with the highest level of confidence.
The second point – that if one drill isn’t working try another (in case you already forgot what the second point was) – has more validity in my mind. You know the old saying about doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.
A good coach will have a toolbox full of approaches to solving particular problems. Not everything works with everyone so even though the coach may have particular favorites, it’s good to have alternatives for when those favorites just aren’t working.
But no matter which drill you’re doing, it should be designed in a way to either solve a problem or enhance what a player is already doing to make it better. And that’s where getting caught up in the idea that the coach needs to keep coming in with new drills all the time is flawed thinking.
I mean, which would you rather have – a set of drills that the coach knows works, or a bunch of random drills that may or may not have any value?
And here’s a little secret for you: a lot of the drills you see posted on Instagram or TikTok or Facebook groups or other online sources are just garbage. There I said it, and I don’t regret it.
The Internet is a hungry beast, and someone who wants to become Internet famous as a coach needs to keep posting new material all the time in order to get those precious likes, clicks, shares, follows, and comments. Once they run out of good, proven drills they still have to come up with new ones or the algorithm will forget about them.
So then it’s a race to the bottom, posting ideas and drills that may seem ok in the moment but really make no sense when you look at them a little deeper.
Finally, I believe there are certain core principles to every skill that cannot be ignored. Players need to have those in place before they can get to the fancier stuff.
And certain core principles need to be pretty well in order before moving on to others. Work on them out of sequence, or decide to just let players slide by without really internalizing them before moving on, and you’re setting them up for a spectacular failure.
Here’s the challenge I will throw out to those who think quantity is more important than, or even equal to, quality when looking at drills. Is it possible that your favorite player is doing the same drills all the time because they haven’t’ put in the time and effort to get those drills right?
Perhaps the coach sees a particular drill is working but the player hasn’t done it enough to move from something they can do when they think about it to something they can do without having to think about it.
It could also be that there are some drills that are just so important that you want to continue using them regardless of how accomplished the player becomes. I know I have a few of those go-tos that help set players up for success faster.
I may try other things from time to time. But when crunch time comes, I’m going to use what I know is most likely to work, even if we’ve done it a thousand times before. Or even because we’ve done it a thousand times before.
The bottom line is you don’t want to do drills just for the sake of doing drills. They should be purposeful and specific, with an ultimate goal in mind.
Take that approach and you’re far more likely to be satisfied with the gametime performance that comes out of them.