Why Practices Don't Feel like Games

Try as we might, the stakes just aren't the same.

“How come we can never practice with the same intensity we play with, in a game?"

It's a common question from coaches and leaders, who are doing their best to prepare their athletes and teams for the real thing. And, the reasoning is solid - the closer we can get to replicating the conditions of the game or performance in practice, the better our odds of playing our best when we get there.

So what gets in the way?

We need to understand the constraints of practice that influence effort and energy. The better we can manipulate those constraints, the more we can get out of the practice time we do have. And the better our team can perform.

1: Salience of Consequences

Behavior is motivated by the consequences we believe will ensue. Though the context will drive what behaviors we believe are available to us, the behavior we select in a given context depends largely on what happens after the fact.

Practices usually have minimal consequences.

In some regards, this can be a good thing. The lower pressure means more room for players to experiment and take risks, without fearing the consequences of failure. It also facilitates deeper learning.

The problem tends to be that sports programs, in an effort to make practice more "fun," tend to focus more on giving athletes the freedom to "mess around" and less on introducing novel games that would make practice more engaging (more on the function of play in just a minute). The message athletes take home is that practice is not as serious, but not necessarily that it's fun or designed to be instructive.

In a game, the consequences are clear.

Less effort and energy are almost certain to guarantee defeat. For individual players who are being evaluated based on their game performance, the possibility of being cut, benched, or traded means that there's a greater incentive to give your best effort. Taking a poorly calculated risk may mean your playing time is over. An ill-run experiment can cost the team the game.

Because the possible outcomes are much clearer and more engaging, games tend to produce greater effort and engagement.

2: Novelty

How many practices have you coached or observed that look essentially the same, day after day?

The emphasis on rote repetition can be helpful in the early stages of skill acquisition. But at a certain point, it loses its benefit and in exchange, results in reduced effort and attention. We even have brain imaging studies that confirm that experts engaging in a task require less cognitive energy expenditure than novices. Essentially, your practices that look the same produce experts at performing that practice, not experts that perform in a game.

By introducing more novelty into practice, we can better engage the learning mechanisms that facilitate transfer to a game. This makes sense because games are just sequences of novel scenarios (though the degree of novelty can vary). The more our teams grapple with performing in new conditions, the better they'll be able to adapt to those new conditions when it matters in a game.

If you want effort and engagement in practice that looks like a game, give your team novelty to work through.

3: Play

There's a reason we say "play the game". It's supposed to be fun!

Games and competition pull on several aspects of play that make it more meaningful to engage with - it introduces challenges, the decisions lie largely with the players, it's spontaneous, and it's immersive.

In contrast, practices allow very little room for play. Coaches tend to be over-involved, pausing the action to make corrections at every opportunity. Players rarely choose what they're doing. The start and stop nature of "periods" mean there's rarely an opportunity to fully immerse into the experience.

We've overengineered practice down to the minute.

Though well-intentioned, coaches and leaders generally often overestimate the significance of teaching and direct instruction, and significantly undervalue the role that play plays in skill acquisition. The more we can create the conditions of play in practice, the closer we actually get to the conditions of competition. It's not a perfect replica, but it’s much more likely to produce the skill transfer we're looking for than we'd expect.

Bridging the gap

Make consequences valuable

We don't have to settle for practices that don't adequately prepare us for a game. Instead, we simply need to address these three limitations throughout each moment of practice.

For example, if we want to make consequences more salient, simply put some stakes on the line during a practice period. Perhaps there's a winner and loser, and the winner is rewarded with more playing time, a longer leash, or some other significant consequence.

The key here is that the consequence has to matter. Too many coaches rely on punishment for the loser as a motivator (think running after practice, which is a terrible idea generally). What's the benefit of winning? Avoiding the bad outcome. Essentially, we're just teaching the winners that the benefits of success aren't actually enjoyable, they just result in minimal misery.

We need to flip that recipe on its head.

Rather than focusing on punishing the losers in a half-a$$ attempt to motivate "winning behavior," give your winners something to look forward to.

Introduce new stuff

If you've done a drill more than 5 times, chances are it's boring for your players.

Unless there's a necessary, rote skill they're executing that can only be practiced with that drill, consider switching it up. There will be times when the best way to train the skill is to simply keep repeating a drill, no matter how boring. In those instances, make sure that you sandwich that training period with two new or more engaging practice tasks.

And, to take it a step further - when you're engaging your team in new tasks, see if you can find ways to make those tasks fun or engaging, and less about feedback and coaching. There's always a time and place for providing direction and instruction, but in general, it should be used sparingly - most of it should come in the drill set up, and then interspersed throughout the execution. The more you start and stop your drill, the more you interfere with the enjoyable aspects of a novel experience.

Let them play

The best advice we can give you here: get out of the way. Most teams and athletes can organize themselves and get a game going. Don't treat play as separate from practice, something reserved for the beginning or end when things aren't serious and the "work" is over. Let them have some fun when it's supposed to be a time to learn.

The benefits of such an approach are massive. For one, play itself enhances learning. Secondly, by approaching practice this way, we teach the athletes that practice and the experiences associated with the practice, like learning, winning, losing, failure, and more are tolerable, and potentially even beneficial in the long run. Finally (though the list could go on), you'll create an environment your athletes want to be a part of.

Though you may never get your practice to feel quite like a game, with some simple tweaks, you can get much closer and get your athletes better in the process.

Reflective Questions

• When was the last time you just let your team play in practice?

• How do you introduce fun into your team?

• What was the last new drill you introduced?

• How can you make consequences more motivating?