An exercise can be used as either a training tool or a learning tool.
It must be clear which it is being used for, because in most cases,
it cannot do both well. Exercises for training create stress which
the athlete recovers from and adapts to in order to improve a
physiological attribute. Exercises for learning are used short term
to teach the athlete how to move his body in a way closer to ideal
for a given movement or as a drill to improve accuracy and precision.
Sports performance is the combination of physiological development and skill
development. Physiological attributes like strength, power,
flexibility, endurance, and cardiovascular respiration are trained
attributes. Their improvement is the result of accumulated
adaptation. This adaptation results from recovering from an
appropriate stress like lifting weights, rowing, running, etc. The
adaptation is specific to the stress imposed – running 100 miles in
a week doesn’t make you stronger no matter how difficult it is.
Skill development is
the increase in accuracy and precision of a movement pattern. Skill
development occurs during sports practice. A gymnast drills a
round-off back handspring repeatedly and in isolation from other
skills in his routine. His coach observes and gives him feedback
between or during the reps. The gymnast modifies his movement based
on the feedback and attempts to reduce rep-to-rep variability while
increasing efficiency and effectiveness. It can be helpful to record
video and study a performance or practice session or even a single
repetition of a movement to get additional feedback.
He then lifts weights.
He uses exercises that do not look like a back handspring, but
instead are general and allow the use of many muscles over a long
range of motion. He does a barbell squat, for example. He adds weight
to the bar to impose a stress on himself that he was previously
adapted to. He recovers with rest and sleep and food, and his body
becomes stronger as a result. These two factors of sports performance
– physiological adaptation and skill – should be developed
independently.
Drilling
Practice versus Using a Movement for Learning
It is critical during a
training or practice session to understand what an exercise is doing
– providing a training stress or developing a skill. Conflating the
two will make both worse. There are many movements that tend to do
better as one or the other – a squat is a phenomenal training tool
but isn’t practice for much but the squat. Drawing a pistol from a
holster is good practice, but does not produce a physiological stress
that will improve a physiological attribute. It would be ineffective
strength training to use do this exercise with a heavier and heavier
gun with the intention of increasing muscle mass and force
production.
However an exercise
like a BJJ sweep done for fifty reps might seem less clear. Is it
practice or training? It’s tiring for sure, so it feels like
training, but it uses a direct movement people do in BJJ. In this
example, the sweep is practice, because it is dependent on accuracy
and precision and is not being done with the intention of improvement
physiological attributes. This example is called drilling,
where a full movement or component movement is performed repeatedly
with the intention of reducing variation, converting conscious
movement into automatic movement, and associating information so that
the practitioner is able to think about the entire movement globally
instead of attempting to think about all of the individual components
at once.
This is particularly
important in coordination-intensive movements. It should be done as
slowly as necessary for technical proficiency, because reps performed
under fatigue always suffer technically, and then bad reps are
practiced. The expression “Practice makes perfect” is popular,
but false. Practice does not make perfect – perfect practice
makes perfect, and poor practice solidifies bad technique.
Where many coaches
create problems is by not understanding the difference between using
an exercise for drilling or for learning. Learning is a conceptual
problem, not a habit problem. A young soccer player who kicks the
ball toe-first when he intended to kick it with the side of his foot
will not benefit from drilling that exact movement 100 times. He has
to be stopped, taught how to do it correctly, and only then
can he drill it. Drilling is done over a long period of time and for
many repetitions to reinforce automatic processes. Learning is
short-term – it happens quickly for a good athlete, slower for a
not-so-good athlete – but then must be drilled to become automatic,
and therefore useful. It may also need to be re-taught at a later
practice session if the athlete gets sloppy.
An exercise can be used
to help a soccer player learning to kick the ball quickly. For
example, using a wall and telling the player to “slowly kick the
wall with the inside flat of your foot” will produce the desired
effect. Additional cueing and coaching may be necessary, but this
should not take more than one practice session to understand this
concept, and it might only take 30 seconds to get the idea. Then the
player comes off the wall, does the movement without the wall, then
adds the ball.
But he doesn’t go
back to the wall once he’s got the idea right unless he loses the
concept. He’s using the wall to understand a problem and move
correctly. He would not drill this later again and again, because
once he knows what the wall has taught him, he can just use a ball
which better replicates the problem. Drilling is best done with
exercises that closely replicate the performance movement. And he
is absolutely not going to kick the wall harder and harder or
weight his foot incrementally and kick the wall trying to train for
strength.
Examples
in Barbell Training
There are some example
of exercises in the weight room that can be used for drilling as
well. A lifter having trouble setting his back in the deadlift start
position can do a rack pull – where the deadlift start position is
elevated. It is easier to get the back in extension in this position,
and he can more easily and quickly learn the sensation of setting his
back in this position. Then the bar is lowered, he sets his back
correctly again, and then lowered again to the ground where he can
now pull correctly. The rack pull, in this case, is drilling
for a difficult mechanical portion of the deadlift – not for the
purpose of applying a stress to get stronger. This should all be done
in a single day; not over a period of 9 training sessions.
A halting deadlift can
help a lifter learn how bent over he needs to stay in the clean. He
might do a set of haltings just before power cleans to drill
the extended bent over position. A front squat must have a rigid
thoracic spine otherwise the lifter will dump the bar forward. An
experienced lifter having a problem maintaining a rigid upper back in
the squat could drill heavy front squats on a light day for a
few weeks until it’s heavy enough to approximate the feeling on the
upper back in a heavy squat.
Athletes also learn
effectively by having a task that requires the correct movement. For
example, in the squat, a lifter can drill with a block of wood to give the him
something to aim his knee toward so that he touches the block without
knocking it over. This helps him set his knees correctly in the
descent. Then, that same day, he removes the block and squats
normally, hopefully with the desired changes.
Training and skill
development need to happen separately, because the mechanisms driving
progress are different, and often conflicting. Exercise selection,
therefore, must have clear criteria – is the exercise for learning
or for physiological adaptation? An exercise used for drilling
should only be done for a short period of time in order to
conceptually understand how to move correctly. Practice requires
precise repetition of movements that reduce variation and improve
efficiency and effectiveness – low energy input for high
performance output. Physical training benefits from heavily weighted
exercises that involve a lot of muscle mass over a long effective
range of motion, producing strength that can be applied through
practice. Mixing the two will produce poor results for both goals.
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