At the beginning of every season, we start with principle one. Everything hinges on principle one.
PROCESS OVER RESULTS
It encompasses so many different factors to finding and putting your best effort, as an individual and team, on display.
As a leader, setting the precedent early in the season that the process is the highest priority can shift an entire season. It's the only thing within our control: how we prepare and show up to practice, compete, and recover.
I want to zoom into a single idea as a way of exploring one focus point:
Deliberate Practice
You've probably heard this term, maybe you've studied it, hopefully you're implementing it. Here is my take on applying it.
Repetition, and going through the motions again and again, have historically been taught as a way to improve. Get up 100 shots today. Reps, reps, reps. 10,000 hours to become a master. Just show up.
All of those things are super motivating and better than doing nothing, I guess. But it's a recipe for stagnation. Deepening the same skill level.
The only way to get better at a skill, the path to mastery, is through intentional or deliberate practice.
> Find and target a weakness.
> Push past comfort
> Seek feedback
For example, pick one thing that you know is a hole in your game. Then structure sessions (even before or after practice) to focus on improving that skill. Not just mindless repetition though; not just dribbling with your left hand while distracted.
Seek the next level, or two levels up and build routines of focused on getting there. Figure 8's with just your left, bouncing and catching the ball off a wall without your right hand, cross training with a lacrosse ball looking to improve wrist, elbow, finger dexterity.
Find something you know you'll fail at, and focus, try, fail, go again, until you do it, then go again until it's easier, and then use it against a teammate, then practice again, and then after you feel good about that skill, use it in competition. Take notes, and figure out what didn't work and work that out. And find a mentor or coach, a master of that skill, and have them help you get better along the way.
And then once you feel like you have seen a significant improvement and are ready, find the next thing. Here's the crazy secret, you'll always find something you can get better at.
And just for clarity, repetition is not bad. But just don't be fooled into thinking doing it purely out of routine, without pushing yourself outside of a comfort zone, will lead to improvement.
Great, you know how to hit a wrist shot. And every practice, you take 50 or more wrist shots between warm-up and cool-down, but unless you are working on something specific, those wrist shots are not going to get any better. You have to focus, be intentional, and identify a weakness to improve—like having the puck hit the upper right quadrant from an awkward angle, close to your body, so the goalie can't see it.
It's early season, things are just getting started up again, so take some time to journal, identify a few parts of your game you are going to get better at, and then build a plan to get better at them.
As Nick Saban says, you get a talented player who becomes a great player when they determine, "this is what I want, this is what I have to do to do it, and then they have the discipline to execute it."
