OBE and Training Skills Slow
I was reading Jack Han's article titled "6 Paradoxes of Skills Coaching" and wanted to build on top of paradox 6. (Side note, if you aren't reading Jack's work, get on it. Read his article by clicking the underlined link)
Paradox 6: To go really fast, start *really slow*
A number of minor hockey coaches ask their athletes go all-out early in the session while neglecting form, then continue to crack the whip and demand pace as the players tire. Bad technique + fatigue = bad reps & bad attitudes.
Training Slow
This process of training slow is lost on some coaches and players.
Growing up I was always cued to start drills with “quick feet.”
Then I got to my first kinesiology class and learned about movement efficiency and other factors that lead to acceleration. None of which are short choppy steps out of an agility ladder made of hockey sticks on the ice, but I digress.
In the unseen hours of military training, there are walk-throughs and run-throughs before any real mission even thinks about happening.
Slowing things down seems to be innate with elite-level athletes. I interned at a performance facility the summer after I graduated college and we trained NFL and NHL athletes. With the NHL guys, we trained on the ice and in the weight room.
Anytime a coach talked to them after a rep about their movement or posture, they would feel through it or walk through it at the slowest speed they could do it at. If the first feel-through was clunky they would reset and do it until it was perfect and then train from that point. They didn't need to be told to do this, they all just did this.
Later that day, we would coach high school athletes, and when you made a similar coaching cue or correction they would start going in fast forward to get through their 6 reps and then go run off to get a drink of water. I experienced a similar observation working with my junior players at the tier 3 level with a few outliers.
The players that identified skills that were limiting them, took note of their skill gap, and started working on that skill right away after practice at a speed they could handle got better at the skill over time.
The ones who ignored their skill gaps and kept doing drills at full speed without training extra kept making similar execution mistakes.
There's a lesson in there.
The best time to go slow is when you don’t know…
O.B.E.
In the Navy, they use a term with fighter pilots called O.B.E.
Overcome by Events
They start the pilots in a simulator in dry, flat, desert terrain and then they add stress:
1 friendly fighter in your airspace
An enemy
Change the environment to rain in the mountains
Add another friendly on your wing
Add 3 enemies in the area
This continues until your plane crashes, everyone takes note of where you are and when you are overcome by events and then you train from that spot. That spot is different for everyone.
Consider this mental model to start…
Self-awareness of where you are and where your skill gap currently sits
Self-discipline to start training from the correct point at the correct speed
Self-confidence when your training speed improves and your O.B.E. point changes.
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