By T.J. Jumper
We have all heard the saying “practice makes perfect.” For Jumper Athletics we don’t necessarily agree with that statement. We believe you can have perfect moments, but consistently being perfect won’t happen. Athletes need to know that to be highly successful mistakes and failures are going to happen. Jumper Athletics believes that purposeful practice leads to excellence. Excellence is attainable. This is the long-range goal if an athlete wants to be one of the best in their sport.
However, attending practice alone won’t make you better or more successful. Purposeful practice with matched intensity can have a high degree of influence on the level of success an athlete and/or team has. Two of the biggest limits on practices having a successful impact are not having a purposeful plan (long-term and short-term) and not meeting the necessary intensity that is needed for that purpose.
Building a long-term and short-term plan begins with having an accurate reflection of your strengths and weaknesses. Once this is known, a long-term plan (a half to a full year) of how to improve the areas that need to be strengthened can be made. These should be big areas that could be broken down into smaller skills and improvements. Short-term planning should be what will be worked on over a month or months. This is where the smaller skills and smaller improvements are built on incrementally to reach those bigger themes. This is the idea or philosophy of mastering a skill. An example in the weight room could be that I want to be more powerful in the power clean. The power clean would be broken down into deadlift, shrugs, and front squat. So I would work on those in the short term to improve my power clean in the long run.
Practice is about developing successful habits on a consistent basis. Practice requires mental toughness because most athletes do not enjoy practicing. They prefer the competitions. But, to be more successful in competitions, it usually results from a high quality of practice.
Way too many times an athlete just gets through practice. This mindset is the easiest because it requires minimal effort physically. But the mindset that results in the highest gains is one that looks to dominate the practice or do it at the highest possible outcome. Granted, everyone has a bad day or doesn’t feel good. Those are the times to just get through the practice so recovery can be focused. However, this is not something that you want to occur continually or on a regular basis. An athlete should not have a habit of just getting through, because when it comes time for a competition the body will not adapt to the higher intensity. The body acclimatizes to routines. So in a higher intensity game, the body will respond as it does in practices because the body has adapted to that routine. Therefore, just getting through in practice results in more mistakes happening in competitions which directly leads to less success.
If you ever have questions, please reach us at jumperathletics@gmail.com The next two blogs will focus on in season and out of season training. The next blog will come out Sunday, February 13, 2022
Reflection
- What do you want to continue doing and what needs to change related to practice?
- How will you go about making those changes?
- What long-term do you want to improve on? How is what you want to improve broken down into parts?
- What is your plan to work on those parts sequentially to improve on the long-term?