In part 1, we set the stage by considering two very different Hockey practice designs at opposite ends of the spectrum.  On one end we considered spending a large portion of our time explaining techniques to kids.  On the other end we focused on a design that featured an overemphasis on spending our time putting those kids through repetitions.  Now we will consider how to find the right balance between those extreme cases.

We know that improving involves some internal part of our body changing for the better.  If we know what part of the body we expect to see these changes to actually take place, we can apply how that area of the body works to the question of how to improve most rapidly.

Unfortunately, the “location” of improvement is not only localized in one place.  Part of our physical skill improvement does manifest itself in our muscles.  With that said, when we are talking about movement skill development, the improvement is in our motor control system.  The motor control system is part of our nervous system, which includes the brain and the other nerves throughout the body.

The good news is that most of the change we need to create improvement is in the nervous system.  For simplicity lets just say that the improvement happens in our brains.  If most of the improvement happens within our brains, neuroscience and related disciplines revolving around motor skill acquisition can tell us a lot about how to create the best rate of improvement in our hockey practices.

In general (Hockey or otherwise), skills are mental structures that are built to meet a purpose.  So, in order to begin to build a skill we should first understand what we are trying to accomplish with this new skill.  Typically this happens intuitively and automatically (meaning kids don’t need to consciously decide to figure out the purpose, their brains just do it), but it is often useful for coaches to make sure their students know this purpose.

As a person learning a new skill, after I have this purpose in mind, I go about devising a strategy to achieve this purpose.  Once again, this is not something that I have to decide to do; this happens automatically during the preparation process for a first attempt.  This is true of mental skills (i.e. math and reading) and physical skills (i.e. hockey and dance).  We are concerned with physical skills so the question I am effectively asking as I devise my strategy becomes, "how can I make my body do what it takes to meet the purpose of the new skill?"

There is no reason why a novice performer would just randomly stumble upon the best strategy (technique) for a new skill when they first try it, so they will come up with... well, something.  If that something sort of works (but is not exactly correct) and they repeat it, they will be in significant danger of creating a bad habit.

This is where guidance comes in.  In the best case, players are both shown and told the best strategy when they first learn a new skill.  Then, over time, coaches provide more detailed accounts of said best strategy as well as guidance on the errors that are being included in each players' attempts.  This ongoing guidance fosters refinement of the technique.

Should all of this detail be explained to players before their first attempt?  No.  Players will need to have some attempts under their belt to create the necessary context to understand richer and richer detail about what a truly ideal version of a technique amounts to.

For example, players (even adults) can’t learn an ideal skating stride until they have experience with what it takes to balance on skates.  That context about the challenge of balancing on skates prepares players to understand more and more detail about what it will take to execute ideal technique. So we could waste hours explaining detailed skating mechanics, but without some reps under our belt, most of it can’t be used.

In other words, when we first learn, we learn fastest with a rough understanding of a “best” strategy, but once we’ve tried a number of times, additional details, which gradually build a very sharp mental model of the technique, dramatically accelerate the refinement process.

So, it becomes clear that, unless we just want to leave finding a good technique for a skill to a "luck factor", we must provide a lot of guidance.

In part 3, we will circle back to dive into the value that we get from repetitions.