Measure Your Success By Your Effort

Footwork Makes You Smarter

Thursday, November 11, 2010

Practice does not make perfect.

Practice does not make perfect. Only perfect practice makes perfect.
Vince Lombardi

It’s true what Vince Lombardi said about practice. You need to learn form, and then steadily increase the intensity so that you are always out of your comfort zone to become better. It’s the same overload principal that body builders use to make muscles bigger. The catch is to make sure you are not creating bad habits, by logging hours doing the wrong thing. That is bad practice no matter how hard you are working at it. Not everything will be perfect in a drill. Maybe the pass isn’t quite perfect, maybe you bobble the dribble on your approach, maybe your footwork was not quite right and you should strive to get it right each time, but if it does break down, don’t go to the end of the line or the start of the line and start over again. Use that bobbled dribble, that imperfection in that repetition to simulate what happens in a game. It is the same as a broken play in a game. Finish that broken play. How many times to quick thinking players make something good happen out of a broken play? It happens a lot. The same holds true for a missed shots in a drill. Always finish, but finish game like. Fight for your rebound, and create a habit. Maybe the habit is to chin it, with a fake, and then put it up high to get the defender in the air and get it over the shot blocker. Whatever that habit is practice is game like and game speed. When you make a mistake just remember when life hands you some lemons, make lemonade with them.

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