MIND GAMES 98
You might already be answering Ragan’s question. With the gun, Ragan shot from the same spot over and over. In a game, Ragan might be at a different place on the court. A defender might be in his face. He may have to decide between passing or shooting. He might be tired and sweaty. His girlfriend might be in the stands looking on with great expectations the way that teenage girls in sports movies do. The gun did not give Ragan practice with any of these things, so the gains that he saw in practice did not carryover to practice. “One of the most important things that motor learning science has come up with isn’t about how you look in practice but how you perform later,” Kessel says in one of Ragan’s video essays. “Performance, which is always after practice by a day or a week or whatever,
is best because you do things that have higher levels of retention.” The gun did not promote retention because it addressed only one facet of performance when in reality athletes need to be proficient in three areas. Those areas,
according to Ragan and his interpretations of motor learning research, are:
Reading – The athlete critically assesses the situation and picks the right response for that scenario.
Planning – The athlete plots out the steps necessary for executing the response, taking into account factors like timing and power.
Doing – The athlete executes the chosen technique with proper form and with the intended timing. The gun taught Ragan to do a 3-point shot but gave him no practice with reading the opportunity for a 3-pointer or planning a shot in the tumult of a live game.
FROM THE COURT TO THE MAT At this point, I hope that you can see how the work of a basketball coach might apply to jiu-jitsu. When we do a traditional armbar drill from guard, we limit ourselves to the doing end of the equation. Having technical proficiency is essential to our success to be sure, but if we fail to get repetitions with reading and planning, our armbars are likely to miss their mark in live rolling or in competition.
Just as Ragan was unlikely to end up in the exact spot of the gun-return with no coverage in a game, you are unlikely to end up with your opponent’s arm in the exact position, with no resistance, as when you drilled. This is what makes you a zoo tiger. Your armbar looks smooth and fluid behind the curated walls of a block drill, but when things get ugly, when you are in the wilderness of a
live match, you fail to retain the gains that you saw in training. “When nothing changes from rep to rep, you only get to read and plan on the first rep. Everything after that is autopilot,” Ragan says. “The technique is important, but you have to read and plan for it to work in a game.” After sifting through the science and working with dozens of athletes, Ragan’s recommendation to coaches and players is simple: Have a growth mindset and get as many game-like reps as possible. These two recommendations are intertwined. A growth mindset—which Ragan pulls from the research of Carol Dweck, a Stanford professor—is the understanding and acceptance that real learning and true growth occur at the edge of our comfort zones. If we are not challenged or are unwilling to face challenges, we are unlikely to improve. This mindset is critical in motor learning because accumulating game-like reps means failing, a lot. If you are not making mistakes, you are not challenging yourself enough to experience measurable improvements in your performance as an athlete. Block drills limit the likelihood of failure. Random drills force you to face and learn from failure, so you need the right mindset to reap the benefits.
Mind Games - Ugly Drills.indd 3
2/16/15 3:46 PM