What's Your Excuse?

I came across an article this morning that made me think about why some players eagerly look forward to practice and why others need constant motivation and often find a convenient reason not to practice or try to improve their skills.

Every team has a couple of athletes that truly love the game and want to get better and will practice every time the gym doors are open. They don’t have to be motivated to get into the gym. Those same couple of athletes usually lead their team in most of the categories (i.e., scoring, assists, etc.) and tend to be the better all-around players on the team. Coincidence? I think not!

To most, practice is boring and always seems to be so repetitive. Games are the important thing, right? After all, we play basketball to play basketball, not to train to play basketball.

It is true that we learn a great deal about basketball from playing in games through the trial & error process. By playing the game, players gain experience, which improves other aspects from decision-making to anticipation and a variety of strategies, but playing does little to improve your overall fundamentals.

Improvement requires deliberate practice. A game doesn’t offer enough repetitions of a particular skill to improve those fundamentals. Improvement requires practice, concentration and repetition.