In the Second World War the great Charlie Munger was tasked with making weather forecasts that would be used to plan allied bombing missions.
Obviously, the goal was max survivability… of allied pilots. Thing is, survivability is quite the open ended topic. So many variables. How to know what worked? Not dying doesn’t mean the plan was good.
Charlies solution: invert the problem. Instead of focusing on success, he focused on failure. What were the two situations he could get pilots into that gave the highest odds of dying? Those were icing and return routes where bad weather consistently made airfields unavailable for emergency landings. He dedicated his forecasting efforts to avoiding those two situations.
Coaching is the same. Despite popular belief, we coaches don’t know how people become amazing. There are so many variables. So much has to go right. So many bullets need to be dodged. The route is unplannable. Obviously, no methods can exist for an unknowable, unplannable thing. That doesn’t keep many… no, most of us from selling methods.
Like the great Mr Munger, I’ve inverted. I’ve figured out the two things that will give you the highest odds of failure.
Number one: Prescriptive (explicit) instruction. You know this as “right” and “wrong” techniques or ways to play.
We are all prisms with unique imperfections. When the light of the universe shines through us, that imperfection… our unique pattern, is projected into the world. It is what makes us… us.
Prescriptive instruction is dedicated to eliminating that uniqueness. It homogenizes us… and the game.
The great homogenization would make sense if there were right and wrong ways to hit forehands, or serves, or backhands, or to move, or play the freaking game. There are not! There are as many ways to do a thing as there are people doing it.
The research is conclusive. Those exposed to tennis without explicit technical instruction developed similar techniques to those who were. In other words, technique occurs organically.
I know what you’re thinking. If the “untaught” came up with techniques similar to their colleagues who were taught… what’s the problem with teaching technique? It’s a good question. The answer to which is this: the players who developed their own approach were able to solve a FAR wider variety of problems than those who were instructed.
Number two: Drills.
Transfer… from practice to match play, is the measure of how effective a practice is. The higher the transfer, the better the practice.
Context is the key to transfer. The more a practice resembles what you’re practicing for, the greater the transfer.
Matches are dynamic, variable, random, and stressful. They don’t need to be stressful. But that’s a topic for a different post.
Drills are everything but all that. You know what’s next. You know what you’re supposed to do with it. Nothing random, variable, or dynamic about that. The “live ball” drills, that supposedly address that problem, start with a feed. Uh… I’m sorry, doesn’t EVERY tennis point start with a serve and a return?
Again, the research is clear. The transfer from drills is POOR.
As usual, don’t take my word for any of this. Do your own research. Come to your own conclusions. After all, it is your game. You don’t really think you can master it without taking responsibility for it… do you?
Be like Charlie. Figure out the killers and avoid them. You’ll get more mileage out of your practices… and by extension your game.