THE Practical Guide to Deliberate Practice in Training

This guide will now demonstrate how you can effectively implement deliberate practice in your training sessions. Once you understand the principles, this example session can be followed and put into practice or you can create your own unique training sessions.

Start your session by setting a process goal to begin your process focus: for example, you may wish to practice keeping your front hand relaxed when shooting under pressure. Then ask yourself, what do you need to do to ensure you relax your hand and how are you going to achieve that? By breaking down your goals, you are paving the path towards achieving them.

Repetition may seem like an obvious component of your training session, but keep in mind that you don’t only want to repeat your shot routine, but also repeatedly consider what you are working on and reflect on how it is going.

In terms of challenging yourself throughout the session, consider the skills you are trying to develop and how you can push yourself to improve your skills. As an example, you may organise some head-to-heads in front of an audience at your local club to test your ability to keep your front hand relaxed when in a pressured situation. The key here is to evaluate your success in terms of maintaining your correct technique whilst under pressure, as opposed to your score throughout the match.

When searching for feedback throughout the session you may wish to ask your coach to share their observations on your technical progress, or use kinaesthetic feedback by trying to feel whether your front hand is relaxed during each shot. A practical way to record your kinaesthetic feedback is to use what I call a ‘process tally’. This involves recording a tally of the number of shots you make with the correct execution per end. This is a technique which can be used to keep you focused on your process goal, but also give you a way of measuring your success rate during each session. This can also be cross-referenced with your results if you choose to use this practice whilst scoring.

Finally, when reflecting on your session, consider writing some notes on your goals, how you felt the session went, what you felt could be improved, and what you would like to continue working on. Taking the time to reflect can not only guide your upcoming training sessions but can also be a valuable source of information for you to share with your coach.