I still have notes to write up and share on the NBA London game coaching clinic but I thought I’d take a quick break from that this week. It’s not entirely unrelated though given that this years game featured the Celtics… At the end of September 2017 my twitter feed exploded. An NBA player had used a long word and it seemed like journalists just couldn’t handle their excitement. The player was Jaylen Brown and the word was “pedagogy.” He was describing the “dope” way in which Brad Stevens teaches skills and concepts. As you might be able to guess there are three stages to this: Step 1: Practice the whole skill or concept. Performing the whole skill or concept allows the athlete or team to understand the complete movement and execution of the skill or concept. Think here about running a shooting drill where players have to perform a full jump shot. Step 2: Isolate part of the skill or concept. Most skills or concepts in basketball can be broken down into their constituent parts. Using the whole-part-whole method, the coach would isolate a particular part of the skill or concept and work specifically on that particular element. Using our example of the jump shot, a coach may realise that a player releases the shot with two hands and so focus closely on improving how the player releases or holds the ball. This would mean completely isolating that part of the shot — perhaps having the player release the ball with one hand and starting in a position similar adopted to Ryan Anderson 47 seconds into the video below and shooting against a spot on the back board similar to what is demonstrated in the video.So what is whole-part-whole practice?
Step 3: Practice the whole skill again. The whole skill is then practiced again, perhaps performing the same drill as in step one.
Why use whole-part-whole?
This method can be used when a skill or concept has many constituent parts. Three key advantages of whole-part-whole include:
- Allowing the player to get a feel for the flow of the whole skill rather than having to string together individual constituent parts
- Isolating the specific movements or parts of the skill that the player finds difficult
- Encouraging repetition, which supports reinforcement of skills and techniques.
The key drawback is that sometimes players can struggle to put the skill back together after isolating one aspect.
So there is my quick break down of “whole-part-whole” — I hope you found it “dope.”
Coaches — I’d love to hear from you: do you use this method? What skills and concepts do you use it for? Are there more advantages or drawbacks that you’ve experienced when using this method?
Practice methods can either be massed or distributed, and whole or part.
Massed practice is a continuous practice session, with smaller rest periods than practice intervals and works well for skilled and motivated athletes. Massed practice suits skills that are exciting or frequently used in performance, such as uneven bar transitions, or passing in football.
Distributed practice has short periods of practice with longer breaks from the skill rehearsal, which can be rehearsal of another skill or a break for feedback. It is often used for less skilled and less motivated athletes and is helpful in teaching boring skills, such as passing a basketball. This practice method can also be used for the more difficult skills that need to be broken up, or when lots of feedback is necessary.
Whole practice is when the skill is practiced in its entirety and is often used for discrete and continuous skills. This practice method is good for teaching swimming or running.
Part practice is when the skill is broken down into its smaller parts and each part is practiced in isolation before being joined together. It is often used for teaching serial skills that have smaller skills that make up the larger skill, such as a basketball layup.
Whole Versus Part Practice
The whole method of practice is obvious: The whole technique is practiced intact. The part method is actually the whole-part-whole method. You teach the whole method as just outlined, practice it in parts, and then recombine the parts back into the whole via practice.
What's the best method to use? When possible, it's best to practice the whole technique; this avoids spending time combining the parts back into the whole and helps your athletes learn how to use the technique in the context of a contest. However, if the technique is so complex that athletes can't develop a good mental plan (the first stage of learning), then you should break the technique into parts.
When to Break Techniques Into Parts
To decide whether to break a technical skill into parts, you need to evaluate the task on two dimensions: its complexity and the interdependence of the parts. Two questions will help you determine task complexity, or how difficult it may be for athletes to develop a good mental plan:
- How many parts are there to the task?
- How mentally demanding is the task?
Next you need to evaluate how interdependent or independent the parts of the task are. That is, how closely is one part of the technique related to the next? For example, in the tennis serve, you can fairly easily separate the ball toss from the swing of the racket, but you really can't separate the racket swing and contact with the ball from the follow-through.
When the task is low in complexity and high in interdependence, have your athletes practice the whole technique. By contrast, part practice is better when the task is high in complexity and low in interdependence. I've illustrated this in figure 10.3, indicating how I would apply these rules for certain sport skills. You will notice that I've listed only one technique in the part method category. This is because few technical skills are low in interdependence. However, a great many technical skills can be taught by using a combination of the part and whole methods.
Where to Break Techniques Into Parts
Now you have some guidance as to when to break a technique into parts, but how do you know where to make the breaks in the sequence of movements? This is another judgment you must learn to make, perhaps with help from more experienced coaches. In general, the more interdependent the movement, the more it should be left intact. When you analyze a technique, look for points in the movement at which there is less interdependence, or where there is a transition from one type of movement to another. Most technical skills have a preparation phase, an action phase, and a follow-through phase. Often you can break between the preparation and action phases; it's usually not easy to break between the action and follow-through phases.
Integrating Parts Back Into the Whole
You can teach technical skills many different ways. Just because you are breaking a technique into parts, for example, doesn't mean that you must teach each part independently. If an athlete has mastered a few parts of a technique but still needs work on others, or if an athlete needs work on putting parts together, you might select the progressive-part method. Start by having an athlete practice the first part of a technique. Then move on to the next part by having the athlete practice it together with the first part. Continue by progressing through each part of the technique until the athlete is finally practicing the entire technique.
Attention focus is an approach that involves practicing the entire technique but concentrating on only one aspect of the technique. You might instruct discus throwers, for example, to practice the entire throw but to focus only on keeping the discus as far as possible from the body as they pull. This method tends to work best with higher-skilled athletes. Athletes who are still trying to learn the fundamentals of a technique may have difficulty focusing on only one aspect.