Coaching practices for Anders Ericsson Deliberate Practice

Describe almost anything you are working through and IX Coach finds the practices whose real-world fit is closest. For Anders Ericsson Deliberate Practice, these are the strongest matches in the current practice library.

Does this sound like the set of challenges you might be facing?

• When I practice I’m just kind of doing it again and hoping it’s better, because I don’t actually have a clear picture in my head of what great is supposed to look like
• I can’t actually tell good from great while I’m doing it
• I sit down to practice for an hour but I’m half on my phone the whole time
• When I run the whole thing end to end, my strong parts quietly cover for my weak one, so the actual bottleneck never gets touched
• In the moment my practice goes smooth and I walk away feeling like I’ve got it nailed

Practices that may help

1. Deliberate Practice, Not Just Practice
   Deliberate practice, studied by Anders Ericsson, is focused, effortful practice aimed just beyond your current ability, with immediate feedback and constant correction. It is what separates people who keep improving from people who simply log hours — and it is why the popular "10,000 hours" rule is an oversimplification of his work.
2. Build sharper mental representations
   Develop a detailed internal model of what excellent performance looks like.
   Deliberate Practice, Not Just Practice
3. Build and refine mental representations of expert performance
   Develop an internal image of what excellent execution looks, feels, and sounds like.
   Growth-Edge Training: Practicing at the Edge of Your Ability
4. Practice with full, undivided focus
   Short blocks of complete concentration beat long blocks of distracted repetition.
   Deliberate Practice, Not Just Practice
5. Use constraint-based drills to isolate one component
   Remove degrees of freedom so attention concentrates on a single weak sub-skill.
   Growth-Edge Training: Practicing at the Edge of Your Ability
6. Stop judging learning by today’s performance
   How well you do during practice is a bad predictor of how much you will keep.
   Desirable Difficulties: When Harder Means Better Learning
7. Break the skill into components and drill the weak link
   Isolate the specific sub-skill that limits you and train it on its own.
   Deliberate Practice, Not Just Practice
8. Give performers choice within practice to support autonomy
   Offer self-directed options in practice — which drill, how many reps, which cue — to enhance intrinsic motivation and learning.
   External Focus of Attention, Made Practical
9. Design practice conditions that enhance feelings of competence
   Structure early practice so it produces more success experiences — competence feeling drives motor learning.
   External Focus of Attention, Made Practical
10. Trust Self 2 — give the body an image, not instructions
    Set the target in vivid sensory terms and then let the body execute without conscious direction.
    The Inner Game: Quieting Self 1

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