Why Good Effective Practice in Sport Often Fails to Create Learning

In many sporting environments, practice sessions are judged by how well they run. High tempo, clear structure, minimal mistakes, and visible coach control are often taken as markers of quality. Players look sharp, drills flow smoothly, and outcomes appear successful. Yet despite these indicators, long-term improvement does not always follow.

This disconnect highlights a central issue in coaching: effective practice in sport is not always practice that produces learning. To understand why, it is necessary to move beyond surface-level performance and examine how athletes acquire and retain skill.

Recent work in skill acquisition research, particularly the framework proposed by Williams and Hodges (2023), provides a useful lens for re-evaluating what effective practice really means. Their Skill Acquisition Framework for Excellence (SAFE) challenges long-held coaching assumptions and offers a more nuanced approach to designing practice environments that genuinely support learning rather than short-term performance.

Performance and Learning Are Not the Same Thing

One of the most persistent misconceptions in coaching is the assumption that improved performance during practice equates to learning. Performance and learning are fundamentally different constructs.

Performance refers to observable behaviour at a given moment. It is temporary and highly sensitive to practice conditions such as instruction, repetition, feedback frequency, fatigue, and motivation. Learning, by contrast, is defined as a relatively permanent change in the capability to perform a skill, inferred only through retention over time and transfer to new or competitive contexts.

Highly structured sessions with detailed instruction, blocked practice, and frequent feedback often inflate short-term performance. Athletes appear competent and errors are minimised. However, research consistently shows that these same conditions can limit long-term retention and transfer. Coaches may therefore “see” improvement without genuine learning taking place.

This distinction is critical. When practice is evaluated primarily on how it looks in the moment, coaches risk prioritising control and order over challenge and adaptation.

Rethinking What Makes Effective Practice in Sport

Effective practice should not be defined by how comfortable or tidy it appears. Instead, it should be judged by whether it creates conditions that promote learning over time.

Williams and Hodges argue that coaches must make deliberate decisions about whether a practice session is designed to:

• Stabilise existing performance

• Prepare for immediate competition

• Or drive long-term skill development

  
  

Problems arise when all three aims are treated as interchangeable. Practice designed for short-term performance is often inappropriate when the goal is learning, particularly in developmental environments.

Focusing on the Quality of Practice, Not Just Quantity

For many years, sporting discourse has emphasised the accumulation of practice hours. While time invested in practice matters, not all practice hours contribute equally to development.

Skill acquisition research distinguishes between:

• Maintenance practice, where athletes repeatedly perform skills they can already execute successfully

• Growth-oriented practice, where athletes are deliberately challenged beyond their current level

  
  

Maintenance practice has value, particularly for reinforcing confidence or preparing for competition. However, when it dominates training programmes, it can lead to stagnation. Athletes remain busy but do not progress.

High-quality practice is characterised by:

• Clear developmental intent

• Appropriately scaled challenge

• Opportunities to problem-solve

• A tolerance for errors as part of learning

  
  

Without these elements, increasing volume alone is unlikely to result in meaningful improvement.

The Role of Challenge in Skill Development

Learning occurs most effectively when athletes operate in what skill acquisition researchers describe as an optimal challenge zone. Tasks must be difficult enough to require adaptation, but not so demanding that they overwhelm the learner.

When challenge is too low:

• Performance is stable

• Errors are rare

• Learning is limited

  
  

When challenge is too high:

• Information becomes unusable

• Confidence may drop

• Engagement can decline

  
  

The coach’s role is not to eliminate errors, but to design environments where errors provide information. This often means accepting short-term drops in performance as a necessary cost of long-term learning.

Designing Practice That Transfers to Competition

Another common issue in practice design is insufficient specificity to competition. Skills do not exist in isolation; they are expressed under conditions of time pressure, fatigue, emotional stress, and interaction with opponents.

Practice that strips away these contextual factors may allow for repetition, but it often fails to develop the perception–action couplings required in real performance environments.

Specificity does not mean constant match play. Rather, it involves thoughtful manipulation of:

• Task constraints

• Decision-making demands

• Perceptual information

• Consequences of action

  
  

Effective practice balances repetition with representativeness, ensuring that what is learned has relevance beyond the training ground.

Accounting for Individual Differences in Learning

A further limitation of one-size-fits-all coaching approaches is the assumption that all athletes respond similarly to the same practice conditions.

Research indicates that learners differ in:

• Prior experience

• Confidence and motivation

• Cognitive and attentional tendencies

• Tolerance for challenge and error

  
  

An optimal level of difficulty for one athlete may be insufficient or excessive for another. Consequently, effective practice design requires ongoing observation, reflection, and adjustment.

This perspective aligns closely with principles of differentiated learning in education, reinforcing the idea that coaching is not merely about delivering content but about shaping environments that respond to individual needs.

From Instruction to Facilitation

Historically, coaching has been dominated by instruction-heavy approaches. Demonstrations, verbal cues, and corrective feedback have been treated as primary tools for learning.

While instruction has a role, excessive reliance on it can undermine learning by reducing athlete autonomy and problem-solving. Contemporary skill acquisition research increasingly supports a shift towards facilitating learning rather than dictating solutions.

This involves:

• Allowing athletes to explore solutions

• Using questions instead of commands

• Manipulating constraints rather than prescribing movement

• Providing feedback selectively and purposefully

  
  

Such approaches do not remove the coach’s influence. Instead, they require a deeper understanding of how learning emerges from interaction with the environment.

Practice as a Learning Environment

The central message from the SAFE framework is not that coaches should abandon structure or planning. Rather, it is that practice must be designed with learning as the primary outcome, not merely performance or organisation.

Effective practice is often messier than expected. It involves uncertainty, adaptation, and reflection. It requires coaches to tolerate imperfection in the pursuit of long-term development.

When practice is evaluated through this lens, success is no longer defined by how good a session looks, but by how well it prepares athletes to adapt, retain, and perform when it matters most.

References

Williams, A. M., & Hodges, N. J. (2023). Effective practice and instruction: A skill acquisition framework for excellence. Journal of Sports Sciences, 41(9), 833–849.