Reactions to my article, “Words Communicate More Than Information,” gathered a gamut of responses. Here is one of them …
I hated “drills,” and so did every child I ever coached! It goes beyond buzzwords. As you said, it denotes a mindset on how we coach and train kids. I VAGUELY remember my childhood, but I do know I hated “drills.”
So, when we become coaches, we blindly carry on the same things we disliked? Yeah, that makes sense. Somehow, we think that now that we are older and wiser, drills, although disliked, can be justified.
Every new generation of coaches does exactly the same thing. I read an article by Kevin Keegan (Liverpool & England great), who praised how the training was conducted at Hamburg in Germany when he transferred from Liverpool. He said their training with the ball improved his skills, fitness, and effort levels. In England, he said, we run for miles without the ball, exercise without the ball, and players scaled back their efforts to last the session.
Perhaps we could remove other words like, rote, conditioning, etc. Drills shout out, boring, sameness, uninteresting & disinterest. Consecutive repetition is terrible. Repetition with variations, increased complexity & challenges are not.
