Challenge Point Framework
There is a zone where learning is optimized. And this zone of learning is not where you're performing your best, but it's outside this zone of comfort. It's the point where you're being pushed slightly beyond current capabilities.
Performing vs. Learning
There's a need to distinguish between what you see now during practice and its relationship to future performance.
Play vs Competition
If you set the goals of winning against those of learning, the goals of winning and performing my best will always trump sacrificing my best in order to learn.
Relationship Between Practice and Performance
Having an understanding of the relationship between what you do in practice and how that impacts performance is important. Thinking about periodization in terms of, when can I afford to spend more time in a messy learning zone where performance is not going to be so high up on my agenda and planning out the practice session with that consideration in mind.
Timestamp
1:24 — Professional Background
4:11 — Challenge Point Framework
7:16 — Difference Between Performance and Learning
9:23 — Three Zones of Learning
16:05 — Skill Transfer
29:05 — Three Different Types of Practice
35:07 — Commonly Overlooked Aspect of Deliberate Practice
40:03 — 5 Common Myths of Coaching
47:58 — 5 Keys to Facilitate Optimal Skill Learning
50:41 — Recommendations For Golfers/Coaches
53:46 — What’s Something You’ve Changed Your Mind About Over Your Career?
56:07 — Book Recommendations
57:27 — Current Projects
Resources
Book Recommendation #1: Thinking, Fast and Slow
Paper #1: An extended challenge-based framework for practice design in sports coaching
Paper #2: Effective practice and instruction: A skill acquisition framework for excellence
About Dr. Nicola Hodges
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Dr Nicola Hodges runs the Motor Skills Lab in Kinesiology at UBC, in Vancouver Canada, which is on the unceded territories of the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh Nations.
It is here she studies anything to do with practice and the processes underpinning motor skill performance and learning. She conducts laboratory experiments with new learners to determine how and why various practice variables (such as instruction, demonstrations, feedback, order of practice) impact motor learning, as well as studying skilled performance and the developmental activities that are best predictors of expertise. She has a particular interest in processes involved in action observation; including the anticipation of action outcomes in sport-related contexts, how people learn from watching others, and how people “share” practice and impact skill acquisition processes when practising together.
She has co-authored the popular book (now in its third edition), Skill acquisition in Sport: Research, Theory and Practice (Routledge) and she has close to 150 published journal articles and chapters on topics related to the study of motor learning and motor control more broadly. She has received funding for her research from the three major government funding agencies in Canada and is very grateful for continued support.
Practice Design & Skill Acquisition w/ Dr. Nicola Hodges