Creating Automaticity In Players
We have all seen the players who when they perform an action are often more clunky or whose movements are often more rigid than other performers. This can especially be true when working with younger or less experienced athletes. Often less experienced players tend to have movements in baseball are more awkward than their skilled counterparts. Obviously a persons natural movements play some role in this. But I think that often times it comes down to At Bats.
When I’m talking about At Bats yes I could mean actual At Bats for batters. But I think that this goes a little bit further than just hitting. I think that providing players with enough experience in game situations is a big deal. Yes actual games will help, but I think that games have a natural “At-Bat” limit placed on them. Most hitters will only get 2–3 At Bats per game. (This could also be ground balls, for catchers this could be opportunities to block pitches, or even the amount of playing time that players get.) Having real situations pop up that help to recreate game situations over and over will help to expedite the process of gaining these valuable “At Bats”.
The idea of gaining experience is often thought of as only happening in games, and though I agree that the game is a great teacher I think their are ways in which players can get more realistic “At-Bats” built into their day. How to build this type of environment is out of the scope of what I am writing today. But there are several really good examples of how to do this available on the internet.
As a player gains experience they can take their attention off of movement or other coordination factors while making that process automated. The idea is to build this automaticity as quickly as possible so that players can begin to move their attention to more pressing issues. The idea is that conscious thought no longer needs to be placed on the movement, but rather the player can begin to focus on other cues, or things that are going on that will help them make a better decision. (Glencross 1978)
Once a player has gained a particular type of skill or coordination to replicate the movement on a subconscious level. I like the way that Posner puts it “Following extensive practice, skills can be performed ‘automatically’ requiring restricted conscious attentional demand.” (Posner 1967)
In order to gain mastery only having 2–3 successful At-Bats in a given day is not going to be enough. Creating practice structures that encourage 5–10 or situations where every moment their is a cognitive load being placed on the player in order to help them gain more experience should be the goal. A great practice structure should have many At-Bats built into them for all players.
The difficulty in building in these At Bats on a baseball field in daunting when it comes to the actual application of it though. You only have so many pitchers/hitters/fielders to help. The problem also is that coaches are always looking to progress quickly. To help players move along in their progress to the next level faster than they previously had been. This is where we might be getting it wrong as coaches. We might need to step back, and realize that although a player has had some success in whatever task we are teaching, that in order to help automate that task we need to make it so that they get hundreds of at bats and a limited number.
Trying to create this automaticity is had to build up, and takes longer than we could appreciate. I think that when coaches go to develop their practice structure focusing on what we are trying to automate, and what we are trying to accomplish should not be overlooked.
