Why Practice Alone Isn't Enough

Friday Fuel - August 8

Performance Practice: Training Skills That Show Up When It Matters

A couple of weeks ago, we looked at how important the basics are in building greatness. Whether it’s the perfect pass, the clean sprint start, or consistent ball handling — mastery of the fundamentals is the foundation of every top athlete’s success.

But here’s the truth:
Just practicing the basics isn’t enough.

Because knowing how to do something in training, and delivering it under pressure, in the heat of competition, when everything’s on the line — that’s a different skill altogether.

This week, we’re diving into the process that transforms repetition into readiness.
The kind of practice that doesn’t just sharpen your skills — it prepares them for game day.

It’s called Performance Practice — and it’s how good athletes become great.

🏆 The Missing Piece in “Practice Makes Perfect”

Have you ever seen a player with amazing individual skills who just couldn’t translate them into a game? Or someone who looks like a star in training but struggles under the lights—even though they practice for hours every week?

It happens more than you’d think. And often, it’s not because they’re lazy, untalented, or unwilling.
It’s because their practice process is faulty.

Now, we’ve all heard the sayings:

• “Practice makes perfect.”

• “Perfect practice makes perfect.”

They sound motivating—but they miss a crucial element: performance under pressure.

To perform in competition, an athlete must learn to:

1. Execute skills at speed

2. Do it under fatigue

3. Do it under simulated then real competition-like pressure

If you don’t add these elements, skills live in practice, fail to progress, and die in performance.

🎯 Wayne Goldsmith’s 7 Steps to Performance Practice

Wayne Goldsmith, one of the world’s leading high-performance coaches, explains that technical skill is only part of the equation. Here’s how Wayne breaks down true skill mastery:

1. Learn the skill – Get the technique right, slow and controlled.

2. Perform it well – Repeat until it’s smooth and automatic.

3. Perform at speed – Make it game‑realistic by doing it at speed in training.

4. Add fatigue – Train when tired to mimic late‑game conditions.

5. Add pressure – Timers, defenders, or small‑sided competition.

6. Consistency – Deliver it again and again, even under stress.

7. Competition – Execute in the actual game, consistently.

If your athlete skips the final steps, their talent never becomes performance.

See the actual detail in the image below.

🏀 Why Pressure Matters

Let’s take Michael Jordan.
He was famous for his competitiveness but also his ability to perform under the utmost pressure. Where did he gain the ability to use his skills under pressure. Yes, it was by following this process on the basketball court but also through his gambling. Hang on a second. What? Gambling?

Look, it’s a completely extreme example, but to Jordan, gambling recreated pressure. He wanted his heart rate up, his focus sharp, his brain rehearsing the feeling of “everything on the line.”

So when the real moment came—a game‑winning shot—it didn’t feel like pressure anymore.

Now, we’re not telling your child to go out and gamble to become a great player 😅. In fact please steer well clear of it!
But we are saying is that finding ways to make pressure feel normal in training really helps when they have to switch into competition mode and perform.

Now Jordan didn’t do this just with his gambling…

🏀 Michael Jordan’s Pickup Games During Space Jam

🎥 The "Jordan Dome" and Daily All-Star Games

During the summer of 1995, while filming Space Jam, Warner Bros. built a mini-court inside an inflatable structure—later dubbed the “Jordan Dome”. That court became the site for daily pickup games with NBA stars like Patrick Ewing, Charles Barkley, Reggie Miller, and Glen Rice, alongside animated extras and guest players. These scrimmages were intense, energized, and often lasted up to 3 hours after filming.

⏱️ Training Like It's Game Day

MJ’s former teammates described these sessions as “like an NBA All-Star Game every day”. Reggie Miller said even after filming all day, these scrimmages would run into the night—and MJ showed up fresh and relentless, like a vampire!

🗣️ Jordan’s Mindset: Proof Over Rest

Jordan himself said that the film was secondary to his basketball shape. He assembled league stars at Warner Bros. to evaluate and prepare collectively before the season. It wasn’t just training—it was pressure rehearsal with the very best, built mid-summer when most players are resting. But what you also don’t always hear about is that he would train alone also, mastering skills and techniques that he would then go and try out in the scrimmages until he KNEW he could perform them, just as Wayne Goldsmith’s process outlines.

🧠 What This Teaches About Performance Practice

• Game-Level Pressure in Practice: By placing himself in high-stakes pickup games—even during downtime—Jordan created game-like stress in training situations.

• Consistent, Relentless Effort: He layered technique training, competition, fatigue, and evaluation, pushing beyond comfort zones.

• Mental Readiness: When the season began, the challenges Jordan created weren’t new—they were familiar, routine.

🏅 Athletes Who Lived Performance Practice

Barry Sanders: My favourite NFL player of all time. Electric. Mesmerising. Like a living whirligig. He had an ability to move that is still unrivalled, all built under pressure. After NFL games, win or lose, Barry would often go back on to the field, absolutely exhausted, to fix the one move he wasn’t happy with. He understood that skills built under fatigue translated to game‑day greatness.

Red Panda: Mindblowing!! Balancing 16 bowls on her head while riding a 7‑foot unicycle at NBA halftime shows. Her secret? She built up her ability from training alone under pressure until she was able to practice like she performs—under pressure, in full costume, with all the variables live. Show this to your athletes. Sure, it’s not a sport but if someone can train to be able to do this live then it’s a great way to highlight to our kids the learning process for any skill can help you achieve anything!

🎨 The Art of Practice — Laido Dittmar’s Secret to Doubling Progress

Laido Dittmar, former Cirque du Soleil artist turned “Art of Practice” expert has spent over 20,000 hours refining what he calls The Natural’s Method—a practice strategy that helps people progress 2–3× faster than average, highlighting the process that sportspeople who look like ‘naturals’ use. Importantly, his insight comes not from more effort, but from smarter effort.

Laido’s key realization:

He observed performers and athletes he calls “naturals,” not because they’re born with skill, but because they practice in specific, effective ways—ways most people overlook. According to his system, the difference is intentional structure, not raw volume of reps. Practical insights include:

• Start with your hardest work first—not at the end when fatigue steals quality.

• Prioritize new or difficult skills early, when focus and energy are highest.

• Treat practice like performance: add constraints, variability, and fatigue to simulate real game conditions.

• In the video below he explains why we get gains quickly when practicing a new skill but progress often tails off quickly. The further learning in this video reinforces what Wayne Goldsmiths progression forces upon us as we practice - that the steps that constantly making it harder force us to improve.

🔍 Why This Matters for Young Athletes

If Wayne Goldsmith’s model maps what true performance practice looks like, Laido’s Art of Practice explains why it works—and how to adapt it to any skill progression.

• Rather than endless repetitions, prioritize high-impact reps early in a session.

• Replicate game stress in training—not just in drills, but in timing, fatigue, and environment.

• Build routines that simulate pressure, so game-day feels familiar, not foreign.

In short: high-quality, structured, performance-aligned practice turns potential into performance.

👨‍👧 How Parents Can Help

Now this depends on the age and the relationship you have with your child. Some children will listen to their parents - often when they are younger this is easier. Some have incredibly tight relationships almost as if they are going through the sport together. Others need someone who is not a family or friend to be that mentor. Knowing your child and what works best for them is the most important thing. Remember, it is about them understanding and owning the process.

That being said, you can help build performance practice into your young athlete’s life with simple tweaks:

1. Show them the seven steps and help them understand where they are in the progression. Ask don’t tell and help them take ownership of the process:

   • Then discuss what the next step actually means and how they can move through the progression.

2. Make games and drills realistic to the stage they are at:

   • If they want help training, help them understand where they are on the progression and what they should be working on - eg speed of the skill vs making it game realistic and adding some pressure. Don’t just always pass in an empty field. Add defenders, countdowns, or targets to start to stress that skill and their decision making.

3. Use playful pressure

   • Make mini‑challenges or goals fun: “If you miss this, do 10 star jumps! If you get it I do 10 star jumps”. “Let’s beat the last time you did it by half a second.”

4. Help them reflect

   • This may be you or it may be a mentor that you have helped to find them. The key is helping them identify the good, praise their effort as they move along the progression and celebrate the little wins so that they can see the growth themselves as well as the next step to mastery.

5. Help them find the right environment and get them there

   • Your child may need help to find the right environment to practice or stress test their new skills. This is where you can come in - helping them identify WHERE is the best next step for their skill development and removing barriers to make it happen. This can be literally anything, from finding the right mentor or club, to picking up all of their friends and taking them for a fun social game every Friday night.

🔥 This Works

My 17 year old son, Sam, has had some struggles this season in his football and his confidence has been pretty low at times.

Recently he started working with a mentor who has built up a relationship and has him focused on some simple weekly habits. One of those habits is to train some of the skills he wants to add to his game. Sam enlisted me to help him during training and we’ve started following Wayne’s process.

He began simple and slow, working on the technique to lose his defender, receive in tight spaces away from pressure with his head up to complete the next action. He then did it at a greater speed - lots of mistakes were slowly followed by more and more moments of perfect technique.

I was then added as a low pressure defender as he received the ball off a wall, and I slowly progressed by making the pressure more akin to a game-like state where I got quite physical with him. He then took this as a focus into his school games which are quite a level below what he usually plays at, but a wonderful place for him to work on the skill. He got a lot of success and you could see his confidence blossoming.

This week he was asked to train with the U23 and Premier teams. He was pretty nervous to say the least but was determined to try what he had been working on. The first 10 minutes was pretty ropey but once he started to understand the speed and extra pressure of these older athletes you could see him adjust what he had been working on and he started to thrive. He came off the pitch having used the skills under much greater pressure, reduced time and space and enhanced fatigue… and learning that he can do it.

Sam was absolutely buzzing, but it was also a great reinforcement that this process works it you follow it through and look for the environments to up the pressure as your skill and technique becomes better. Staying still is not an option if you want to progress and you have to go in search of ways to put that skill under stress when it is appropriate.

💪 Final Whistle

It’s pretty simple, great athletes don’t just practice - they practice in a way that makes performance inevitable.

We would love you to share this process with your athletes and hear what you have to say about it. Whether it is this week or sometime down the line when they have tried it out, please let us know how it going.

See you next week,
— Billinda & Ben
The Game Changer

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