August 12, 2024 – Practice Until You Can’t Do It Wrong

There’s a common saying in high-level sports: “Don't practice until you do it right. Practice until you can't do it wrong." This is another way of saying ingrain the fundamentals. You can never practice the fundamentals too much as that's how you make it so you can't do it wrong. 

Far too often I hear players say, “I already practiced that, I can do it.” What they say is correct, but meaningless in the context. The goal of fundamentals is that they should be nearly unerring unless your opponent does something to force a mistake. Block a loop? You should be able to do this over and Over and OVER – unless the opponent varies the loop, gives you speeds or spins you aren’t used to, moves it around, and so on. But in a drill, where you get the same ball over and over, you should strive for perfection. If you keep making mistakes, then you probably are drilling too fast.

Note that “strive for perfection” doesn’t mean you reach it, but if you strive to reach it in rote drills, then you’ll start seeing results in regular rallies as those ingrained fundamentals become automatic. The irony is that players below the advanced stages often have trouble ingraining these fundamentals because their practice partners are often their level, and if neither is consistent, then neither gets consistent practice and so they don’t ingrain the fundamentals as well as they should. Why? Because they drill too fast! Slow down to speeds both sides are consistent at, and then you can ingrain the shots.

And then you can practice until you can’t do it wrong.