The argument for Games in Practice vs Drills — Bones 🦴 not Cones 🚧

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When I initially heard the term Small Sided Games (SSG), I was on the fence. I thought that the idea was just to roll the balls out and let the kids play.

Why would you just let players play? In order for them to learn the game, they need structure, drills and explicit instructions. Why would anyone replace drills with games?

The term “Games” in sports don’t mean passive coaching

A lot of my colleagues use different frameworks when it comes to coaching — Constraints Led Approach (CLA), Games Based Approach (GBA), Small-Sided Games (SSG), Teaching Games for Understanding (TGfU) — The list just goes on and on.

Whilst the nuances are different within each framework, the intentional design of the practice environment to replicate game-like movements and actions is consistent.

That was the key part of where the word “game” had thrown me off. This wasn’t passive coaching at all. In fact, I would argue that it was more intentional. Coaches who coach through games are deliberate in designing “games” that replicate the conditions necessary for the skills to be learned.

This had a crucial advantage over drills in multiple ways.

#1. Learning requires Transfer

Drills tend to isolate a technical movement in a blocked segment. Improvements are seen because the player is repeating the action over and over. Unfortunately, this skill doesn’t transfer to the game.

A core reason is that there is no context in a drill. In a shooting drill, a player will get multiple shots up in a short space of time, and that allows the player to refine their technical movements. However, in a game, every time that player catches the ball, they would have to perceive multiple cues including, but not limited to:

• “are my teammates open in a better position?”
• “do I have space to get this shot off?”
• “am I in range?”

Drills remove all the noise that exists in a game and places the players in a vacuum where they are just repeating the same move over and over again.

“Blocked, repetitive practice leads to increased performance in practice. These improvements do not transfer to competitions as well as small-sided games”(Wigmore, Williams)

#2. Games provide Context

Using games decreases performance as things are more chaotic. There is more context and players are able to perceive the various cues needed to execute the movement.

Because the cues are dynamic, there are more errors. Reflecting back, this may have been my resistance to adopting this style of coaching. As a technical movement is not isolated, it becomes very difficult to coach a single aspect. Every possession has multiple things that can be corrected.

The player catching the ball to shoot it perceives that the defense is taking space away, so he drives and finishes at the rim.

Do I now coach the footwork on the catch or the first step? Do I coach the finish or do I coach the closeout by the defender? Do I correct the defenders stance and recovery?

In a very simple example, there are a lot more variables present. Imagine adding more players and working on a more complex skill.

Research shows that this style of random practice is better for learning because “the process of problem-solving is more beneficial than repeating a solution to a problem” (Metcalfe, 2007)

#3. Performance ≠ Learning

Performance is a temporary change in behaviour, whereas learning refers to a permanent change in behaviour. Blocked drills increase performance but decrease learning, whereas small-sided games do the opposite.

Drills are designed for rapid progression and because the noise has been removed, players are able to default to autopilot. This means that perceived improvement in the drill can be observed without retention actually taking place.

The increase in performance in practice fools coaches into thinking that learning is taking place. Hence coaches can continue to do things this way because it appears that players are getting better. We know it’s not true because when game day rolls around, there is no transfer.

Bjork (1994) indicated that short-term performance is a lousy indicator of long-term learning and showed that they can be inversely related.

Drills aren’t inherently bad. In fact, there are times that it makes sense to use drills in an isolated fashion. Yet, there is more evidence showing that the three components of learning (acquisition, retention & transfer) are enhanced through the use of small-sided games or constraints in practice.

If we ask our players to get outside their comfort zones so that they can become better players, we must be willing to do the same. Move away from the known good to an unknown great.