455 – Do We Really Need to Learn The “Fundamentals” of a Skill Through Decomposition and Repetition First?

Challenging the Traditional Approach

The podcast episode discusses the common belief in sports coaching that players must first master isolated, repetitive drills before moving on to more game-like contexts. It introduces a study that challenges this notion and compares the effectiveness of traditional drills with a nonlinear pedagogy approach using small-sided games. The study found that both approaches were equally effective in developing the fundamental skills of soccer, even though the traditional method stacked the deck in its favor by testing in isolated and unrepresentative conditions. This challenges the idea that strict repetition is necessary for skill acquisition, highlighting the importance of variability and representative practice.