How I Practice. What it all means.

The way I practice keeps on changing as I develop as a skater and as I study training techniques by top coaches in “talent hotbeds” across the world. These studies are changing my life and also my approach to stand-up comedy and yoga, and are very influenced by The Talent Code and The Little Book of Talent by Daniel Coyle. My approach also changes due to influences of yoga, meditation, various motivational speakers and other “older” skateboard bloggers.

I have goals of what I’d like to learn, so I break them down into baby steps and slowly, steadily work toward making it happen using a combination of drill-like games and analysis. Yeah skating is purely for fun – as a bi-product it keeps me sane and healthy. Steady routines and analytical practice may not seem fun to other people, and they aren’t always fun for me either. However, the end result of practice is more fun.

Practice Sets, Games and Drills
New Trick Practice: Anything I’m just relearning or learning for the first time, I break down into it’s component parts, and practice them, goofing around with it all. Once I have a basic feel for how it should all go together, or at least the first chunk, I start to play a game with myself of counting my attempts versus makes. Sometimes long before I ever land one. Often I get zero makes for a long time, and then I slowly start to land the trick and I compete with myself over the weeks to increase my make rate.

There is a very important variation on this New Trick Practice. I used this technique quite heavily back in the early days of learning kickflips and varial flips (back around February and March, 2013), and then switched it up until resuming along with the implementation of more games in December 2013.  Here’s the deal:

My goal is to learn the baby steps, or “chunks” of each trick, in sequence, and then put them together and land “makes” of the tricks.

You’ll see with some of the New Trick Practice I break down the numbers like this:
Tre Flip Practice:
2 – 16 – 7. (8% make rate/64% Flip or other fix/28% ollie or scoop fix)

Component tracking: Depending on the trick, the actual numbers mean something different, but in general, the numbers total the amount of attempts. Above, there were 25 tre flip attempts. The first number is the number of makes. So in this example, I made 2 out of 25, for an 8% make rate. The second number is usually the number of non-make attempts that had the initial ollie/scoop action performed correctly, but didn’t land it due to a problem with a chunk further on in the trick (like the flick of the foot, or the lifting of the legs, turning of the shoulders, etc). Often, these second numbers are composed of attempts that were super close “almosts.” A high second number here means that I’ve been doing a good job learning the first “chunk” or baby step of the trick. In almost all cases, getting the right ollie or scoop angle into the trick is the first component. As I update this page, I’m still struggling with tre flips, but I’m actually stoked to see my middle number improving steadily. Means I’m on the right path, and I take inspiration from competing against myself in a game of improvement based on this middle number. The third number pertains to non-makes that were more flailing thuds due to me not getting a proper ollie or scoop motion. My immediate goal, even before getting 25 makes (25-0-0), would be to have anything with a zero at the end (0-25-0 would still be very satisfying).

Component Game involving New Trick Practice: One of my new games pertains to new trick practice as described above, check it out, “The Component Game“.

In general, once I consistently reach about a 30% “Make rate” of a new trick, I switch that trick out of the New Trick category, and I include it as part of my practice in a “Practice Set” (or Drill set, from about 1/13 until 12/13. I changed the name of it).

Drills:
You’ll see throughout this blog a bunch of links and pages that list “Drill Sets.” I used to do very repetitious and experimental drills of these tricks. I’d land anywhere from 1 to 25 makes of each trick in any given drill set. Productive, and I learned quite a bit. However, as of December, 2013, I’m switching away from Drills sets. Am moving toward more games using these “Practice sets”.

Practice Sets and games: I have now begun incorporating my “Drills” into “Games.” I still repetitively practice a fixed amount of makes in a routine, – so I’m still totally macho – but I wish to increase the learning and the fun by following the principles of top coaches of everything worldwide. I’m getting the same benefit of drills, but with more engagement and as a bi-product more analysis of every trick a split second after each attempt. Plus I now have the thrill of a making up new Skate games that can be played solitaire or with others. Check out The M.A.T Game or The F.A.M Game. SKATE Solitaire! Yeah I’m a geek.

Non-game use of “Practice Sets”
Before I started playing games, I would work through the drill sets, always experimenting for better execution of the trick. Motivation was not a problem, and the drills had not (yet) gone on auto-pilot. That is always a danger with drills.
After only a couple of days of playing games using “practice sets”, I foresaw that I was more focused on the make of the trick rather than the cleaner or higher, more precise execution. That is because the goals of the first couple of games I created involve landing the trick as soon as possible. Not always good for pushing the envelope. Initially I named them, “Game sets” instead of “Practice sets”, but have already gone back into the pages and posts and changed it to the latter. Reason being: Sometimes I just might feel like moving through a practice set without playing a game behind it. I just might want to experiment slowly with a number of makes and not move on to the next trick until I’m satisfied with all of the components of any given make. Just like I did when I called them “drill sets”. So I was like, “Why call it a “game set” if I’m not always playing a game? But I was also like, “Don’t call it a drill any more, soften it up and make it sound more fun, like it is!”.

(A little side note on this: I did just invent another game, and I’ll call it a “The Practice Sandwich” I got the name from Daniel Coyle. This game utilizes two practice sets sandwiching together a set wherein I reach beyond my limits to improve the skills. In this game, it isn’t all about the fast make. So all I’m saying is there are ways to make games that don’t just play it safe for the make. All the same, sometimes I just crave to do a straight, experimental, high quality Practice Set without tallying any scores).

Geek chart
I also used to have a geeky chart application on my phone. From time to time I would plug in the numbers and look at the chart, just so I could get a dramatic boost of encouragement. I stopped doing this though, as it was time consuming. Below is a chart of when I was first learning rolling kickflips.