Why People Love to Hate Practice

Parents want to know: How can I teach my daughter the value of working hard without pushing her so much she wants to quit? How will I know if her goals are her own, not mine for her? How do I help without affecting our relationship in a negative way? 

“How To Get Your Daughter to Practice” was one of the top-ten opened email newsletters I’ve ever sent out.

I was a kid who felt very guilty that I didn’t want to practice. I just didn’t feel like it. I was led to believe that if I wanted to be good, creating a goal would be motivation enough. However, for some reason, that hypothesis was not proving itself in real life. It turns out, there are reasons why creating goals as your only motivation doesn’t work. You need to create systems.

First, the foundation of the system is a good parent-pitcher relationship. In order to be a pitcher who can move past a baseline competency, her parent has to be heavily involved. He or she will have to take her to lessons, learn the mechanics, and catch for her 3-6 times per week. The partnerships looks something like:

• Both love to pitch & catch together.

• Both are working towards improving their own life skills (kindness, patience, tenacity, resilience, etc.).

• Parent is showing his/her daughter how to take ownership of herself

• Physical skills are showing improvement.

The great pitcher-parent duos make practicing into a habit. They do at the same time each day, no questions asked. It was simply a way of life. How did they get that way?

In James Clear’s book “Atomic Habits.” he aggregates many of the basic sports psychology concepts to date. In fact there were so many great ideas, we used his book as our offseason mental game guide.

One of the tactics he explains  is called “habit stacking.” When I read it, I remembered the most successful Practice Pro pitcher-pitcher teams I knew were already doing this, probably without consciously realizing it.

James Clear says “habit stacking” is a great way to start a new habit. After a habit you already have, you add in the new one you want to begin. Be as specific as possible. 

“After [current habit], I will [new habit].”

Pitcher: “After [I put my backpack in the closet when I get home from school], I will grab my glove out and go to the backyard to meet mom/dad.”
Parent: “After [I pull into the garage from work], I will grab my bucket from the corner and meet pitcher in the yard.”

This needs to be done every day to get into the habit. Then, as the pitcher gets the hang of it, you can replace Mondays with:

Pitcher: “After [I put my backpack in the closet when I get home from school on Mondays], I will grab my glove out and go to the backyard to pitch 40 fastballs to the 5 spot into the net.”
Parent: “After [I pull into the garage from work on Mondays], I will see pitcher practicing on her own and give her a high five. 

Keep working on replacing “together” practice-days with solo practice days and she will develop a sense of ownership. Your daughter will know which tasks to complete while she is alone. For me, it took about 6 months of 5-days-per week practice with a coach to learn how to work out by myself. I reached the point where I had memorized a few routines and felt “off” if I didn’t do my practice. Unfortunately, I didn’t get to this level of discipline until college, but I have many current students who have achieved this in middle school.

By creating systems and relying very little on will-power and “telling/encouraging her to go out practice alone,” Clear says, you’ll take the stress out of your day and add freedom into it.