An advantage of being a coach is that I\u2019m looking at what a driver needs from an outside perspective. One of the disadvantages of being a driver who wants to improve is that\u2019s it\u2019s difficult to be in the act of driving, while observing what you\u2019re doing with your driving.<\/p>\n
Over the years, I\u2019ve discovered dozens of tactics that any driver, from novice track day driver to elite-level professional racer, will benefit from using. For simulator training alone, there are over twenty specific practices. It doesn\u2019t really matter what their skills are like, whether they have a weakness in a technique or not, or what they or I think they should focus on to improve, these practice approaches, or \u201cdrills,\u201d work.<\/p>\n
When I mention the word \u201cdrills\u201d to drivers, I sometimes see a confused look on their face. To many drivers, the idea of coaching is having someone tell them to brake later, turn in earlier, get on the gas sooner, look further ahead, and so on. But that\u2019s like a basketball coach telling a player to \u201cshoot the ball so it goes through the center of the hoop.\u201d<\/p>\n
Athletes in all sports\u2014with the exception of motorsport\u2014practice in a more effective way. As I\u2019ve said many times, if football teams, for example, practiced like performance\/race drivers, they\u2019d show up to a practice session and play a game. But they don\u2019t do that, do they?<\/p>\n
Football teams practice drills\u2014passing, kicking, running, catching, blocking, etc. The coaches break the game down into discrete skills, and have the players practice them over and over again. Then, they put a few of these skills together and combine them into another drill. And then, they play a practice game, a scrimmage. Finally, they play the game.<\/p>\n
What do most performance and race drivers do? They drive around the track, over and over again, playing the whole game. Practicing a specific skill in the middle of playing the whole game is not the most efficient and effective way to improve.<\/p>\n
Dr. Anders Ericsson<\/a> (who passed away in 2020), considered by many to be the leading expert of understanding and studying how the best performers in any activity became the best, called this approach to learning and improving \u201cdeliberate practice.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n I really don\u2019t know how or why I stumbled onto this approach with my own driving, and the instructing and coaching of other drivers. But at the time I called what I was doing\u2014 breaking the act of driving down into bite-sized techniques, and practicing just them\u2014\u201cstrategic practice.\u201d And it worked, so I kept doing that until one day I read some of Ericsson\u2019s research and realized what I was doing was what he called deliberate practice.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/substackcdn.com\/image\/fetch\/$s_!0guf!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep\/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F2982971d-e57c-4b12-ad7a-53985db3629a_2155x1580.heic\")
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