Speed Secrets: How to Practice
Practice does not make perfect. Only the right kind of practice makes perfect (and perfect is questionable).
Natural talent and seat time. That’s all it takes to be an elite-level driver.
Nope.
Most people look at the very best race drivers (Max Verstappen, Alex Palou, Colin Braun, Kyle Larson, etc.) and think that what makes them the best is what they were born with—their natural talent. Or, that they would be just as good as these superstars if they had the same amount of seat time that they’ve had.
While their DNA does make a difference, it’s what they’ve done with it that makes the biggest difference. Why do I say that? Well, I’ve seen how hard drivers at the very top work at improving, and I’ve seen far too many drivers with spectacular natural talent hurt their careers because they didn’t work at improving.
Having coached drivers as young as 7 years old in karting, as well as Indy and Daytona 500 winners, I’ve seen firsthand what a driver with natural talent becomes when they work hard at improving, and what happens when they don’t.
But “working hard” isn’t all it takes. You can work hard at the wrong things, and that’s not going to help!
I’ve been fortunate to have coached drivers of every level of natural ability and work ethic. Some have succeeded, and some have not. The common denominator of the ones who have succeeded (to whatever level and type of racing and driving they have chosen) is not just the amount of effort they put into improving, but it’s how they’ve put in that effort.
In other words, how one approaches practice is critical to the ultimate level of performance the driver produces. And if there’s a single reason for the success that I’ve had as a coach, it’s how I’ve approached helping the drivers I work with take on practice.
If football teams practiced the way most performance and race drivers practice, they’d show up at the practice field and play a game. But they don’t do that, do they? No, they do passing drills, tackling drills, blocking drills, kicking drills, and so on. The coaches break the game down into discrete skills, and have the players focus strictly on them over and over again. Only after doing that will they put those skills together to play a “practice game,” or scrimmage. And then, after they’ve done that multiple times, they play the actual full game.
And yet, most performance and race drivers go on track and try to practice all of the thousands of individual skills and techniques all at one time as they attempt to turn their fastest lap. They practice by playing the full game. Unfortunately, too many instructors and coaches approach improvement the same way.
For years, I called my approach “strategic practice,” but then learned about the research by Dr. K. Anders Ericsson (that led to a misinterpreted “10,000 hour rule”). Ericsson called it “deliberate practice.” Either way, it’s all about being more deliberate or strategic in how one practices.
At the core of deliberate practice is breaking the game down into discrete skills, and focusing on each one. In the example I use of the way football teams practice, they might spend up to ten times as much time focused on a specific skill or technique than they do on the entire game.
My observation of most drivers is they spend most of their time focused on the end result—the lap time—than they do on individual, specific skills and techniques. Again, they focus mostly on the entire game.
So, if there is just one thing that you get from this article, it would be that: break your driving down into smaller individual skills and techniques, and spend more time practicing them on their own.
But wait, there’s more to this “how to practice” thing. Twelve-and-a-half things…
Be Deliberate: Yes, I’m stressing this again. If you want to improve your braking, for example, focus on practicing your braking, and not trying to turn a faster lap by braking later. In other words, the more specific you get with practicing a certain part of braking, the more you’ll improve in less time–the more efficient the learning is. Practicing by turning laps with the goal of setting a faster lap time is not efficient or productive. Break down driving a lap into the various skills and techniques, then practice just them, one at a time. The more you break it down, the more effective your practice will be.
Reflection multiplies practice: Research has shown that taking 5 to 10 minutes immediately after a practice session to close your eyes, relax, and reflect on the practice you just finished is a valuable approach to learning. During that time of reflection, don’t be judgmental, or even put a lot of thought into what just happened. Instead, just relax and let your mind wander. Why? Because during that time, your mind consolidates what you’ve just practiced, and it cements it into your mental programming much deeper than if you didn’t give yourself that reflection time.
More is not always more: There comes a time where your mind fills up with learning, and you need a break. Twenty minutes is a good length of time for intense practice, and then take a 5- to 10-minute break before going back at it. Three twenty-minute sessions with short breaks in between are far more effective than a solid hour. Think about how you can use that within the scheduling confines of the event you’re participating in, and how more seat time for the sake of more seat time is not everything.