When i was still serious in high jump, when David took over as coach, he introduced to us this thing called drills, a set of practices we’d do every training. I thought more about it and realised, hmm, these i could possibly make this concept of drills into an everyday affair, so that i’ll do it out of habit everyday. It ought not to take too much time or consume too much energy because its not meant to be an “intense” workout/routine, but over time it ought to help a lot.
Minjian noted i could be much better physically, which is quite true so i set myself a target of doing 200 pushups and 200 crunches everyday. Although it might seem quite intense, when you break it up into repetitions or sets and once you get used to it, it actually doesn’t consume that much time and tire you out. I haven’t seen the results of this training yet since im only a few days into it, but i find it much easier to do after the first two days. If i build up my strength, it ought to give me a significant advantage in every part of my game, so through this drilling method, i’ll be able to give and maintain an added edge into my game.
The other part of my drills which are more technical are the skills i think are really useful in a real game. The first one is dragging the ball forward with the inside of the foot(both left and right of course) so that it looks like a pass 50 times, but not releasing it and instead dragging it back to fake a pass and buy time/space. (another 50 times)A variation of it is using the outside of the foot to push the ball outwards and then dragging it back into my control. Both of these exercises ought to be useful in maneuvouring in tight spaces as well as under pressure.
The second part of my drills is doing 50 decent elasticos. It’s a skill that’s medium-difficulty in a standing position, but once you start trying to incorporate it while moving, it becomes really difficult. It’s a really good move to go past defenders because that change in direction of the ball is so quick, and when both the attacker and the defender are moving, that quick change in direction makes it very hard for any defender to contain.
The third and final part is doing the Puskas move, whereby i drag the ball back and push it into another direction. The first variation is when the ball is towards the left, i used my left foot to pull it back, do a little jump on my right foot such that its positioned in front of the ball, and then my left foot pushes it into a new direction. The second one is easier, where the ball is on my right and i use my left foot to pull it back and push it towards the left.
So how does this apply to everything else? I think drills is a good, efficient way of getting good at a skill, any skill and allow you to make good, steady progress no matter your workload or schedule. It could last from 10 minutes to 30 minutes (anything more and its likely to heavily interrupt your schedule) but since it doesn’t take a huge amount of time from your everyday, you can develop it into a habit and consistently do and apply it. If its not very intense, it won’t require much discipline to persevere with the training everyday, and once you build it up into a habit, it becomes easy for you to keep doing it.
Let’s say you want to get good at interacting with people, and an efficient drill of doing that would be practising/visualizing doing that confidently for a set amount of time. Over a few weeks or even less time, you ought to be a lot more proficient in interacting with people, with no heavy commitment of time. The visualization technique is especially useful because you can do it anywhere, everywhere, anytime.
With the application of drills, you could learn and pick up new skills without putting too much effort into it, simply by incorporating it into an everyday-event. If you want to become fitter and complain there’s no time to exercise, a drilling method would come in helpful because surely the busiest person can afford 10-30 minutes of everyday doing some pushups/light jogging!?
Right now, i think the puskas technique is one that is pretty easy to master, so in a few weeks time i may decide to change and move onto another new set of skills. The elastico looks set to stay for at least a few months, since i can’t even do it 100% well during practise with no pressure. The ball-dragging thing is a bit inbetween, so i think i’ll see how good i am at it by using in a real game to see if it comes to me instinctively.
Maybe you find it hard to find a day in the week to dedicate 3 hours worth of exercise. But with the drilling method, you could gain up to (30minute x 7) 3 and a 1/2 hours of exercise in a week easily by finidng 30 minutes everyday. If you want to get better at your studies, you could spend 30 minutes each day practising the new concepts you’ve learnt, or simply going through them.
Of course, the problem with drills is when you want to learn several new skills and have different areas of your life fighting over the “drill time”. That comes to a matter of prioritization. But with visualization, you can actually use up all your “useless” time into something useful, practising the set of skills you wish to acquire.
What is useless time? When your friends are late for a meeting, and you have to wait for them, that is useless time. When you’re sitting on the bus and simply daydreaming, that is useless time. When you brush your teeth (so regularly you ought not to need to spend much effort consciously doing it), it could be considered useless time. Waiting in a queue is also useless time. There are plenty of pockets of “useless” time and think about how productive it would be if you converted all of them into visualizing your skills.
Let’s have an example. On a typical saturday, i wake up and go for footie training. While waiting for the bus, i spend more or less 10 minutes waiting for it to arrive. When i get on the bus, the trip to school takes about 30 minutes. Once training ends, we regularly just sit around to let ourselves cool down but not doing much for about 10 minutes. We go to someplace to eat, and waiting for the food could be around 5 minutes.
After eating, i remember i have a meeting with my friends, so i take a train to the destined place. Let’s say it takes 20 minutes. I arrive there and my friend is late by a forgivable 5 minutes. Half of my day has passed and let’s take stock of how much useless time i have garnered.
…
Okay i’ve done the counting and altogethere there was up to 80 minutes of useless time! And that’s just half the day gone by, and i didn’t include many “minute” useless times that are scattered throughout the halfday. Visualisation has found out to be very effective in building up skills, even when compared with doing the real, physical action (i think a safe estimate would be that visualisation is 60~80% as effective as real, physical action), but here’s the catch. It can be done anywhere, at any place, and since you have so much useless time in your life, make use of visualisation and turn it into useful time!
The greatest liverpool footballer waiting for his contract 