Once an athlete has decided on the specific goals that they want to accomplish for that practice session they must make sure that they are able to repeat the activity a lot. In Geoff Colvin’s book he states, “High repetition is the most important difference between deliberate practice of a task and performing the task for real.” I mean think about it, you may only get 3 or 4 at bats through out the course of a game. Of those at-bats you would probably only get a few pitches to swing at so through the course of that game you may only be able to swing 4-5 times. Plus you will be so focused on hitting the ball that you won’t be able to focus on improving any specific aspect of your swing.
Remember, what separates great hitters from everyone else is their ability to repeat proper mechanics more often then other hitters. All proper mechanics are, are a group of individual movement patterns. When you are specific about what you want to accomplish you are able to work on the different movement patters in the swing. When you are able to repeat these movement patterns a lot you are developing your ability to repeat them in a game. The more you repeat proper mechanics in practice the more likely you are to repeat them in the game, as a result you will be more likely to produce the results you desire.
In the practice sessions that most athletes engage in they are not usually specific about what they want to accomplish. If they are specific about what they want to work on they usually choose goals that can’t be repeated. Make sure you are choosing aspects of your swing that you can repeat. You can see why focusing on the process and not on the outward result is so important. You may choose to work on your hip separation during one practice session. The result of what the ball does is completely irrelevant. As long as you are able to work on separating your hips during your swing you can consider your practice session a success.
During your next practice session makes sure you begin to implement the first two aspects of deliberate practice.
Be Specific: choose a particular aspect of your mechanics that you want to work on
Make it Highly Repeatable: make sure you focus on and repeat what it is you are trying to accomplish
