Drill or adapt? Why you don’t have to choose

Ask two coaches whether to drill or adapt the task, and you’ll get two strong opinions.

One says repetition builds the foundation: get the pattern right, then add the rest. The other says players learn by solving problems: change the task, and let them find the movement.

If you coach tennis like myself, you’ve probably heard both, and perhaps felt both are partly right. And you start asking yourself questions:

I feel like the research doesn’t pick a side. It picks a stage. When I read it that way, something clicked. Here are three reasons why.

1. Early on, repetition and focus both help

In the research on practice schedules, drill-like blocked practice usually loses to mixed, random practice in the long run. But there is an exception. Schmidt and Bjork (1992) report that at minimal levels of practice, blocked practice produces better retention than random practice, and that this effect reverses with additional practice.

Attention seems to follow a similar pattern. Beilock et al. (2002) compared attention on step-by-step execution with distraction. Experienced golfers putted more accurately when distracted, and experienced soccer players dribbled better with their strong foot when distracted. But novices performed better when focusing on the steps, and so did experts with their weaker foot.

In plain words: in the early stage, a stable setting and step-by-step cues both seem to help. A drill with clear cues fits a new pattern. It fits an established, fast forehand much less.

2. Later, the task has to change

As players improve, the same drill stops asking enough. Guadagnoli and Lee (2004) propose that learning depends on the information that comes out of performance, and that this should be tuned to both the difficulty of the task and the skill of the performer. A task that challenges a beginner is a different task for an advanced player.

That is where adapting the task comes in: variation, decisions, and consequences. Pinder et al. (2011) argue that practice should keep the functionality of the performance setting and the fidelity of the actions the player will need. And a meta-analysis found that practicing under simulated pressure improved performance under pressure, with a medium effect (g = 0.67 after removing one outlier; Low et al., 2021).

3. Adapting isn’t only for advanced players

It’s easy to think adapting the task is something you do with good players. But in a five-week study with beginning tennis players, those who practiced with a standard ball on a standard court had fewer hitting opportunities, and lower hitting success as a result, than those who practiced on scaled courts (Farrow & Reid, 2010).

That is adapting the task, for beginners. It shows that the choice isn’t “drill for beginners, adapt for experts.” Both tools can be right at any level. It depends on what the player needs in that session.

Together, these three make “drill or adapt?” the wrong question. The better question is: what does this player need right now? And that’s a darn difficult question to answer on a busy court.