I love a good practice plan. There is something deeply satisfying about looking at a sheet of paper with neat time blocks, drill names, goals, and arrows. It gives the illusion that practice will behave.
Practice, of course, has never agreed to this arrangement. One drill runs long. Another needs more teaching. A ball disappears behind the bleachers.
Someone has to retie a shoe. Then you look at the clock and realize the final 18 minutes of your carefully designed masterpiece are now six minutes and a prayer. So coaches do what coaches do.
We move faster. “Water. Go. New groups.
Grab a ball. We’re switching. Middles over here. Pins there.
Servers on the end line. Let’s go, let’s go, let’s go.” What if the drill itself is not the problem? What if the hidden cost is the transition between drills?
The Part of Practice We Rarely Coach
We plan the work, but we rarely plan the switch. That matters because changing tasks requires its own set of cognitive demands. Athletes have to stop one activity, release one set of rules, locate new information, organize themselves physically, remember where they belong, and begin a new task.
For some athletes, that is almost automatic. For others, especially athletes with ADHD, autism, or other executive-function differences, the transition itself can be the hardest part. Then we often punish the athlete for the cost of that transition.
They are the last one into the next drill. They forgot which side they were on. They carried the wrong ball. They missed the first instruction because they were still trying to figure out whether their water bottle was supposed to come with them.
From the coaching side, it can look like laziness, inattention, or poor urgency. From the athlete’s side, it may feel like being asked to change television channels while someone is also changing the language, the remote, and where the couch is located. That is a lot of switching.
Urgency and Chaos Are Not the Same Thing
I am not arguing that practices should move slowly. I actually like urgency. I want athletes who can transition quickly, communicate, and get into the next task without wasting five minutes discussing who is first in line.
But urgency works best when the environment is understandable. There is a difference between “move quickly” and “figure out what I mean quickly.” Coaches blur those two all the time. If athletes know the destination, group, equipment, and first action, then speed becomes a performance behavior.
If all of those things are changing at once and the coach is shouting them during the transition, speed becomes a test of who can decode chaos fastest. That may accidentally reward the athletes who process the environment in the way the coach expects.
It may also make other athletes look less prepared than they really are. This is one reason I have become more careful about using behavior as evidence of motivation. An athlete who is slow moving into a new drill might not be unmotivated.
They may be overloaded by the switch. We still coach the behavior, but we should probably understand what is producing it before we assign a character trait.
Build the Transition Into the Drill
A simple fix is to treat transitions as part of practice design instead of dead space between the “real” parts. Before the current drill ends, tell athletes what is coming next. Keep it brief: “After this round, same partners, move to Court 2, one ball per group.” That one sentence gives the brain a runway.
If the next setup is complicated, put it on a whiteboard or demonstrate the shape before releasing the group. For a volleyball practice, I may point to where each position is starting. In a classroom, I might show the next assignment on the screen before students close the previous one.
Same teaching problem, different shoes. You can also create consistent transition language. Maybe “reset” always means get water, check the board, and return to your home base. Maybe every new drill starts with athletes frozen in their first position before the explanation begins.
Maybe equipment always gets returned to the same place. The point is not to turn your gym into an airport ground-control system. The point is to reduce unnecessary decisions.
Decision Fatigue Shows Up in Small Places
We often think of decision-making in sport as tactical. Where should I serve? Who do I block? Do I shoot or pass?
But athletes make dozens of smaller decisions before they ever get to those meaningful ones. Where do I stand? Who is my partner? Is this live?
Are we keeping score? Do I rotate after the rep? Which side am I on? Can I get water?
Was the coach talking to everyone or just the setters? For an athlete who has difficulty with working memory, task initiation, or shifting attention, those small decisions can quietly eat up mental bandwidth. By the time the actual competitive decision arrives, they have already paid a cognitive tax just getting into position.
This does not mean we remove all decisions. Sport requires decision-making. In fact, athletes need chances to solve problems, adapt, and manage uncertainty. We just need to ask a better question: Is this decision part of the skill I want to train, or is it accidental friction created by my practice design?
If I want a player to read a block, that uncertainty belongs in the drill. If I want them to guess which court they are supposed to be on because I changed groups without telling anyone clearly, I have invented a much less impressive cognitive challenge.
Neurodivergent Coaching Is Often Better Design
This is one of the themes that keeps surfacing in my doctoral work. Individualized coaching does not always require some dramatic accommodation. Sometimes it is simply better design, which is why I have argued for rethinking the one-size-fits-all practice plan rather than inventing separate coaching worlds for different athletes.
The CDC’s ADHD classroom guidance specifically recommends extra warnings before transitions and routine changes, along with organizational supports tailored to the individual. The National Autistic Society’s guide for sports coaches similarly emphasizes clear communication, processing time, predictability, and attention to sensory demands.
Neither source turns those ideas into a universal sports formula. They do reinforce the value of making environments easier to understand. None of that means a diagnosis tells us what an athlete needs. It does not.
Two athletes with ADHD may experience transitions very differently. Two autistic athletes may want completely different amounts of predictability. The diagnosis can inform questions, but the athlete and context still provide the answers. That is why I would rather watch what happens in practice than apply a template.
Who is always late into the next drill? Who looks confused during group changes? Who performs fine once the activity starts but struggles during setup? Who becomes more agitated when several instructions arrive at once? Those patterns tell us something.
Audit the Minutes Between the Minutes
At your next practice, do not just watch the drills. Watch the transitions. How much information do you give while athletes are moving? How many things change at once?
Does the next task have a clear starting picture? Are athletes wasting mental energy solving problems that have nothing to do with the learning goal? Then make one change. Maybe you preview the next drill.
Maybe you use the board more. Maybe groups stay together longer. Maybe you create one consistent transition phrase. Maybe you decide that the first 20 seconds of a new activity are for orientation rather than yelling at everyone to hurry up.
You may discover that the athlete you thought needed more urgency actually needed less confusion. And you may discover that a smoother practice does not come from squeezing more drills into the schedule. Sometimes it comes from paying attention to the invisible work between them.
Key takeaways: Transitions create real cognitive demands. Separate meaningful sport decisions from accidental practice confusion. Preview changes, reduce unnecessary choices, and watch how individual athletes respond. Fast practices can still be clear practices. Until next time, remember that the clock is not the only thing paying for your transitions.
