Everything has its process—a beginning, a middle and an end or final result.
I was taught that learning is a process that passes through three phases before
reaching the final phase of excellence. 1) The initial phase is where we don’t know what we don’t know. We’re “newbies” without an inkling of what we are about to attempt. We’re like new-born babies, with a clean, empty slate. We’ll call this phase, “Unconscious incompetence”. 2) As we begin to take on information and act on it, we are learning how to apply this information, but we still don’t perform the skill well. We can glimpse the future and see others who are farther along the learning curve and we know that there is more. We’ll call this phase, “Conscious Incompetence”. 3) Now we have arrived at a plateau where we know enough to perform the skill we’ve been trying to attain, and we can perform it but, perhaps not well all the time, because we still have to think about it. The longer we stay in this phase, the more we learn, the more we practice the skill, the better we become at performing the task. We’ll call this phase, “Conscious Competence”. 4) With each plateau, we’ve built new information upon the foundation of the information and skills we learned before. If we’re out of phase 3, we’ve entered the phase of excellence, where a task can be performed without having to think about it. The skill has been learned. We’ve risen above the others who are still going through the learning curve. We must, however, be guarded now about thinking we’re better than everyone else. We must be cognizant that there are others—many others—who have also attained this level, and their skills may be at a higher level. We’ll call this phase, “Unconscious Competence”. Continue reading “Youth Basketball—Teaching Balance And Control”