“Routines Teach Skills (If You Let Them)”
Understanding how routines deepen the skills you teach
QUOTE
“A routine doesn’t just hold a skill…it trains it.”
OBSERVATION
Last week, we talked about why consultants need to embed skills into the routines athletes already use. But there’s a second step most consultants miss:
Once a skill is inside a routine, the routine becomes the teacher.
This matters because athletes don’t improve a skill just because a consultant introduces it. They improve it because the routine provides:
Repetition (the volume needed to automate a behavior)
Context (the environment that shapes attention and decision-making)
Feedback (micro-successes or micro-failures they feel instantly)
Most consultants assume the skill lesson is the teaching moment.
It isn’t. The teaching moment is the next 50 repetitions of the routine.
For example:
A reset breath doesn’t become reliable because you explained it well. It becomes reliable because it gets attached to a specific part of the athlete’s pre-rep sequence.
A confidence cue doesn’t strengthen because it sounds good. It strengthens because it’s used in the same moment of the same routine until it becomes automatic.
A focus strategy doesn’t sharpen in a quiet room — it sharpens inside the familiar rhythm of a drill the athlete repeats every day.
The routine is what gives the skill its shape, timing, emotional tone, and reliability.
So the consultant’s job isn’t so much to “add skills” or even “teach skills.” Your job is to shape the environment that trains the skill.
This is the real shift:
Stop evaluating the skill. Start evaluating the routine that teaches it.
ACTIONABLE IDEA
Pick a routine and ask one question:
“What is this routine currently teaching the athlete?”
Try this with one athlete this week:
1. Select a routine the athlete repeats frequently.
It could be:
A warm-up sequence
A first-touch drill
A special teams transition
A hitting approach
A between-rep reset
2. Observe what the routine is reinforcing.
Is it teaching the athlete to:
Rush?
Hesitate?
Reset effectively?
Make deliberate decisions?
Get emotionally stable before the next action?
3. Make one adjustment—not to the skill—but to the routine.
Examples:
Add a cue earlier in the sequence
Slow down one part of the routine
Add a “check-in” behavior before restarting
Adjust the wording of a drill
When you adjust the routine, the routine retrains the skill. This is how skill development becomes sustainable, repeatable, and grounded in what the athlete already does every day.
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