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Is repetition bad?

Writer's picture: Creative PhysEdCreative PhysEd

Some people say that repetition is bad. It is boring for the learners. What is it about repetition that makes it bad?

As a physical education teacher or sports coach, what do we want our students/athletes to repeat? And why do they need to repeat it?


Bernstein coined the phrase, "repetition without repetition." While the phrase itself sounds "poetic" and probably "ambiguous" to many, it is important that we educators begin by understanding the term so that we all end up speaking about the same thing. In essence, Bernstein suggested that ‘practice does not mean to mechanically repeat the same solution to a given task, but, to repeat over and over, the process of solving the task itself.



In short, research in the last decade is quickly pointing towards the importance of information-movement coupling. Information-movement coupling is a fundamental concept, integral to theorizing on the coordination of goal-directed activity in ecological psychology. While repetition is definitely necessary in motor skills learning, it is perhaps more productive to repeat the search, exploration and adaptation process while trying to "solve" a movement problem as opposed to repeating the prescribed movement solution over and over again. Food for thought.


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