ACADEMIA Letters Variability and Distribution of Practice Colin Pennington Pietro Amado Brandon Harris Brandon Howe Nick Jarvis Introduction Perfect practice makes perfect. However, practices rarely resemble perfection and the ‘right’ amount of practice time and type have been hotly debated. Furthermore, most athletes have experienced the unpleasant, unproductive, and unreasonably long, and repetitive practice. Ex- periences such as these oftentimes leave athletes questioning their participation or worse, sus- taining an injury. Therefore, it is imperative that athlete development specialists thoughtfully design and organize practices in an efort to propel athletes toward peak performance. Thank- fully, recent scholarship has examined concepts related to the organization and planning of practices, specifcally geared toward team sports and motor skill development. Variable Practice Versus Constant Practice Previous studies have demonstrated that variable practice, or varied practice, (involving sev- eral versions of a skill) has advantages over constant practice (involving only one version of a skill) in learning a motor skill (Yao, DeSola, & Bi, 2009). Schmidt’s Schema Theory (1975) suggests that when using variable practice, more learning can be accomplished in a less time. Additionally, varying experiences within practice promotes a greater likelihood of in-game Academia Letters, April 2021 Corresponding Author: Colin Pennington, cpennington@tarleton.edu Citation: Pennington, C., Amado, P., Harris, B., Howe, B., Jarvis, N. (2021). Variability and Distribution of Practice. Academia Letters, Article 252. https://doi.org/10.20935/AL252. 1 ©2021 by the authors — Open Access — Distributed under CC BY 4.0