Practice Should Be Fun But Games Are Not How You Make Practice Fun
The first thing that probably comes to mind when you think about how to make practice fun is playing a game. However, when it comes to making practice fun games are often misused and counterproductive. Why? It comes down to what makes practice, practice.
The purpose of practice is to make you better. Therefore, an activity must have the intent to make you better for it to be a practice activity. So, if you play a game in which the intent is only fun and the game does not make you better in any way, then your coach has done nothing to make practice fun. Instead, you just wasted practice time playing a game for the sake of playing a game.
The fact is most games are fun, but most games aren’t practice. It’s easy to come up with a fun game that has nothing to do with practice. On the other hand, a coach must be creative to come up with a game that’s both fun and beneficial to the purpose of practice. In team sports like football and basketball for example, this is much easier than in individual sports like wrestling or an activity like playing an instrument.
In my opinion this is why you see athletes who start playing later in life still excel in the team sports while it’s rare for someone to excel when they get a late start in individual sports. When practice is fun you get better faster. When practice is boring, only certain personality types tend to thrive through the tedious work. Moreover, that personality type is not the norm.
Correspondingly, the coaches who are most creative in making practice fun while not wasting practice time on games unrelated to practice are the best coaches.