Why Repetition Can Make Pilots Worse

Claire Brooks

So imagine this pilot, Jimmy, up over the practice area, doing 45 degree steep turns. He does one, does another, does 20 of them back to back. By the twentieth turn, I mean, he is nailed on altitude, airspeed perfect, feeling like an absolute aviation legend.

Oliver Hart

A legend right up until Captain Bob, his instructor, waits until they get back to the traffic pattern, hands him a surprise call on downwind, and asks for one more 45 degree bank right there.

Claire Brooks

And what happens? Jimmy panics, over-banks, almost blows right past his bank limits instantly. The whole perfect turn just vanishes.

Oliver Hart

And that right there is the fundamental trap. What Jimmy was doing out in the practice area is what the FAA Aviation Instructor Handbook calls blocked practice. You perform the exact same drill continuously, over and over, until the movement feels completely automatic.

Claire Brooks

Right, because you are keeping that specific motor program locked right at the front of your working memory. You do not actually have to recall it from scratch. You just leave the engine running, so to speak.

Oliver Hart

Precisely. And it creates this incredibly dangerous illusion of mastery. During the lesson, performance looks stellar. It looks like you have got it down cold. But because your brain never had to retrieve the skill or distinguish it from another task, long term memory retention is, uh, well, it is near zero.

Claire Brooks

Near zero. Wow. That is, uh, that is really striking because I think most people, when they want to get good at something, whether it is flying or golf or piano, their instinct is to repeat the single movement 30 times in a row. Jimmy even confessed he would do 30 identical touch and go landings in a row just to feel confident before a checkride.

Oliver Hart

Which turns you into what Bob calls a procedural zombie. You can execute the sequence perfectly only so long as the environment remains totally static. But the second a real world variable changes, wind shift, traffic call, sudden unexpected instruction, the zombie brain freezes.

Claire Brooks

So if doing 30 touch and go landings in a row is just training us to be zombies, how does an instructor actually fix that? How do we build skills that do not fall apart under stress?

Oliver Hart

Well, as the handbook highlights, there are three types of practice, each of which yields particular results in acquiring skills: deliberate, blocked, and random. To get past the zombie stage, Bob introduces random practice.

Claire Brooks

Random practice. So instead of doing 20 steep turns in a row, what does that actually look like in the cockpit?

Oliver Hart

It means mixing up the skills unpredictably throughout the entire flight. You execute one 45 degree steep turn, but then immediately transition into slow flight, and then without warning, recover from a power off stall. You never do the same maneuver twice in a row.

Claire Brooks

I imagine Jimmy hated that. That sounds way more frustrating while you are in the air.

Oliver Hart

Oh, it feels awful while you are doing it. It feels clumsy and disjointed. But cognitive science shows us that very struggle, forcing your brain to constantly drop one motor program and retrieve a completely different one from long term storage, is what builds true adaptability and long term retention.

Claire Brooks

Right, because every single time you start a maneuver, your brain has to do the heavy lifting of remembering how to set up for it, rather than just riding the momentum of the last turn.

Oliver Hart

Exactly. And then you layer on deliberate practice. Blocked practice is mindless repetition of a whole exercise. Deliberate practice is zeroing in on one specific technical error with instant, focused feedback.

Claire Brooks

Like when Jimmy enters a steep bank, drops the nose, and loses 200 feet every single time.

Oliver Hart

Right on the money. You do not just repeat the whole steep turn 20 times hoping it improves. You isolate the roll in, focus entirely on back pressure and trim at the exact moment of entry, fix that specific flaw, and then throw it right back into the randomized rotation.

Claire Brooks

So on the flight back, Bob puts a frazzled Jimmy through a randomized multi tasking drill, throwing unexpected demands at him one after another.

Oliver Hart

And Jimmy finally realizes that feeling frustrated and challenged during a lesson is not a sign that you are failing. It is the exact signal that actual, long term learning is happening.

Claire Brooks

If it feels easy in the moment, you are probably just tricking yourself. Good stuff. Talk soon, Oliver.

Oliver Hart

Cheerio, Claire.