Wooden's 8 Laws of Learning
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Legendary basketball coach John Wooden won 10 national championships in 12 years with the UCLA men’s team—a record yet to be bettered. His thoughts on coaching still provide insights and wisdom across all sports and teaching generally.
He was a big advocate for preparation, dedication in practice, and repetition so that a player could perform instinctively when it counted. To achieve this, he created eight laws of learning:
John Wooden’s 8 Laws of Learning
- Explanation
- Demonstration
- Imitation
- Repetition
- Repetition
- Repetition
- Repetition
- Repetition
I’ve unknowingly followed John Wooden’s “laws” in sports and music—piano practice. Perhaps you have, too. Whether it’s writing, teaching, coding, drawing, or playing an instrument, Wooden reminds us that unconscious competence comes after repetition, not just once you’ve figured something out.
Sport is not the same as many of the environments we encounter in our lives. Patterns repeat over and over, and feedback is generally accurate and rapid. It can often be what’s called a “kind learning environment”—where experience leads to predictable improvement. Nevertheless, I’d hazard that running through all of Wooden’s 8 Laws to develop skills in most domains we work in is likely to be a good start. Replicate then innovate.
As an aside, creating “laws” of something always sounds great—simple, authoritative, axiomatic. But once something is a “law,” it becomes easy for people to stop looking for alternatives or solutions that circumvent it. But I can’t deny that it’s catchy.
What would happen if you spent twice as much time on laws 5–8 as on laws 1–3?
Related Ideas to John Wooden’s 8 Laws of Learning
Also see:
- Bloom’s Taxonomy for Learning
- Replicate then Innovate
- The Learning Pit
- The stages of competence learning model
- Analytics maturity
- Autonomy, Mastery, Purpose
- The 3 bricklayers story
- The Express-Test Cycle
- The third teacher
About the quote
John Wooden quotes his eight laws of learning in Wooden: A Lifetime of Observations and Reflections On and Off the Court, by John Wooden and Steve Jamison, 1997
“The four laws of learning are explanation, demonstration, imitation, and repetition. The goal is to create a correct habit that can be produced instinctively under great pressure.
To make sure this goal was achieved, I created 8 Laws of learning; namely, explanation, demonstration, imitation, repetition, repetition, repetition, and repetition.”
Some authors have pointed out that, though John Wooden often talked about repetition, what he really implemented was “deliberate practice”: practice that targets specific areas for improvement, with feedback and moderated challenge.
