Driving Practice Strategies

Driving is one of the final key elements to being successful at competitions. It's the final show of building, programming, and coordination combined. A common misconception about driving is that it's all about natural talent and luck; reality is that it requires a lot of practice to reach potential.

Above is a video of the 2131D Skills run at TSA Nationals in 2015. We show this video to new students in our club every year to showcase good driving. The robot pictured has no sensors or specialty programs to help it aim. The driver, Cooper, had simply practiced run after run until he could master the field. Seeing him drive that year wasn't like watching most drivers. It was like watching someone zoom in- nothing else existed to him, the noise faded out of the background, and it was just him, the robot, and the game objects. Practice made what he did possible.

"One of the most valuable strategies I've learned is simply practicing repetitious movements over and over, scoring ball after ball." -Jack Tanner, 2020

Similar to basketball players throwing hundreds of free throws over years to be ready for national tournaments, memorizing repetitive motions is helpful for doing well in real matches. Optimizing muscle memory can in turn optimize the exchange between coach and driver and speed up the reaction time at the field.

Here are some driving warm ups to do as often as possible:

Red, Blue, Red, Blue

Have your driver score all of the red balls, then descore all red and score all blue, and toggle the field back and forth until you run through your batteries.

2. Run skills

Running skills can feel tedious, but it can help in more than just skills itself. Being a good driver in skills can help students to get a feel for their robot overall, which helps in matches.

3. Mystery cycle

This exercise focuses on the tie between coaching communication and driver's muscle memory. Have the coach stand by a goal with a store of blue and red balls. Drive to the chosen goal and begin cycling (or, if the robot cannot cycle out the back, simply score and descore out the top by backing away and spitting out balls). Have the coach drop in random balls and call out which colors to cycle back in and which to feed out. Do this as fast as possible while still being accurate.

4. Center goal spin

In this exercise, practice shooting into the middle goal from every angle without moving as a driver. This helps them get used to scoring in real matches, when they are confined to their alliance station.

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