2-Minute Tuesday Let's CFI faster Issue 22

Types of Practice FI.I.B.K10

Source AIH Chapter 3Sent Read time 2 min read

Why This Matters

Your student nails twenty crosswind landings in a row. You're both happy. A week later, on a checkride, they butcher the first one.

What happened isn't a fluke, it's the difference between practice that feels productive and practice that is productive. The AIH names three types of practice, and each one yields different results. Choose the wrong type for the wrong moment, and you can build a student who performs well in the training environment but struggles outside of it.

The Three Types of Practice (per AIH)

  • Deliberate Practice: Practice aimed at a specific goal, with specific feedback on the gap between actual performance and the goal. Distractions are avoided; feedback is brief and explicit.

  • Blocked Practice: Same skill repeated until it becomes automatic. Enhances short-term performance but produces poor long-term retention. Fools both the learner and the instructor into thinking the skill is well-learned.

  • Random Practice: Different skills mixed up throughout the session. Scores worse during the session, but produces significantly better retention. The learner builds retrieval pathways and recognizes patterns across skills. The AIH explicitly points to SBT as a strong vehicle for random practice.

Know when to stop. The AIH also warns about diminishing returns - when errors start increasing or motivation drops, you've hit the wall. Move on and come back later.

How I Think About It

Here's how I find it easier to apply in real life:

The three types actually answer two different questions:

  • Deliberate describes how you practice - with purpose and feedback.

  • Blocked vs. Random describes how you sequence or schedule the practice - same skill repeated, or skills mixed up.

So they aren't really three competing choices. Deliberate practice is the method you should be using (it reflects the syllabus and any weaknesses you’re addressing). The real decision is whether to do that deliberate work in blocked or random order.

My rule of thumb: Deliberate practice is the default. Blocked scheduling has a narrow use - early repetitions of a new skill where some repetition is unavoidable to build habits, or briefly when needed to reinforce habits and muscle memory (and even then my general rule is no more than 3-4 attempts) - but don't stay there. Once they have the foundation, random is what locks the skill in.

And here's why I think random practice produces better retention: every time you switch maneuvers, the student has to mentally reset and rebuild the new procedure from scratch, pulling the steps and parameters from long-term memory. Blocked practice doesn't require that. The motor system stays warm, and the student is essentially repeating muscle memory without re-engaging the cognitive process. Random forces them to reconceptualize each maneuver every time, which is exactly the work that builds durable retention.

The Scheduling Trap

When scheduling deliberate practice, how you sequence skills matters. This is one of the most counterintuitive findings in learning research: Blocked Scheduling — Same drill repeated (10 touch-and-goes) Looks great during training Poor retention next day Running on short-term memory Random Scheduling — Skills mixed throughout session Looks rougher during training Better retention next day Forces long-term retrieval The counterintuitive truth: Blocked scheduling feels like success but creates an illusion of learning. Random scheduling feels harder but produces better pilots. Resist the urge to drill one thing endlessly - mix it up.
This slide is from Lesson I.B.5 on backseatpilot.app

What This Looks Like

You've got 90 minutes with a student.

  • Wrong move: Twelve traffic patterns, all crosswind landings, all the same runway. Student goes home thinking they're a crosswind expert.

  • Right move: Three crosswind landings to warm up the skill (blocked), then mix in a short-field, a no-flap, a go-around, and crosswind landings in unpredictable order (random). If the short-field falls apart, that can become part of the deliberate focus for the next lesson.

The student may go home a little frustrated by the messier performance, but comes back stronger next lesson.

Checkride Q&A

DPE Might Ask

"Your student lands beautifully after ten crosswind approaches in a row, but butchers the next one a week later. What might have happened, and how could you fix it?"

Weak Answer

"They probably just had an off day, or they need more practice. I'd run them through more crosswind landings to reinforce the skill."

Why this fails

Doesn't recognize the pattern as a blocked-practice retention problem, and the proposed fix (more blocked practice) would make it worse, not better.

Strong Answer

"That's a classic blocked-versus-random practice problem. Ten crosswind landings in a row is blocked practice, it enhances short-term performance but produces poor long-term retention. The skill looked great in the session because it was warm and predictable, but it didn't get stored in long-term memory. The fix is random practice: mix the crosswind landing in with other maneuvers and approaches in an unpredictable order. Performance during the session may look worse, but long-term retention will be significantly better. The AIH also points to SBT as a good vehicle for random practice. "

The mock checkride on backseatpilot.app asks questions like this across every element in Task I.B.

Nate is a CFI, CFII, and MEI, former USAF C-17 Instructor Pilot, and current airline pilot with 8,500+ flight hours. He writes 2-Minute Tuesday to make CFI checkride prep clearer, simpler, and more logical, one ACS element at a time.

Get 2-Minute Tuesday by email

One CFI ACS element every Tuesday. In your inbox a week before it's posted here.

You're in. Look for it Tuesday.

Unsubscribe anytime.

Study the full Task I.B lessons

AI-integrated slides, audio, quizzes, teach-back and oral questioning for every section — then a mock checkride on the whole task.

Learn More