I am preparing to teach a class on constraints-based coaching, and spent the weekend looking at different online videos in order to “flip” the classroom. I have returned to the video below several times because of one of its early points about education and training. (more…)
Posts Tagged ‘peak by friday’
Is the Goal of Coaching to Educate or to Train?
Monday, March 5th, 2012ACL Injury Epidemic – The Solution Starts with Coach Education & a Change away from Peak by Friday Mindset
Friday, July 15th, 2011ACL injuries have become a politicized issue, as evidenced by Wendy Parker’s latest column. While pundits and activists battle, the larger issue is muddied: the rhetoric has no effect on changing the epidemic of injuries. Rather than writing about rehabilitation or prevention programs, the injury issue creates a gender war.
The epidemic boils down to two issues: (1) Lack of education and dissemination of information to coaches and (2) the Peak by Friday mentality. (more…)
The Fallacy of Wins and Losses in Youth Sports
Monday, January 31st, 2011Note: Originally published in the January/February 2011 issue of Los Angeles Sports & Fitness.
In a recent youth football championship game, one team trailed 6-0 when the coach ordered a trick play that is now a youtube sensation. After a penalty, he called out loudly that the defense had been off-side, and the official forgot to walk off the five yards. He yelled at his center to move the ball forward. The center stood up and handed the ball over his shoulder to the quarterback, which is a legal maneuver. The quarterback started to walk off the five yards and then sprinted past the unassuming defenders for the game-tying touchdown. (more…)
Coach’s Role in Skill Development
Thursday, December 2nd, 2010We measure a coach through immediate outcomes (wins), but his main function may be in terms of his long-term influence over a player’s skill development. In “Inside the brain of an elite athlete: the neural processes that support high achievement in sports” by Kielan Yarrow, Peter Brown and John W. Kraukauer (2009) published in Nature Reviews Neuroscience, the researchers write that a coach “can prevent an athlete from falling into local maxima for immediate rewards by evaluating a local action with respect to the future goal of winning, and thereby allow the athlete to attain the global maxima with maximal rewards (value).”
Essentially, if a player picks up a basketball, he seeks the immediate reward of making a basket. However, making a basket in the short-term may not develop a skill that is useful in the long term, and that is where the coach enters the picture. The coach understands what is necessary for the player’s long-term success, and he prevents the player from falling into the short-term bad habit. As the researchers write:
“A recent study supports the usefulness of coaching by showing that subjects do not necessarily choose the optimal long-term learning strategy when allowed to choose on their own (Yarrow et al., 2009).”
Therefore, the coach’s role is to promote long-term learning or the skills that lead to long-term development, not the short-term approach. When evaluating coaches, we must remember that the coach’s role is not short-term success, but long-term development, especially with coaches of youth players. If coaches fall into the trap of a short-term approach, and players tend to choose the immediate success over long-term learning, who will enhance the player’s learning or outline the strategy for long-term success? Who will set forth the optimal approach if the coach has a Peak by Friday mentality? What coach will maintain a LTAD philosophy when parents and random Internet posters evaluate coaches on a short-term outcome?
By Brian McCormick
Author, Cross Over: The New Model of Youth Basketball Development
Director of Coaching, Playmakers Basketball Development League
Does not Keeping Score Solve Anything?
Friday, September 10th, 2010I turned on Two-and-a-Half-Men tonight, and the episode featured Jake playing soccer. Charlie sat down next to a mother at a game and said, “Where do you stand on this not keeping score thing?” The mother answered, “I think it’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard of.”
In the next scene, Jake walks into their house with slumped shoulders while his dad said, “Nobody got creamed. Nobody won or lost.” Jake retorted, “Except us, 12-2.”
This is the problem with not keeping score: everyone keeps score, whether there is an official scoreboard or not. Everyone knows the winner and loser, especially in a 12-2 soccer game. Children are not dumb; you cannot hide the result from them or their parents.
Not keeping score misses the point. The scoreboard is not the problem; the problem is the way that the scoreboard makes us act. If the coach plays with a win-at-all costs, peak-by-Friday approach, the scoreboard makes no difference. However, if a coach takes a long term, process-oriented approach, the presence of a scoreboard does not change his coaching.
If we want to help children enjoy their initial sports’ experiences, ignore the scoreboard. Its presence or lack thereof will not determine a child’s enjoyment of the activity. As I wrote earlier this week, children view competition differently. They are not absorbed by the score until parents and coaches make such a big deal out of it that they have to hide the score. In many cases, this brings more attention to the scoreboard.
Rather than focus on the scoreboard, leagues should spend more time creating equal teams, as children do when picking teams on the playground. Next, if a league worries about blowouts, play each game like a mini-tournament: re-start the score each quarter.
Other ideas that would change the league’s culture more than worrying about the scoreboard would be to encourage coaches to work together; to run one practice per week as a group workout focused on skill development; to change teams more often; to alternate coaches based on strengths and weaknesses, so each teams learns from the strengths of each coach, not just one coach; to teach coaches about the Peak by Friday concept and its negative effect on youth player development; and more.
The scoreboard is a superficial change that changes very little. To make an impact, the changes need to go to the league’s foundation, focus on the league’s philosophy and change the coaches’ approach to their teams, winning, development and players’ motivations.
By Brian McCormick
Author, Cross Over: The New Model of Youth Basketball Development
Director of Coaching, Playmakers Basketball Development League
Join the forum discussion on this post - (1) Posts Coaching for the Process or the Result
Friday, April 23rd, 2010On another site, a coach asked for a play to run with his 12-and-under team in late game situations because only a couple players make good decisions with the basketball. The question raises several other questions:
1) What is the purpose of the team? At 12-years-old, learning and development should take precedence over winning games. Therefore, all players need a chance to develop. Rather than hiding the poorer players, we need to develop these players to eliminate the weaknesses. Rather than focus strictly on the result of the game, we should focus on the process of improvement and development. If a weaker players takes a bad shot or commits a turnover late in the game, it becomes a teaching point rather than a reason to substitute or not pass to the player again.
2) Isn’t learning to win part of the process? Yes, which makes this question tougher to answer. While we focus on the process, part of the process is learning about shot selection as well as finishing games. Handling late game situations is part of the process. Late game situations differ from the first quarter because of time and score. While we do not want to obsess over the score or the outcome, players do need to learn to be competitive and how to win. Sometimes, this means getting the the ball to the team’s best player or finding a way for the best player to create his own shot or an easy shot for a teammate.
When we concentrate on the process, not the result, it does not mean that the result has no importance. We play games to win. The difference is approach.
This season, I played all 12 players in every half of every game. However, in close games, my best five players on that day generally finished the game. We played to win, but that goal did not dictate my coaching: everyone played whether we were down five or up by 20. Players generally had freedom to shoot any open shot, but in close games, we tried to work a little harder to get better shots rather than shooting the first shot. This dod not mean that the outcome all of a sudden trumped the process; instead, part of the process was learning to finish close games – when to foul; who to foul; who do we want to get fouled; when to gamble for a steal; when to shoot the three-pointer vs. attacking the basket; how to manage the clock. Ultimately, learning these lessons are part of the process.
However, we do not want to create situations where we avoid players, like Little League coaches who stick their T-baller in right field for every inning and never allow him a chance to play a meaningful position because the coach fears that the player could blow the game.
When coaching young players, coaches must balance the line between developing all players and giving all players a chance to learn, develop and exhibit their skills, and teaching players how to execute at the end of the game. By nurturing confidence in each player, the coach can worry less about hiding weaker players and concentrate more on maximizing the involvement of the best players. In this way, an occasional set play to create a good shot is not moving away from the process, but when implemented correctly, is an extension of the learning process.
By Brian McCormick
Director of Coaching, Playmakers Basketball Development League
Winning and Losing and Player Development
Sunday, March 21st, 2010One issue with developing young players is the emphasis placed on winning by coaches and parents. In a rush to perform, players sometimes sacrifice the process.
But you can count Nick Bollettieri, the man who may have done more to bring about the demise of serve and volley than anyone, as a believer in its continued potential, provided a young player devotes himself to it very early. He coaches at least one young girl with a professional net-rushing future in mind, but he says that the roadblocks are often the parents, who don’t have the patience that it takes to allow this style to mature. “You have to lose for a while if you go that way,” Bollettieri says, “and who wants to do that?”
This happens with post players frequently. The tallest player is told to stay close to the basket and be tall, and he is prohibited from dribbling. How does this enhance the player’s development?
Similarly, eight and nine-year-olds shoot three pointers with poor form because they are trying to win the game. However, these shots develop bad habits.
In both cases, coaches, parents and players concentrate on the immediate results, not the process and the player’s long term athlete development.
Pressing and Skill Development in Youth Basketball
Saturday, January 23rd, 2010On another site, coaches discussed the merit of a no-press rule for pre-high school players with many different suggestions. The argument against pressing was the lack of skill development to handle the press (something that continues to the high school level).
This is true. But, I do not understand how it is true.
Now, at younger ages, when players cannot throw the ball the length of the court, teams can cheat and put five defenders in the back court to take away space and make it more difficult to break the press. For this reason, when I coached u9 boys and u10 girls, we used our bigger players to break the press because the smaller guards lacked the strength to throw over the top and relieve the pressure.
At younger ages, I understand the struggles to break the press to a certain degree. However, the discussion centered largely around 6th – 8th graders.
When I played, our league only allowed man2man defense. However, teams could use a zone press in the back court, so many teams pressed. We ran two different presses. I played point guard and I never felt overwhelmed by pressure. We had players who could dribble with both hands with their eyes up and players who could pass the ball, and we generally had no more trouble with a press than with half-court defense (incidentally, in our recent blowout victories, we’ve given up more points with our press than our half-court defense, as most teams cannot get off a good shot against half-court man defense).
I never played organized basketball until 5th grade, and we played only 20-24 games per season from 5th – 8th grade. However, we were able to handle a press. Today, children start organized basketball at 6-years-old and cannot handle a press by 8th grade. What is wrong with this picture? Why the rush to organized basketball if skill development appears to be receding, not improving?
There are reasons to explain this: defenses are more sophisticated, children are more athletic, etc. However, at the high school level, we run one press and teams struggle against it. When I was in 6th grade, we ran two different presses plus played full-court man, so my high school team is less sophisticated than my 6th grade team.
I am not a huge proponent of pressing at early ages because the defense is ahead of the offense, and it does hurt some players’ confidence and make for some uneven contests. Of course, I also believe young players should play 3v3 and not 5v5 for the same reasons – younger less experienced players need more space to make moves and play the game and 3v3 offers the space and more touches for all players, not just the star.
Also, some teams that press spend all their time practicing their press, engaging in the Peak by Friday mentality rather than preparing their players, teaching them how to play and developing well-rounded skills.
However, the coaches who complain about the pressing teams need to focus more on developing their players’ skills. Now, in tournaments, sometimes there is a big discrepancy in ability levels. Playing half-court defense does little to solve these discrepancies. If competitive balance is the goal, tournament directors and coaches need to do a better job of creating more equitable competitive levels. Once within the same ability level, coaches need to teach skills so players can handle a press.
In our last game, our opponent called timeout and went to a 2-2-1 press, a press that we have not faced or practiced against all season. I had to get two players’ attention because they had set up in our half-court offense. Once I told them to look down court, they filled the right spots. We broke the press with four passes and two dribbles and finished with a lay-up and a 15-foot jump shot. Our opponent quickly took off the press.
We were not bigger and faster than the other team. We work on passing, cutting and pivoting every day in practice in general drills so that players can adapt to any defense. We talk about spacing and angles every day because most of the top teams rely on presses to win at this level. We are prepared for a press because we develop these fundamental skills in every single practice (in our first scrimmage in October, we could barely get the ball across half-court against a press because we had practiced only 4-5 times before we scrimmaged a top team).
I have mixed feeling about the no-press rule. However, if the argument is that we cannot press because it impedes fundamental development, as some argued, I disagree. With beginners and very young/small players (who should be playing 3v3 anyway), I would disallow a press. However, by 8th grade, players should have enough strength to handle a press if they have developed their fundamentals.
The argument should not be whether or not to press, but how to eliminate the Peak by Friday mentality in the league, whether a team presses or not.
By Brian McCormick
Director of Coaching, Playmakers Basketball Development League
Join the forum discussion on this post - (3) Posts