A fraction of coaches are insulted any time that anyone (me) suggests that changes are necessary to improve the basketball system or environment, especially when one of those necessary changes is more coach education. Coaches argue that great coaches like Bob Hurley demonstrate that there are plenty of great coaches, yet conveniently ignore coaches like Joe Keller who illustrate exactly why reform is necessary. (more…)
Posts Tagged ‘Skill Development’
Is coach education important to improve basketball development?
Thursday, August 25th, 2011Skill Development and Strength & Conditioning Coaches
Friday, June 3rd, 2011The 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…)
Automaticity, Skill Development and Expert Performance
Sunday, December 5th, 2010Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers popularized the 10,000-hour/10-year rule from the research of K. Anders Ericsson, Benjamin Bloom, Istvan Balyi and others. Some reacted to the concept by suggesting that the 10,000-hour rule illustrates the importance of early specialization so athletes have time to engage in 10 years worth of practice.
There are two flaws to this reasoning.
(1) The 10-year rule pertains to expert performance. Specializing in a sport to complete the 10 years of practice at an early age would mean a peak at 18-years-old. In most sports, including basketball, players reach their peak in their mid to late 20′s. There is no incentive to peak early as colleges recruit potential and the NBA drafts potential. They want players who will continue to improve and develop. If a player’s reached his peak, there is no more development or improvement.
(2) When a player learns a skill, he goes through three general stages according to Fitts: Cognitive Stage, Associative Stage and Automatic Stage. Some champion early specialization because of the need to move through these three phases. The perception is that players who reach automaticity earlier will be better performers.
There is recent research to refute this idea. 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. Krakauer (2009), the researchers write:
It is not automaticity per se that is indicative of high proficiency but rather the level of skill at which automaticity is attained.
If a player starts year-round basketball at eight-years-old and reaches automaticity with his shooting form as a 10 or 11-year-old, he masters the shot of a 10-year-old. The skill of a 10-year-old is not likely to lead to success at 15, 18 or 25 years of age.
The researchers continue:
Most of us fail to develop beyond a hobbyist level of performance precisely because we settle into automaticity at a level of skill that we find enjoyable rather than continuing to improve her skills. Hence, automaticity is more of a false ceiling than a measure of excellence.
When a player makes his shooting technique automatic, he settles into a comfort level regardless of the performance level. Most players remain at the level because they practice at the same level; their automaticity becomes a ceiling for their performance.
Experts, however, do not settle into their comfort zone. They continually strive for better performance – they defy the speed-accuracy trade-off by improving the speed of execution and the accuracy of their performance (Yarrow et al., 2009). Fitt’s Law suggests a speed-accuracy trade-off – the faster that one moves, the less accurate will be his performance. Experts defy the speed-accuracy trade-off through practice outside their comfort zone. They practice at a faster speed and learn to shoot with more accuracy at the faster speed. They push beyond their comfort level, and this ability to push past their level when automaticity is reached is one distinction of an expert performer.
By Brian McCormick
Author, Cross Over: The New Model of Youth Basketball Development
Director of Coaching, Playmakers Basketball Development League
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
How Important are Rules to Skill Development?
Thursday, October 7th, 2010I am working with an after-school program. The children vary day by day and by skill level. We have a couple children who have played in leagues, and many who have never played previously and do not know the rules. Several days per week, the soccer players play basketball, so there is a big mix of size, skill and experience level.
Today, we played 5v5, 6v6, 7v7 and then 4v4 on the side courts. One beginner never plays offense, but is a great and enthusiastic defender. Others cherry pick. Rarely is everyone on one end of the court at the same time.
As I watched them play today – I am not really coaching, but leading an activity – I had a thought: do rules really matter for beginners?
As I watched, players traveled, double-dribbled and fouled. The best players, however, encouraged the weaker players, even when they traveled or double-dribbled. The better players did not take advantage of the slack rules. Instead, players essentially played with rules that allowed them to compete. Good players played by a strict interpretations of the rules; average players played with a loose interpretation; and bad or beginner players played with almost no rules or violations.
From a developmental perspective, is that a bad thing? As I recall, that is how we played on the playground when I was a child. We accommodated the lesser players and allowed them a little more freedom to balance the competitive levels.
In two weeks, I certainly notice improvement from some of the beginners. Players who shied away from the ball last week now ask for the ball and attempt shots. One player asked about the proper shooting technique. Another pivoted out of a trap and made a good pass.
Ironically, the best player played his best game today. I don’t think he has improved his skills, but his attitude toward others has softened and his leadership and passing increased. Also, I play some of the time to give him a small challenge and to keep him from getting bored.
From a player development standpoint, more experienced or better players should not stay in this environment for too long, as they need challenges to continue their development. However, for beginner and recreational players, is it bad to ignore or ease the rules to give beginners an opportunity to learn the game by playing the game without constant interruptions for violations?
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 - (2) Posts Kobe Bryant’s Basketball Camp & Skill Development
Saturday, July 10th, 2010Kobe Bryant apparently runs a hugely popular basketball camp in Santa Barbara, which is very commendable. However, after reading an article about the objectives, I am confused.
I must admit that I am biased against big camps. I run basketball camps, but even this week, while running a camp in Yellowknife, Northwest Territories, I felt that we had too many players of disparate abilities to create a great camp. We made it work, the players improved and had fun, but it was far from my ideal learning environment.
With a young group, our focus this week was basic technical skills (dribbling, passing, pivoting, shooting, individual defense and lay-ups) and beginning tactical skills (give-and-gos and pick-and-rolls).
Kobe’s Camp, however, appears to focus on running different offenses:
The kids will be taught the flex offense, the Princeton offense, and of course, the famed triangle offense, among many other things. “It doesn’t really matter what age group they are, these kids can learn these things — especially at that age, because they’re sponges,” Bryant said.
Really? I agree that children are sponges and learn things quickly, especially when the instructions and skills are age-appropriate. However, I do not see how teaching the Flex offense to eight-year-olds is age-appropriate.
I worked a camp where every coach had to teach the same generic pass-and-screen away offense. It took all week to get players to follow directions and pass and screen away. Every team practice was spent memorizing the offense. However, if the players did not run the same offense with their teams at home, did all this practice time transfer to improved performance?
When I run camps, I teach general skills. Rather than learning the Flex offense or the Princeton offense, I teach players how to use a screen, how to make a backdoor cut or how to use a dribble hand-off. At my camp in Idaho two weeks ago, we learned all these skills. Through the six-week Playmakers Basketball Development League, players learn all these skills in general ways, not specific to one offense.
Now, this week, I used drills that I would use with a Flex offense team. Some of the girls at the camp run the Flex with their team, so I adjusted some of our general shooting drills to mimic cuts in the Flex, so they practiced the type of shots that they get with their team. However, the tactical instructions remained general: the goal was to learn how to read and use a screen in any offense, not in one specific offense.
When I was young, we ran the Flex. We set the cross screen and received the down screen to cut to the elbow. There was no deviation. Without a shot clock, we turned over the offense time after time until we got a lay-up or elbow jump shot.
When we moved to high school, we no longer ran the Flex. Now we memorized a new offense. Through these years of playing, we never learned to curl off a screen or flare off the screen or cut backdoor based on the defense; instead, we memorized where to run in a particular offense. If the shot was not open in the Flex, rather than flare because the defender went top-side, ball-side over the screen, we caught and waited for the next cutter or we re-screened if we were not open.
There is nothing wrong with the Flex offense or the Princeton offense, and there is nothing inherently wrong with teaching an offense at a camp. However, in the limited learning time available, how do you want to appropriate your time? Is teaching an offense that the players may never run again the best use of valuable time? Is it the most fun or inspiring use of time?
I try to teach to the age group. With younger players and beginners this week (10-14 primarily with a few 15 and 16-year-olds), the focus was fun and basics. We played dribble tag and speed tag every day. Why? The games are fun and with beginner players, these types of games improve their dribbling more than learning moves and doing more advanced drills. They learn naturally, one of Kobe’s emphases:
“Fun. I want them to have a good time,” Bryant said. “That’s where sports start. I want them to enjoy themselves, and not get bogged down by this or that. These kids are going to learn a lot of things at this camp — they’re going to learn them without knowing that they’re learning them, and they’re going to have a good time doing it.”
I agree completely with the attitude. We played tag because it kept the entire camp involved, is fun and develops skills without a lot of instruction.
We also spent time on lay-ups. We did speed lay-ups, power lay-ups, lay-ups off a pass, lay-ups off a catch, etc. We did a progression into the “Rondo,” and also learned the “Rondo Up-and-Under.” There was a 12-year-old who has never played in a competitive game before (from a remote town) who used the Rondo to create a shot in a 5v5 scrimmage on the last day to cheers from other campers.
We went through a defensive progression to learn to defend the ball and played lots of 1v1. We shot every day, going through the first three stages from 180 Shooter: 5 Steps to Shooting 90% from the Free Throw Line, 50% from the floor and 40% from the 3-pt line.
We played a lot of 3v3 and 4v4 half and full-court scrimmages to five baskets. I prefer short games with a definitive end to increase competitiveness. Also, short games allow you to change teams if the teams are unbalanced. When I worked bigger camps, each coach had a team of 8-10 players and the teams remained the same all week, even if the teams were unbalanced. We also played 30-minute games, which meant half the camp sat on the bench and watched (or sometimes more than half the camp if there were not enough courts to keep all the teams playing at once).
I usually play cut-throat at camp, so players are generally out for no more than 30 seconds in a half-court game and a minute or two in a full-court game. That keeps all the players engaged. Also, because no coach coaches a specific team or group of players, but assists everyone, the coach’s egos do not get in the way of helping the players. No coach is playing to win. Along the same lines, we did not spend time memorizing offenses. Instead, our goal is to teach general skills that players can apply to their teams at home regardless of the system that their coach employs.
Like all coaches, I have my biases. I am biased toward small-sided games, active drills and fun games that engage players while developing a number of basic, general skills. I dislike long lines and players sitting out.
While offenses taught properly can develop basic skills, is it the best way? Is playing 5v5 games with 8-10-year-old players the best way to develop their athletic, technical and tactical skills?
If you have more thoughts on camps and skill development, please join the discussion in the forum.
By Brian McCormick
Director of Coaching, Playmakers Basketball Development League
Author, Cross Over: The New Model of Youth Basketball Development
Join the forum discussion on this post - (2) 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
7 Sport Memory Techniques to Accelerate Skill Learning
Thursday, March 25th, 2010Author: Denise K. Wood, Ed.D.
Sport skill memory is developed when athletes learn and remember motor skills. Motor memory techniques can accelerate the skill acquisition process so athletes can progress to higher levels of sport performance more quickly.
Motor learning principles are drawn from psychology and applied to sports training. Coaches can use the following sport memory techniques to speed up skill learning and retention for athletes of any age:
1. Help athletes learn skills correctly the first time. Initial learning is most impressionable. A skill learned incorrectly is often difficult to re-pattern. Coaches should monitor and guide athletes to learn proper technique when athletes are still in the early stages of learning.
2. Teach skill rhythms first, then refine the movements. Athletes can learn and recall rhythmic movements more quickly than isolated movements, just as rhymes are more readily remembered in verbal learning.
3. Chunk movements. Movements can be learned and processed if they are “chunked”, or grouped, into larger movements. This grouping technique increases an athlete’s capacity to learn and perform sport skills. Break skills down only as much as necessary. Overanalysis causes paralysis.
4. Make new skills meaningful. Explain and demonstrate new skills so that the athlete understands what the skill requires and why it is executed that way. Also make clear how a skill, movement, or strategy will help the athlete improve sport performance.
5. Associate new skills and concepts with well learned skills. Athletes learn new skills more quickly if key movements make sense to them. A coach can capitalize on an athlete’s previous experience and maturity level by suggesting mental images that associate new skill concepts and features with familiar ones.
6. Point out specific cues that require the athlete’s attention. Intention to remember alerts an athlete to important aspects of a skill or game situation. An athlete’s ability to focus and remember key cues distinguishes beginners from skilled performers.
7. Overlearn skills to correct errors. Overlearning means practicing skills beyond what is necessary to perform them properly. It is effective for correcting previously learned errors and for reinforcing properly coordinated movements.
Sport memory techniques such as these can streamline training, saving valuable time and effort. These are just a few of the many tools used for how to effectively convey what skills and strategies athletes need to know.
Article Source: http://www.articlesbase.com/sports-and-fitness-articles/7-sport-memory-techniques-to-accelerate-skill-learning-835770.html
About the Author
Dr. Denise K. Wood is an educator and sport and fitness training consultant from Knoxville, TN and creator of www.sports-training-adviser.com She is an inspirational motivator with an extensive toolbox of training techniques based in science and delivered to accelerate the learning curve. Dr. Wood is a former USA Track and Field champion and member of more than 20 USA National Teams. She has trained a wide range of clients from beginners with special needs to Olympians. She has been recognized as an outstanding professor in exercise science and research/statistics.
A High School Coach’s Impact on Professional Basketball Players
Tuesday, March 23rd, 2010Carlo Rotella of the Washington Post wrote an article about the NBA’s D-League and followed up the article with a chat. When asked about some of the things that surprised him, Rotella answered:
I was a little surprised to find how unanimous the players were–at least the ones I talked to–about their high school coaches as the ones who had the most influence on their game. Most didn’t see college as the place where their game developed the most. The story they tended to tell was that their high school coach taught them the basics and then playing pro taught them the pro game, often abroad and often the hard way.