Identifying & Targeting Rate Limiters with Alex Sarama

This is the Transforming Basketball Podcast hosted by Alex Sarama. This is the podcast helping coaches and practitioners change the way we think about basketball performance. Our goal is to provide the ultimate resource for making sense of applying contemporary skill acquisition ideas within basketball.

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Welcome to another episode of We Talk About Practice, Alex. Great to have you a third time in our podcast. I think you're the second guest that reaches that number. The only one who else reached the number is Eric, our good friend from Bremerhaven.

Welcome, Ben, as well. Welcome to the show.

Thank you so much, guys. Pleasure to be on. Always enjoy shooting podcasts with you guys. Being in a hotel room in Washington is not the same as the Blindside Studios in Berlin, I will say. That was a really fun episode over the summer.

But hey, it's crazy how quickly things change. We were recording that episode. I was visiting the Final Four to interview with With a team. And then, you know, a few weeks later ended up doing something completely different and joining the Cavs. But hey, that's life.

That's basketball. And great to be back on the show.

I have to tell, this is also definitely the most, like, the craziest episode we ever recorded. In Berlin, it's currently like 11:30 at night. Felix is currently in Bochum for an away trip, and you are sitting in Washington. So that's amazing. This is like, couldn't be better.

I was walking by the White House literally 20 minutes ago, and Ferdi was like, you ready for the podcast? I was like, oh, the podcast? So luckily, you know, the US is very efficient with things like Uber and Lyft. So, you know, straight away I was able to resolve it.

I think to make that happen in the future, I think in the office we have to hang up different clocks now for different continents to make sure that Ferdi does not mix up the times again. That would be amazing.

Definitely, definitely. I spent six hours on the bus, then heading into practice, and then from practice, I think like ate three plates of different foods. Went up here just to notice that I completely messed up the time. Great, awesome feeling. All right, let's get into the topic for today.

I think first we should talk about the skill series. We released it, I think two weeks ago. Last year we were in summer at the camp in Italy and recorded, I don't know, 120 exercises, I think 3 hours of content, which is out now on the Blindside app.

Everything accessible for you guys to learn about the CLA and just have an insight on what Alex is doing with his practices. I think, Alex, you can quickly give a sum up what The basketball camp in Italy is actually, and like, if it is happening 2025 again.

Yeah, absolutely, Ferdi. So I, uh, I started the Transform Your Summer Camp last year as, um, I wanted it to really be, um, the camp I wanted as a kid and what I wanted to do as a coach to really like develop and learn about these things.

And I honestly didn't think there was really anything out there that was really hitting the market for delivering an experience that's transformative, where kids can actually just go to a camp and not just get babysitting, but actually really get better and learn in an amazing environment and also do it in an incredible location.

So after many kind of brainstorming sessions with my team at Transforming, we found this great location in Italy, right by the beach in Roseto. And that's kind of how the summer camp was born. And I think it was kind of insane in our first, what, first year doing it, we ended up with, I think, I mean, I should know the number.

I think it was like 60, 70 players, something like that. And 50 coaches. It was insane. So this year we're actually doing 2 weeks, boys and girls, but obviously having you guys there to record it was amazing because it was really just showing You know, everything we do at Transforming Basketball in one week, essentially,

and showing how you can basically install a conceptual offense to disrupt the defense in 5 days with players of all different ages and abilities. And, you know, all the specific language that we use, how we coach, how we're using constraints. So obviously, I think that was a really—

I think the Skills Series ended up being very authentic because it was really just behind the scenes of me coaching. Yeah. And doing what I love doing best, which is just being on on the floor with the players, inventing new things, trying new things out.

So yeah, really really happy with how the skill series kind of worked out, and we had a good number. We had obviously Sasha Protzig brought his whole NBBL team last season, which was great, and I think we have more German players and coaches who have signed up this year, which is awesome.

So yeah, really excited, and I know you guys will be back. So. I'm excited for that.

Definitely, definitely. And also what I have to say, like being next to the sea, having great-ass coffee and then wine in the evening as a mix-up to basketball, that wasn't too bad.

Oh man, absolutely, absolutely. Beach time is obviously factored into the camp, which was very important. I don't believe in all this shit like do 7 hours a day. So it's, it's It's quality over quantity with me.

Yeah. How do you go by if you don't know the whole personnel of like how skilled basketball players are, how different they are, of like building a practice with them? What were your initial thoughts on that?

Yeah, absolutely. I think you just, you have to be really adaptive as a coach, Ferdi, as opposed to being adapted to your idea of what you're going to do. So, I mean, I'll be completely honest with you. I didn't have a single practice plan really for the Roseto camp.

We had principles which I discussed with my transforming team of what we were going to touch on each day because we had like pre-planned video sessions. Like we had, we did classroom sessions with the players every day where they'd learn new transforming concepts every day.

And then of course we'd do it on the court. But it was actually a great constraint having you there because of all the different groups. I was always I mean, personally, I never repeat stuff anyway because it's really boring. So it's like, even if you guys weren't there, I just, I wouldn't have done the same sessions with different players because it's like, it's not fun for me.

So I was constantly just, you know, had a principle like, all right, we're going to work dominoes day 1, day 2 we're going to hit gets. But then kind of how we brought that to life was really different with each group of players that we had.

And I think that's where Being able to respond on the fly, and obviously I think it's just being bold enough to literally try stuff you've never done in a practice and just seeing what happens. That to me is like I find like my favorite practices are when I'm in that flow state and I'm just experimenting, experimenting, and I think that's so important for us as coaches.

And I think it's really cool because obviously the finished product was me. Trying a bunch of things which I've never actually done before, or maybe you know taking different constraints from different small-sided games merging them together. And I think that's just really important as coaches.

I think it's good to have a mix between all right yeah you're going to have a practice plan for some sessions for some sessions and then going into others where you're you don't have a plan and you use that as a constraint in your coaching to force you to be more creative and maybe you say all right I'm not going to repeat.

an activity that I've already done with the team. I'm going to be forced to do something else.

Alex, since we started talking about CLA here on the podcast, I mean, Ferdi and I are in constant kind of like exchange on how we can use the method in our practices. And I mean, we are in completely different environments. I mean, I'm in a more semi-professional amateur level with like youth, right?

With like kids, 15, 14, 15, 16. And I would like to know, since you coach different levels, right, how easy is it for players, especially young players, to adapt to CLA practice? What has been your experience?

Honestly, it's a great question, Ben. And I think it's like, regardless of if I'm doing a CLA activity and I've got Donovan Mitchell, Evan Mobley, Darius Garland, or I've got 3 12-year-olds from the Rossetto camp in Italy, They all learn the same way.

They all move their bodies in the same way, aka self-organization through constraints. And in complete honesty, all the things I've done over the last 2 years at the youth levels are basically I'm using in the NBA with NBA players. And it's like, it's that stuff with the youth players allowed me to get good at experimenting, knowing kind of what works.

Then of course, yeah, I'm tweaking it here and there. I'm delivering it in a slightly different way or different messaging, but essentially it's The same at the end of the day. The only difference is obviously with younger players, you're scaling constraints sometimes to make it a little bit simpler if it's too hard.

But I really believe that I think a lot of coaches kind of use the bailout where they're either a professional coach and they say, "Oh, the CLA only works with kids," or they're a youth coach and now they're seeing CLA being used more professionally, and they're like, "Oh, you can only do that with pros."

But to me, I really Very strongly disagree with that because at the end of the day, every person is the same. We all learn the same way. There's no such thing as learning styles. It's, it's you know how can you create activities which allow them to problem solve,

perceive affordances that are most optimal for you know each each situation they're in, and then find ways to self-organize within the constraints present acting upon them. And that's what it is. So I think it's. It's cool because everything you see in the Skill Series is really the same as what I do with NBA players.

I would really like to expand on this because I had exactly the same experience even further. Like, I actually believe that actually executing practice is much easier now because I think it's— you have so many benefits in the sense of, as a coach, you can easily grow, even as a coaching staff, that we— it's easier to talk about certain next steps and what we want to improve and how we build practices because it's way more Let's say, how do you say, maybe more— it's so much easier to talk about it, if you know what I

mean. It's like if you have constraints and then talking about constraints and how you use them in practices. And from a player side, I think it's even easier for them to understand practices and drills. They're not drills, but I mean, like drills in the past are usually way more complex.

They're way more difficult to understand. So I think it's much easier for players even to adapt to that kind of like—

I agree there. I think it's like smart pros too. It's kind of like You know, we were talking about it before we started the podcast, Ferdi, just in terms of, you know, how you articulate these ideas to pros. But I think, you know, if you— it's very intuitive to CLA because it's kind of like, all right, are you going to shoot the same shot in the game?

Or look, take a look at this video. I'm going to show you 6 of your shots from the last game. What do you notice? Oh, you're shooting from a different place every time. You're receiving the ball from a different distance. The defender's coming at you from a different angle.

So how do you think this aligns with all the stuff we're doing in practice? Ah, I see. Right? So it's, I think it's, if you could really picture like that, and even things like I recommend, like for coaches with pro teams, just like do a 5-minute presentation about CLA to your players.

Like, you know, this is what it is, this is how you guys learn. And the good thing is now there's actually real examples of teams at the highest level doing this. Right? And a few years ago, and the last 6 years I've been trying to bring this to life, the one thing people have always said to me is, all right, Alex, show me one team at the highest level doing this.

And I never had an answer. But guess what? Now that's no longer the case, right? And I think unfortunately it's the way sport is. Everyone always looks at winners and what winners are doing. It's the way it is. So, I hope that this will allow more people to kind of be like, look, this stuff really works.

There's a lot of research behind this. We shouldn't need winning teams to win just for people to start listening to this. But that's sport. It's the way it goes.

I made, like, a completely different experience. And I kind of have to admit, I kind of struggle to implement CLA right now in my warmups. Because our players always were told what to do instead of finding out and self-organizing and just play within the rules.

They expect them to just tell me what to do and I'm going to do it. That's okay. But if I go, let's say, 2 players, hand on the back, and then we do an agility drill and I just say, okay, you have a 4-second shot clock, you need to go behind the line, the other one is defending with a bib.

In the pants, for example, as an exercise. Everyone was looking at me like, what does this guy even want from us? Like, they were just looking at me. And then I had to explain it again. And I even did like— In the video series we talk about, right, the rule of 30 to explain it in 30 seconds, use pictures.

I pulled everything, everything. I tried everything and still it didn't work. And then I had to showcase it. Then they got it. Like, how would you go with players that actually have a long experience as professional players by coaches that tell them what to do, to now bring them into CLA and buy into those small-sided games?

You have to trick them, Ferdi. And it's like, find ways to get their buy-in, because it's like, you know, this is a good— something good that, you know, Kenny, one of the many things kind of I've learned from Kenny, just like, Finding ways to get buy-in from everyone—players, staff, front office—and it's like I think things like that video example, right?

That I referenced earlier on. But it's like a how can you build the relationship like to such an extent that then you are able to really suggest these things and frame them to the players? And like one example is I probably one one of the players I probably went too early.

I was using different size basketballs like. WNBA normal oversized, and they just didn't like it. But then they love all the contested shooting games. So I was like, all right, well, that's still an enormous win in the NBA to avoid doing spot shooting and to just be doing CLA shooting games as opposed to that.

All right, yeah, I'd love to be doing all my differential learning stuff too, but they're not ready for that. No problem. That's still an enormous win. And maybe we're going to do a less advanced— we're doing less advanced versions of DL, like for instance, just different stances, arcs, changing range.

And then we might never get to the different ball sizes, but that's okay. Maybe they'll be ready for it in 6 months, maybe a year. But it's, you know, I think especially at this level, it's kind of like so many people in the player's ears that it's, you know, so many people are talking at them.

I think once you really, once they really trust you and they feel like they're improving and they see it, then I think you can keep suggesting more. But it's just finding, you know, what's the most advanced thing we can do that's acceptable? I call it Maya, and let's roll with that.

And then, you know, obviously over time, hopefully it keeps evolving and keeps changing. But I think, you know, it's still obviously a huge win just to be doing, having loads of variability from different 1-on-1s, 2-on-1s, 1-on-2 shooting games, and the rest will come.

Maybe the last question regarding this. I recognized always when a player's injured, I started the rehab process about like, From movement to differential learning stuff with a basketball, and then towards CLA with just one-on-ones. And it always felt easy in that kind of way to go by, because players get more confident in their return to play by just moving and exploring.

Oh, yeah.

And then I got the trust for them to build CLA activities, to build small-sided games. And they bought into that because it was more like a personal relation to the methods and stuff like that. Did you make that experience as well, that the more individual one-on-one session then enables more the team side to jump in into bigger games?

Yeah, 100%, Foddy. I think especially at the pro level, I was lucky because in August, September, I was doing quite a few individuals. Those guys were coming back, and I think that The individual is what allows you to build your relationship with the player, like, just like at a faster rate.

So I think, you know, obviously I'm an advocate for more, for doing more small group stuff with pros, just because you can get all the interactions and all of that. But I think especially in things like shooting, and if you have really specific rate limiters, then an individual can be useful.

And I think just more at this level, the relationship is so important. Yeah. And the individual is a great way to kind of open them up, do things that they like, and involve them with some co-design, you know, like get them identifying constraints and things like that.

And obviously, with pros at the beginning, it's really funny because they just don't know. They just know drills. But then it's really fun. Like even things like shooting, you know, when you shoot with pros at the beginning, it's always like 5 spots and they just move in such a linear fashion around the court.

And I was just thinking this morning, As I was working with some of our guys, I was like, this is actually a huge win that the moment we start shooting now, without me having to remind the players, they're changing range every shot and they're moving around the court in a nonlinear way.

I was like, wow, this is actually a huge win. And it's just, you know, it's things like that which are cool to see.

It's amazing, Alex, that you kind of like pre-built a Kind of like transition to our actual topic today by your last answer. We wanted to extend on our last podcast and go further and talk about rate limiters. Maybe for everybody who is new to CLA, maybe just basically understands the base idea, maybe you can go deeper into what are rate limiters.

And yeah, let's start with that first.

Yeah, great question. So a rate limiter is just a really specific thing reducing the opportunities that a player can act on. So for instance, it could be a really specific rate limit in finishing, could be maybe a player when they're heavily contested at the rim, they're unable to find an effective, a functional solution.

So they need some help with it. So it's not about kind of saying, all right, this player's got to get better at shooting, they've got to improve their ball handling, their defense isn't good enough. That stuff's just really generic and it doesn't really mean anything.

So it's more a case of, all right, what's something really specific in their game that is an opportunity they're not maybe aware of or perceiving, or their inability to self-organize when confronted by that opportunity? And then it becomes a case of, okay, how can we then use a CLA to target these rate limiters?

And the good thing is when you identify these rate limiters, either, you know, for your team or for an individual player, It kind of informs what constraints you select and how you design activities. So I think it's a really good one. And I'm just, I'm looking at my notes here because I was just reading Rob Gray's new book.

And I always, every book I read, I type up my notes. And there was something really good Rob said about it. I'm just scanning through. He was talking about the difference with technique and skill, and it's super relevant for For, uh, for this topic.

One sec. It is— yeah, here we go. I'm just going to read it out. Simply put, we can consider a technique to be but one of the possible movement solutions, um, to a movement problem faced by an athlete. Skill, on the other hand, represents the extent to which an athlete can adapt that technique to produce behavior that suits the task's demands, i.e.,

Is it functional? And is it resulting in performance optimization? And I think that's just a really good way of putting it, because the more I've kind of spoken about rate limiters, I did a whole chapter basically on rate limiters in my book, talking about player development.

And I just think some people maybe got a little confused thinking it's kind of talking about just techniques or things like that. And I think that's where it's important we recognize the difference between technique and skill. Yeah.

I find it really interesting and quite important for CLA that you find those rate limiters. I mean, this is one of the key parts that you can then adapt and build kind of like exercises around, around those rate limiters and then constraints to improve them.

I— what I've seen, especially in a youth setting, is it really depends where the player is kind of playing and how much is he forced to kind of unveil his rate limiters? How do you discover them? Because if I have a player who's like super dominant in a certain league, then he's never really like forced to actually unveil them and they kind of like, it's more difficult to find them.

So what are maybe ways to find them? What works and what would work for players who are maybe in like different scenarios, like a young player who plays on different levels?

So my whole career up until last year, I had no analytics available. Like nothing. College prep Italy, we had no numbers ever. It was just the constraints of the league and the level we were playing in. So what that forced me to do was basically everything I had to do in terms of identifying rate limiters was based off very specific observations from film, watching tons of film.

And I actually think the rate limiters we identified were incredibly accurate and relative to the players. Now at the NBA level, obviously you're really lucky because of all the great data that's available, Second Spectrum, et cetera. And I've loved using that because it basically, if it's used well, it basically can highlight what the rate limiters are straight away.

And you know, it's empirical. The problem is you then need to do a deep dive into why the number is the number that it is. And, you know, actually why it's a limiting factor or rate limiter if it is one. And that's where I think Analytics is not used like it could be in the NBA because you never see that deep dive, and then you never see the results of that deep dive actually

leading to on-court development that's targeting it, if that makes sense. So it's it's kind of like at this level, it's let's use the numbers, let's let's figure it out, and then you know all your interventions kind of come from there. But I think for For youth coaches, I think you don't, you know, you don't need the numbers necessarily.

Of course, you know, I think, I think things like box scores, it's just, it's too simplistic. I think it's better to just focus on film and just be really specific, you know, create, find 3 rate limiters in your players, create like a Google Sheet where you keep them all, um, and then start, start tracking it.

And then maybe you review it every month. Now, obviously, the next step is if you have some people who you can help Kind of stat things, then you can see all right. Is this rate limiter being solved? Are we achieving it? Great. Now we're now we move on and pick a new one.

And I think yeah, I think obviously it's it's a very systematic approach. And I do think even like in professional basketball in Europe, I think there'd be a lot of value doing this. So I think they're not you know the analytics is not as advanced as the NBA, but I still think it's.

there. Um, and if it's you, if they're tapped into, I think you could create a very systematic kind of development program.

Maybe we can just, to have a better visualization on what rate limiters can be, maybe you can name a few examples and maybe explain how can it be categorized. So what is the dimensions? Um, is it also applicable to teams and groups and, or just players?

Maybe you can give a few examples so listeners can actually have a visualization on how, like, what rate limiters exist.

Yeah, absolutely. So what I'll do is I'll just read some rate limiters from, um, from my time at college prep, right? So, um, I've got like a huge database here in front of me right now. That's the benefit of having everything on Google Drive.

Improving the ability to cancel on-ball screens through better positioning and agility to avoid the screener getting through without trailing excessively and conceding big advantages. Okay. Closeout defense, prone to conceding blowbys, more of a focus on KYP and maintaining neutral. Rim finishing, especially off the dribble or rolls and cuts at full speed.

This requires the intention to find solutions to advance all the way into the smile as opposed to settling for mid-range floaters. Intention to Punish switch coverages through decisive intent in dribble ISOs and off-the-dribble 3s. Use of advanced passes and the boomerang could also help here.

Use of a 1-dribble push-out to help gain enhanced separation coming off screens and DHOs, as this is a high-volume action for this player. This could be done by staying behind the 3-point line versus going inside the mid-range. Making quicker decisions in dominoes when a closeout exists.

Prone to taking jab steps and fakes, which reduces the advantage. Eliminate fakes and hold the ball when an advantage exists. So, you know, those are just some examples. So I had this big database for prep, and then we'd just change them every month.

And obviously, these rate limiters would be the focus of their player development plan. And then the idea is, you know, you can involve all your departments. Like, obviously, Ferdi, you as the athletic performance coach, then you would kind of diagnose, all right, why is this a rate limiter?

So instead Instead of separating it where it's like on-court performance, nutrition, sleep. All right, I still think if you just had all of those things on the PDP, you're probably miles ahead of everyone else. But the next level is how you integrate it.

So instead of having the separate buckets, how it's kind of like the rate limiters, and then everyone in each department kind of chips in as to why it might be a rate limiter and how it could be solved.

What I find really interesting is like the different levels. I mean, still, I'm right now working in second league in Germany, and we have one player who is not able to solve pick and rolls when he goes to the left because he can just— he cannot actually ball handle really good with the left.

Now, how would you go by such a general problem? Because he just produces more turnovers when he dribbles left. How would you then specify? Specify? Specify? Yeah, specify. Such a like general problem, which is like maybe 10 years back in like player development in like youth classes below 14, below 16, and stuff like that.

How would you tackle that in like a professional environment?

So do what, like, should I just give an example to like not going left, right? How you could actually improve the ability to go left with constraints? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So really it would just be, so you take that rate limiter, now you just, you know, I Typically what happens is I like drawing all my activities out because it gives me inspiration.

It makes me more creative. So I just have a sheet of paper and then just start drawing, sketching some diagrams out. So probably start really simple one. Let's do it right now. I've got a pen right here. So I'd probably just start with, just draw the key and then I'll just have, all right, well, The five the five design principles of nonlinear pedagogy are going to inform kind of how I design this.

So, you know, we want some repetition out repetition. We want good constraint manipulation, and we want to obviously ensure perception action is coupled. So there's going to be a defender, and I'm just going to start them in a different location every time outside the outside the key, outside the paint, right?

And the defender is always going to be shading them to their left hand regardless of where they are. So they're going to start on a 45-degree angle. And the constraint is the offensive player goes when they want, they have 2 dribbles, and they've got to finish at the rim inside the smile.

They score it, they've got to get 12 points before the defender gets 3 stops. Boom. Now ideally, that defender could be a defender who's a player whose rate limit is maybe related to, um, Fouling on drives or verticality or one-on-one containment. So you're trying to find these complementary pairings, right?

So that's kind of, that's incredibly simple, right? It's basically just one-on-one, very, you know, go from different places. Very, it's incredibly simple. It's not rocket science, right? But now we can start to be a little bit more creative, right? So now we might scale the complexity.

We might use some different basketballs.

Yeah.

To develop touch. We might constrain how they finish around the rim. We might say no backboard, or must shoot off backboard, must be above the square. You can only shoot with one hand. You can't touch the ball with your second hand. Maybe with the second defender stunting or coming across to help, so it's a 1v2.

Maybe we add a passing option, right? So it's like a whole rabbit hole because there's so many different— Yeah. Directions I could go from here. So then I just you know sketch these different things out, and then I just kind of highlight the ones I want to try.

And then sometimes I might do them. Sometimes I might do the first one and do something completely different. But that's that's basically the process I go through through the player development. So it's and what this requires is obviously very intentional, very thoughtful time to prepare.

And it's obviously, it's somewhat ironic because I spoke at the beginning about not having a practice plan, right? So it's a balance, but it's a balance between both, right? And I think the more, because I've done this like religiously for the last 5 years, this process, that's kind of why I can go in now and not use a practice plan.

But it's really like 5 years of doing this religiously, which kind of allowed me to get to that level.

Yeah.

Does that answer the question? Yeah, yeah, definitely.

I already have my follow-up question. Like, how would you then prioritize which rate limiter at the moment is like the most important to tackle? And then also, how do you set expectation towards a player how long it will take to solve some rate limiters to build culture and make them buy into the whole process?

Yeah, so professionally, it's kind of like, I think you can link rate limiters to upcoming opponents. In Europe, it's so much easier, you know, because you're probably, you know, most teams, if you're not in a European competition, you've probably got what, 5 games a month?

So I think you could really map out the coverages each team— you've got to be super organized, right, to do this, but it's perfectly achievable. You just have kind of the coverages, principles of play that that team are going to use that you envision need to be amplified by your team.

So, you know, you might see, all right, we're playing this month, we're playing 4 teams that really switch a lot in pick and roll. Well, guess what? That's if one of your rate limiters is something related to efficiency in pick and roll offense against the switch, that's probably going to be prioritized, right?

So it's what you do is it's like a bit of detective work. You just try and draw, draw, you know, the connections. So basically what I have is like a, you know, you. What I did in Italy was you have a database, you have opponents' tendencies, and then you can just always review it.

And then you kind of have your team's summary of rate limiters in front of you, and then you're just looking for connections. And I think you can do a lot of activities too, where maybe you're solving 2 rate limiters at the same time, right?

So let me give you an example. Say this one related to going left. Well, we could do, say one of the other rate limiters is creating advantages more consistently in pick and roll against the drop coverage. Well, great. That's easy. What we're going to do now is we're going to play against a weak coverage.

So weak means you just send them to their left hand regardless of where they are on the floor. So obviously, if it's on the left side of the floor, it becomes an ice or a down. If it's in the middle, it's a weak.

And then obviously, if it's on the right, it's a weak. So we're going to be in a weak drop coverage. So they're always going left. It's going to be a 1v2, but the screener is a +1. So it's 1v2 +1. The screener is going to screen to create the advantage, but then they can't score.

And the offensive player has 5 seconds to shoot a 3-point pull or get all the way to the smile. And then maybe we're going to add some stunt defenders, some extra coaches around. There's my little drawing right there. Boom. And that's the activity, right?

So it's, you just try and use your knowledge as a coach that you've built up for all your years coaching, then apply CLA to it. And that's kind of boom. The connections just become obvious the more you do it.

How much do you communicate that You work on a rate limiter with a player?

I think it's very important to tell them. I think especially with pros, like, pros are really smart, and I think if you tell them what the rate limiter is and that you're tracking it, I think that automatically, just with the game, without even you doing this stuff, they might get better at it just because of their ability to take in information and go straight away.

So I think if you actually Show them that you're tracking it, they're like, oh wow, this is actually important. But then the next level is like doing all this stuff. That's really when you see the results. But I, I, even with youth players, like at college, we presented the PDPs to them, um, sit down with the players, involve them in the process.

And I, I think it's huge, huge part of it.

If then the next question would be, if you tell them and you make it public or Talk to them. How many can you tackle at the same time? I mean, we all know that probably in our minds we would find a lot of limiters for each of our players.

Yeah, the toughest level. I think three, Ben.

I think three at a time is good because I think it's basically you know when the player goes into the game, the way I look at it is like they they should have these three things as intentions that they're focused on. Yeah, right.

So Anytime, like, your players should be able to tell you, all right, these are my 3 rate limiters for this period, and you know, this is maybe where I'm trending and achieving it or not. So I think 3 is a good number. Um, could be 3 defense, could be 3 offense, could be 1 or 2.

You know, it depends on what is going to help the player the most right now. And often professionally, that means what's going to help the player improve in a way that makes us win. Right. At the youth level, it's more a case of what's the most important thing for this player in 5 years, right?

So that's— it's kind of different based on what level you're coaching.

So, um, how do you, like, how do you deal with situations where— you talked a lot about adapting or using and choosing rate limiters also depending on the opponent and the circumstance the player is kind of like facing. I mean, you're not the coach of both teams, right?

So there might be surprises and there might be situations where Unexpected things happen. I mean, that's great in the sense of CLA, but how do you make— like, how do you deal with those situations where the player's kind of like without intention being forced to do something completely else?

How often have you experienced this? And how do you kind of like make sure if there's so many different inputs, you kind of gave him rate limiters and things to work on, and then in the game something completely different is expected from the player?

How do you kind of like deal that also in planning and preparing and continuing?

Yeah, I think it's just, you know, any player development coach, you got to be so aligned with your head coach. And it's, you know, it's, it's kind of what I wrote about in the book too, where I was talking about the silos, where often player development is just like individual moves and stuff that you don't even want, um,

your players to do in the team offense. Like, you know, I'll give you an example, like An iso where you take a contested fadeaway, right? And it's just it's funny because I had this conversation with my coaches in Italy about this example. They never did that.

They never would have. But we saw it with like you know on social media and all this, and we're like, you know, this is it's insane that this is existing. You know, high levels where it's like players would be taking this shot in PD, and it's literally the head coach would probably be having a fit if.

This player who's not like a star goes into a game and like is taking the shot on a regular basis, right? So that's just one example of the silo that exists. So it's more your player development has to be reverse engineered from what your head coach wants for, you know, how the team plays.

So even if you don't agree with that, doesn't matter. You've got to do, you know, you've got to implement your head coach's vision for the team. And then you're designing your PD environments around that. Right? So I think in college prep, it was kind of like I did most of the development, even though I was the head coach.

And it's the other coaches coached a lot, right? I delegated a lot, but it's just I didn't want to have the silos. So it was kind of like I, and that's what allowed the other coaches to learn faster and really kind of see how I wanted it for the principles of play and all of that.

So I think You know, even if I was like head coaching professionally, I'd do this. Like, I would be out there pregame warmups, sweating with the guys, guarding them with the stick, doing all that stuff. Because I think it's— we've got to try and get out of these silos and really like ensure that it's just, you know, anything you see in a PD environment is reflective of what you want the guys to do in a real game.

I think What might be the toughest one to deal with are rate limits that are somehow connected to psychological stuff.

Yeah.

How would you deal with one of those? Let's say somebody— let's just make an example out of our team. Great shooter overall, but starts missing free throws. Now he's getting a rate limiter because he's all nervous and he has a bad streak going.

How do you go about ensuring confidence again in those rate limiters and tackling those high, sensible topics?

So an integrated coach, mental skills coach, is the only way you can really hit that. You know, it's— because it's— especially when you start getting into that stuff, I think you really have to know what you're doing if you're giving advice to players.

So basically, in the book I wrote about, in the last section, there was a great contribution from Andy Bass. He's the mental skills coach of the Pittsburgh Pirates. And he basically spoke about how to apply motor learning ideas to mental skills training. Another great example is J.D.

Dubois. He was the assistant coach of the Lakers last year, just finished his PhD on mental skills training. So the idea is that you basically need someone like that on a staff who's really part of your day-to-day, who the players trust, and who is— John Giesbrecht's another great example.

He also had a section in the book. And they're basically out there with the basketball coaches. So then during the activities that you're creating, they're giving feedback to the players, designing constraints, all of that. That's the only way I think you can do it.

And I know not everyone has those resources, but I think if the only other solution is you try and learn it yourself by learning from these guys. So maybe you read some of John's work, you read some of Andy's work, you listen to their podcasts, and you You do that.

But it's an interesting one.

As soon as you have finished, like, one rate limiter, let's say you're working on certain stuff, when would you actually term it as being developed successful? Like, we're at a state where we can say, okay, we go to the next one, or we find a new rate limiter?

And how would you, like, communicate that with players?

I think it's just, to be honest, it's just my gut feeling. Like, it's, of course, yeah, we can say we're going to have this KPI and this number attached to it. And, you know, I do that in all my stuff. I have real KPIs.

But then at the end of the day, that's where it's like, how can you take the science and art, right? Sergio Oliva also wrote about that in the book. It was a great thing. He, I'm sorry I mentioned the book too much, but it's literally, it's perfect because it's literally like, You know, all the resources and answers I can refer back to.

And you know, Sergi said it's like it's always going to be the art side to coaching, right? We can't just be 100% science, CLA, all of this. So it's like, but to apply the CLA well, then it's like apply—you have to apply your gut feel as the coach, right?

So that this is the perfect example, you know, because it's like. All right, we maybe the numbers maybe as a KPI that you've been set, but you feel like this thing is so important to the players' continued success and the team that you're going to keep that rate limiter all year because it has such an impact on their game and their efficiency.

Whereas on the other hand, maybe they're not achieving the KPI, but it's been two months and you feel like there's another rate limiter which you can really quickly solve, right? So this is where it's. The more players you work with and the more years you've done this, the easier it is, I think, to

do this in an informed way. Yeah, that's my two cents on it.

I think we should also not underestimate the players themselves. I mean, usually they're quite capable of understanding, even if we, I don't know, like stop working on a limit. In practice together and really focus on it, in my experience, even like 14, 15, 16-year-old kids get back to that in games themselves.

They get back to that in practices. So maybe sometimes it's just a great option to switch. And maybe for youth coaches, in my experience, sometimes it's just a great thing to rotate, even having a certain rhythm and knowing that you have like, I know, for every player, 10, 12 maybe In total, and you rotate between them, and they're well capable of—I don't know—still thinking about it.

And if you talk to them once in a while, they will get back to it. And when they get a chance in practices, so maybe for youth coaches, it might even be a good thing to just have a structure that does not stress you even in an unprofessional environment to actually track all of it.

Doing the prep on rate limiters in general, and then the whole year making sure that each of those rate limiters gets enough attention. that the player has understood it, and then getting back to it again in a certain rotation. From my experience, that makes it much easier for environments where resources are limited and time is limited to just have enough attention on each of them without having this extra step of like super managing and micromanaging each of the steps.

Maybe that can be, can be a solution for environments that are smaller and a bit less professional. 100%.

No, I think that's a great idea.

I think to sum up the podcast, we do something really practical. Now, Alex, last week in the podcast, I introduced Hitman to our listeners as a small-sided game. So that's off the menu. We have like an exercise, a small-sided game of the week.

I think it could also be just a constraint which you really like. Or which you have used more in the past? Maybe you got something for us, maybe also something from the skill series, uh, which we recorded.

Yeah, let's go with the one opportunity constraint from the skill series. It's such a good one, you know, it's— it gets your offense and defense. Um, so it's, it's, you know, take any offensive trigger or action that you want to develop, um, create a small-sided game around it.

So maybe Maybe it's a 2-on-2 plus 1 off a back screen, or 2-on-2 plus 1 off a flare screen, or 2-on-2 pick and roll, a 3-on-3 pick and roll, maybe 3-on-3 horns. I don't know, whatever, whatever it is. And you basically just say

it's the offense has one opportunity to create dominoes, an advantage off this action. So if you run the action and you're still in neutral, it's an automatic turnover. So, and if you want to constrain the coverage, and you can. So like, you know, say you're playing against a team who's always gonna— who's always going to stay with their own on off-ball screens, right?

So they stay with their own, they go over-under, that's the coverage. And then you've got to punish it without being stuck in neutral. So just use the one opportunity constraint. You can apply it to any small-sided game. And it's great because it—

Yeah.

Elevates your defense because your defense becomes— the intensity goes way up knowing that just one stop means it's over. And then your offense, it really forces them to be decisive, looking for advantages, as opposed to being passive and kind of just, you know, running the action very passively to get to something else.

So I'm a big fan of that one.

I think what's even better, if you look at the constrained live on the Skill Series, which is now exclusively on Blindside, the whole camp, the whole Italy camp, which we recorded, I think it's 3 days of actions, 2 sessions per day, which you also can access the whole practice as a live cut video with 120 exercises, explanations towards Building CLA practices and everything.

So maybe download now the Blindside app to have a look at it, and then get a deep dive on the whole CLA topic.

Alex, it was great. That was a great pitch, and we didn't even mention the one-hour deep dive they get of me where I was sweating profusely in front of a horrendous gold curtain. But all for sacrificing for the sake of the Skill Series, man.

I actually think Ben doesn't know about it. We were like in a hotel room. where we had all the lighting on you and it was like above 30 degrees.

You guys were giving me tissues every like 2 minutes.

Yeah, every new interview recording session, we brought tissues and pulled away all the sweat. If you look really closely in the Skill Series, which you obviously will do, you can even see it. But still, content was great. Connor was great. Alex, thanks for being on the show.

My pleasure.

Awesome to have you. Ben, thank you for taking the time as well. It's now 0 o'clock in Germany, so we podcasted into the next day. It's a new achievement.

Alex, I'm really excited about the next episode we're doing. I wish you all the best with your work in the US currently. I mean, it's super successful. We're actually hyped, Alex. I'm not sure if Fadi actually told you, but it's actually like in our like weekly meetings and mixing, we just like check the scores and standings.

So like we're super excited for you. I'm really, really happy that it works out that well. Thanks for being on the podcast, taking your time, even though you're on an away trip currently and sitting in another hotel room. Thanks a lot for joining the show.

My pleasure, Ben. All the best. And I mean, guys, See you next week on Monday with a new episode of We're Talking About Practice.

Thanks, guys. You guys, great practices to all of you.

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