Effective Constraint Manipulation

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Hello and welcome to the Transforming Basketball Podcast. On today's episode, I want to discuss not only the importance of effective constraint manipulation, but also some practical constraint ideas that we love at Transforming Basketball that will help you in your practice environments. If you've had a chance to see a clinic, attend the Transforming Summer Camps, or even listen to some of our shows, you will have heard some of these constraint ideas before, and hopefully some of them will be new to you as well.

So firstly, what is the purpose of manipulating constraints? The purpose is to guide behavior, and that's essentially why we do it. It's very simple. So effective constraint manipulation is the key to skill development. So we have to give players some credit here. They're always going to play within the rules of the game.

And it's really interesting between practice and then the game. Like, I remember working with under-12s at London Lions before they played in a game. There was a lot of rules that they didn't know, like how to line up for free throws and things like that.

And then immediately after playing the game, they learned straight away because they had to abide by those rules or the game couldn't continue. So. You know, the players are gonna play by the rules or the ref's gonna blow their whistle and it's gonna be a turnover.

There's gonna be a consequence. That means that if we constrain effectively, so we change the rules of the game purposefully, players will adapt with the aim of winning and improving. So the overarching question when manipulating constraints is what affordance or affordances or the opportunities for action are you hoping to create?

What is the intention? And is the constraint manipulation guiding your players' attention to this new possible outcome? And I spoke about the intention in the previous solo episode. So make sure to check that out if you haven't already. So for example, if it's a 5-on-4 plus 1 game where the shooter high fives the coach on the baseline, the intention of this game could be to play and greet.

So the constraints I could have in this game could be Players have 4 seconds to cross the half-court line or it's a turnover. And you might see that this could result in more kick-ahead passes. And I could also do players have to land like a quarterback.

And then from this constraint, more bust-out dribbles are going to start occurring. So think of how the constraints are going to guide the behavior to play with the green principles in this example. So these 2 constraints, landing like a quarterback, 4 seconds to get it over the half, done at different times and maybe separately, will help guide players' attention to the intention of the game.

So what does this look like practically? And I want to give some examples on each of the constraints of Noel's constraints model. So for example, task constraints, which are, you know, probably the easiest for coaches to constrain or manipulate effectively, the constraints are the rules of the game.

So you could limit the dribbles, enforce a shot clock, change the scoring rules. And then you have environmental constraints. So you could change the court size, and this could also be argued that it is a task constraint. But you know, for this, let's just say it is an environmental constraint.

You could simulate crowd noise, you could play music. You could have a practice where players aren't allowed to talk or a section of the practice where they're not allowed to talk and they have to find different ways to make connections with each other.

You could even do this for individual players. So individually constrain them so that they can't talk. You could, and I've tried this once and I really liked it, have your practice warmup like a game warmup where players have to show up like an hour before and prepare for the practice like they would for the game.

Then you have individual constraints, so you can constrain fatigue. So for example, you can do more full court games and then quickly transition to more specific half court decision-making focused games. You can play versus different players constantly. So the trick here is to have short games with quick turnaround so players can constantly switch with different partners because different movement solutions are gonna occur versus taller, shorter, faster, slower defenders.

Individual constraint that I like is like golden snitches, and we'll talk a little bit more about this in the next section. And then finally, individual constraint for players could be turnover for the same movement solution. We had a player when I worked in Portugal, and every time he went for a layup, whenever we played a one-on-one advantage game, He would always finish with some kind of spin move.

So the constraint was, if you spin, it's a turnover. And initially he didn't like it. He was like, oh, but every time I spin, I score. And it's like, yes, but then you can't do anything else to score. So it was more about helping him unlock and guiding him to different movement solutions other than just the spin move.

Then we have, I want to talk about constraints to bring this out in training. So let's start with our principles of play. And constraints that we really like at Transforming Basketball related to shot selection, firstly, is you can only score gold and silver medals.

So whatever your shot spectrum is, players can only score those shots, or, and the other ones don't count. And what will happen is players will become so attuned to finding and taking these shots and making these shots that they just won't even shoot, or they'll shoot very limited of the shots that aren't in your shot spectrum.

So attention, so essentially. You're really guiding your shot spectrum. Then we have dominoes. So, you know, a simple constraint that's super popular, you have heard it on the podcast before, is just the turnover one. And I mentioned it already, but it's essentially like if we're working on our dominoes principles and we create a game, very important that we create a game where dominoes exist.

Like maybe it's a, you know, 3-on-2 game. And so dominoes already exist. So the players have to play with dominoes principles because in this environment, the dominoes already exist. So if they don't exhibit zero-second decisions, floor is lava, or one can't guard 2, then it's an automatic turnover.

Then you have your green, yellow, red principles of play, and you could constrain it. A constraint that I like is a golden snitch. So, you know, let's say you're playing a 2-minute game. Team with the highest score wins, but you could also add the Golden Snitch.

So if the team is able to catch the rebound, land like a quarterback, and bust out dribble twice in that game, they automatically win the game. And what this do will make your players very attuned to one, busting out dribble, landing like a quarterback, but also stopping the other team to do that.

So you might see more tagging up. You might see more crashing for offensive rebounds. So it's a very powerful constraint. That golden snitch constraint. Okay, and then another one that we really like is you have to trigger if it's neutral or it's a turnover.

Okay, and we'll talk more about that here as well. So instead of overloading players with explanations of what you want them to do, use constraints, build environments that make these behaviors that you're looking for part of the game. Right? So some really cool and fun constraint ideas that are very purposeful.

As well is trigger before the score rule. So we already spoke about that. You know, you could even make it like, even if it's a green situation, the team has to trigger and that's super extreme. And that's obviously if you want to work more on your yellow versus green or versus a combination of all of them.

But that is something like if you want to get those pick and roll reps, you know, you can use that constraint. Another one that I found to be very powerful is 2 seconds to retrigger. So let's say you go. And you trigger or you arrive in green and you have an advantage, but then you lose dominoes, then you have to reset, but you have 2 seconds to flow into a trigger or it's a turnover.

And this makes the players very attuned to being in the correct spacing, flowing to the trigger that makes the most sense for that spacing as well. Then you have the one opportunity constraint. We've spoken this about this as well. Before, and this is a super powerful constraint because players are gonna be very attuned and they're gonna be looking for the specific coverage solutions because they only have one chance to create dominoes.

So if it's a side pick and roll and the defense are switching, then, you know, they have to be really intentional about making that pocket pass or the pass over the top to the short roll, or maybe the relay pass. So they really have to think hard about Creating dominoes or it's a turnover.

Another constraint that you could use similar to those is the short shot clock. So it does pretty much the same thing, but you know, you could, like, for example, in the one opportunity constraint versus the short shot clock constraint, let's say you have 6 seconds and starting from a side pick and roll, you know, you could create a domino sequence that lasts longer than that.

So that's why I prefer the one opportunity constraint, but the short shot clock Is also good to get players to find the best possible shot in the short shot clock, which is great if it's late in the shot clock. So it's very representative of the game environment.

Then you have Battleship and, you know, different ways to play Battleship. You could say players can score from 3 different spots and they win the game like the board game. Or you could get even more specific and say, if you're doing triggering and the trigger is gets, you could have the players have to score for keep.

They have to score with a pitch and slip, and they have to score off a backdoor cut. So those are the 3 ways that players can win the game, or the way that players can win the game is by scoring with all 3 of those coverage solutions.

Or you could do 2 out of 3, or maybe 4 out of 6. So you could get very creative with Battleship scoring. And then another constraint that, you know, I don't use so much myself, but it could be useful to try in your practice environment is Touch the paint rule.

So the score only counts if the possession has a paint touch first. And, you know, coaches really like this because it forces players to be aggressive to the basket, hunting higher value shots versus just taking the catch and shoot 3. So to wrap up, I want to say that effective constraint manipulation is the single most powerful tool coaches can use in practice.

It allows coaches the ability to create a very specific game environment where the actions you are after will organically emerge. So the question I have, and I want to leave you with today, is what behavior or behaviors am I trying to encourage or discourage?

And how can I manipulate the task environment or individual constraints to nudge that change? Okay. And the rule of thumb to manipulate constraints, because I know it is difficult to manipulate constraints, especially in real time. It is something that you just have to practice and work on.

But a rule of thumb is if you find yourself constantly repeating the same instructions, consider adding a constraint. So if players do not follow your instructions that you're constantly yelling and trying to get them to do, there will be a clear and immediate consequence, like the turnover, for example.

So I hope you enjoyed the episode. Thank you so much for listening.

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