Transforming the Athlete: NBA/NFL Consultant Dr. Craig Liebenson's Holistic Approach

This is the Transforming Basketball Podcast. 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. Within this podcast, we unpack how an ecological dynamics framework Impacts our perspective of the game.

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Welcome to the Transforming Basketball Podcast. Today's guest is a trailblazer in enhancing human performance, Dr. Craig Liebensohn. As the founder of First Principles of Movement, Craig has spent decades bridging the gap between clinical rehab and elite performance. Craig has also worked with NBA, NFL, and MLB teams, including a tenure as a team chiropractor for the Los Angeles Clippers and consulting for the Seattle Seahawks and Arizona Diamondbacks.

Craig, welcome to the show.

It's great to be here, George. Thanks for inviting me, and I'm looking forward to your questions, and I'd do anything in the world for Alex.

Awesome. And so can you tell me about First Principles of Movement, exactly what that is, and maybe just explain to our listeners?

Yeah, sure. So First Principles of Movement, or FPM, is a group that kind of was born out of the ashes of a fix-it approach that I followed erroneously for decades. And about 10 years ago, kind of my philosophy roots came back And Aristotle talked about identifying first principles.

And I think the dynamic systems theory and constraints-led approach, ecological dynamics, these are all part of first principles to me. And so we kind of wanted to bring together a community who weren't following a herd mentality, weren't following systems or methods, but were following principles.

And we're very agnostic. We're very interested in the scientific method and failing forward, learning from each other in our community and growing and evolving constantly without any ego, with humility.

And is that about, you know, your first principles? That's about living healthier for a longer amount of time. Is that right?

Well, I think that FPM is a group which includes professionals, healthcare professionals, professionals, trainers, coaches, physios, chiros, medical doctors, et cetera, who are committed to both health and performance. So these are common— it's a common bedrock or foundation for physiological adaptations, for promoting one's affordances.

So it works for people that have shrunk affordances or people whose affordances are at the highest peak like we see in the Olympics. But at the end of the day, it's about resilience and robustness and being able to take advantage of living your fullest life.

So it's not just about healthspan. We see a lot of people could care less about, about what happens after the age of 60, but are interested in getting back to tennis right now, getting back to sprinting right now, getting back to their sport or just getting rid of pain.

So let's stick with this for a little bit because I'm interested. I've done like a movement class before. And it was fascinating. We would start moving, let's say, from one side of the room to the other side of the room in different ways every time.

And maybe it sounds crazy to the viewers, but it's like we were jumping like monkeys from one side of the room. And then we were same movement, but jumping laterally side to side while going to the other side of the room. And then we would partner up and our partner would have some kind of prop, like maybe a ball on a string, and they would try to hit us and we would just try to dodge.

The prop, you know, and I thought it was fascinating because it really helped me to design my warmups and practice and my other small-sided games that I use in a practice environment. So I'm just curious, like, for the coach that's listening and for myself as well, what are some of the things in your practices that maybe a basketball coach or another coach could take into their practice environment?

Well, sure. I think the term we used to use is called gamification. So one of the nice things about gamification is that You give people a goal so that they can self-organize their own way of solving the movement puzzle. For instance, if we're doing planks or we're doing a beast crawl, we might put a yoga block on a person's back.

Now, with the yoga block there, obviously, if they're doing the beast crawl or the plank and they're rotating on one side, the yoga block's going to fall off. So they get feedback. Similarly, in gamification, a lot of times we use partners. So if we're doing single-leg RDLs, we have 2 people holding a hand.

And doing single leg RDLs, they're going to be helping each other because, because when you have support, it's assistance. And now you can actually start to hit the target tissue easier. You can start to hit the posterior chain, hamstrings and glutes easier, kind of like if using like a TRX or just doing some sort of hand-assisted or hand-supported single leg RDL.

It's not just a balance exercise, but ultimately at the end of the day for Whether it's a youth basketball player, whether it's professional basketball player, you know, your idea of small-sided games is a form of gamification. And what I want to do is I always want a guide by the side.

I want people to find their own solution. And that is so contrary to everything that I ever learned before. I always, always before thought there was a right way and a wrong way. And now I realize that there is no right and wrong.

Some people are very unorthodox and highly successful. We have golfers that come from the past era before there was video analysis, and they're some of the greatest champions of all time, like Ray Floyd or Jim Furyk. And these are golfers that you would never see their swings today because everybody is fitting into a narrow bandwidth of what is correct.

What do you say to coaches or Or anybody that's trying to teach the correct way, you know, as a basketball coach, you know, we've all done it. We've all been there. And like your point about putting the block on the back of someone's back and letting it be feedback, great.

Because you're not actually telling them what's right. You're just trying to tell them, this is the outcome we want. Let's try to find it. So what do you say to that?

Yeah. So, you know, when coaches, let's say we're talking about change of direction drills, there's a lot of things about shapes, angles, and positions that are traditionally taught, and it's part of repetition, you know, with repetition. And we know from Bernstein's work that it's more important to be able to withstand the stressors of a more chaotic situation where there's more of a moving target.

But if I'm dealing with a traditional-minded coach who sees something and says, no, no, the posture's wrong, or they're not activating the correct muscles, or it has to be done this way, well, I'm actually not going to try to convince them. I'm not going to try to persuade them.

I think rather what I would do is listen to them and I would ask them, well, in addition to that, wouldn't it also be valuable to bring in some variability? And I think Franz Bosch talked about this. There is a dance, there is a tension between specificity, like under the bar, and variability.

I like the metaphor. I like to introduce metaphors rather than logically explain why somebody's position is wrong. I love Bosch's metaphor. He says, imagine you're carrying an angry dog upstairs. Is there a right and a wrong way to carry that angry dog? No.

And so I think that that can allow a person who's stuck in a way of Teaching change of direction, for instance, where there's a correct shape, angle, and position, and now get them to realize, no, maybe we throw 2 different opponents at that person.

We don't let them just practice change of direction by themselves, trying to stop and then turn left or turn right. Maybe what we do is we have 2 defenders against them, and then we have a slow defender against them, and then we have a big strong defender against them, then we have a quick, fast defender against them.

And we then ask them, in each of these situations, do you think that you have different rate limiters? You have different action possibilities or things that are available to you? And I think anybody would say, of course, yeah, every situation is different. And now they answered it for themselves.

I think about basketball, which is, you know, an invasion sport. And then I think about other sports like volleyball where maybe teaching one movement one way makes more sense because there's no one that's going to— but you know, there is obviously there's your teammates, but there's less people taking away your space in the game.

You know, there's less variability. You know, you could say that. Let's just say that for the sake of argument. So I guess what I'm trying to ask is, you know, in a game of basketball where there's so much variability and you say you have the strong defender and then maybe the slower defender, what exactly are you trying to do to this player?

Well, we want to expose them to as wide a bandwidth as possible of things that are ecologically valid. So the concept of ecological validity or relatedness is, I think, where you get buy-in. And, you know, for me, tie-in equals buy-in. So when I'm working with anybody, it could be somebody who has chronic pain and their landscape of affordances has just shrunk.

The world they're living in has gotten tiny. They've lost their identity. They have no agency in the world. Or you could be working with an elite athlete. It doesn't have to be somebody returning to sport from an injury. It could be somebody who's just

Even, or a surgery. It could be, you know, anybody at all. Like, I want my athletes to be able to perform very close to their peak even when they're tired. So how do we train for that? So we want to get them gassed is one way you train for it.

Or in volleyball, there's tons of variability in my mind because people are having to retrieve the ball at really extreme positions. The possible different angles that they have to face. In terms of where the ball is coming from, how close they are to the net is almost infinite.

So even though there's not a defender in their space, they're having to get the ball in many, many different positions. So you've gotta explore all those. In tennis, the same thing. You know, tennis is definitely one which is an endurance sport also. And then there's the pressure.

You know, we saw it at the Olympics, you know, how a lot of them prepare really well and then they realize, okay, I've done all my preparation. Now I just want to And that's, that's a psychological resilience. And I think the ecological approach is a really big way of preparing people for the things that you can't really in a repetitive or specific way prepare yourself for.

Yeah, it's more specific. And so there's a lot to unpack there. I want to ask for some shooting advice actually. So I want to take it maybe a different direction. So let's say like I watch games and, you know, I guess in the NBA we're a bit Everyone can shoot really.

It's very rare you see players that can't shoot on the court. But, you know, you watch other leagues and there's some players that are really poor shooters. And like, you look at them and, you know, they're strong, they're big, they're fast, they're athletic.

But then when they go to shoot a free throw, you can really see how they have like these degrees of freedom that just, you know, they don't have a big degree of freedom there. So then they, you know, they try to shoot it like the correct way.

And I just think it really doesn't help them. And so I guess what I'm trying to ask you is like, how would you, if you were the shooting coach, how would you take that and help this player become a better shooter?

When I was at the Clippers, I was lucky. I saw CLA in action and Elton Brand, who was an All-Pro power forward with the Clippers for quite a few years in his prime, he extended his range between one season and the next with the Clippers.

His scoring went up from like 22 to like 24.5 points a game as a result. And what he did in that offseason was he added a second rim on top of the rim. And what it did was it forced him to use more trajectory and not to shoot it as flat.

And that's an example, obviously, of a constraints-led approach. It's a fairly rigid interpretation of CLA. I realize that. But it definitely was novel and, you know, the process led to a really good outcome in his case. So, you know, I think that, you know, as a general rule, we do want to see shooters shoot the ball with more, more arc.

I know when I was a kid playing horse, you could surprise yourself sometimes by making a shot from the corner that, that was not at a distance where normally you would have a chance. And when you took a really long shot from the corner, you would automatically throw it up really, really high and you, you would surprise yourself.

Okay.

You could make it at all. So I think I've seen some of the things that Alex does, and I've seen some of the other things that some of the other transforming basketball coaches do with respect to, for instance, the clock. So you'll have like 5 seconds to get the shot off.

So inevitably you're going to have to take a shot when your feet aren't set and you get nothing if you don't try. So, so you're gonna get the shot off. You could even increase the penalty because you could say, not only do you not have a chance if you don't shoot, but if you don't get a shot off, we're going to subtract a point.

And things like that, you know, I think can really gamify forcing yourself to get a shot off. You could reward people for just hitting the rim and you could force them to take shots that are way outside their range. And, you know, that's kind of like Curry.

He's taking shots from the stands. He's taking shots from the other free throw line. And God knows that when he practices those shots, he makes half of them. When he gets to the 3-point line, you know, even in a game, he still has a chance to make like 40, 45% of them.

That's great feedback. So it's essentially, you would change the constraints that get them away from these states of shooting. So this rigid state where he has limited degrees of freedom, and you would just help expose him to different, you know, ways to shoot by Adding the constraints or maybe taking away a constraint, whatever the case is.

That's great.

100%. You know, I mean, we've all seen, you know, Shaq's issues back in the day, or you've heard about Wilt Chamberlain and, you know, I don't know how CLA solves that. Chamberlain was more successful shooting underhand, but supposedly he refused to do it just because of his ego.

Do you see they move off of center? Chamberlain moved back from the line. And maybe that helped him a little bit. I don't remember what things Shaq tried, but, you know, these guys really struggled.

Yeah. I remember someone told me a story that Shaq had one season where he increased his percentage by 10, 15%, working with a specific shooting coach. And then he stopped and he plateaued.

I'd be curious about LeBron, how he improved, because first half of his career, he was not somebody you wanted at the line in crunch time. Whether it was maturity or what, I don't know.

Yeah. And I think it was, you know, he shot a career best last season, one or two seasons ago. But it's interesting because to your point about shooting off the line, you know, he shoots the ball from the middle of his body, but he takes a step, but his right toe is on the nail.

So when he's shooting it, it's actually a longer shot versus if he was standing on the line. But then, you know, maybe he shoots a little bit to the, to off his shoulder instead of shooting straight. So It is interesting that like the very nuances of it all.

Yeah.

I think if you have a second to talk about a different sport like baseball, you know, I remember some of my son's coaches, they would ironically or paradoxically, they'd say, if you're facing a pitcher who's throwing gas, you actually want to have the mindset you're going to pull the ball, which is backwards because they're throwing so fast, you know, you're not going to get around on it.

And so you're obviously going to hit it to the opposite field. But if your mindset is that you're going to pull the ball, then you actually have a better chance of squaring the barrel.

What does that mean, pulling the ball?

That means getting out ahead of it. So when they throw faster, it's harder to get out ahead of it. It's harder to square it. You're always late because they're fast. Similarly, if somebody's throwing junk and they're throwing slow, you're going to be too far in front.

So the mindset is to actually sit back and not be overanxious, you actually want to be thinking in your mind about hitting the ball late. And then that gets you into the zone where now you can square the ball up.

And I guess just to talk about that in terms of your experiences working with so many pro teams, what are some like lessons that you've learned? And also, you know, some of the things that you brought to them as well that's helped them?

I think the most important lesson is to understand the culture that you're working with, understand what's expected of you. Don't go in like a gunslinger, like you have all the answers. That never leads to a good result. So you want to mirror the culture and listen to the athlete more than anybody has ever listened to the athlete.

Don't go in because, you know, you think that, oh, they hired me and this athlete knows I'm a sharpshooter and I'm going to show them all the things I know. Probably the most powerful thing is to establish rapport and connection. With the athlete first and foremost, but also being respectful of all the other coaches.

And I think that's a big issue when you have a revolution like ecological dynamics, like CLA, you have a revolution. And so now you have, you know, one of the problems for Ecod is they have a language that other people don't speak. And so you want to be careful using terminology that others don't understand.

That's not going to help you break down the barriers. That's making the barriers higher. So, you know, we want to use terminology that translates well. Like, I wouldn't use the term affordances. I wouldn't say that, like, it's wrong to fix, you know, faulty shooting technique.

I would be more positive about everything and say, well, let's, let's see how the athlete self-organizes. Let's give them an opportunity to find their own style, and then let's reinforce their own style. Well, that's going to be harder for somebody to have a problem with.

And then they see that you're really good at bringing out a person's own uniqueness. And then this person is now performing with more confidence, then they're not looking over their shoulder because maybe they have an unorthodox style. Sean Marion, back in the day, over 20 years ago, had a really odd shot that like, should somebody have changed that shot?

Hell no. It was really effective.

And even like there's a kid from Denver this year who's got a crazy looking shot. And you know, there's a lot of makeups. Tyrese Haliburton.

Oh yeah. Haliburton's a great example and he's so clutch.

Yeah. It's great what you said. I think especially even for myself that I spend a lot of time, you know, talking to coaches online and just having these conversations with maybe people that don't know about the CLA ecological dynamics or the theory behind it.

So it's like, it's great for me. just what you said, just taking that into account, like, okay, so let's, you know, how can I kind of, you know, open them up to think differently? And I think that what you said is maybe could be a, you know, missing link in what I'm trying to do with these conversations.

I think everybody needs to read Alex's book because Alex has a gift for translating knowledge in a way that is easily understandable, not only by athletes, But also by other coaches. And I think this is a real problem in Ecod and CLA is the language.

The people who know it best, they come off sounding like know-it-alls because they're using almost a proprietary language. It's not proprietary, it's scientific language, but unfortunately it's not a language that other people understand or are familiar with. So, you know, I think if we really know Ecod well, we should be able to explain it in a way That doesn't make people feel like they're inferior.

So even going back to the original language of blocked and random. So, well, we're going to do more random stuff. So the person learns how to solve different problems because the game is very chaotic. Okay. You never said ECD, you never said CLA, but you're talking about that.

Yeah. Just another way to phrase it. Absolutely. I remember even in that movement class, we had a group discussion at the end of it. And one of the discussions was like, how much can you simplify the most complex piece of information you know, and then that'll be, you know, how easy it is for you to have conversation with people.

And I was like, that's, that's a great way to look at it.

Whenever I say something that resonates with the patient or client, I always go, that's how I should describe it when I'm teaching. My patients are laypeople. So when I say something to them and it resonates, and then I go and teach and I use more, you know, sophisticated language, that's a mistake.

The teaching should be the same. And actually, my patients are a gift to my teaching and My teaching is a gift to my patients. So it's all very reciprocal.

Yeah, I think the challenge is the fact that, you know, the research papers do use the scientific terminology, and then you're having a lot of people translate it in podcasts and books, and they are simplifying it. So it's helping, but it is quite a new process, the whole translation, I think.

So, you know, I think even in NBA circles, you know, you do get more and more discussions like that. So people are getting, they are learning the terminology. As well. I want to ask you, Craig, you just touched on it a little bit, and I saw something on your Instagram account, and it was about you want to make athletes run 3 to 4 times a week for 9 days.

So what are your thoughts on that load management? How can we make athletes stronger, more durable?

I wish I knew. I mean, if I knew, I'd probably, you know, have a billion dollars in my bank account. The Yankees and Red Sox and Dodgers are trying to solve, uh, Tommy John and pitchers that throw 100 miles an hour and football and basketball are trying to solve non-contact ACL, Achilles ruptures, and pulled hamstrings.

Of course, the highest level in soccer is trying to solve the hamstring and groin issue. But I'm a big proponent of load management. I think load management has been misunderstood though. Tim Gabbett, who coined the term, I think was misunderstood. And so it became an excuse for rest.

Whereas really what he's always emphasized is offseason preparation. So there are 3 moments when, when injury risk goes up. One is offseason to training camp, because there's a bump in, there's a higher requirement for capacity. 2 is preseason to regular season. Again, the intensity of competition that requires more capacity.

And 3 is return to play after an injury. And so the solution is better preparation. We call these things overuse injuries. Basketball player gets like a tendinopathy in their knee. Oh, it's an overuse injury. They need to be shut down. Well, what are you doing when you shut them down?

Because it was an underpreparation problem. It was not an overuse problem. They were underprepared. And so, you know, we need to realize that the next offseason is the key. But right now, what can we do when somebody is hurt?

Yeah.

Tim has made it clear that there are 3 stages to building a person. One, when there's an injury, is the local area. You have to calm things down. And every team has amazing staff, massage therapists, acupuncturists, chiropractors, physios, especially athletic trainers who know how to calm the local tissue down.

But the problem is that when you're calming the local tissue down, when things are inflamed or swollen or injured, You're letting the rest of the body decondition. And when you let the rest of the body decondition, it causes a metabolic storm. And we know that people who have a metabolic issue like prediabetes or diabetes, they are 4 times more likely to rupture tendons or develop tendinopathies.

And this is true across the spectrum from sedentary to elite. So why would we want people to decondition throughout their body?

Yeah.

Globally when they have a local injury. So we want to train globally. We want to train the arms and chest and back when somebody has a knee injury. We want to train the hips when they have a knee injury. We want to train the calf when they have a knee injury.

And this global work is not happening because at even the highest level, there are turf battles and professionals get siloed. So when somebody's hurt, they're only seeing the physio, the chiro, the massage person, The ortho. The S&C is now sidelined, but the S&C, he or she is not there to train the injured part.

They're there to train everything else to maintain insulin regulation and to lower systemic inflammation. So the body is a healing machine and we don't want to stage things. So first you do local capacity, then you, when things are calm, then you get back to a mini training camp and you work global capacity.

And then you go into the third stage that Tim calls sport-specific. Yeah. No, you don't ever stop the global. The global continues even in the face of injury. So I think this is a big mistake. I think people are underprepared, and I think even when they're injured, you can train around the area with higher intensity work in order to prevent atrophy and to maintain a level of metabolic health that helps lower systemic inflammation.

But that's just the theory. I'm happy to be on the side of the ball with Tim Gavitt. He's a pretty smart guy. I wouldn't be surprised if he came in and was talking about underpreparation and started to realize that the acute injury staff were actually far better at calming things down than maybe he even expected.

Interesting. So I guess what you're saying is if a person has an ACL injury, you know, after they have their surgery, They should still be able to do a bench press in simple terms.

Before the surgery. Yeah. So while they're waiting for the surgery, post-op, we want to work the arms like never before. You know, Clayton Kershaw has a history of back injuries. That was an opportunity, and not just to strengthen his core. That was an opportunity to strengthen his calves.

It was an opportunity to strengthen his shoulder girdle. He's a pitcher. His forearm muscles, you know, Halliburton or Tatum, obviously they're focused like Lillard on building up the calf muscles, the soleus and the gastrocnemius. But, you know, from the very beginning, the hamstrings, the quads, the glutes, all of these things should be front and center.

No, that makes complete sense. Like you said, it's like every day is an opportunity you're missing to get stronger somewhere else.

Never sideline your SNCs. For me, rehab is training in the presence of injury. That's a quote from Philip Glasgow in Great Britain. I think he's in Ireland. Rehab is training in the presence of injury. So, so we want to continue to train what's safe to train.

Safety first, obviously.

Yes, absolutely. It makes complete sense. Very interesting to hear you speak about that. Craig, I do want to, I just want to thank you for your time. It's been great having this conversation with you. I have one more But I just wanted to give you thanks, and it's been really nice to just have a nice conversation and hear your perspective.

And last question I have for you is our transformative tip question, and we ask every guest this: what is the one piece of advice that you would give to coaches to instantly improve their practice environments?

Um, that's easy. You want to give your athletes a positive experience with you. And you want to challenge them by finding the hardest thing that they feel safe doing. Whatever is the hardest thing will make them feel like badasses. So stretch them at the edge of their capability.

If there's anybody who has an injury, you want to give them just a positive experience so that they want to come back. But if there is no injury, Then you want to challenge people by finding the hardest thing, the hardest thing that's like nested to their goals, to the sport goal, the shooting goal, the passing or dribbling goal, the rebounding goal.

There has to be an ecological validity. It has to be relatedness, but you want to give them something challenging. You want to find their edge. And every great coach, what makes them great, is that people feel like they've grown through the process. So if it's too easy, it's boring.

It's got to be hard.

And then on the flip side, if it's too hard, it's, you know, they maybe can't engage with it like they want to.

No, it's a Goldilocks thing. And that's the personalization. So in a group, you know, being aware, like teachers, they're not going to teach to the person in the class who needs the most personalized attention, nor are they going to teach to the one who is the smartest and should be 3 grades ahead, but they're not going to teach to the middle.

They have to have the ability to navigate and put people in situations where they're all challenged at the edge of their capability. You know, it's like in tennis, you know, we used to do these games where the best player might be playing 1 against 2, and then it was simple.

Now it was fair.

Yeah, exactly. And that's a great thing about the CLA using constraints because It's an easier way for you to manage the level of the intensity for the athletes in whatever game they're playing.

Listen, it's the first stringers in basketball who are going to be on the court at the end of the game at crunch time with the clock running down. So you might as well give them a more extreme constraint as far as pressure or stress, whether it's a time stress or something else, whereas the other players, it can be loosened a little bit.

No, absolutely. Great point. Craig, thank you so much once again for your time. It's been great.

George, pleasure, pleasure. Hi, Alex.

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