George Vaz and Loren Anderson discussed his journey into coaching through an ecological dynamics lens, emphasizing the importance of athlete-centered approaches,…
Keep listening while you explore. Your episode keeps playing as you browse other pages on this site.
In this episode, George Vaz and Loren Anderson discussed his journey into coaching through an ecological dynamics lens, emphasizing the importance of athlete-centered approaches, motivational interviewing, and creating representative learning environments. Loren shares insights on how to provide effective feedback and foster communication among athletes, ultimately aiming to enhance their development and performance.
Cette transcription correspond à l’audio original en anglais.
So instead of telling them what to do, they asked questions that led them to decide what to do on their own. And if I'm just trying to guide them towards one thing, I might be over-constraining them again. So I think it's good to say, hey, go explore.
My primary job is to help them fine-tune their attention so that they can find the feedback in the environment and in the game and from their teammates.
Welcome to another episode of the Transforming Basketball podcast. Today on the show, we have Loren Anderson. Loren founded volleyball academy called Rise, and he recently sold it in 2021, moved to Portland where he's the head coach at Century High School, and he's also opened up another academy in October 2024.
And the interesting thing about this is that they're all on the ecological dynamics and evidence-based approach. So welcome, Loren.
Hey, thanks for having me. I appreciate it very much.
Loren, can you just talk to us about not only the fact that you started these academies, but the reason why you went all in ecological dynamics and how you got involved with the CLA?
It comes back to basketball. Oddly enough, basketball is what got me into starting to look for more evidence-based ways to help the athletes in front of me. I've been a volleyball coach now for 32 years. And when I first started my club in the Boise area, Rise Volleyball Academy, we were using a little Middle school, or yeah, like a charter school gym.
And I had worked out a deal with the charter school that I would coach all of their sports in return for getting access to their gym. And they didn't have tons of sports. They just had girls and boys basketball and track, and that was it.
So I coached girls and boys basketball and track. And now this was a charter school that was very focused on academics and not on athletics. So most of the kids there were not They hadn't really done a lot of athletics in their life.
And so I'm coaching boys basketball and we play this team that's from a small town in Idaho who are like gym rats. And we lose 74 to 3, I think is the score. And that's the worst loss I've ever had in my life coaching, playing any sport.
I played basketball all through high school. It was the worst.
And And I would imagine it would have been more if they had a shot clock or—
Yeah. And so, I mean, I know basketball, I know how to coach basketball, but at the same time, I was like, there's got to be a way to bridge that gap between the experience levels, right? Like, to me, it was just my team hadn't played basketball enough.
And these kids at this small high school, that's all they did. They spent all every day of the year, probably after school in the gym playing basketball. And so I just started looking around and trying to find something. And what I came across was Brian McCormick's stuff and started reading it.
And I was just like, this is fascinating. This is a totally different approach than what I had grown up with. And I was like, this, I understand this. This makes sense. It's, I never had a coach in the sport of volleyball. I picked it up at the age of 17 and I just went out and started playing and What Brian was kind of talking about was kind of my own personal experience through learning volleyball.
And so I brought it in and we started using it with both the boys and the girls. The next year, we're playing that same team and it was like 45 to 30 or something like that.
Right. And how did they take it? How did those players take this new approach that you use with them? Did they like it or?
Oh, the kids I was coaching, they loved it because they got to just play, right? Like they're just playing. I mean, To them, that's what we were doing. Of course, it was more intentional than that, but they weren't playing basketball because they wanted to be basketball stars.
They're playing basketball because they just wanted to have some fun outside of all the classwork they were doing. And so it met their needs and they got better a lot faster. So then I was like, wait, if this can work in basketball, I bet this can work in volleyball.
And up until that point, I was a very classical, traditional, whatever word you want to use. Volleyball coach. And, you know, very isolated drills. Everything was decontextualized. And, and I was like, man, I should start incorporating some of these ideas into volleyball. So I started messing around with it.
And then I started just trying to find people who were already doing that, which was very hard. But I came up with some ideas and found a few people out there that had some ideas. And I was probably in about 2020, 12, when we started, 11, 12, somewhere in there, we started bringing those ideas into our club and we didn't go all in.
We just started kind of bringing it in. But within 2 years, we were all in because we saw just an amazing difference in every way possible.
And I've read your article. So one of the, the way that me and Lauren got connected was through Substack. And I was just reading articles that were similar. to the ones I write and, you know, things that are related to ecological dynamics. And you wrote a very interesting article.
Well, you wrote a couple I wanna reference here. One was about motivational interviewing, which I'm gonna ask you about in just a second. But the other was about how we shouldn't necessarily like put up this wall as coaches that the traditional way is incorrect.
Like you said, it's in the article, and I hope I'm getting this right. It was a template that we could use to begin our learning process. I think the main thing is that we always keep evolving and keep asking questions. To your point, is this the best way that I can coach and grow the game?
Right. And then what I want to ask you about more specifically is the intrinsic motivation, the motivational interviewing. Can you talk to us about the motivational interviewing, what that is, and just give some examples as well?
Oh, sure. And I think it's an absolutely powerful tool to bring into your coaching toolbox. Stephen Rollnick, I believe, is one of the people involved in creating the idea of motivational interviewing. You might want to check me on that. I think that's right.
But anyway, it was created for— yeah, I think I got it right. He's got that book out that's Helping Athletes Be Their Best or something along those lines. That's by him and a few other people. It was You know, obviously he's a psychologist or who has dealt with addicts of different types, you know, drug addicts, alcohol, smoking, things like that.
And they developed this way of speaking with and talking to and helping and guiding their patients that allowed their patients to retain the power of the conversation. I think is a good way of putting it. And so instead of telling them what to do, they asked questions that led them to decide what to do on their own.
And I think that when I came across that idea, it just seemed like a really perfect fit for this ecological approach. And it seemed a way to round out what we are already doing and, or to add to it or upgrade it or however you want to term it.
And so some examples, I mean, you know, he has some really cool catchy terms in there in that book that he talked about, you know, like the fact that we as coaches tend to have the righting reflex, you know, we see something go wrong and our first impulse is to tell them how to fix it, you know.
And so I think an example would just be, When you see an athlete of yours doing something that you don't think is a good solution out on the court, instead of just stepping in and giving them the right solution, you ask them questions that guides them to come up with a different solution.
And it might not be the one you want them to, but it's their idea, which then is an extremely powerful motivating idea. And so, I mean, I think that's, there's a lot more to motivational interviewing than that, but I think that's the core and that's really the part of it that I embrace.
It's just being able to, you know, ask really great questions. It's not, I mean, people say it's sometimes I just gotta tell 'em. I'm like, it's your, that's okay. Like sometimes it's okay just to tell a kid like they gotta do something different.
Right. But it, I think we're, Much like constraint-led approach, you know, our voice is a constraint. And so when we're stepping in to tell a kid, hey, don't do that, if we follow that up with do this, we've over-constrained them. And so instead, hey, don't do that.
I don't think that's a good idea. Let's explore some other ideas. Why don't you give me some thoughts on what? And so then that's blending The constraints-led approach and the motivational interviewing, I think, altogether in a pretty seamless way. It's almost like they were written to be mixed together, right?
Yeah, we call it leadership voice, right? We want the players to have a leadership voice. But I think it's also, and just to build on what you said, it's like we want to guide the player not to the correct solution, but I think sometimes away from the Incorrect solution.
My question is, how do you, if a player's not getting it, like you said, you can just tell them, but do you ever walk out of the practice and they haven't got it, but you want them to figure it out? Do you ever not give 'em the answer and wait till the next practice or next week or whatever until you come back to it?
Or would you always like kind of at the end tell them?
Yeah, I mean, I've definitely left kids On unread, you know, like, you know, if I really feel like they're doing a good job of exploring options and they haven't gotten to maybe the one I want them to yet, but they are still trying different things, that's where we want them, right?
I can't necessarily say for certain that the idea I have in my head that I'm trying to guide them towards is the best for them. And so. I like what you said about like, we can know in pretty much any sport for the most part, there are certain things we know aren't going to work.
And so if we can get them away from that and start exploring other things, they're going to find a lot of other things that don't work, but they're also going to find more than one thing that does work. And if I'm just trying to guide them towards one thing, I might be over-constraining them again.
So I think it's good to say, Hey, go explore. Let me know what you're figuring out. Let's have a conversation about it. And then if they haven't gotten to the one thing I had in mind, so what? Like, it's your sport, my sport.
We're not judged on how we do things. We're judged on whether we score. And so if they're figuring out solutions that score, then they're, they're moving forward. So.
And I had a kid once at the start of the season here. And he would always, like, if we were playing a one-on-one or a type of one-on-one game, he would, his, his solution would always be to spin, right? Because it's a way that you can protect the ball with your back when you're changing directions.
So I said he couldn't spin. Like, you could do anything else, but you can't spin. Now he got, I don't wanna, how can I say, a little bit defensive about like, oh, but you know, it's working. Why can't I just keep using it?
And I explained to him, I want you to also have other ways for you to solve the same problem. But how do you, in your position, if you're dealt with that same kind of scenario, how do you approach that situation thinking about the athlete and their development and how you would have that conversation with him?
That's a good question. I mean, one I think is designing the environment first to encourage exploration rather than necessarily Having a conversation, I think if we do a good job of designing a game or a drill that incentivizes them to do things that they're not good at or that they don't feel comfortable doing, that speaks much louder than anything I could actually say to them.
But even in those situations, I feel like I'm still going to have kids who, no matter how you know, like in volleyball, I might say something just simple as hey. Let's say you're normally like a kid likes to tip a lot in volleyball and I'm trying to convince them to take a full swing and hit it hard.
And so I say, hey, if you take a full swing and you get a kill, I'm going to give you 3 points instead of 1. But if you just tip, you're only going to get 1. I've certainly still had kids who still do the tip.
They, they're fine just getting the 1 because they know they can't. That's when I think you as a coach have to get creative because you got to figure out And there's a couple of solutions. One, to me, first off, apparently 3 points wasn't incentive enough, right?
All right. You get 10 points if you swing at the ball and you get a kill and you can kind of sway back and forth and find the number that gets them to do it without it being extreme. Right. And so I've done that.
I've gone to kids and said, all right, hey, your team, I'll tell the whole team, hey, if so-and-so, if Sally gets a kill off of a full swing, your team gets 10 points on one kill. Well, guess what? Now all of her teammates are encouraging her to swing because they, they want the 10 points.
And so that then becomes, it's not so much just her choosing. The whole team's like, hey, come on. They're encouraging her. They're trying to get her to do it. I've honestly found that we have a coach in our sport here in the United States named Keegan Cook.
And he once said that points and participation are the biggest motivators. And I really took that to heart in our sport, at least. It's great. Like, you know, we have versions of our game, which I know exist in basketball too, where, you know, we do almost like short versions of mini games where like, okay, you're playing 3 on 3 and the team that loses is off and the next group of 3 is on.
And that's a participation-based motivator, right? If you want to stay on and play more, you have to try to find solutions that score so you stay on. You know, then if you're growing the size of the team, so you have 6 on 6 and you don't have anybody off and you don't, so you don't want to push people off, then you make it be about the points.
And I think, you know, yeah, I will have conversations with kids, but usually it's It's simple. It's things like, there's a lot of solutions in this game. I want you to go explore and see if you can find out new ones other than just the ones you have, because you will eventually come across people who are games or matches or teams that you're not going to be able to score against in the way that you're currently doing it.
And I would like you to have practiced other things prior to that moment. Rather than have to explore in that moment. And, you know, just trying to get them to think a little bit differently about it, I guess. And it really also depends on the kid.
I think a lot of the motivational interviewing stuff, a lot of constraints stuff, it's so individualized to the kid in front of you. If you know the kid in front of you, you're going to have a much better chance to know what's actually going to click With them, how much you need to talk, how much you can just let the activity talk, all of that.
How competitive is the kid? That's when points, you throw points in and the competitive kid is just, I'll do whatever you say because I want those points, right? But if a kid's not super competitive, then maybe it's more about talking to them about how their choices are affecting their teammates because maybe that kid's more about the connections and the interactions.
And so. There is definitely a degree of understanding the kid in front of you that affects how you're going to motivate and incentivize them.
Yeah. And so like I heard you say, it was like making the affordance or that opportunity for action really attractive to them so that they are forced to look for those solutions. You know, you said about spiking the ball instead of tipping it.
So like by incentivizing with the point system, really making that The affordance really attractive to them, right? So how do— I wanna ask, how do you create— so you talked about creating a representative learning environment there as well. So how do you go about not only creating those representative learning environments where they have, you know, these, all these solutions that they can, they can choose from, but how do you go about giving feedback to them so that they, if they're not finding the solutions that you are trying to incentivize, for example, obviously you can, you
know, make it more points, more points.
Yeah.
But if that fails to work, how, how do you feedback to them for them to kind of see it?
Yeah, it's a good question. I would say one, I just had a conversation yesterday morning with a collegiate volleyball coach here in the United States. And we talked about this and that's that term of feedback. And that we as coaches always tend to talk about the past and should really be focused on talking about the future.
And so I actually try really to not use The word feedback, especially when I'm talking to athletes like, hey, I want to give you some feedback. I want to give you like some tips, or I want to give you some advice, or I just want to share my perspective with you.
And then it should be to me; it should be about what's going to happen next, not what happened before. Let's just keep the conversation on what you can actually control, which is what's going to happen next. That doesn't mean we're not looking at what happens.
Because we can learn from what happened, but it's more about how can we learn from that so that the next thing we do is attempt to find a better solution, right? And so to answer your question about how in the middle of a representative game, how do I actually give feedback?
Honestly, I don't a lot. I think the game does. And that's, I think what we have. My primary job is to help them fine-tune their attention so that they can find the feedback in the environment and in the game and from their teammates rather than needing it from me.
There are thousands of sources of feedback in a gym at any moment in time. Our culture has just put one of them on a pedestal and said, this is feedback, which is the verbal feedback from a coach. Unfortunately, I think, as I said in a very recent article I wrote on Substack, I think that feedback can actually be a negative attractor and a rate limiter for growth.
Not that it always is. Absolutely. I mean, I'm a coach. I think I'm an important part of the equation, but I give a lot less feedback now than I ever have. Most of it is simply just catching them doing something right and celebrating it with them.
Right. Because I think that's a part of it as well, right? We always think of feedback as like, what can you do to improve it or get to the solution we want, or we think is, or, you know, the aim of get to the intention of the exercise instead of let's feedback and reinforce that you've, you did what we, what the game is about and we're celebrating it.
Right. I think that's important.
Yeah, I think it's very important, especially with these kids. You know, it's like they're looking for approval. They're looking for, they want to be seen. And if we see them, but we see them and all we ever tell them about when we see them is what they're doing wrong, that then, you know, and how to fix it, then that's just, I think that messes them up.
I think it messes with their head, you know? And so if we can, Make sure that most of the time when we're telling them, hey, I see you, it's, I see you doing something great, keep it up. And I think that is pretty motivating for kids.
Agreed.
Yeah.
And you said on one of your recent articles, good cues are like flashlights, not commands. So just quickly, I want to give you a few examples in the game here, and I want you to just kind of, I'm going to put you on the spot a little bit and maybe just give The cues that you might give a certain player if this happened in the game.
So shooting, let's say a player is missing shots. What feedback or what kind of cue are you giving that player?
I think the first thing I would have, if I'm going to have a conversation with them, is going to be where, what's their attention on? Like, where is, where's their focus? What are they thinking about? Different ways of framing where's your attention. But I think to me, that is the most important thing in all of sports is where is the player's attention?
And so if someone's missing a lot of shots, I mean, again, it's going to be kind of specific to the kid. Is that kid always miss shots? You know, like, are they always, have they ever made one? I mean, then I'm probably not going to like really freak out too much about it.
I'll probably just be like, hey, I love that you shot, you know? But if it's somebody who's normally a good shooter and then suddenly they're not making shots or something like that, Then it is, I think my first conversation at all might just be, where's your attention?
That might be my cue for them, honestly, is, hey, what are you focused on? Giving them the opportunity to think about it. And hopefully in the gym, in practice, we have discussed where their attention should be. And so that cue of me asking, hey, where's your attention?
Brings them back to where We've said they should be. You know, I'm not gonna try to be a basketball coach and say, hey, your attention should be on the front of the rim when you're shooting or the back of the rim or whatever.
I've heard everything from different basketball coaches, but, you know, whatever you do in your gym and however you, whatever you teach your players to focus on when they're shooting, is that where that kid's focus is in that moment? And so my quick question would just be, where's your attention?
What do you think? What are you focused on? And that way, hopefully, if we come back to that, And then we can go from there.
Love it. No, that's great. All right. Second question. Say a player is making bad passes. What is your cue to them?
I'm just trying to think of what direction to go with that. I think probably my first thing would be to ask like, hey, what are you seeing? You know, like to try to get them to think about like, what are they seeing that led them to that pass?
And if they, they're like, hey, he was open. Like I just messed the pass up. Okay, you're learning, you're going to get better at it. If it's, hey, what are you seeing? And they're like, I don't really know, I just kind of threw it.
Well, then that's a great opening for us to have a conversation about, you know, being a little bit more mindful in our choices. Again, coming back to attention and, you know, we, we move because of how we see and we see because of what we move or how we move.
Yeah.
So if a kid's making, is moving poorly, which is what a bad pass might be considered, then I want to know what they're seeing that led to that. And I don't really need them to tell me. Like, that's the thing. Like, I might say, hey, what are you seeing?
And as they start to explain it, I'm like, look, I don't, I don't need to know. I want you to know. I want you to know why you're making that choice instead of just some automatic unconscious process that Is leading to bad results.
Love it. That's great. And last one here, say you're coaching a team and the communication is poor. Players aren't communicating on, on, you know, actions. So the defender is maybe, we're giving up advantages because we're not communicating effectively on, on-ball screens, for example.
What kind of feedback would you give to your, your team, the one that's on defense allowing this to happen? And how would you give it?
I'm guilty of being too general in these moments. Like, you know, in that, in what you described, there's probably one specific player who's more responsible than the rest to be communicating, right? And I might be guilty of telling the whole team, hey, we need to talk more.
We need to communicate more. We, the whole group, needs to call the screen, whatever, you know. Whereas it's really one person. And so I think one thing I'm really working on is being better at going directly to that person and having that what can be considered almost like a confrontational talk.
I don't think it needs to be, but I think a lot of kids see it as that when you come at them one-on-one, they're on the defensive. And so I think Going to a player and saying, hey, in that moment where the offense is screening, what does your team need from you in that moment?
Like, what can you do to help your team be more successful in that moment? And of course, the kid, again, if we've done our jobs in practice, the kid's probably going to say something like, hey, I need to call out the screen. And you say, okay, I mean, you know what you need to do.
Now let's just go work on it. You're not always going to be good at it. But let's go see if we can get better at it today. So I think it's, again, that's the motivational interviewing thing. Like, get them to say the answer instead of you.
Yeah, because a lot of the times they'll know the answer, right? So it's just about letting them come to the conclusion themselves. All right, so just as we wrap up here, I think it's awesome to found your Substack and reading all of it or reading some of the articles on there.
I think it's awesome that you're athlete-centered in everything that you do. So my question is, how does that influence the decisions you make when you're putting the athlete first?
It influences everything. It's constantly asking yourself, is this helping or hindering the player in front of me? So that it becomes— well, and one other thing there too is I don't necessarily, which I've had a few conversations about this, I don't necessarily feel like athlete-centered means I'm not team-centered, right?
Because there's a, you know, like, we know that in basketball, just as in volleyball, you might have your athletes do some things that aren't in their individual best interests, but they're in the best interest of the team in that moment, right? But then that's also good for the athlete to learn how to squash their own ego and be a great team player.
And so athlete-centered to me doesn't mean I spend my entire day trying to make the player in front of me feel good. All right. And to like just give them what they want. It's about challenging the athletes in front of me to perform at a higher level and behave in a better way while also giving them an incredibly high degree of support, knowing that I'm there to help them achieve those goals.
Giving them a, I think the big word is, you just giving them a lot of autonomy along the way, like letting them come up with answers, letting them find solutions, letting them talk, just letting them have ideas and express those ideas, being willing to let them tell me I'm wrong in one way, however they choose to do that.
I mean, I've had kids come straight out and say, I think that's wrong. I've had kids who find less direct ways. And I think we need to be okay with that. I have really worked hard in the last few years, 5, 6 years, to be more okay with that, to be okay with what I can see as a challenge to my power.
But then what I've been working on is trying really hard to realize that I don't have any power Unless I choose to have that power, right? I don't need to have power on this team. They do. I just need— I guess maybe that's what it comes down to.
I don't need anything from these guys, right? Like, if I need things from teenage girls and teenage boys that I coach, that's a different conversation. Like, they need things from me. And so the more I can be willing to be less of a commander, less person, less of a person with power.
And more of a person who is just helping. What can I do for you?
The main thing I took out of all of that, and a lot of our conversation as well, is asking questions. And I think something one of my coaches last year told me is like, George, sometimes you should ask questions you don't know the answer to, to see, because that's really a thing of like, I feel like sometimes if the players don't know the answer, they expect you to know the answer.
But then it's okay. It kind of shows them that you're human too, in a sense of like, I don't have all the answers. We're learning this together. We're figuring it out together. And I think creating that culture where, like you said, they can tell you if they don't think things should go that way, but creating that culture where everyone can be vulnerable and challenge each other, we call it ABC, right?
Agree, build, challenge on anything anyone says in the gym. And I think creating that culture is so powerful for the athlete. And of course, for the, ultimately for what's best for the team. Loren, I want to thank you. It's been a great conversation.
Lovely to connect with you as well. The last thing, just before I actually, I asked you the transformative tip question, any resources, methods that you suggest for coaches and where coaches can go to reach out and find you?
Well, my Substack is where I'm currently spending a lot of my time. I'm actually looking up What it's called, I always forget. It is no drills dot stack dot com, and it's just got my name at the top of it. Like it just says Lauren Anderson as the title of the substack, and I've been writing two to three articles a week for the last almost two months now.
I started it with just an intent to get some of my ideas out, and I had no in like no expectations of anybody reading it. And now I'm. You know, I, I get, according to Substack, I have over 10,000 views a month, which I don't know if that's good or bad.
I don't. And so, but it's a lot larger number than I would have ever anticipated. I have a lot of really cool people reaching out with questions and comments. I've had some pushback, which is awesome. So yeah, so that's where you can really find my information.
As far as other resources, gosh, I mean, there's a lot. I mean, you guys, the stuff that's been put out through your guys' platform is great. I think Rob Gray is almost, it's almost become like a stereotypical answer when people say, hey, do you have a good resource for ecological dynamics?
And I'm like, yeah, it's go to Rob Gray. You know, his podcasts can be really awesome and they can also be really confusing depending on how much you know of the science behind Ecod and constraints approach. He has some very simple ones that are wonderful.
And then he also has some real deep dives that even I'm like, you know, I love the science behind it, but man, I gotta, I can't listen to this, this, you know, I gotta get going. But his books are great. All 3 of them.
I think the last one was actually probably the best one as far as just practical application of people being able to take some ideas and take it right into their gym. For your sport, I would definitely point people towards Brian McCormick's stuff. You know, it's not 100% aligned with ecological dynamics, but gosh, it's close.
And it's very much, it's got a lot of the same concepts behind it. He's always been about what could be termed motivational interviewing and asking questions and guiding kids. And I really, really like his stuff a lot. I mean, it started me on this path I'm on.
Yeah, that's all that comes to mind. I know there's tons out there. The guys over at Sean Miska and Tyler Yearby, what's the name of their company? I cannot remember for some reason. But anyway, they have a really great platform that they're doing some good stuff with ecological dynamics on.
I don't want to be like you guys. You're not even in London right now, but in, in Europe or just in England, you've got like Stuart Armstrong, who's running the Tal Equation podcast. He's kind of changed the format a little bit lately. Not that it's any worse or better.
I mean, it's, it's great. I like the change. It's a little more in-depth and really trying to create a podcast of practical application. But if you go back through some of his old ones, there's some, some of the best information about how to change as a coach on that podcast that I've ever come across.
I mean, he did a really good job of getting a lot of really good guests on there. That really challenge your views. So I think that's another really big resource too.
So that was actually the last podcast guest appearance you made, if I'm not mistaking. But that was a, that was a great conversation you guys had back then. I think it was 2017, that one.
Oh yeah. You know, I've been on others, but most of them are not really big podcasts. I've been on a few in the United States that are smaller. I was just on one that's a volleyball-specific podcast here, actually 2. One's called VolleyPod. And then the other one is there's a group here, podcast, it's called Coach Your Brains Out, which is a group of coaches who have been exploring these ideas of ecological dynamics now for about 10 years in the sport of volleyball.
I was one of their, actually, they didn't start off exploring Ecody. They just started off exploring evidence-based coaching methodologies. And I was one of their first guests and I actually talked to them about the early versions of the research of ecological dynamics and the constraints-led approach.
And they thought I was nuts. And, and then, you know, 10 years later, they had me back on. Basically were like, we should have listened to you before. But, but I don't know. Like, I also feel like, well, and I also feel like when I was on that first time, I didn't do a really good job of explaining it because I didn't really understand it super well.
It was just a beginning phase for me. And I went back and listened to it a few times and I'm like, man, if I'd have listened to this, I would have been like, that's dumb. Don't do that. So I certainly don't fault them or anyone else.
So I have been on a few others and the other little ones all in the volleyball world. There's been probably 5 or 6 over the last 5 years. But yeah, so there's, there's a good number of resources for people that are looking out there.
You know, quick word on mine. And the words, the thing I'm getting back, the feedback I'm getting back from most people is that my goal was to make these really almost esoteric, high-level concepts just understandable by somebody who doesn't want to go read the research, who doesn't want to delve into the science.
Not everybody wants to. We're coaches, right? Like, I love coaching. I happen to be someone who loves deep dives into science. I love picking up the big weighty books and diving through them. But I know that that's a small portion of people who coach.
And what coaches want is, strangely enough, coaches want solutions, right? Exactly what our players want. And my goal with the Substack was to simplify a lot of these ideas and to provide not necessarily solutions, specific solutions, but certainly specific principles and ideas that I think people could walk away with and without all the science mumbo jumbo, right?
Like, again, I'm not trying to slight the science because I love it, but I do know that a lot of people over the last 10 years, I talked to a lot of people who were turned off by ecological dynamics because it's so, which is a weird thing, but it, it's so rooted in science, right?
There's, and To really understand how ecological dynamics differs from maybe like the game teaches the game or other games approaches or even traditional coaching, to really understand how it differs, you kind of have to understand a little bit of the science behind it.
And that turned a lot of people off. And so I really wanted to just create something that simplified it for people and made it be tangible and actionable for more coaches. And I've actually heard back from a lot of coaches of other sports like yourself, MMA and golf and a few others who've appreciated how they can just take the ideas and apply them into their sports.
And so if people are wondering what they're going to get, hopefully you're going to get some slightly snarky, somewhat funny, straightforward, normal language that just kind of helps all of us think about what we're doing when we're working with the athletes in front of us.
No, absolutely. And, and we'll put all the, all the references there in the show notes as well for the listeners to check out. Last question here, transformative tip. If you could leave coaches with one piece of advice that would transform their team's learning environment or maybe their approach to coaching, what would it be?
I mean, there's like 700 to choose from, but I would say like, Something actionable where you could walk in the gym tomorrow with your athletes, add more variability. Don't plan your practice so that your practice looks good. Add in variability so that chaos shows up.
That will help your athletes become better very quickly. Yep. Lovely.
Thank you so much, Loren. It's been a pleasure. And yeah, thanks for being a guest on the show.
Yeah, you got it, man. This is great. Thank you. Thanks for tuning in to this episode of the Transforming Basketball Podcast. If you'd like to learn more about the work that we do, head to transformingbball.com to access our free resources and spread these ideas throughout the basketball world.
If you enjoyed today's episode, be sure to subscribe and leave a review on your favorite podcast platform. You can also connect with us on Instagram, X, or YouTube with any questions that you have from the episode. See you next time on the Transforming Basketball Podcast.
Explore Transforming Basketball membership and continue your coach development.
George is joined by Jamie Ransberry during the Transforming Summer Camp 2026 in Roseto, Italy.
George is joined by João Pacheco, a coach from Portugal who has been living and coaching in Germany for nearly 14 years.
Use deception, tag games and live opponents to build basketball agility, perception and decision-making in your warm-up.
