Warm-up Design with German Pro League Coach Domenik Theodorou

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So welcome to the Transforming Basketball Podcast. On today's show, we have Dominique Theodoro. Dominique is a performance coach for Rasta Vecta, a Division A pro basketball team in Germany. He's a self-acclaimed performance management enthusiast who likes to create rich movement environments for his players to experience different affordances and solve problems.

He is a master in environment design, and we're going to get into that on our conversation here today. So, Dom, welcome to the show.

Well, thank you, George. That was a rich introduction. I really liked it. Maybe a little bit too much, but let's see if I can bring that much to the table. I hope I can bring a little bit.

Exactly. Setting expectations high. So, dog, I have to ask you, you know, if you just look at your Instagram, there's loads of small-sided games that you use for warmups. Firstly, when did you start, like, getting into this? Like, when did you start? Okay, like, this is it.

I'm gonna start doing this.

It's maybe not the best reason for change, but I was just so bored with the stuff I was doing for quite a long time. I'm now in season 12 working as a Performance coach, and at some point I was like, "Man, this you know these warm-ups.

I mean, it always depends if you play international also international competition. Then you don't have that many practices as you have when you don't play international competition. But usually you have at least 130 to 150 practice sessions, which include contact where I start with the warm-up.

And if you think about that, that is even if it's only 130 times, hey, it's 130 times." 12 to 15 minutes, that's a lot of— let's say you have a lot of opportunities, you know. But at the same time, in my first years, everything, you know, it was just me running the show and it was me instructing and it was— I was the chief and I wanted them to do like certain dynamic stretches in a way I wanted them to be done, like with the technique I thought of was the right way of going about

it. And yeah, it was more like You know, I tell you and you do it, but there was never anything.

Was this like the more traditional lunges that you see, you know, like the sideline to sideline warmups?

To be honest, it is still a little bit like this, but back then it was always the same. And because I was just so preoccupied with figuring out the perfect warmup with, you know, where I include the groin, where I include the hammies, you know, the quads, the hip flexors, and everything needs to be in there.

And we need to go lateral, we need to go frontal plane. And You know, this was always my way. Okay, how can I get everything in in the time that I have? And at some point I thought I had it all figured out and the warmup never really changed.

It was the same. And guess what happened? You know, players were just figuring out the whole routine. You know, at some point they were on autopilot because they knew what was coming. So it was completely devoid of any joy. It was just monotonous.

It was repetitive. It was predictable.

And this is like they were maybe physically being prepared, but mentally they weren't. Mentally, they were almost like being unprepared for what was coming at hand.

Exactly. And this was basically at some point I was like, okay, I got to change something because I think it's just like boring for them, but it was even much more boring to me. And then I thought about, okay, How can I tweak things?

And initially, you know, I started thinking, man, what about like putting in a small game? But then I was like, nah, that's not professional. Come on, we are a professional team. We cannot have fun, right? These were my, like, my first thoughts. And at some point I did it and I was like, I'm not sure if this is the right way of going about this.

But the feedback from the players, which I received, was just so much better because all of a sudden they, you know, they seemed to enjoy it just a little bit more. Because all of a sudden you forget what you're doing because you're just preoccupied with the goal of whatever game you choose.

You know, you just, you forget how fast you move because you just want to get the problem solved. You know, the players don't think about that they have to solve a problem, but they just think about the goal of the game, you know, and even in professional sports, you know, players want to win and, you know, even if it's just a small game, it's about winning and all of a sudden they forget.

How are they executing things?

Just play. Yeah, we were speaking before the importance of the warmup. And I was saying how, you know, you can go on your Instagram and there's all, like I said before, all the different games and small-sided games and activities you do to get the players prepared for practice.

And I was saying, like, I love the warmup. I think it's so important because it not only gives the players mentally and physically prepared, like you just said, but it also, you can also work on the skill development part. So maybe as a, you know, a team, you're limited for time and you don't have time.

Oh, I can't train skill development. But you can add that into the warmup. So you can add ball handling, you can add passing, whatever it is. So how do you do that?

Now you're, you're opening a big topic here with skill. Let me just first of all connect to what you said initially. I think like the warmup in general is something we, you know, everybody understands that it's important, right? Everybody is like, okay, yeah, okay, we gotta warm up somehow.

But the way we fill that part, ah, I think we can do a better job there. And there was one quote that I once read which really got me thinking, and I don't even know who said that. I really, I still don't know.

I'm just going to read it out. It's just one sentence. Learning is not the process of repeating a solution, but is repeating the process of finding a solution. And this really got me thinking because, okay, if that's learning, if we can connect skill to this, let me just think about how I always went about warmup.

And I said it before, I was always giving the instruction. There was no, you know, that there was no problem to solve for the players. And this really got me thinking, and this was the point where I was like, okay, how can I come up with problems in the warm-up?

And then, you know, if you want me to talk about my light bulb moment, I can talk about this because I think this really fits nicely here. This was when I got to Vechta, it was 22-23 this season, and we had our first practice of the season.

And at the end of my part At the end of my warm-up, I decided to do like I wanted them to build up their speed, and I put them on the baseline, and I just told them, "Hey, you know, guys, go from baseline to baseline, and in the course of you going to the other baseline, you build up your speed.

All right? You don't need to sprint 100%, but please give me 80, 80% at the end." And they did it the first time. It was maybe 50%, you know, from what I was from what my eyes were telling me. And then they went the second time.

It was probably the same. And I was like, okay, this is, you know, it was incredibly boring, right? Because there was nothing, it was just very like limited. So, and then I was like, okay, I don't want this to happen again next practice.

So what I decided to do next practice, I just gave them a basketball and I put them in the corner of the court, 6 on one corner, 6 on the other. And everybody had a basketball and I told them, okay, hey, throw up the ball in the air.

The ball needs to bounce 3 times and then you need to finish on the other side with a layup. All right, can everybody do that? And they did that. Yeah, they threw up the ball across the whole court. They had to bounce 3 times and they finished with the layup.

After 2 tries, I told them, okay, give me 2 bounces. All right. And then after 2 tries, I told them, give me 1 bounce. And guess what happened? They built up their speed. Yeah, because they were so incredibly focused on the basketball and on the way they were tossing the ball up that they completely forgot how fast they were moving because they wanted to, they They wanted to solve.

Well, I can say pro. It's not a real pro. It's just a task. They wanted to solve the task. Afterwards, I was like, okay, good. Because I try. I always like to reflect on the things that I do. And I was like, okay, good.

I saw like way better buildups than the day before.

Yeah.

And I had the feeling that they were enjoying themselves because they were picking on each other. You know, if they didn't, if they weren't able to complete the task, they were, you know, like I said, they were picking on each other. Some guys were even helping each other, and they were figuring out a way.

of how to toss the ball up that they are able to complete the task.

Proactive communication, yeah.

It seemed to me that they had much more fun, but I wanted to ask them. So on the next day, I went individually, like without telling, I went to every, like to each one of them. And I was like, hey, why do you think I did that?

And we had some smart guys on the team in that year, but nobody told me. They all said things like, yeah, you wanted us to perform layups. You wanted us to figure out how to throw up the basketball in order that I can, You know, get the layup done after one bounce.

Nobody said that it was about acceleration, building up speed. And then I was like, okay, maybe this is smart coaching from our lens because I let them build up speed, but they don't even think about that because they are just preoccupied with something else.

And to be honest, now this is not a real problem that they had to solve because there was no defender or anything, but it was a little bit kind of a game, right? They still had to solve a problem. And then I was thinking, okay, this is something I should build on.

And I was like, okay, what about like integrating more small-sided games or mini games? I'm not even sure if small-sided games is the right term. Uh, it's probably more mini games.

Because I think it translates differently in German, doesn't it? Because I— we had another one and he was telling me that. Yeah.

And then I was like, okay, maybe we implement a little bit like more games from now on because they started to enjoy it much more. And once you implement games, you know, now you have to think about, okay, there you have real, you have problems to solve, right?

Yes. And we spoke about it briefly, but can you summarize your unwritten rules for a basketball warmup? Like what are the physical mental boxes you have to always tick? So it's like a problem to solve.

So I categorize into, On the one hand, there are my unwritten rules, and on the other hand, I have a little checklist. And it always starts with the checklist. And the checklist, I say that it's completely stolen from Charlie Weingraf in, I think, 2018.

I still love this checklist because I think it checks the most important boxes. My checklist is, you know, you need to increase tissue temperature. I think we don't have to speak about that. You need to prep the mobility that you have. You're not going to gain any more mobility in your joints through the warm-up because you simply will not work with Enough tension to create that change.

You need to prep the central nervous system. I think you need to send your body a signal that we're about to start practicing, especially at the end of my warmup. And then you have to somehow rehearse the movements of your sport, in this, in our case, basketball.

Yeah. So these are the 4, like the 4 checklists from Charlie Weingriff. And I have a 5th one. And the 5th one for me, maybe he also back then meant that already with checkpoint 4, But for me, it's also about creating a warmup environment, which is a little bit representative of the game of basketball.

And in the very end, I think the gap between the end of my part, if I start with the warmup, and the first drill of practice should ideally be very small. Yeah, it should be a smooth transition. These are just, it's just my warmup checklist.

And then there are my unwritten rules. The first unwritten rule for me is that no warmup should ever be the same. Which is not easy, although you might think it is.

Sometimes, like, the players enjoy it so much and it does so much for them that you want to make it the same. But then it's like, how can we make a similar game but still keep it fresh? So I'd love to hear what you say to that.

It's very true. Some, you know, especially if, uh, if I've never played a game before, you know, I'm always a little nervous because I never know how it will turn out. But if it turns out well and everybody is engaged and everybody seems to understand the rules and everything, then, you know, it's a very good chance that I do it again because then they will remember and might even do it a little better.

Yeah. The second one that I have is ideally I want players— a little bit what I said earlier— I want players to forget that they are warming up. I just want to create an environment where they don't really think about warm-up, where they just think about something else because they hopefully have fun.

Then I want a high-energy environment, which is also not easy, especially if you're in a season where you maybe lose more than you win, or when you come off a tough loss. Not— it's easier said than done, let me tell you that. What do you do?

How do you do that then, those environments?

I personally think that I try to be always very energetic because I think if I don't have the energy, how can I, you know, expect the players to be energetic or find the energy? So that's why I'm all pretty loud. You know, and there are people who say you don't have to be the loudest all the time, but I'm a little bit like, ah, but if I don't bring the juice, not sure if they can bring it.

And some guys will always do that, but some guys, for some guys, it's always tough. You know, that's why I'm saying it's not easy with the high-energy environment. It doesn't work all the time, but at least it's my goal. And then one really important one, the last one of my unwritten rules, I want all of them to move.

You know, I don't like choosing minigames. It depends a little bit, you know, if we just have a shooting practice and I start to warm up, then I like to choose warmups where they maybe don't move as much. Then it's probably more about mental, like their mental preparation, you know?

But if we have a game day minus 3 practice and I know it's going to be a long practice and the first drill is maybe already live, yeah, then I have to pick something which, you know, prepares them well. And then I, you know, if I have to pick a game, then I pick a game where everybody hopefully moves and moves enough.

So that they are ready, like I said, that we bridge the gap, like, from the end of my part to the first basketball drill. And these are the unwritten rules. So I have 4 unwritten rules and 4 or 5 checkpoints that I always want to try to check.

So it's like 9 little checkpoints just to make sure that you are challenging your players, warming them up, getting them ready for practice, making sure that they're mentally engaged. And it's all in there. I love that. You do work with, you know, like load management and making sure, you know, how can we reduce the chance of a player getting injury?

Obviously you can never prevent it, but you can reduce the likelihood. I want to ask you in terms of when you're using your warmups, like tag games, there's been a lot of research done on tag games and how it can reduce the likelihood of injuries because you're learning to stop, you know, you're working on your deceleration and a lot of injuries occur up during the stopping movement.

So tag games are great for that, but how do you You know, design the warmup to maybe if the player only moves a certain way, you're trying to get them away from those kind of movement patterns to ultimately reduce the likelihood of them getting hurt.

How do you do that?

Well, I'm probably a little old school. I like flow. I like to have, first of all, I like to have a good flow in the warmup. So what that means is I like to start stationary. I like to start, if I have the time, I like to start on the floor because I believe that it gives the players a little bit of time to arrive at practice.

Also mentally, yeah. And I like them to go from a seated to a standing position. From a— we still do dynamic stretches, not to the extent that I used to do it, yeah. A little bit different because I always ask them to perform them in a different way.

And from there, like, these are like the first 5 minutes. The next 5 minutes, I'm just roughly now, yeah, we'll do some locomotion. So they will go sideline to sideline, but this is all within, within my approach of Like creating a good buildup, let's say.

Yeah.

So because I want to make sure that we get— when we get to the small-sided games, they're already prepared. Because I know playing a tag game all of a sudden, it isn't something you can do out of the blue, you know, without being prepared at all.

So that's why it's very important to me.

Is it different then? Because I know you work with the youth teams as well and you help them out. So is it different, like, with the younger age group? Would you go straight into a tag game? Whereas with adults and professionals, you do, you know, you gotta prep 'em more.

Yeah, it's exactly how you said. I mean, I still would like the youth team, you know, maybe not to the extent I do it with the pros because I believe the youth doesn't need that. Let's say they also need preparation, but maybe not that much.

Yeah. With the pros, I always take a little bit more time because I know if you have some older guys, you know, they, they need that. So that's why I, always try to progress it, let's say, steadily. So I think my main job as a performance coach, you know, I want to impact health as best as possible, you know.

And the levers are, you know, load monitoring, load management, strength training, and the warm-up, of course, right? We said earlier that we have so many warm-ups during the season. And if you always play basketball, it's also pretty monotonous, right? I know we never move in the same way twice, But in the end, although no movements are ever the same, in the end, it's basketball on a daily basis.

So at some point, and this probably goes in terms of your question, I came across the big buzzword movement variability. And in the beginning, I had sort of an idea of what it was. But then, you know, I listened a lot to the podcast from Rob Gray, for example.

And there he had one episode where he mentioned the variability overuse injury hypothesis. And I came across— I crossed this term, and it basically suggests that greater movement variability allows stress to be redistributed across different tissues. And this maybe has the chance to reduce the risk of overload and eventual tissue breakdown.

So in other words, variability helps spreading the load, and maybe we can mitigate the repeated application of stress to the exact same tissues. And when I was thinking about that, I was like, okay, so in order for us to snap out of the attractor valleys of basketball, we also need to do something else in order to come up with more movement variability.

And then I was like, isn't there a better space and time of implementing this in the warm-up? Because this is something we do. It's a staple in each practice. And if it really helps when we, you know, do something else, if we can then redistribute the loads a little bit more evenly, and if that maybe then helps injury reduction, hey, I'm all for it.

The way I do this is, you know, if we are in the, for example, I mean, if we're in the dynamic stretching part or in the locomotion part, I sometimes just call out the player. I basically, I invite them to their own party.

I'm like, hey, You know what? The next time we go up and down, I want you, you go to the midline of the court and I want you to dance for 5 seconds. And all the other guys, they have to do it. They have to be copycats afterwards.

You know, stuff like that. Really easy things. Or I, you know, I'm just taking something, let's calling something here. I don't know. Hey, I want you to be a volleyball player for 5 seconds. Let's go. And then the other guys, they have to copy that.

Yeah. Or go to the midline and be a soccer player and perform a free kick. I mean, sometimes I put them in a circle and I put one guy in the middle and I give them a motto. Yeah, like 2 years ago we had such a great team, they were enjoying that so much.

And then at some point I was like, you know what, we build a circle, you are the guy in the middle. And I knew who I picked, you know, I knew the character that I picked. And I told them, hey, you're a belly dancer.

5 seconds, boom. You could not imagine what happened to the vibe in the gym. Yeah, the other day I picked another guy, and I mean, I say that here now because it is what we did. I asked him, "Hey, you're a lap dancer.

Give me five seconds." And it was so incredibly loud in the arena afterwards. One guy, he made a comment, and everybody lost it. He said, "Oh my God, I want my money back!" And the whole the staff, the players, me—I could not—I mean, it set the tone for practice because then they were like, you know.

That doesn't happen all the time, of course, you know, but these are just like, this is one of the probably best stories I've, you know, ever experienced. But, you know, in terms of variability, you can use the concept of donor sports. You know, we play a lot of games that are related to football, for example.

Yeah. And for me, you just borrow a part of a different sport and put it in your warmup. And just the fact that it's football, everybody knows football. They are just so in—

Yeah.

The energy just goes up because they wanna win. And this is how I try to spice things up on a daily basis.

No, that's great. I said this before in almost a similar conversation I had with a previous guest, Martina. We were speaking about like every sport is basically the same game, but with different constraints. So it's like, that's how I look at it when it, when the warmup, designing the warmup.

Yeah. And if you think about that, there are so many Possibilities. They're actually unlimited. But I also have to say, since I look at this stuff always through my lens of things, although I'm thinking that I'm varying a lot already, I'm at a point where I'm getting bored again because now I'm like, I would love to have more possibilities.

I think right now, although I haven't done this yet, but I think that I have done it all, you know?

Right. Of course. Yep. I guess it's limitless what you can do. I want to pivot a little bit and ask you about how you think this variability— you spoke about, like, you know, what the kind of the joking and how you added the movement variability, you know, made practice lighthearted.

But how does this variability in your current warmups impact player engagement compared to maybe previous scripted routines that you did?

Yeah, one thing is for sure. First of all, I think it adds novelty to the warmups. Yeah, because a lot of times the reaction from play, if we start a season, the reactions that I get from players who are not used to that, They're like, huh?

They always give me the weird faces. You know, they're like, what? Excuse me. What do you want us to do? Because I think it's still something that it's not lived everywhere.

Like maybe for someone that's been there with you, they're like, yeah, it's crazy. It's going to be like this. But for a new player, they're like, what's going on? Yeah.

And I definitely think that it keeps them on their toes. I think the amount of sleepwalking just goes down because they know that I will constantly toss them a wrench. So they have to be engaged mentally because they cannot rely on previous routines.

And I think they're just less on autopilot, right? That's what I believe a lot of variability does. And the fact that it's unpredictable, like I said before, keeps you more focused.

It gives the player autonomy and, you know, SDT, self-determination theory. It like makes them accountable.

Exactly. Yeah. And the autonomy thing is awesome because that is something that I, That I do a lot, actually. Sometimes I tell them, hey, I don't know, run from sideline to sideline, but you need to do right leg once step, left leg four steps.

And then they, you know, to me, I'm like, hey, do the same, but now we do it laterally. Figure it out. So that is something that I say a lot lately. I always say, figure it, figure it out, figure it out. Just figure it out.

Yeah. And because this way, yeah, like you said, it's autonomy.

Absolutely. And a question of, you know, have you ever done a warmup that you're in your mind, this is going to be the warmup, this is great. It's going to get them moving, you know, all kinds of different ways. And then you do it and it's, you know, it flops completely and vice versa.

Maybe you have a warmup you're not too sure about, and then you're like, this is great. We have to try this again with different constraints. You know, does that happen for you?

This happens all the time, to be honest. I mean, now I I have like a, let's say, a big list of things where I know, big list of games where I'm like, okay, this one will probably work. But it happened to me, I'm very enthusiastic always before I start doing things, but sometimes they just, it just doesn't play out the way I was hoping for.

But then it's not a bad thing because then you can reflect on it, right? And that's what I do after each practice. I'm like, okay, What went wrong? How could I do it better next time? But on the other hand, it also happened where I wasn't as enthusiastic maybe before I was implementing a game, and then all of a sudden it went completely wild.

There's one game that I really like where I was actually surprised of how good it went. I call it, I don't know why, I think Austin Yokum said that once, it's razzle-dazzle football. And what I did, I used the sidelines of the court as the end zones.

Yeah. And you have 2 teams, like let's say you have 2 times 6 players. The goal was that you receive the football. I had a football, like an American football that we used for playing. And the goal was that somebody of your players has to receive the football in the end zone.

When I did this the first time, I gave them 5 passes. And there was not really a flow. It was like 5 passes where, and I also let them run with the football. And I was like, I know this is, and for me it was no contact.

You know, you could only like deflect the ball on defense and stuff like that. But for me it was much too stationary. They still enjoyed it because it was football. But then on the next day I applied the same game. But what I did then, I told them, hey, you cannot run with the football anymore.

And you have max 2 passes, and the 3rd one needs to go in the end zone. Yeah, so you can one pass, second pass. And what I saw, it was much quicker. They were moving much faster. And you had— and this is really important— you had much more changes of possession.

And the good thing about this is you don't need a lot of equipment. You basically need a football. You can also use a basketball if you want, but with the football, it's more realistic, you know? And you only need the court and a little space behind if possible.

And that's why I love this game so much, because it's so easy to implement. The rules are incredibly easy to understand, yeah, and it's a fast-paced game. And most of the time you have a lot of guys moving and they score also quite a lot.

And this is, you know, what you just asked before, this is a very good example of— I tried where I tried it the first time, it was like so-so, but the second time was like, okay, if you do this in that way Man, then you have flow.

Yeah, I think it's so simple, right? The time constraint and like passing constraints or dribbling constraints, like limiting them, it just speeds the game up so much. It gets the players to what you want them to do faster. It's exactly to your point.

You want them to warm up. So you're going to make them change, you know, change directions more. So they're constantly having to defend and then attack. So it's like, it's a simple constraint, but just reflecting on it and be like, all right, what can I do?

It's just add this really simple constraint to To manipulate behavior.

One other important aspect, whenever you choose a game, I think the goals for the game, they need to be achievable. Very important. Might sound, you know, it might sound intuitive, right? But if it's too hard to achieve, they can be disinterested very fast.

Do you like want a game to last a specific amount of time? And what I mean by that is like, for example, do you want an ideal amount of time of a game to be a couple minutes? So it can be quick, or does it just depend on the game?

Do you have that?

I mean, it depends a little bit on the time that I have at my disposal. Usually with my head coach right now, I have 12 minutes, which is not a lot. So when I get to the game, it's not that I can put myself in the middle and explain for 1 minute and set the stage with equipment and stuff like that, because I simply don't have the time for it.

So ideally I want it to be quick. I love it to be competitive and they should all move. Of course. But like I said, it's, it's not always easy to get that done. But from, from it, yeah, for me it's like always 3, 4 minutes max.

That's it.

Yeah, no, I agree. And I think, you know, when I, when I, my previous team, when I'm coaching, I want them to 3, 4, like maybe, you know, 1 to 2 minutes, 2 to 3 minutes max. And then it's like change partners. So then they get different kind of problems to solve in the game as well.

So just coming to the end here, I wanna thank you for your time. I do want to ask you about a few of your favorite games or setups that help players transition from warm to game ready. So what are it like? Do you have any of those?

Yeah, I mean, the one that I just said is razzle-dazzle football. I think it's very easy to implement. You just— and it doesn't need to be like an American football. If it's some sort of a spiky ball, this is also something, you know, if you come up with weird equipment, they always get like excited, you know?

Oh, what is this for a ball?

Can I have this?

So you can use any sort of ball. It may just take a smaller basketball or a tennis ball or whatever.

Can I just say, one of my favorite things is like going into the sports equipment room and just picking out equipment that I've never seen before and thinking like, how am I gonna turn this into a challenge for the players to solve?

Exactly. I even have now a, let's say we bought it this season for me, just for me, like a cage, like a cage that you can lock. And I have so many different like Utensil, like utensil, different balls, like rubber frisbees, foam balls, which you can throw at, you know, at each other.

So stuff like that, because, you know, I just like to vary things. But in terms of your question, is there razzle-dazzle football that I really like? One thing that is awesome, I just played, used this game like, I don't know, last week, I think.

You know, there's no name for it. I call it basketball volleyball. So you use the whole court and each of the player has a basketball in their hand. And one team is on one half of the court, one team is on the other half.

And at the midline, you have like a zone. After the midline, you take like 1.5 meters on both sides where they cannot, first of all, they cannot enter this zone. And the ball that you play with also cannot enter that zone. Like a different kind of ball could be a small basketball, like a kids basketball, for example.

And the way you play it, you can play the kids basketball only with the basketball that you have in your hand to— it's like volleyball rules, basically. So if you play the ball over to, to one side, it can bounce twice and you can play like you can receive, set, and play it over.

You know what I mean? It's just basically But you always play the small basketball with your own basketball that you hold in your hands.

I understand. Yeah. So it's like volleyball, but you have a basketball in your hand. Yeah.

Exactly. Ideally, you play 4 on 4 because then again, they move much more. But I can tell you, since you have this zone at the middle, it's very important, this zone, because that leads to the fact that you have longer rallies because it's pretty easy to keep the ball alive.

But it's pretty hard to score, but you can do it. Because the first time I did this, I didn't have this zone in the middle. And then there were, it was just too easy to score. And with the zone in the middle, man, you had like rallies of like 10 to 8, like plays.

And they, it was just so competitive. In the end, the game finished like, it finished 3-2, but this took a little longer because we only had a shooting practice after. So that is something they, They enjoy it. The other thing I like, I always like playing on 3 basketballs.

If you have 2 teams, you can use the whole gym or even play on 4 baskets, I mean. And then I give them like, hey, you have, I don't know, you have 3 passes. And after the 3rd pass, you cannot pass anymore. You need to shoot, but you can only shoot 3s.

And then there are also so many things you can do. You can only score after a give and go, for example. You can only shoot 3s, but before you shoot, you need to circle the ball around your waist. Stuff like that. On 3 baskets, on 4 baskets, you can come up with so many things.

The other day, we did 6 versus 6 on 3 baskets, and I told them they have 4 passes. With the 4th pass, you need to shoot, but while you're shooting, you need to call out the name of the last guy who passed you the ball.

I guess what happens, the shooting percentage just goes down because they cannot focus. Of course.

I guess the main thing there is that they're constantly playing, right? Because they have 4 passes, so the games are quick.

Exactly. And I, these days, I'm not like, when I started, I always gave them more passes. These days I'm like, no, less passes are better because you have more changes of possessions and there's just more speed.

Is that important to you? The fact that they like just Making them play more possessions. What, like you know offense, defense, offense, defense?

Yeah, because I don't want them to be only on offense or like only on defense for too long. And what's also important is always the overall number of players that you have, because if you want to play, I don't know, six. If you have thirteen players, yeah, then you cannot play six versus six because you have thirteen players.

So what I do then, I always choose one guy. I give him like a little jersey and I tell him. It's your lucky day. You're only on offense, right?

Yeah, that makes sense. And that's a good way to simplify or make the game harder depending on how you choose. Maybe you're only on defense, you know, for example, so you can simplify it.

Yeah, only on defense. Exactly. So there's, there's so many possible ways of going about this.

Yeah, man. And I think that's the beauty of the warmup time. And it's like, You know, if you take the warmup time at practice and then the warmup time at games, you have a lot. I mean, I don't want to do quick math here and be wrong, but it's like you mentioned 150 practices a year.

And let's say 50 games. So 200, you know, warmup times. You're looking at 2,000 minutes of just extra practice. So if we can really use this to not only get players ready to play mentally and physically, but also develop them, their movement capabilities.

Movement variability and their skills, it's just, you're gonna, you know, the players are just gonna benefit so much more from that.

Yeah, unfortunately, and this is, but on the other hand, that's also the beauty of it. You know, nobody will ever be able to quantify what really, you know, has led to success, for example. You know, it's never gonna be black and white, but on the other hand, that's also the beauty of it.

Sometimes I'm like, oh man, sometimes I would love to know What has led to, you know, XYZ, but it is simply what it is.

I think also, like, to your point, sometimes you said you take it easier. So it's like, it's also important to not always be go, go, go with the players, but also give them that space to like, okay, it's like, it's relaxed. You know, it's okay to be here today where, you know, it's relaxed.

We got a game tomorrow, you know, or whatever the case, but it's also just important to meet the players where they're at.

There's one really interesting thing before. I had this once, we had a warm-up game, it was football, and it was about Hail Marys, like long passes. Yeah. And we played that 2, 3 times in that year. And then towards the end of the season, we had a game and one player threw a Hail Mary in the game, a Hail Mary pass, like through the whole court.

And our other wing caught it and laid it in. And the player who threw the pass, he came to me because it was in front of our bench. He pointed at me and he was like, yo, you know, Dom, that's because we play football all the time.

That's why I can throw this pass. And I was like, initially I didn't even notice what he was referring to because I was just locked in on the game. But afterwards I was like, isn't that amazing? I mean, he thinks that this is the reason why he can throw this pass.

I think it's not. Maybe it is a little bit, but as long as the player thinks that this is the reason, we're all good, right?

As a coach, you know, whether you're the performance coach or the head coach assistant, you always want to make sure you put players in environments that they'll see in a game so that the first time they see it isn't in the game. And obviously that's an impossible job, right?

But the most you can do is like try to get some form of what they'll see. So that kind of pass full court. Isn't something that you're going to see every game, but having a game where they're forced to do that. So now when they do get an opportunity, they can see the affordance more clearly and they can act on it.

So that's, that's an awesome story.

In the end, it was just nice. I really liked it and the player was happy and that's, that's what matters, right?

That's what matters. Absolutely. So Dom, I want to thank you for your time. I really enjoyed it. For coaches listening and whoever's listening, check out Dom's Instagram. He's got awesome small-sided games on there, warm-up things that he does with his team. So check it out.

It's his professional team that does that. You can film it. I think it's awesome, man. And it just, you know, like I said to you before, it kind of reminded me what I was trying to do with my previous team as well. So again, just thank you for your time, for the work you do and the passion you bring.

And I have one more question before I let you get out of here. And that's our transformative tip. If you could leave coaches with one piece of advice, that would instantly change their practice environment, what would that be?

There's no perfect warmup. You know, one coach once said, you know, warmup is open space. It's a blender of skill, movement opportunity, and strength. And anything is allowed as long as obviously nobody gets injured.

And as it ticks those boxes as well, then it fits. I love it.

Exactly. Of course, you should have a little plan, but There's no perfect warm-up.

Couldn't agree more. Dom, once again, thank you so much.

Thank you for having me. Appreciate it. And yeah, looking forward to the next episodes here because I'm an avid listener, of course.

Perfect. Well, I'll let you go. Have a great rest of your day.

I really enjoyed it. It was a lot of fun. Thank you so much.

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