Why Drills DON'T Translate to the Real Game with Adam Omiecinski
Alex Sarama is joined by Adam Omiecinski to discuss the contemporary skill acquisition ideas which form the basis of the Transforming Basketball approach.
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Alex Sarama is joined by Adam Omiecinski to discuss the contemporary skill acquisition ideas which form the basis of the Transforming Basketball approach.
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In this episode, Alex Sarama is joined by Adam Omiecinski to discuss the contemporary skill acquisition ideas which form the basis of the Transforming Basketball approach. They discuss Adam's journey into discovering an ecological approach, as well as their experience coaching together at College Prep in Italy. A number of topics are touched upon including the practicalities of using a CLA, co-design and developing action capabilities.
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Cette transcription correspond à l’audio original en anglais.
This is the Transforming Basketball Podcast, and I'm your host, Alex Sarama. This is the podcast where we help coaches and practitioners change the way we think about basketball performance. Our goal is to create the ultimate resource to help make sense of how contemporary skill acquisition ideas can be applied within the basketball world.
Throughout the podcast, we'll unpack how an ecological dynamics framework alters our perspective of the game. If you're ready to join us in our quest to transform the basketball world, then this is the podcast for you. Welcome back to the Transforming Basketball podcast. Today I'm delighted to be joined by a very good friend of mine, Adam Omiecinski.
Explore Transforming Basketball membership and continue your coach development.
Happy to be here, Alex.
So Adam, just for the listeners, would you be able to just introduce yourself without kind of giving too much away from what we got up to last season?
Sure. Let's see. I've been coaching for over 15 years. At least memory serves correctly. It's probably closer to 20 at this point now, but got into it, loved it right away. Was always seen as like the older brother type who was very basketball IQ, I guess they would refer to me as, and just fell in love with coaching and I just kept trying to get better and better.
I got a master's in sports psychology. I thought that would be helpful. And then I fell into skill acquisition and after I got deep into skill acquisition, I met Alex and Ended up in Italy and now here we are.
So I think one of the most interesting things, and I ask a lot of guests on the show this, how did you come across ecological dynamics and first really getting into contemporary skill acquisition ideas?
What sticks out in my mind is I graduated with my master's in sports psychology, was an assistant coach at a local university around my home. And was doing summer workouts and it just, at some point it, it just kept hitting upon me that, you know, I was, the psychological aspect was fantastic.
It was the first thing that, you know, allowed me to build great relationships with the boys. I saw it really impacting their experience and I just more or less built upon that. But what always stuck out to me was like, they did not see basically what we call affordances, the opportunities for action.
that I saw, and I could not figure out how to connect that without explicitly telling them. I, I, I would do my best to ask questions and try and understand what they were seeing and what they weren't seeing. So that just always stuck with me.
So I just started reading about like how we learn, and it started with something as simple as this book called Made to Stick by Peter Brown. And there was one study in there that I remember was, it was a baseball study, I think that's often cited in books, is it was basically like random practice.
And I just started using that. And I happened to hear one sports psychologist mention Stuart Armstrong's podcast, The Talent Equation. And I remember the day vividly. It was like a September day. I was out shooting at my house and I clicked on the podcast that said, uh, War on Drills.
And as soon as I heard that, I was just in from there on out.
I think everyone listening, I implore to go and listen to that episode, Talent Equation: The War on Drills. One of the many benefits to being in London this year is hopefully I, I get to see Stuart a bit more and, uh, you know, talk about some of these ideas in person.
So Flash, I want to kind of rewind back to when we first connected. I think it was— I, I'd posted a YouTube video, Adam. It was a small group workout, and you sent me an amazing email just with a bunch of ideas and things I hadn't thought of and ways to make it better.
And I think for people kind of listening, you're basically— you have basically been my coach over the last year coming to college prep. and really helping me kind of enhance my understanding of the research and make sure that we were applying it as best as we could.
So rerunning back to that and then to now after a year kind of in Italy, what compelled you to first even reach out to me and then, you know, after our conversations, even make a huge trip leaving upstate New York and making the trip to Borgo Manero?
Well, I can address the, the latter question about going to Italy. Like, there was no debate in my mind. I remember having conversations with you and For a matter of like 2 or 3 weeks. I didn't want to come for just 3 months and then have to leave for 3 months because of the visa rules over there.
If you don't have a visa, you have to leave after 90 days. And I tried super hard, but it's a very difficult process. I tried as much as I could, but it was causing too much stress. And finally I just gave in and just did the 90 days in 90 days.
That wasn't difficult to me because I just wanted to be, I always wanna be around like-minded people because that's the way I'm gonna grow as an individual. And I'm, I'm very passionate about this and I, I care very deeply. Now there's good and bad to that because I, it can cause big swings in my emotion, but I would never give it up for the connection I can make with the kids and the difference and learning about this stuff, helping other coaches.
It's just, It's what gives me meaning and purpose in my life. So it wasn't, wasn't a difficult decision to go. As far as reaching out to you at that stage, I mean, I had connected with people who I admire in the field and they told me how knowledgeable I was, but I honestly, I, more than anything, Alex, it was just like, oh, this guy's in basketball.
He seems to show some level of interest in this and he's putting out stuff. So maybe I can just lend a hand and maybe we're, you know, on a similar path. So.
Yeah.
I just want to offer any insight that I could, and I guess I did.
It's really funny, Adam. Like, when I look back to that video, I cringe at some of the things in it. And I think we, you know, looking at some of the things we did even at the end of last season, even where we are now, that's one of the best things about this.
We're constantly learning, constantly discovering new things. You know, just yesterday we were exchanging texts about the idea of a constraints builder and how we can really get coaches understanding the We're manipulating constraints with intention for a reason. We're not just setting kind of random games up and using a games approach.
There's a very kind of specific rationale behind using a CLA well. And I think that that can be sometimes very difficult to understand. But even before we get to that, and just, you know, one of the reasons I started Transforming Basketball was really to spread the ecological message and to help coaches all over the world understand what this is about.
and critically how they can apply it. So what would you say for coaches who are interested? Maybe they've experimented, they've done a little bit of a games approach in the past, or maybe they've been using drills. What would you say is kind of the best introduction, the best starting point for coaches who are interested in trying to shift towards more of a constraints-led approach?
I think what's best is going to be individual. I would never say like whatever I do or you do is the best for any individual. I, I want to get that out straight. But the way I think I learn best is honestly, first of all, you got to do it and you got to just live with the process.
And the most difficult part of it, I think, is just being patient, not to jump in. It's not easy. It really shifts the role of the coach into be— you have to be very keen at observing. This is not about controlling. I think that's Like the biggest shift that has to be made when you're making the transition over to this, which wasn't that difficult for me, honestly.
So I was lucky in that aspect. I'm sure it can be a big shift, especially if you're a head coach when, you know, we, there's so many sociocultural associations with, oh, I gotta be talking, I, I'm in charge and it has to look this way.
It can be very difficult. So I think honestly playing around with it, maybe even if it's just one activity a day, One drill a day, play around with a constraint that you think would be effective, and honestly be patient and observe what happened.
And then more than anything else, reflect upon it afterwards. What happened? What did you see? What could I do differently? But patience and observing, I think, is like the biggest thing that I would encourage coaches to do.
I just— what you brought up there, I want to go a little bit deeper into the role of the coach, and I think it's So important to get balance because especially something I've been seeing a lot is extremes of coaches who are either way too passive and kind of just setting a small-sided game up, standing in the same place, and then being kind of like completely quiet or just kind of leaving it for 6, 7, 8 minutes and just maybe saying things like good job, etc.
And then on the other side, we got coaches who might set up a small-sided game and think they're using the CLA. but then constantly correcting, instructing. So for me, it's like actually understanding how we can be an effective coach through the CLA framework and, you know, use feedback in a more effective manner to educate intention and attention, but also know what we're actually looking for and how we're observing and, and what lens we're using to view what's emerging within that small-sided game.
Would you be able to speak a little bit on that, Adam?
That was a lot right there. I think the thing that came up when you just closed out there for me was understand what to look for. Then you have to set an intention to begin with. You have to know what you're looking for.
And if you're just setting up an activity, like you said, like, oh, I'm, this is an activity I saw on some social media thing, or this is from a list that I saw or something like that. And hey, we're just doing 5 seconds shot clock and we're gonna constrain the boundaries.
Well, why, why are you doing that? What kind of behaviors are you trying to take away? What, what are you trying to encourage the athletes to explore? And are they exploring it?
Yeah.
That, that's really what it comes down to, setting an intention. And then is it happening? And these humans are complex, so it's not gonna always, it's not gonna be neat and tidy. It may not happen. Because you don't know, their motivations could be different.
They see the game very differently than you do. So it's gonna, and that's why you have to, it's really good in your preparation not to just say, okay, we're doing this constraint, end of story. You have to think more or less like game plan in your mind.
All right.
So what may happen and how would I address this? What could be another way that I could potentially invite this behavior to happen? Because it's, it's not gonna be always clean cut every single time. And sometimes You're gonna have to play around and it may not happen at all, and that's okay.
And you're gonna have to probably more than, more than anything reflect to yourself. But I think more than anything, this is where co-design comes into play and you have to have conversations with your players and try to understand how they're seeing the game, how they're interacting.
You, the best evidence is literally how they're behaving. I mean, it's very difficult sometimes to recall like why you're doing things, and usually we're just making up a story, in fact. But I would say in a roundabout way, setting that intention and then game planning around that intention, different ways to achieve that.
Yeah, like on that note, I was watching a practice today and they were doing a 2-on-2 pick and roll, but then I was seeing how they were venturing into spacings which would just never exist in 5-on-5. There was no shot clock, so there was no pressure, there was no intention with the shots they were taking.
So Like very low-value shots. And I think that's where once you see the game through this lens, it's impossible to go back. And I just, I was watching out, observing on the sideline, and I kept thinking, wall pick and roll, wall pick and roll.
And that, that was one of our many inventions last year where we play our pick and rolls or many small-sided games in imaginary spacings with variable shot clocks. But I think it's just, it changes everything when you start viewing the game this way.
One thing you mentioned within that, Adam, was co-design. And obviously what I want to do throughout all these podcasts is take the ecological language and really just break it down consistently. So could you just build on what co-design is and then maybe what coaches could do to facilitate more of that in their practices?
Co-design is simply a process of including your players in on the conversation when it comes to designing activities and really shaping them once you're even in the moment itself. So it's engaging in a dialogue, letting them know sometimes the intention. This doesn't have to be pre-practice.
It can be inside the practice, but I think this has to be like a daily thing. Otherwise it becomes very difficult for the players and really explaining your why to the players from get-go and letting them know as soon as the start of the season or when you're recruiting them, like, this is how we do things here.
And I want to include you in on the conversation. And here's what we're doing and why you're always going to be included in that conversation. I think that will encourage them to be a part of it.
Yeah, definitely.
So I think if you're not doing co-design, I would ask you, well, who's playing the game? You are the players. Who has the most insight? I think it's so critical because ultimately it's not the coach's game, it's their game. So if we're not gaining their perspective and letting them shape what's going on in practices and their training, because they're shaping the outcomes in the game, no matter how much we think we can control things from the sideline or Whatever magical plays you draw up, they're the ones out there performing.
They're interacting with the defenders and their teammates. They're ultimately the decision makers out there, not us. So if we're not letting them be involved in their training and how they prepare for their games, we're really missing out.
And it's so easy to do. I mean, I've just, with some of the London Lions Academy players here, had a workout today with 3 of our under-16 boys. And, you know, they've never been in a CLA environment before. ever. It's the first time they were exposed to it.
But still, I'm ex— I was exposing them for immediately. And it, it can be difficult because some of their ideas at the start, they, you know, they haven't been used to being given autonomy and freedom. And that, that's where I just support them more.
And I think the more they get throughout the practice, the more they kind of understood the constraints I was using, the better kind of their ideas became. And that was just in one practice. And I think straight away it sets such a collaborative tone.
Yeah.
with the players. And it's just, that was the first time I'd really worked with them. And just so the relationship after one practice, when they know that there will be stretches of the practice which they have an influence over, I think it, they really kind of see the practice in a different light.
So going back now, I want to change topic to college prep, and I want to just go back to kind of what we were doing. So just for the listener's benefit, What do you think? I want to ask you 2 questions and we'll do it in 2 parts.
We'll start with the first part. What do you think were some of the things that we did most effectively and that you are most proud of at college prep during the year we had in Borgo Manero?
What am I most proud of?
You always undersell your influence too, Adam, so you gotta, uh, big yourself up a little bit for this one.
Yeah, I'm not worried about that. I can't get it outta my mind, honestly. It was just the topic we just touched on. Like the thing I always reflect back on that I'm just like most proud of is the ownership the players had over practice.
It really is like, actually getting a little emotional thinking about it, like the level of knowledge they developed of the game. And I would tell people this when I came back during the winter, and then, I mean, obviously whenever I interact with people now, I'm like, they could run our practice.
They didn't even need us there.
Yeah.
I have no doubt in my mind. I tell Oscar this when I talk to him now. I'm like, we were just chatting the other day and I'm just like, oh yeah, that's right. Of course you have everything settled down because you could run a practice right now for us.
They, because they really could. But it wasn't that hard. It wasn't that hard.
Yeah.
They love basketball and we just encourage that love by including them in on the conversation. And really, I mean, it, it's, and it's, it's throughout the whole thing too, because again, the conceptual offense plays a big role in that. Because they do have the freedom.
It does.
And they're learning and they're, and we don't tell them exactly what to do. It's very simple, but it has such a profound impact. It really does. So honestly, that ownership, and I think we did cultivate kids who just like love to play basketball.
And that's honestly what I'm most proud of. 'Cause that's ultimately what I'm about. 'Cause I still love it and I can't foresee a day where I won't.
Yeah, absolutely. And on the flip side, if we could have done it again, what do you think we could have maybe done a little differently? Or, I mean, and the thing is, it's just how much we improved during the season was staggering, even more so than the season before.
And, you know, I think a lot of that was down to having you around. But, you know, say we could do it maybe somewhere else in another setting, or even for coaches who are maybe interested in some of the things we did, what could have made it even better?
To me, something that I really started exploring, and honestly it was something that I started doing more because I was literally not there in person anymore, was for the players that I had like player development, like that I was doing their PDPE activities and stuff like that, their player development plans.
I would watch their games or the occasional practice and just break it down to 'em and then I'd create a video. And to close out, I would always give them some sort of thing that they could Embed in their practice. And obviously I wasn't there and I couldn't say, hey Alex, do this.
It was, it's very difficult to like actually activity design from a distance, especially cuz like I talked about, I'm not there observing and I can't tweak it or anything. So I would just essentially tell them, have this intention for this specific activity, explore this.
And I think individual constraints for players in the team practice. And it could, again, it can be just for stretches of certain activities. I'm not saying make it the entire practice, but I don't foresee sometimes that being a bad thing. Individual constraints for players, I think, is the next thing that needs to really be further explored.
I think that's one of the things where we started scratching the surface of it, but I don't think we had a process where we were consistent doing it every time. But I think towards the end of the season, we were quite good at it.
A lot of the coaches listening will know the players we worked with. So maybe could you give some examples just of how we were doing that with some of our players, especially in those team practices in that last kind of last couple months of the season?
That's a tough one, putting you on the spot from the memory recall, like Linus, Jamie, OG, Corey.
A lot of it had to do, like, sadly, like the one that sticks out in my mind, honestly, I wasn't even there for. He may not even have done it. But just an example was like, I noticed that our biggest player from Estonia, Axel, was, he was just constantly holding his screen way too long.
He was just trying to make contact every single time. So at the close of a video I did for him during the winter, I told him, hey, whatever activity we're doing for one practice, I just want you to slip right away. No, if you make contact, consider that failure.
That's a mistake.
Yeah.
And just see what happens and report back to me.
Yeah, that's a great example. And then just watching it during the whole practice. So we have these task constraints manipulated for every individual. And I think it's just that example. It's such a— for me, that's such a behavior that emerges with traditional coaching, with how pick and roll is traditionally developed, players staying in those actions way too long.
And then it's kind of what we were doing was the complete opposite to that. Really getting players to understand the affordances within a pick and roll and just how much more you can do when you're decisive, whether you're ghosting out or you're slipping in.
It's just a completely different ballgame. So we both had the experience last year working remotely, myself for Paris Basketball, where I was, you know, going back and forth between what we were doing, and then yourself when you went home back to the US after the 3 months.
So I think personally that having someone remote is a huge advantage for any organization. I think it's something a lot of organizations are very reluctant to try because, you know, there's this belief that we have to have people there the kind of the whole year.
But I think having that perspective where you can zoom out and kind of provide very specific help in certain areas without being in the trenches there the whole time, I think could be So useful. So could you just speak a little bit about that, but spend more time actually talking about what you did practically?
So for instance, you were helping me a lot with, you know, the activity design, practice reviews, and of course the performance analysis.
I think like the zooming out is exactly what it does. It allows you like— emotionally, I wasn't affected at all. I'm typically a person who isn't really affected emotionally unless it's individual player development. That's just my niche and that's what I care about most.
So even like with the team stuff, I'm just very diplomatic. So I think like, and usually if you're a distance away, so the people who are emotionally triggered by that stuff, I think they do. It, it's much easier to have a more global neutral perspective because you're not there every day.
You're not swinging with the ups and downs and stuff like that. You're able to do it more or less on your time and have some distance, as you said. As far as what I did practically, When you would have questions about, hey, like, this is what I'm seeing in the game, like, how could we design something that could address this?
So I would come up with certain ideas around that. I obviously, for, like I mentioned previously, I still kept in contact with those individual players and, you know, I would just do performance analysis for them. I created, like, I would do like a 10-minute video where I would walk through 3 or 4 Sometimes I'm even up to 5 plays.
I tried to keep it under 10 minutes. I wasn't always successful with that depending on the player. And I would just simply talk over whatever I saw on the video and let them watch it. And then we'd have a dialogue back and forth on what they could do and what they were seeing.
I think that's more or less what I, what I did. I'm sure there are probably things that you remember that I forget, but those are the main things that I recall.
I think the performance analysis part really stood out to me because what we traditionally see in the basketball world is kind of the affordance landscape presented directly to the players through lots of instruction. And I think too, it's very much looking at the affordance landscape from a technical perspective of you should do this if you see this.
And I think just how you presented those videos where it was reflective, they were thinking about it, and you weren't actually giving them the answer like what we see with, you know, how coaches mostly present video. It was kind of very reflective, the whole way you constructed the video.
It was very ecological. I think that was one of the things I learned the most from you last season.
Well, yeah, because honestly, like, even when you were just talking previously about making contact on screen or ghosting or slipping or what have you, like, honestly, there are no right or wrong answers. Like, sometimes what may appear on the outside, oh, well, like, you want to make contact here because that'll lead to this.
Well, It, it may, it may not.
It may not.
Yeah. Also, if you ghost, like this could also shift it. You could get the same result by doing it a different way. So like, and again, sometimes it's good to hold the screen super long and then seal the guy that could open up something different.
You know, it's just like you have to look at it that way because that's the truth. I mean, honestly, like in my, my new favorite saying the past year or so, and I heard Keith Davis say this about golf and I think it's just is relevant to basketball or any other sport.
There are no rules. We're playing against the rule book itself.
Yeah.
So whatever principle, even like game principles, sometimes I even get iffy about that because more or less like, sure, sometimes in certain conditions, but you could also like, an example that pops in my head is like an out-of-bounds play where it's like, oh, you know, offense, you want to create space and stuff like that.
Well, sometimes if you like run screen after screen and stacked on top of each other, It'll, it's very difficult to navigate that tight space for the defense, and that can open up an opportunity for your offense.
I think that's where on the game principles, it's flexibility. And I think the moment you start going into musts and automatics, it's murky waters. And I think that's where, I mean, that what you just said, it has huge implications for coverage solutions. And myself too, even 2 years ago, I was way more, I'd see a switch and I'd be like, all right, this must happen.
And now we're just the last 2 seasons, it's been the opposite to that, even especially last season, appreciating that every player will see an affordance, perceive and act on an affordance differently within the pick and roll. So what might be effective for one player is the complete opposite to another.
And I think we really moved away from this idea of universal coverage solutions, which everyone must look to do. And really appreciating the individuality to it. And I think that's just, you know, the complexity and nonlinearity of basketball, so to speak. So I want to get to your current interest areas, Adam, and what kind of part of the CLA you're most interested in, and kind of hint action capabilities, because that was something you exposed me to for the first time.
Oh, only I'd say June was actually the first time I actually first did it by myself and started experimenting. But you were You did it for March when we got those AquaBags and all of that. And, you know, this involves when we're developing action capabilities, we're decoupling.
So, you know, we're not training with perception-action coupled. So could you just explain for the coaches, you know, why we do this and kind of how we integrated that a little bit towards the end of the season at college prep?
Okay. You want to talk about imposter syndrome? I definitely feel imposter syndrome on this topic. It's just something I'm very fascinated with and I've just never been satisfied with Like, it sounds funny to me, but I was kind of more or less, I actually framed this in the questions we were thinking about for certain podcast guests that are involved in physical preparation.
And I think the lines are much blurrier than like people wanna make it out to be like typical strength and stuff like that. We only like, too often we look at only the positive effects and there's so much about the body we don't really truly understand, but like the body's gonna respond differently when it's loaded versus when it's unloaded and When, when you start talking about isolated exercise and stuff like that, and an example I kind of more or less wanna do for a presentation is go ahead, reach your hand to the sky and actually
feel your foot right now. Oh yeah, it's pressing into the ground too. So the entire body moves. It's not separate like that. So really like with the AquaBags and stuff like that, it's more or less a lot of it's based on the ideas of Frans Bosch and he really just applied A lot of different principles.
Essentially, if you read through his book, it, it seems super complex, but essentially he's taking his knowledge of human anatomy and then he looked into motor learning and the dynamical systems. He was heavily influenced by Mark Latash and Michael Turvey, and he just built upon basic principles and made conclusions.
Now there isn't a ton of research around it. There is some developing actually. I had found actually a couple research papers on AquaBags and the effect it has on Torso and trunk control the other day. I'm not doing a good job at explaining that.
No, you're not.
You're doing a great job. Could you just give the coaches, coaches an idea, Adam, of how we actually use those AquaBags?
See, these are good questions that I need to reflect on further. Let me just describe the purpose of the AquaBag. It's essentially to provide variability in the system because with the water slushing around, it, it, it's, it's in the title of the actual company itself, Ultimate Instability.
Yeah.
Essentially it gets back to those simple principles of dynamical systems that within a system there has to be some elements of stability. Otherwise it's very difficult to remain stable to outside perturbations. Say you're driving down the lane and if you get bumped and if you're only fluctuations, you would just collide.
Well, first of all, if we only had variable aspects of our body, I would be on the floor right now. I wouldn't be standing up. Because we need some element of stability. Otherwise we can't organize our actions. There has to be some level of stability because we have this constant perturbation of gravity going against us.
So that really, like the AquaBags, it's, it's a, it's a level of perturbation. So the perturbation kind of will invite a level of stability. And the more you explore with it in certain positions, and there are like actual like moving attractors that Franz is put out there.
He's, they're not hardcore and he's not like saying, oh, these are the only ones, or these are like rock solid. I, I, he could have his mind changed about it, but it's essentially we're trying to suss out what needs to be stable in certain movements and what doesn't.
It's very similar to some, a different topic that I'm sure will be touched upon in the podcast as far as differential learning.
Exactly.
Providing this, the body a ton of noise. You're just tossing tons of variation at it. And what the ultimate aim is with differential learning is to hope essentially that the body will figure out, all right, what's needed and what's not within this particular task.
Yeah. So I think in terms of how— that's— couldn't describe it better. So how we used it, I think maybe the easiest example was the shooting stuff we did, right? When you were using those exercises and we did a burst of DL shooting.
Can you just explain what that looks like? So say a coach has got this just like one activity that they could do.
And that's with the Aqua Baggers.
Exactly. Yeah.
A simple activity like you're gonna see decelerate. It's our sport is there's not gonna be a lot of high-speed running. And Franz writes a lot about running because he was, he was a track coach, specifically a high jump coach, and he really bases a lot of things off running.
And we have to operate in different postures in basketball because we don't have the availability of space, say in comparison to Aussie Rules football or even rugby has so much more space than us. Even, well, actually even soccer does too. So we're really more or less like working out of brief accelerations into change of direction, deceleration.
So something that's very critical in our sport is hinging around the hip.
Yep.
So essentially what that is, a good way to think about it is like Barry Sanders, for those American football people going into a cut, he gets his heel, he gets his hip right behind his heel. So his butt's back and then he's able to have the space in front of his body.
In order to clear something. But it's, he's literally coming to a stop. He's decelerating. He stopped his momentum forward. So he pushes his hips back, has that space, and now he can choose which direction he wants to go. So something that can simply be a nice starting activity is to get up against heavier, have one foot up against the wall, take, stagger the other foot slightly in forward and just start punching down towards the ground at different angles, different heights, different speeds.
And quickly returning it to your chest and see if you can hold that position for 2 seconds, or even just push out and hold that extended position. And can you be stable there?
Love it. And I think too, I started experimenting a lot in the summer where we'd do different exercises with the Aqua Bag. It could be as simple as lunging, squatting different ways, Aqua Bag in different positions, whatever. And then we'd follow that with a burst of DL shooting.
So it could be we're doing the Aqua Bags for like 30 seconds, then we spend a minute doing DL shooting, shooting on different stances, different ball Just infusing as much variability as we can. So I know I'm really putting you on the spot here, Adam, with these activities, but I want to finish the last question today.
And, you know, a key aim of the podcast is I want coaches or practitioners in any role to leave each podcast with at least one thing that they feel they can try in their, in their next kind of session. Could you just give us 2?
We worked the whole year on an extensive activities book, which we did at College Prep. I think it's got something crazy like over 700 activities now. Could you give us 2 of your favorite ones that you created and just explain, without going into all the different constraint manipulations, just kind of 2 basic versions of, you know, what 2 of those activities could be that coaches could try in their next practice?
The activities that come to mind— I know you use this a lot— was the gauntlet. I don't know.
Yep.
I certainly wouldn't say that I created this. I just— it's something that just came to mind. And that activity is essentially you create some level of boundaries. It's purely to enhance someone's, I guess we could categorize it as ball handling or ball manipulation, whatever you want to talk about there.
It's someone's capability in their dribbling and things they're going to experience with that. So just a basic layout is, say for instance, we're going to put the player on the baseline and he's going to have from the edge of the foul line to the sideline.
spatially, and we're gonna have 3 total defenders he has to go against. And his goal is to try and essentially get down to the other baseline. And for— there's gonna be a defender in the backcourt, then there's gonna be a defender more or less in between.
I like to say the volleyball lines, cuz we usually had those on the courts in America. So it's essentially somewhere near the coach's boxes in, in FIBA, in between those. So there's a defender there, there's a defender in the backcourt, and then there's a defender in the frontcourt.
And he essentially has to get by them. You can obviously manipulate constraints and invite different actions throughout that.
Just on that note, Adam, I loved— obviously, we gave them like 8 seconds to do it, like dribble it, like do it in like 6 dribbles. One I loved in the summer was when I used cones to mark out completely weird-sized gauntlets, which were like completely irregular angles.
And it was amazing just to see how different some of those solutions were that emerged when it wasn't just a regular kind of straight rectangular gauntlet size. And so I cut you off. Last activity?
No, you're good. And that's the reality. And I want to encourage that more than anything else. Like, I, I, speaking of activities we did, what was it? I, I can't remember the exact title of it, but it was essentially similar to like King of the Court, I think.
Oh, I think that's actually what you did call it. King's Cup One-on-One, where we'd have like a series of one-on-one activities, but those who weren't involved plus coaches would essentially provide different boundaries and barriers, and we could actually reach in and deflect the ball from the offensive player if we wanted to within the half court.
It's literally as simple as that. And I'm not even gonna describe it in detail because I want coaches to experiment, because honestly, if they experiment and let their own ideas come out, exactly, maybe I'll learn something too. I was like, oh, I didn't even think to do it that way.
But it's essentially that is you're, you're just creating boundaries with the people who are not involved in the activity, and it's a one-on-one activity. You can do different shot clocks, whatever, whatever you wanna do. That's, that's another very simple activity that requires no equipment or anything.
The hardest thing was actually naming them. The activities came so easily to us. It was, uh, all the funny names we came up with. Moses 101 was my favorite. Sella was like, who's Moses? Moses Malone, of course.
In fairness to him, Moses Malone, it's like 50 years ago. Yeah.
They're thinking the religious one.
Yeah, that actually— me may have understood that. Moses Maloney has no idea.
Well, Adam, I want to say a big thanks for coming on today. I think, you know, it's great to obviously have your help with Transforming. Uh, you're a big part of what we're doing, and I think coaches can really look forward to not just more podcasts but blogs and, and things of that nature too.
So thanks again for, for coming on today.
Thank you, Alex. Thank you for your friendship, and thank you just for the opportunity to grows an individual. Like, I'm really appreciative that I found you, and I know you're— more than anything, like, your heart's in the right place, and that's what I care about most.
And that's what I would tell anybody. I don't care what Alex does, I know he has good intentions, and that's the most important thing.
I appreciate you, man. Thanks, Adam. Thanks for tuning into this episode of the Transforming Basketball Podcast. If you would like to learn more about the work we do, head to www.transformingbball.com to access our free resources and help spread these ideas throughout the basketball world.
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