How Basketball Coaches Can Create a Culture of Learning with the CLA with Markus Klusemann

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. We're really delighted to be joined today by, uh, one of my good friends in the coaching world, Marcus Kluseman.

Marcus, thanks so much for joining us.

Thanks for having me, Alex.

So Marcus, we initially met, I think it was about 2 and a half years ago when you were working for the Bavarian Federation in Germany. But you're a dual German-Australian citizen. I think that's played a big part in shaping your current coaching philosophy.

Could you maybe just talk a little bit about what that philosophy is and how your experience working in both countries has really shaped that?

Feels like a big question. I think to start off with my philosophy, I would say, you know, I call myself— I like to call myself a coach scientist or a scientist coach because my background has been both in sports science and an academic background there, as well as coaching in parallel while I was studying and in my career also.

So that's really shaped my philosophy in terms of using science and evidence, facts, to inform what I do as a practitioner. I'm working with athletes and players and studied in Germany and in Australia. I've worked in both countries, in both federations. I think, you know, studying in Germany, I learned a lot about strength and conditioning and, and how the body works, training design and training periodization, planning, all those kind of things.

And in Australia, I really focused on basketball competition and training and, and did a PhD on that, um, and got to work with a whole bunch of interesting coaches and learn from a lot of coaches, but also a lot of experts in, in other fields— biomechanists, skill acquisition experts, um— and so

got immersed into a very unique environment early on where I had a lot of different people around me and got to learn from lots of different thinkers in the high-performance space. So I think that influenced me very early on.

That's great. And I think one of the things I speak about a lot is ascending out of these organizational silos that I think are very prevalent within the basketball world, where each domain, whether it's coaching, athletic performance, but the biomechanics stuff, it's all very isolated.

And I think that's why it's so interesting because you've got an experience experience in all of these domains. And also, you know, you're using the same theoretical framework in terms of the CLA, the constraints-led approach, to kind of influence what you're— how you approach, you know, each field.

So how was it, Marcus, that you actually first exposed to the CLA? And, you know, how did you really develop your skills using CLA activities within the practice environment?

Yeah, so my first exposure was, uh, when I went to the Australian Institute of Sport. Um, they, they had a skill acquisition expert there called Adam Gorman who, you know, worked very closely with the basketball program. And he was sort of the first person to introduce the coaches there and myself, um, to those kind of concepts of creating games and creating environments to elicit specific solutions, um, and using constraints to manipulate those activities, um, to achieve certain learning outcomes.

Uh, and he would be really creative in creating all kinds of crazy games and drills and activities, whatever you want to call them. Um, and so that was my first exposure. And then as my journey went on, you know, got, you know, in Australia, the, the challenge was at the time,

making better decision makers out of Australian basketball players. That seemed like the main area of improvement compared to especially the European nations, who, those players always seemed a step ahead in terms of IQ and quick decision making. And, you know, Australians pride themselves on being great teammates and being good passers, but we struggled with turnovers in some of the major competitions.

So That was a big challenge and task, is to come up with ways to improve that aspect of basketball. And then, you know, diving into that whole topic and that theme led more and more to, okay, we've got to use things like the constraint-led approach and expose the players to more situations that will transfer to competition.

And then in Germany, it was a similar challenge in terms of, you know, the German players are very disciplined, very coachable, um, and they want to know the solution from the coach. So, um, and so the challenge there is how can we get more creative players, players who can problem solve when the challenge is happening in the game on the, on the floor straight away.

And that challenge and that search for the answer also led towards CLA principles. So, uh, yeah, going through working for both federations and dealing with those kind of challenges all led more and more to incorporating those kind of principles, um, into practice.

Great stuff. I think it's really interesting thinking about the forms of life, you know, the prevalence of very influential social cultural constraints in each environment, like you alluded to there. So In terms of coaches really getting to grips with the CLA, what do you think are some of the barriers to really understanding it, and maybe any suggestions on how they could be overcome?

Well, so I think there's, there's a couple factors. Uh, one of the main ones from my experience is that coaching with CLA principles is counterintuitive to what we traditionally think is coaching. Um, I experienced this a lot when I was doing coaching courses in Germany, was

a lot of the main feedback I was giving was talk less, stop giving the solution, and ask for this— ask what the solution might be from the athlete. Or even like, are you sure that is the only answer or the only solution there?

Because all the coaches that were, you know, going through this education process were super keen on just giving the information. I know the answer and giving that to the athlete. And I think that's how it's portrayed on, on TV when we watch games, you know, the coach on the sideline directing and giving answers.

Um, but that's not necessarily the most conducive to, to learning. So that's, I think, a big barrier in changing that mindset from Okay, I'm the person that has the answers to— no, my job is to create an environment that encourages learning and encourages the player to find the optimal solution.

Um, so I think that's one. The second one is the research terminology, I think, is too abstract and very domain-specific. So you really need to spend a lot of time understanding things like affordances and ecological dynamics and all those fancy buzzwords. Um, and, and so I think that's a barrier for, for many, especially if they haven't spent time reading research papers and then understanding what is a good research paper and what's not a good research paper.

Um, I think that's where I got, I got lucky by studying sports science.

Yeah.

And the another one is A lot of our coaches are time poor, and designing a CLA practice takes a lot of time because you really have to— Especially at the beginning. Yeah, especially at the beginning, um, because you need to put a lot of thought into, you know, what is the learning outcome I want to achieve, and how can I design an activity, and how can I use different constraints to make that activity interesting, and so forth.

So I think it's not as simple as, I've got this bank of drills and I can just run these drills and, and my practice will be great. I've got to really think about, okay, what activities do I want? How can I manipulate them?

Yeah.

Um, and, and what kind of outcome solutions would I like to see, or what am I going to be open to? Um, so that's another one. And then this is sort of one of, again, from personal experience, is you can't be afraid to suck.

Uh, that's the term I came with. Also, you know, a lot of people say you've got to be comfortable with the chaos, or practice might look messy because the activity you come up with might not work the way you imagined it. So, um, being comfortable with trying things out and being creative.

Just as a small anecdote, a small story, I ran into one of my former bosses, um, who now works in the NBA, and he introduced me to a GM and said, hey, this is Marcus, and we used to work together, and he was great in creating a lot of small-sided games and activities.

A lot of them sucked, was sort of his side note. What an amazing introduction. Yeah, so I was like, oh, thanks, thanks for that. But I think it just shows that you got— you can't be afraid of, of trying things out, and you'll get, you'll get some golden nuggets through that process.

But you've got to be willing to fail and, and have a, have a shitty drill.

I, I agree completely. I think one of those barriers, time, That's so true. I mean, something I introduced here at London Lions is I just gave a very kind of short activities book to the coaches. And early on, you know, this season, they, you, you know, using that and just trying to help them.

But obviously I want to get them off that soon so they really are able to design their own and be empowered to do that. But I think that can be a good starting point in clubs' programs. So moving on, obviously we've had numerous conversations over the years, Marcus, and one of my big crusades at Transforming Basketball is to coaches either from drills to the CLA or from a games-based approach to the CLA.

What do you think are some of the biggest differences? I, I, you know, I think we know, we know about drills. Enough has been said about that. But a lot of people are confusing our stuff for a games-based approach, and they just, like you said, they view our ideas as kind of one-off small-sided games.

They're not looking at the whole methodology behind it. So, you know, what do you think could help coaches maybe transition from, from a GBA, a games-based approach, to a CLA?

I think understanding that CLA doesn't necessarily just apply to 2-on-2, 3-on-3, 4-on-4, but, you know, you can use it in, in all aspects of your practice and training. So even if you're using, uh, doing an individual skill practice with 1 player or 2 players, you can still use those same principles.

Like, how can you couple what the players are doing Um, with, uh, an environment that they will be facing in the game. Um, and same thing for 5-on-5 team practice. So I think moving away from, okay, this is just something that's a small-sided game thing.

And then it's understanding, like the name says, is how you can manipulate constraints. You know, game-based approaches, you know, you create some games and hope that athletes just come up with something. Whereas I think a constraints-led approach is a lot more purposeful in terms of thinking, okay, I still want specific learning outcomes.

I might not know what they look like and what they, what the athletes come up with, but I want to improve, you know, my pick and roll decision making. So how can I, and what elements of decision making, and for which player, for the roller or for the, the guy that's using the screen?

And maybe I want to work on the defensive side of that. So not just looking at offense, but defense as well. And so then I can determine, okay, specific learning goals or outcomes, and then manipulate constraints to emphasize those within a specific activity.

So I think those are the main differences, you know, goes across domains or across areas, and that it's a lot more purposeful than a game-based approach.

I think, I think you hit the nail on the head with that. Now, something we've spoken about quite frequently is how we are kind of observing and tracking the behaviors that are emerging within these small-sided games. And you've spoken a lot about tracking KPIs.

In fact, that was a large part of the contribution that you wrote for your excellent section within the book Transforming Basketball. So could you speak a little bit about that? Because I think if coaches can observe what's happening more and implement some of this stuff, I think it's going to naturally help them gravitate towards more of a CLA from a games approach anyway.

Yeah, so I think again, that's why the planning process at the start is important, is to think about, okay, what kind of learning outcomes am I looking for? And at the same time, and this, I think this is where practice and experience comes in, is being open to seeing different things emerge when they're doing an activity.

And okay, maybe I thought it was going to work on decision-making and pick and roll, but I noticed something else emerged that is being a barrier or a bottleneck for the players. And so then maybe I shift my focus towards that. To use a simple example of offense and defense, maybe I was going to work on offensive decision-making in the pick and roll, but notice that really defensively the players are making a lot of mistakes and making it too easy for the offense.

So then I add in a constraint that will assist the defense to, to adjust. Trying to come up with a good example right now, but maybe one will come to me later. But I think that's sort of the thought process that a coach needs to go through when using this approach.

Excellent. We've covered some of the underpinnings behind your philosophies. I want to get to what you're actually doing now in your current role. I believe it's 2 years that you've been at the Overtime Academy, you know, one of the premium academies in the world, some of the best kind of youth prospects from all over the world.

What's your title and role at Overtime?

So my title is VP for Health, Performance, and Development. A bit of a long one, but it's meant to encompass a lot of the things I do. And at Overtime Elite, we're essentially a league. So we're more than just an academy here in Atlanta.

We're a league with 8 teams in this 3rd season now. And my role is to essentially look after the health and fitness of all the players, especially the ones here in Atlanta, but essentially responsible for the whole league. Also provide evidence-based ideas to combine everything we do to the players and to the coaches and make sure it translates to what they do on the court.

And I think that's where my background, also working as a basketball coach, helps because I, my job is essentially to translate all everything we do to the basketball court. So it's been a really unique opportunity to help build a program and a league from scratch.

This didn't exist more than 2 years ago, so it's been an amazing, exciting adventure and opportunity. We've learned a lot. In my current role, I'm really learning to just directly look after players but also look after staff. So I'm managing a team of experts that work directly with the players And, you know, there's a couple core challenges with that.

One is synthesizing all the information we get. You know, we collect a lot of data and synthesizing that into sensible insights and information for the coaches and players. That's a really challenging part of the job. The other part is, you know, utilizing everyone's individual experience or forms of life, as you like to say, different backgrounds.

And using everyone's strength while at the same time getting everyone following a unified approach and getting essentially everyone rowing in the same direction. That doesn't happen overnight, and that's a continual process that never stops. But that's sort of the, some of the challenges and some of the tasks that I, I deal with here.

Excellent. I want to come back to the idea of being a master generalist, which I consider you to be, Marcus, as opposed to, you know, just kind of as more sports science has transcended into the highest levels of the NBA, I think organizations have become even more fragmented as they've become even more specialized.

But before we get to that, can you just maybe give us some examples of the practicalities of what a day-to-day— obviously it's going to be very different based on the period in the season, but what your day-to-day might look like and, and how you're able to apply CLA into some of the things you're doing there over time?

Day-to-day involves a lot of meetings for me. One of my teammates said, uh, my daily line is, sorry, I gotta go, I gotta run, I got the next meeting to go to. So I think that just points to a lot of communication and working together with colleagues across the business.

It's very easy, especially for someone like in my role, just to focus on their domain and just get stuck in that bubble. But I think it's important to really seek time and and conversations with colleagues in other areas and other spaces. And I think overtime does a really good job of encouraging that as well.

So that's one of the main things. And the other thing is to create a learning environment as much as possible. So for example, one of the things I introduced right from the start is a thing called Teach Me Tuesdays, where one of us internally you know, touch on a topic and it's a half-hour talk, presentation, activity, can be anything.

But the idea is to, you know, expose ourselves to different ideas, new research that's come out. And sometimes we bring in external experts that talk to us. And the whole idea is just to create an environment where it's okay to think differently or to be challenged in one's own belief.

And I think that's sort of one of the main challenges, you know, speaking to what we talked about before, is encouraging feedback and encouraging new ideas. So I always try to do this myself and encourage our staff to ask the question, like, ask a colleague or ask someone that's observing.

We have lots of visitors come in, and so I encourage our colleagues to ask the question, like, what would have you done differently? And through that conversation, you can then I think create new insights and then get people to have discussions. And I think that's the starting point for then getting everyone to get on the same page.

Great stuff. I'm gonna steal that Teach Me Tuesdays. But I think it's so good just to not only invest in your staff, but it's, I think so many times we get caught up as practitioners in any role, we get caught up in the duties of the season.

And just having that ability to take a pause and keep kind of studying and, and have that culture of learning in any program. I mean, that's the only way that the complexity of these ideas are going to be harnessed, because if we don't have that mindset, it's just, it's going to be impossible for any organization or any program to really adopt an ecological rationale.

So I love that.

What I can expand on that is because you You brought me there is also using the times when it's slower. So in the season we have Teach Me Tuesdays. That's like a regular weekly thing that's set in place exactly for the reason you mentioned.

The other thing we encourage is when it's offseason and when we've got summertime is using that as a learning period. So going visiting other programs, going to conferences, and then all learning about a new topic. So we all give each other homework, so to speak, for June, July, um, when it's a bit quieter.

And we have to learn about a new topic and present on that topic to the staff just before the season begins. We call that like summer learnings. And so I think all those kind of activities really help encourage all those things.

Great stuff. So let's go back to the idea of a master generalist. Like, my vision for an organization in the future, I think especially at the professional levels, in our sport is to have lots of practitioners working together and kind of blurring the lines as much as possible.

So let's say I was a coach and you were in your role right now and we were working for an organization, we would be collaborating as much as possible, we'd be on the court together doing a bunch of different activities as opposed to me just doing basketball on the court, maybe you doing something in the performance realm off the court.

Do you kind of see that being something that the basketball world, you know, a direction that would be beneficial for the basketball world to head towards?

Short answer, yes, definitely beneficial because each expert can learn from another expert. Secondly, the challenge with that is, you know, again, finding the time to combine forces. And I think the way to do that is to, or the way I envision it happening is to create, you know, so-called tiger teams to use an analogy from, I think from the military where you create small groups of experts.

So Maybe there's a specific challenge or there's a specific group of players you want to work with. Let's just say you want to work with the centers and improve how they can catch the ball. Well, let's get a skills coach involved with that.

Let's get a skill acquisition expert or a scientist. Let's get the strength coach and let's get, you know, those 3 people working as a tiger team, a group to target that specific challenge and goal. And so those, the task is for those 3 to work together to come up with activities and practices for the, that group of players.

And then you get another group of 3, 4 experts together to work on something else and so forth. So that's how I envision it working within an organization to overcome these silos of specific areas of expertise to, okay, we've got specific challenges that we need to deal with.

Let's find a group of individuals that might be perfectly suited for that challenge and get them working together. As a small group.

Great stuff. Now, just on that note, I mean, we've got listeners who are working in multiple kind of domains in the basketball world and also all levels from NBA, WNBA, EuroLeague, all the way to, you know, grassroots, high school basketball, etc. Now, in a youth program, you've also had a lot of experience coaching, obviously, at the youth level.

Where might someone start if it's just one coach? How could they maybe start to learn about how some of these ideas could be applied to warm-ups or athletic performance and, you know, wear several hats as opposed to just being a coach?

Yeah, I think that's up to each individual to try and be as proactive as they can and to try and learn from as many different people as you can. Like, sort of the approach I think all of us need to take when— especially when we're starting out.

And that's where I was fortunate, learning from lots of different people, not only basketball coaches but Experts from other areas as well. And then trying to always bring those learnings to, okay, how can I apply that to my team, my, the players I'm working with, the environment I have?

So if I only got, if I only have 1 hour practice 2 times a week, how can I make you make the most use of that hour? And I want to bring, I want to obviously teach them basketball, and ideally I can teach them how to move better, a bit better at the same time.

And maybe I can teach some life skills and some mental skills. And so realizing, okay, those might be the 4 biggest areas, 4 most important areas I need to touch on with my players. Okay, how can I touch on each one with each practice?

And also the con— I like the concept of microdosing. So, you know, just having consistent tiny bits that touch on each area on a consistent basis, I think can be just as effective or more effective than just doing something once a month for an hour.

Definitely. You've got a lot of excellent analogies. One of those, Marcus, it was, it was very tough for the book because obviously I had very limited space, and I promised that we'd save this for a blog or something else. You spoke about the importance of practitioners using MEIs.

Could you just kind of share what those are and just why they are so important when you're using a CLA effectively?

Yeah, so it stands for Minimal Effective Instruction. And I like to think of efficiency and effectiveness a lot. I don't know where it comes from. That's probably my German side.

I was gonna say, I didn't want to be offensive, but, uh, no, it's got to be a form of life for that German upbringing.

Yeah. And played a little bit. I never professionally, but what I enjoyed the most with all the sports I played was actually playing, um, as much as possible. So bugbear of mine has always been when the athletes or the players are standing still.

So I've always tried to be very cognizant of making sure the players are moving as much as possible the whole time. Best way to do that is to keep the amount of talking to a minimum while at the same time bringing your message across.

This is something I'm still trying to work on and hence doing things like podcasts. So hopefully I'm bringing my messages across nice and concisely. Be a good learning opportunity for me. And pinched ideas on how to do that from other areas as well.

So for example, I've learned from writers who I know have been, I read somewhere that they've been given a challenge of writing the shortest possible story, the least amount of words. And this is a sad example, but I thought it was, it really hits the nail on the head is, you know, one of the stories that got submitted was baby shoes for sale, never used.

And, you know, that's a very sad story, but it shows how with very minimal words you can tell something that's very, you know, emotionally sad and, and meaningful. And so just taking that idea and taking that to coaching and say, well, how can I explain an activity with minimal amount of words and having the players understand that activity straight away?

And, you know, you and I have spoken about using a bit of a checklist approach there and going, okay, Where do the players start? What do they have to do? Pass, dribble, run, play 1-on-1, 2-on-2, whatever it is. And then what are some constraints?

3 checkpoints. I can probably say that in 20 seconds if I'm really concise with each of those. And then the girls or guys are going. So yeah, I, I just like that principle because I think it's conducive to having the players have more fun because they'll play more, they'll learn more, and we'll become more effective as coaches.

I call it intentionally leaving gaps. And I think so much of the time we see coaches might explain a drill or even a small-sided game, but they spend so long doing it because not only are they attending to all the minute details of where to stand, where to rotate, but then they're telling the players what they want to see within that.

And it's just so much time is wasted. And I think it's exactly like you said, can we give them the least amount of information they need to grasp this activity? And then we just see what happens. And In the past, something I've done is just have coaches time me and try and do it within 30 seconds.

The less, the better. And it's then we can start to shape it, manipulate constraints, et cetera. And I think that's just such a paradigm shift to traditional coaching. It really is. Marcus, I just want to say a big thanks. So many words of wisdom that you imparted on us today.

Do you— I don't know if you're a huge social media guy. Are you? Do you even have a Twitter? I'm sure you do, right? I must be following you.

I have a Twitter. I only use it to watch other people tweet. I don't tweet myself. That's an area of growth for me. I look at social media every now and then just to learn from others like yourself, but I still need to learn how to distribute some of my own content, which is something I'm trying to learn working for Overtime and working for Overtime Elite.

So maybe I'll get there one day. Yeah, people can find me on social media if they want, but yeah, I'm not, I'm not going to give too much wisdom. I'm, uh, through social media, is that all?

Well, Marcus, thank you so much. Obviously, uh, we really appreciate your support at Transforming, and, uh, we love all the work you're doing. So thanks for taking the time to join us today.

No worries, thanks for having me on, and really enjoy listening to your ideas and thoughts. And I think, uh, it's good that you push all your stuff out there because then, you know, we all have something to talk about. Which is the main thing.

Thanks again, Marcus.

Take care, Alex.

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