What the CLA Is and Isn't (Part 1)

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We've got something quite different today. We've very simply put 10 slides together to articulate what the constraints-led approach is and what it isn't. And this is a very different topic for a clinic that I've wanted to try for a while. And something I've been seeing over the last few years is a lot of misconceptions between what the constraints-led approach is.

And I wanted to use today to address that. And for this one, it's interesting because a year ago, 2 years ago, I always would've gone in and explained what the constraints-led approach is. Before doing that. And I'm making a little bit of an assumption today that maybe most of you are familiar already what CLA is.

So we're going to kind of skip through the basics and really get into the nitty-gritty, into the details at a more advanced level. Of course, if you're not familiar with the CLA, after this I'm going to guide you towards some more resources, but I just want to make the most we have of the time today and also turn this into a Q&A at the end.

which can be very practical. Hopefully a lot of you will be— feel free to unmute, turn your videos on, and we can talk about some of these things. So on that note, let's get started with point number 1. So the CLA, what it actually is: a framework for understanding performance in basketball.

So what we mean by this is it's not just a coaching method that we can all use in our practices. And I think sometimes That's what we think the CLA is. It's much more than that. It goes way deeper, and it's a framework we can use to understand how everything happens in basketball the way it does, whether that's in a practice or in a game.

So this is what's somewhat, I'd say, a bit of irony in terms of when we see a practice of the dominant approach, whether it's drills or teaching moves, techniques Well, that's still emerging within a constraints-led approach. The difference is that the coach is not doing it intentionally.

So the whole idea is that we've got these 3 types of constraint: individual, task, environment. Okay? And it's within these constraints, which are always interacting, that skills emerge as they do. And even in that traditional practice style, the CLA accounts for how that's happening.

So therefore, kind of our whole perspective on this at Transforming Basketball is we know that basketball performance at any level, whether it's a beginner or an NBA player, performance occurs and successful performance occurs if a player can satisfy the constraints acting upon them in one particular time.

And that determines whether they'll be successful or unsuccessful in one possession. So our whole rationale here is if we know that's how movement happens in basketball, Why do we not make sense of that and harness these changing constraints more in our practice environments?

Greg, I'll just let you build, jump in and build on that.

Yeah. And I think an important thing to note here too is that, like Alex said, it's not just limited to sports science or to basketball, but it is actually fundamental to the way that we move about the world, right? So how we perceive to act and we act to perceive.

Traditional cognitive information processing looks at the brain as having some central executive that can direct— send directions, send orders out, and the individual components will do exactly what the brain says. And we can see that model in the traditional way of coaching where the coach may be the central executive, right?

And gives these very specific directions, these very specific set plays that are typically context independent. And then the players are supposed to act accordingly at the exact same time, the exact same way. And that's really just not what we see or what the research shows either.

So finishing on this slide, we wanted to give you some practical examples of how when we understand this as a framework, we can manipulate constraints more intentionally. So like I said, with Newell's constraints model, we got individual task environment. And as coaches, the category of constraint that we probably have the most impact/control over is task.

So it's about a lot more than just starting a small-sided game, and we are going to get into that. That's actually one of the slides here. It's how you change the constraints in your activity based on what the players are doing, based on what information they're seeing, and maybe what they're not seeing.

So some common examples we have at Transforming Basketball. Number one is the scoring system. And something we do a lot in every activity, we call it gold medals or silver medals. And regardless of this is, if this is a 1-on-1 or a 5-on-5, if players can only score a gold or silver medal, it's gonna have a big impact on the skills that emerge.

Yeah.

And a gold medal is simply a finish at the rim inside the smile. A silver medal is a catch and shoot 3-pointer. So in a lot of our practice activities, we would have this task constraint on the players where they can only score a gold or silver medal.

So that's one example. Another example could be a shot clock. And again, this is something we do a lot. We call it the variable shot clock. So regardless of if it's a 1-on-1 or 5-on-5, There could be a fixed shot clock or a shot clock which changes, and the players don't know what it is until the repetition starts.

And the coach could just simply call out any number down from between 3 and 10, and they have to play. And obviously that's going to drastically impact the solutions. If players are playing 3-on-3 with a 6-second shot clock, they are going to be far more aggressive with their behaviors to try and score.

Whereas if there's no shot clock, They'd be passive. Maybe they can just get away with passing the ball and not having that intent to try and beat their opponent. So that's a really simple example too there. Another one we use a lot would be the floor is lava.

So this is a very famous one that's become quite popular, I'd say, all over the world, where if players catch the ball inside the 3-point line, the floor is lava and the coach calls a turnover. So naturally, what does this do? Well, this improves your team spacing.

Even with an under-12s team, without you having to talk about spacing concepts, if you use the floor is lava in every single small-sided game and you call a turnover every time players catch inside the mid-range, suddenly you will see great spacing emerge. So the whole idea here is that we're using constraints for a specific reason.

We're not going to be using the exact same constraints every time. But we see what happens and we change the environment accordingly. So if you would like some more practical examples of constraint, just head to transformingbasketball.com. We've got a whole page of 12 of our favorite constraint manipulations.

Okay. And you can check that out. So moving now to slide number 2, it's a way to understand how we can coach that's underpinned with theoretical research and evidence. And I think this is a big one because one of the biggest limitations to the dominant coaching approach, which is based on more technical instruction and drills, is there's simply no compelling evidence base that it works.

And I think a lot of times, including myself, when I used to coach in that way, we used to point to the success of players who had maybe grown up in that approach. But the, the whole thing is we don't know how much better they could have even been if they were playing within the CLA.

So we can't use this, just this mantra of saying, well, it's X number of players have got to a level through the traditional approach. That's not how it works. So for us, it's all about how can we create a learning environment which offers the players the very best?

And ultimately, at the end of the day, players, our players deserve the best. And this is one way we can do it. We can actually understand why we coach in a certain way. And I think a lot of times as coaches, we have bundles of different beliefs as opposed to a very strong theoretical framework to base our understanding on.

So what the CLA does is it allows you as a coach to understand how human movement occurs. And a lot of times as coaches, we say things like muscle memory. Things which actually make no sense and theoretically have no foundation. So the CLA allows us to think, okay, how is it that human movement in basketball happens?

And how is it the players become skillful? Now with that understanding, we can reverse engineer and create a practice environment which is aligned with how players learn most effectively. And I think the whole thing with this is this, you know, the CLA was not my idea.

I just realized that no one was applying it in basketball. This has been done by researchers, by professors all over the world, and it's there for us as coaches to harness and to manipulate so that we can ultimately create the best learning environment for our players.

Gray, as a researcher, I'll let you speak a little bit more on the research side of this.

Absolutely. So something you may run into if you appeal to notions like Muscle memory or something like that is something known as the storage problem.

Okay.

So if we have muscle memory for a movement, okay, let's, let's grant that on its face and say we might. If you have muscle memory for a jump shot, then the question is now, is it the memory of one specific ideal movement that can occur context independent and will always be the correct solution?

Or do we need to store muscle memory for every kind of context that we may be facing? So the way I shoot with a 7-foot defender in front of me is going to be different than If I were to shoot with a 6-foot defender in front of me, right?

So would we need to store a movement pattern or a movement solution for each individual context? And once you start going down that road, you realize we may not have that actual kind of storage capacity and retrieval capacity for things that we've never even faced before, right?

You also run up into the theoretical and philosophical problem of how can I have muscle memory for something that has yet to occur in the game? Right? Can't have the muscle memory for something that you've never had to do or there's never been a requirement for.

So when you start to pull at the theoretical threads of this, you kind of begin to realize that it isn't as much in the individual that we need to worry about, but we need to start thinking about what are these constraints that are eliciting these behaviors?

What are the environmental task and individual constraint interactions that produce the behaviors that we're either wanting to see or not wanting to The easiest kind of way we phrase this to coaches is we want to shift from being instructors to learning designers.

So the idea of being a learning designer, this is something, you know, you could use to explain to colleagues, other coaches at your club. Instead of setting up a drill or setting up a technique that you want to teach, instead, as a learning designer, how can we create an environment where a different solution will emerge every time?

And critically, a solution will emerge that aligns with every player's unique anatomy, their individual capacities, their individual constraints. And there's a good quote here we saw on Twitter the other day, which we wanted to read out on this slide. And it's, skill acquisition is not actually acquiring a movement or memorizing stuff.

Skills are adaptations to specific environments. It's the adaptation that defines technical movement and And the solutions that we see. So I think that's a really interesting one there because the idea even of players acquiring skills, as Gray mentioned with muscle memory, it's just, that's not how we're viewing it.

That's not how the human body works. Instead, it's about how can players adapt to every scenario. And obviously the more that they face these scenarios in practice where these different adaptations can occur, the more successful they will be within the game itself. Want to take a deep dive into the Transforming Basketball approach?

Our free skill acquisition workshop is a comprehensive resource for you to learn about evidence-based coaching strategies. Within the workshop, you'll find small-sided games that will transform your practice. Get instant access by heading to the link in our show notes. Okay, so this is a big one.

And the CLA— this is our first it isn't. And we don't believe that the CLA is a coaching method which you can use occasionally along with drills. And this is kind of a Best of both rationale I've been seeing quite a bit over the last few years, where it's definitely great that coaches are using more small-sided games, et cetera.

But typically what's happening is that the small-sided games are being used in to accompany drills, and maybe a coach will teach a move or teach a pattern 3-on-0 and then create a small-sided game where that thing may emerge. The best analogy we can give you here, coaches, is that Using the CLA, it's like a pair of glasses, wearing a pair of glasses.

It changes fundamentally the lens that we use to view and understand basketball. So it's not as simple as sometimes wearing these glasses and sometimes putting them down and picking up a new pair and wearing those, because it's one lens which we are using to view basketball.

So if we really believe that constraints impact performance and the, you know, it's things such as perception-action coupling within this dynamic environment. If that's what shapes performance, there would simply be no need to then go and use a drill. And I think the biggest thing too is if you are looking to practically improve your application of a CLA, it's not just about doing things like 3-on-3, 4-on-4, 5-on-5.

Because the problem is the environment is not gonna be specific enough To allow your players to explore different solutions. So this is where the key magic, the key recipe for using the CLA well is how you create very specific environments, which requires a lot of formats such as 1-on-1, 1-on-1 plus 1, 1-on-2, 2-on-1, 2-on-2 plus 1, because it's those formats which amplify the ability of your players to perceive information and act.

And I think a misnomer is that we are just doing 3-on-3, 4-on-4. And it's, the problem is those environments will not be specific enough. So if you think that you need to use a drill to allow your players to become more skillful, instead we would challenge you to think about even having a defender in there who's very constrained.

So say for instance, you want to improve your player's ability to score layups with their left hand. Instead of just doing that 1-on-0, you could easily add a scripted defender who plays defense on the offense's right hip. So naturally it's a 1-on-1, there could be some type of advantage.

What is going to happen is the positioning of that defender is really going to almost force the offensive player to use their left hand. And that would be one example of how we can really create a very specific environment that's heavily constrained. But still, it means we don't need to revert to 1-on-0.

And the whole idea is we want to keep the key information within the practice but will impact what players see in the game. So the problem is, as soon as we remove that defender, all the real information is gone. So it's key to think about how can you constrain the defense in a very specific way so that the players can they all keep perception-action coupled.

And what this often leads to, if any of you work with beginners, is using constraints such as the defense playing with one hand, or maybe they cannot jump, or maybe they're playing defense holding basketballs. You could even do that 3-on-3. So the whole idea is how can we create the right level of challenge but a very specific environment without having to go to 1-on-0?

Now when we get to the end of this presentation Something which could be really practical is if you have a technique or a drill which you can't envision how to create a CLA version of it, hold that question and ask Gray and myself at the end, and we could give you some practical examples of how you could use the CLA as an alternative in such situations.

Another one, it isn't— it's not a games-based approach. So We've seen this term a lot over the last few years, and especially the word small-sided games. And you might be wondering, huh, what's going on here? Because absolutely, using small-sided games is a big part of the constraints-led approach.

That's obvious. We need the small-sided game. It can't happen in drills. However, it's about a lot more than just that. And I think there's been a big kind of misassumption that the CLA is literally just creating a small-sided game, rolling the ball out, and that's it.

And I'll give you a practical example of this, coaches. If you have a small-sided game that you use frequently in your practice, if we really want to purposefully use the CLA well, you would play that same game but maybe slightly differently every single time.

And how that happens is you changing the constraints. If the players always play the exact same small-sided game, that would be a games approach. And from our kind of belief rationale, we don't believe a games approach is specific enough to help players. Now, yes, it's going to be better than traditional drills, but the problem is if we just play a game, players can rely on the same old things and behaviors that they've always done.

They might have movements that they're consistently drawn to or information they don't pick up. And if the environment is not constrained specifically, Then they're simply not gonna become more skillful and work on those things. So the key thing that we would encourage you to do is think about the small-sided games that you're using the most and think about how you can slightly tweak them every single time.

So let me just give you an example here. Maybe you are playing pass keep away in your warmup, and all that is, is you have 2 teams, could be 3-on-3, 4-on-4, whatever, and they can only pass inside the 3-point line.

Okay.

And they have to try and get 8 passes in a row to get a point. If there's a turnover or deflection, possession changes. Okay, fun warm-up game, could be great for just developing pivoting, passing, etc. The problem is if we play that same version every time, for the reasons I just mentioned, it's not that conducive.

So we've got to think, okay, how could we change this? And maybe we introduce different constraints. So it could be every time we pass, You have to run, touch the sideline, and come back in. So what that will afford is some situations where the defense have an advantage.

So maybe they start trapping and they're using that advantage that they have aggressively. Maybe one player on each team, when they catch the ball, it's worth 2 points. So that might allow the defense to figure out how to top block and guard them very aggressively.

Maybe we say if you get a dribble handoff or a get, It's worth 2 instead of 1. Maybe we change the space, we play inside the paint, which will make it a lot harder and the offense will have to pivot and protect the ball more.

Maybe we play with a permanent advantage or disadvantage. So maybe for younger players, there's one player who's a free agent who can play on both teams, so it will always be 3-on-3 plus 1, and one player is always offense on both teams, so they use that advantage.

Maybe we say if you get 5 passes in a row, you get to score and you play to the score. So the whole idea, coaches, is we want to be finding ways to be creative as coaches and changing these constraints in every single small-sided game.

If you have a small-sided game which you use consistently every time, see if you can find a way to change it. And that could be as simple as maybe in your next practice, after you start playing the game, take a timeout and you say to your players, you have 30 seconds, see if you can identify one way to change this game.

And it's really funny because sometimes some of the best constraint manipulations come from the players themselves. And even if you have players as young as 12 years old, just giving them a chance to be involved in this process can really be a nice tone for your practices.

Absolutely. And somewhat implicit in the traditional approach, and even just a small-sided games approach, In and of itself is if you're using these approaches, you are assuming a higher level of certainty with your predictions about what's going to happen in the game. And it's not accounting for the variability that you may face from a different opponent, different time of the season, different levels of competition, different constraints that your teams are facing, right?

So by adding that constant variability, you are actually getting your players prepared for the level of variability that they're going to be facing in-game situations as opposed to setting a game and forgetting it and assuming that it's going to apply in all of these contexts?

So this is a big one for us, and I think what the CLA is, is it's the way you can coach and still be active delivering feedback. And again, another misconception we've seen is that when we use the CLA, coaches should be hands-off and not coaching.

And we've never said that, and we don't believe in that. You can still be very active delivering feedback from the CLA. I think the key difference is that often we are not providing instruction based on how to move or the specifics of a technical movement.

Instead, our feedback is more related to the principles of play. Okay? So big difference there. So let's take, let's say we're doing some type of one-on-one. We're not going to say within the CLA, you must finish with your elbow here, your hand here, and give them a very specific solution.

But maybe we see they're not successful. So what we could say is, can you find a different way to finish? Or have you noticed that you are always finishing off 2 feet? Maybe there's another way you could explore some more options here by going off one.

So it's a lot more open-ended when we are asking questions to our athletes, and the feedback is more related to the outcome of a movement, not necessarily how it should be done directly. And I think— Something that this has big implications for is shooting.

And a great example is you saw yesterday in the NBA All-Star Game, Halliburton, the best shooter in the NBA right now, shooting 47% from 3. And again, he has a shot which a lot of coaches would correct because it supposedly is, is, does not look ideal.

Yet it's a highly effective functional shot. And obviously in previous clinics I've done in Germany, I've given the same example of Dirk Nowitzki. So when we deliver feedback, we want to focus more on the outcome, not the movement. And that could be in shooting, as simple as the arc of the shot, trying to get a BRAD.

It stands for back rim and down. So we could give feedback trying to encourage players to explore this, but we're not going to tell them one way that they should shoot or how they should be doing form shooting. And I think if you have principles of play as a coach, Regardless of whether it's a conceptual offense, a motion offense, or a set offense, you can very much still coach bringing those principles to life.

So you can show players good spacing templates, you can show certain things in pick and roll. You've got to do that, and you can still do that within a CLA. You don't have to just sit back and let anything happen.

Absolutely. And it also becomes a much more collaborative process with your players too, so it's less siloed off in the sense of You hand directions down from on high because you know better, because you're the coach and they're going to be executing, right?

It's a lot more player-specific, even if it seems like it's going to be general. By having these principles of play, you let their specific problem-solving solutions emerge in that co-design relationship. And when we coach in the traditional way, what we're actually doing, if we're pushing someone towards an ideal movement solution or a particular way to finish, we're actually averaging out their unique individual differences that could be used as a competitive advantage in the game.

Like Alex was talking about with Dirk or with Halliburton.

And just as we finish this note, I think when it comes to feedback, if you see or you catch yourself saying the same thing consistently over and over again, that's when you need to change the constraints and force the players into doing it due to the design of the game itself.

So I'll give you an example. My idea for floor is lava, you know, not catching inside the mid-range That concept came up because I found myself always yelling spacing to a group of young players, and I noticed that it was having no impact at all.

So then I thought, okay, what can I do where instead of me just keep continuing to yell the same thing over and over again, how could we design this game so they're forced to pick information up and actually attune to this? So then we just said, It is a turnover if the floor is lava and you catch the ball in the mid-range.

Instead of me yelling spacing, I changed the game itself. So if there's something that you really think the players need to pick up, or there's something you continuously find yourself saying it over and over again, you have to change the constraints. Because if you just keep saying it, it is not gonna be efficient for the learning process.

And that's where the right constraints It allows your players to learn far more efficiently and effectively. So that we're halfway through here, we've got the last kind of five coming up, and this one is what it isn't. And I think something we see a lot is the concept that the CLA only applies to coaching, and really it's a framework we can use for every part.

Part of basketball. If you're in an organization where you maybe have some strength and conditioning too, some mental skills, some nutrition, whatever it is, the CLA applies in every field. It's not just coaching. So even if you're using video and you're doing video sessions with your players, the CLA should inform you of a useful way that you could deliver those video sessions.

And the best example I want to talk about now is the warm-up. Because that's applicable to every single coach on this call. Well, if we view the game through the perspective of CLA, it changes how we see the warmup. And I think the dominant approach to a warmup would be dynamic stretches and players doing the same thing over and over again.

But instead we could use the CLA, and this is where concepts such as repetition without repetition could come to the equation. So you could still get your players to do their lunges, to do their squats, and some of their functional movements before practice.

But all you could say to them is find a different way to do this movement every time. So if they're doing their lunges instead of a traditional lunge all in a straight line, which doesn't open them up to different movements, it restricts the degrees of freedom.

You can say to them, find a different way to lunge. You could change the angle, change the distance, change the speed. And this is why a lot of our small-sided games also apply for warmups. So Some of our best warmup games would involve playing other sports and immediately going into it.

And the best example is often in our younger days as kids, when we were playing at school, we'd, we'd never warm up. We'd go straight into it. And I think it's exactly the same with a lot of youth players. There's simply no need to use stretching and have these movement-based routines.

We believe it just wastes time, even pregame. So if you can reinvent 10, 15 minutes of every practice.

Yeah.

And use that to use CLA warmup activities, that would be a huge advantage. And it could be as simple as giving your players some different pieces of equipment. We call it playtime, where they're in groups of 2 or 3, they have different props.

It could be a soccer ball, a tennis ball, a bib, a cone, and they have to invent their own warmup game. And when we start to use the CLA as a lens for everything, it changes Not just in terms of how we deliver the practice, but the entire organization.

Absolutely. And to echo that, it's not just applicable only to coaching. There's research out there supporting the CLA in developing graduate students. So there was a law school that used this method, and a group of law students that used the CLA method outperformed their peers, which was a group of people that did not use the CLA.

It works well in nutrition. It can be used as a tool to Even develop yourself as a coach, right? It's not strictly drills-based, only skills-based. It is a framework for learning and enhancing skill at a quicker rate than the traditional paradigm has allowed for.

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Thank you.