Realising the Potential of the CLA with Liam Jefferson

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Thank you so much and enjoy today's episode. Welcome back to the Transforming Podcast. Delighted to be joined by a colleague and someone I've really enjoyed developing a friendship with this year, Liam Jefferson. Liam, welcome on the show.

Thanks for having me on, Alex. I know we've spoken about this probably the whole season now, so glad to finally get the chance to do it.

Absolutely. So for those who obviously aren't aware, we work together at the Lions Academy. Been a really great season, you know, exploring lots of evidence-based coaching ideas together and just applying it in person, you know, with, with all the, the kids we've got in the program here.

Could you just kind of introduce your background, Liam, and what you were doing prior to London Lions and just your experience coaching?

Yeah, so I'll try and keep it brief. I spent the last 12 seasons coaching at Loughborough University up in the middle of England, pretty much bang smack in the middle if you drop a pin on the country. Was fortunate enough to be there for, like I said, a period of time working with some high-level coaches and athletes as both an assistant coach and a head coach.

Won a bunch of championships. We won 5 national championships while I was there, which again, I think is a testament to the program that we built in the time that I was there. Spent some time last summer on the GB Under-20 men's staff as an assistant coach.

Also some other National League experience throughout the country. So I would say prior to London Lions Academy, I was, and we've spoken about this a bunch, I was a games-based coach and my practices probably followed that sort of model. And then coming to Lions Academy for this last season, I've really started to knuckle down and get into the CLA and how I can embrace that practice within my coaching.

Love it. And I mean, it's been so enjoyable watching your practices this season. What would you say, Liam, that was the biggest Probably change you've incorporated into your coaching this season, kind of shifting towards the CLA?

Yeah, definitely. I think, like I said, I, I was a games-based coach, probably using constraints without really understanding how, where, and why I was using them. And I think one of the biggest growth areas this year for me is understanding the science of it to then turn it into art, is the way that I best describe it to people.

So yeah, I think this year really embracing the CLA and utilizing it within my practice has been the biggest area of growth for sure.

I love that. And I think there has been some curiosity in maybe English coaching circles as to what we're doing here. How have you, and you know, you've got a really good network here, you're well respected in coaching circles, how have you kind of described some of this to other coaches?

Because it's not easy to kind of harness the complexity of this and just describe succinctly what it actually is.

Yeah, it's a really good question. And it's one that I think at the start of the year, I probably struggled with a little bit as I was getting to grips with utilizing it as well. I think the biggest misconception amongst coaching networks with the CLA is often that we're rolling out the ball and putting some cones down and expecting players to come up with their own tasks.

And basically, we're there to just officiate and referee. I mean, sometimes we do, right? But the biggest way I've described it to people is, it's like I said, like, we're understanding the science behind it, the science behind ecological dynamics and how to utilize the CLA.

To turn it into art. So we're manipulating the environment, the task, the participant to get to the specific affordances that we want to present themselves. And we are very intentional with practice design to ensure that we're getting to that point. And I think once coaches start to understand that that's how we're utilizing it and that actually we're building the scaffolding around a practice for the players to really explore the maze as such, When they get to a fork in the road, which affordance are they choosing and which direction are they going?

And I think when you describe it that way to coaches, they start to picture it a little bit more, start to understand a little bit more of what we've been doing and how we really bring that to life.

I love that. Have you got— I don't want to put you on the spot with this one, but any— maybe just talk in reference to a recent practice, like either a practice you plan tonight or the one you had yesterday, just any ideas on constraint manipulations or how we're actually using constraints that you could just offer to the audience?

Yeah, of course. I mean, I filmed one of our small-sided games the other night for another podcast that's coming up in a couple of days and utilized wall pick and roll. So we're working on the side pick and roll, but we're actually adding that in, like, imaginary wall with just some cones down along the lane line so that we're constraining the space that the players are able to operate in.

We want to make sure that that is representative, and in-game they're not going to have the space to be able to play with if we're just playing 2-on-2. With no wall and no out-of-bounds area. Then once we got going, we started constraining what can the defense do.

So we were looking at trying to present the affordance for a Gortat screen. And we started by manipulating it that offense couldn't reject. So now they're starting to look at, can I hold hostage? And we're giving incentive with points and scoring system to utilizing the hostage dribble.

Now we can add in that Gortat screen or Gortat seal to allow them to snake and get to the rim for their finish. So I think within one small-sided game, we probably We introduce 7 or 8 different constraints within a 10-minute period that's helped get our players from A to B to C to D in much quicker than I feel like a traditional practice would get from A to B.

I think too, what stands out there, Liam, is how you can't use the CLA well if you don't have these really coherent principles of play. And that's obviously where we've spent so much time and focus this year. That's been most of our coaching workshops, you know, how can we have this one club vision in every age group where we're all using the same language, principles of play, Could you talk about that a little bit?

Yeah, man. I think that's been probably the most successful piece of what we've done this year with the Academy at Lions. And I've always been one that's big on terminology anyway, because I think it's really important that everybody is on the same page.

And I know me and you have spent many an hour on phone calls, over dinner, over coffee, trying to come up with all these different terms that fit within our style of play and our terminology to make sure that it suits. And I think it's been great because, like you said, within our coaching workshops with all of our coaches, everybody is on the same page.

And we know that if you're dropping into any practice at any age group, you're seeing and feeling a Lions practice. And that's a big deal for us with the academy this year. It also removes confusion for the players.

Yes.

And I think once we get it right, and we saw it at our last EYBL tournament out in Poland in February, it really does become a language that the players are utilizing on court within your style of play, within your terminology and your philosophy, that nobody else really knows what's going on except for us.

And I mean, if I use the drop coverage again, like we were just talking about in the pick and roll, we will teach it to the players as this is a drop coverage. So then we know that when we're in game, whether it's timeout or on the floor, we can be very succinct and purposeful with our communication.

Other players aren't going to know what's going on, but we've still taught it as a drop coverage so that when our players leave our academy, if they don't go on to represent our senior men's and senior women's teams, Yeah. They still know how that can drop into any environment and what that might look like from a terminology standpoint.

And I really do think it has become a language for us.

Yes.

And it's great to hear some of the players really embracing it in those moments that we give them purposeful timeouts to be utilizing that terminology. When someone subs out of a game, they're like, don't forget to jam up on our shots. Make sure you're jamming up, which is tagging up.

Again, we've looked at different terminology for it. And yeah, it's just been awesome to see, man. I think it's really fast-tracked the process for everybody because there's no confusion.

Certainly agree. I think too, just looking at the 16s boys team, it's amazing how sophisticated you can get with principles of play. And obviously we've been very intentional in terms of less is more. Like most of our offense is basically playing out of 4 different pick and roll spacings.

But you watch a lot of professional teams and maybe they don't have that coherency in terms of spacing, understanding, and actually being able to express these coverage solutions. So if we start on the offensive end, and we'll shift to defense after my next question, but could you just talk us through, Liam, some of the offensive principles of play that we've been able to develop with this under-16s team this year in 4 practices a week, but players often coming to 2 or 3?

Yeah, so it all starts with our rules, I guess, around floor is lava. So our spacing on the offensive end and what spacing we expect our players to be able to play in. Making sure that one can't guard 2, and they're also understanding that within their spacing on the floor.

And then we get into, I guess, our phases of offense. So green for us is that we want to get out in transition and bust out, be as quick as we can in sprinting the floor and trying to play in transition. And I mean, coaching a youth team in London, it couldn't be more suited to the personnel, their skillset, their athleticism, their size and length that they have.

So we want to get out in transition and try to maintain the early dominoes that we would see in transition anyway. Then once we get into the half court, we're starting to recognize whether or not the defense is back to neutral. So have they taken away dominoes and are we now in a situation where we need to trigger?

And that's where those pick and roll spacings that you just spoke about would come in. So we play out of 4 different pick and roll spacings. And then with the under-16s this year, we've actually been able to put in a couple of fall triggers as well.

Yeah.

So we've got wide and pistol that we've put in. And the bit that I guess we've only just started to explore with them is then our red offense, which is anything that comes out of a timeout or off a dead ball. So what that's allowed us to really do is then, like you alluded to, teach the coverage solutions within all of our triggers.

So our practices are very intentional where when I'm teaching a middle pick and roll, we're teaching it against a switch, a drop, A hard hedge. And one, we're teaching the defense, which I know we'll come to, and what that looks like, but also then how to punish it, which in turn, as we're coaching both with both head coach and assistant coaches, is like leveling us up every single time we coach.

So the defense improves, the offense has to get better at finding their coverage solutions. And again, I think we're very intentional with what those coverage solutions are. So we have a pick and roll matrix.

Okay.

That a lot of us worked on. So using those as the triggers, for example, where it's listed all of the different coverage solutions that we may see, but then where we're, I guess, using it at the moment is picking what works best for the personnel that we have.

That's exactly right.

So if we're seeing a middle pick and roll, we might have 10 different coverage solutions for that middle pick and roll. But right now, our personnel, under-16s, they're only ready for 3 of them. So we're only then teaching them within the practices those 3, and that's what we're manipulating the constraints around.

If we're seeing it against a switching defense, what different coverage solutions can we look at? So we've got the quick crack and slip, so getting to a good crack angle and immediately slipping without any sort of contact.

Yeah.

We're looking at reject, we're looking at the relay pass or the Messi pass. I've heard a couple of people describe it as on the podcast previously. Then now we've started to introduce ghosting the pick and roll. And so between those 4 coverage solutions, we've got ways to get us back to the dominoes that we have within our style of play, and then we're back to playing with advantage.

It's so good, Liam. And we often say, even though this is an under-16s team, I think where they're at and what they're doing, I think it could be a high-level professional offense. And, you know, obviously we'd have more sets in, but we wouldn't really put more coverage solutions in because, like we've said, it's kind of like less is more.

And Instead of doing all these different things, far better to do less, but do it really, really effectively and have the intentions crystal clear where every single player knows what we are looking for. And I think that's what you can see when watching the team play.

Yeah, 100%. I think especially for a U16 team, speaking about our U16 boys, the only real coverages that we've seen are switch and drop with a little bit of The hard hedge in there.

And the drop isn't intentional when they really— right, when they do it, it's just a bad switch, or we've prevented it through some type of trigger before.

Yeah, exactly. But then I think our intentions with those coverage solutions mean that the players are able to problem solve on the fly.

Yeah.

That's great for me is those moments where they recognize what coverage they're seeing in game and they huddle at the first available opportunity. You can see that they're utilizing the language and the terminology that we talked about before. So there was a moment where we were in Poland again in February, February, where we were playing against a Romanian team who were switching everything.

We were struggling to find a coverage solution without me having to take a timeout. The next dead ball, the 5 got together and I could hear them saying, let's look at a relay pass as an option. Well, lo and behold, the next possession down, we executed a perfect relay to the roller and then had a weak corner ghost cut to the basket for a dump-off and an easy lay.

And the player's ability to get to that solution at 15 years old, Like you said, I don't see pro teams doing that sometimes. And they were able to self-organize and do that themselves, which was— that's probably for me the most rewarding part of the entire tournament.

Forget the results and how we did and what we achieved. They were able to think at an elite level and find their own solutions to the problems that presented themselves.

Have you enrolled in our free skill acquisition workshop? This is a game-changing resource for you to apply the ideas discussed within the podcast. The workshop features some of the best snippets from previous podcast guests, in addition to illustrations and free small-sided games for you to use in your practice.

Click the link in the footnotes of this podcast episode to enroll in the workshop today and receive lots of instant ideas for your next practice. That's it. Love it. And it's just things like that where you realize what could be achieved if we had more time in the academy.

And you were playing in like an ANGT and it had a couple years of a group from U12s to 16s. I think it would be incredible. And honestly, I don't think we've seen that yet where we haven't had a whole program in Europe go all in on CLA, every age group.

I think maybe Alba Berlin are the closest with the younger age groups. And obviously, I had Maris on the podcast, he does an excellent job. I don't know about the continuity as they get older, but it's, you know, I'm waiting to see the first club that does it.

It's going to be a huge advantage. So I want to move on. You're just like me in terms of we are pretty obsessed with organization and processes. Could you just speak about what you think some of our most beneficial processes have been this season?

Because we've got obviously loads of coaches at all levels listening to this, I think from NBA to youth, these processes, I think, are useful and practical for all coaches.

Yeah, I mean, the first one that I would start with is just our use of Google Drive, which has revolutionized the way we work as a staff. So if you were to drop into that, you would see every single process that we follow within there.

I think understanding the way we work as a club, all of our coaches will have a different touchpoint with every age group. So that might be as a head coach, that might be as an assistant. And then you are, I guess, in charge of head coaching your own age group, but you may not see them every week at that practice.

So us having all of our practice plans stored on one template in one place has made it so good for us as coaches to be able to, one, ensure that there's continuity in our practice. So if I'm dropping in to take our under-14 boys practice, I can see what's been covered in the last 4 or 5, make sure that I'm not duplicating any effort, but also Ensuring that I'm really doubling down on some of the teaching points that maybe Will, as their head coach, has wanted to deliver.

But that's also allowed us as coaches to be really, I think, inquisitive as to what each other are doing and what new small-sided games and constraints are we implementing across the program that maybe it triggers thought in my mind. It's like, oh, that's great.

I've been struggling with jamming, so our tagging up in practice. And I've noticed that, Will, last week you did this small-sided game with these constraints. How did that go? What did that look like in practice? What did you learn from it? And so that's been great for us.

The other one that I would highlight that I think has been great for our young coaches that are newer to the coaching profession is the game day checklist that we have. What do you need to do pregame? What do you need to be looking for in-game?

What are you looking for in your review postgame? And some of the things in there might sound a little bit arbitrary to coaches who are a little bit more experienced. Even down to the angle with which you're sitting and facing your team in a timeout and actually not having your back to half the team and only facing those that are on the bench.

Sit down at the end of the bench and you have a view of everybody and ensuring that everybody is— something so arbitrary as that on a process, on a checklist, actually makes a huge difference with how I know that the message that I'm delivering as the coach in a timeout is being received by all 12 players that are on my roster.

And especially with the way that we, I guess, lead and deliver our timeouts, there's a lot of player input. And so I want to make sure that as a coach, I have a view of if player X is talking and they're talking about a coverage solution to a problem that we're struggling with, that player Y, who would normally be stood behind me, isn't talking to his mates or staring off into the crowd and he's locked in.

There's a lot of things within that game day checklist for us that have been really beneficial for some of our younger, newer coaches to the profession.

That's so good. I love it because it's— you always forget something. It's just the way we are. There's so much going on. I think that's the power of those checklists and having these checklists that we've developed for like every scenario. I think it really just allows you to perform at such a high level as a coach when it's just, oh, I forgot about this.

And it's just, it makes these intentions consistent and we can add more. So yeah, great stuff. Thanks for sharing that, Liam. Could you talk a little bit too about our coaching workshops? Because I think that's been a really unique part of kind of what

you've done. And part— I wrote about it a little bit at the end of the book in terms of I really believe we have to reframe the importance of continuous learning and CPD as coaches at every level. And I think how we've done that at Lions is through these workshops.

So maybe you could just touch upon that.

I mean, I'm very similar to you in that I have a growth mindset and I'm naturally quite inquisitive. So for me, the concept of continually learning and trying to better myself Doesn't seem so foreign as I think it does to some coaches, but those workshops have been great for us.

So we would look at meeting at least twice a week, and that'll either be virtually or in person. And they'll often be around either topics that yourself, Alex, you've decided that is something that we need to address across the whole academy, or problems that maybe we're presenting as head coaches of our age groups that, do you know what, within our philosophy and our style of play and our terminology, we found a problem with this and we're really struggling with it.

So let's deep dive into it and let's start to understand a little bit more. Let's share some of the things that we're all struggling with or what I've learned from dealing with it in practice. So that's been really, really useful. And again, coming back to that point earlier, ensures that we're all on the same page and what we're delivering is across the board.

But I think we've also been really fortunate to have a lot of external speakers as well. Some speakers come in and share topics that I guess some coaches typically would think is outside of their area of expertise. So having Paddy come in and deliver a session on nutrition and how to fuel and what to put in your body pre, during, post-training, games, recovery was extremely useful because we're in a position where we're 1 year into our academy and we don't have a nutritionist.

So as the coach, I've got to make sure that I have experience and understanding across multiple different professions and areas that I'm then able to be able to share and upskill. So I found those really beneficial and I know the other guys have done as well.

I think the ones where we've heard from coaches from other sports have also been great. So hearing from football or soccer coaches and how they introduced the CLA within their own game and what that looks like, you'd be amazed how much you can take from other sports and what they do in their environments to be able to apply to your own environment and what you're doing.

And I think without those workshops and those opportunities to get together as coaches, and don't get me wrong, we're very fortunate because we're all full-time coaches.

Yes.

So it can be difficult to find that time, but even getting together for 20 minutes on a Zoom call can have such profound impact across your whole program that it's definitely worthwhile exploring ways to be able to do it.

100%. So I want to ask you this question then, because we've, through Transforming, we've helped quite a lot of youth clubs kind of create what we've done at Lions in terms of shared principles of play and basically embedding these processes into their club.

And I think a question we get a lot is, well, that's really challenging because coaches all have their own ideas. And it's difficult to create this unified framework. Do you agree with that? Or do you think kind of the way we've done it has been very natural?

It hasn't just been a case of, here's the principles of play, go do it. I'd say, yes, of course, you know, I've provided a lot of the framework, but I can genuinely say we've all co-designed all of this. And like, you've left a huge imprint on the stuff we do.

So what would you say to that?

Just the sheer amount of dinners and coffees, like I was saying before, that the two of us have had, there's been plenty of co-design in there. I think playing conceptually and utilizing the CLA to do so has allowed a lot of room for creativity for me as a coach within both our style of play and our philosophy, but also what I do in practice.

So it's not like we've got— so there's 4 of us currently coaching within the Lions Academy, and then yourself as our director of methodology and setting that direction for us. We haven't got 5 Alex Saramas delivering on court. We've got Alex and Liam and Will and George and Pierce.

Yeah.

Each of us brings something different to that. Each of us has impacted style of play and our philosophy. And we spent a lot of time at the start of the year when you initially presented, this is our framework, this is our scaffold around what we want to achieve.

Let's get into the real details of it and let's see what do you think works for your age group? What do you think is something that we can just completely disregard? What do you think we need to build and bring into this? And I think by us having the ABC framework, so agree, build, and challenge within all of our meetings and our conversations, we've been able to feel that even if I don't agree, I've had the forum to be able to challenge.

And we've come to a consensus as a staff that actually for our program, this is the best thing that we need to do. So maybe there's a couple of things that, you know what, if I got my own program and I went somewhere else and I did it differently, Yeah, sure.

There'd be a couple of things that I'd change. But for right now, as a staff, we're fully aligned, even if we don't completely agree on something, that for our under-12s through to next year, our U18s, this is the right thing for us to be doing for the London Lions Academy.

So there's definitely scope within it to be able to do that. And I guess the role for you as that director of methodology is to do the same thing for us as coaches as we're doing for The players on court, you're essentially building that framework for us to have those discussions and chew the fat on it a little bit, and guide us to different affordances that might present themselves within the style of play that we want.

And we're then starting to explore that, putting that on the floor and coming back and saying, "You know what? That doesn't work." So let's look at something different, and let's go in this direction. I would completely disagree that it's just a case of picking up a one size fits all model for utilizing the CLA and dropping it into 100 different academies across the world because it just wouldn't work.

I think the other. Sorry, just to go on on this one a little bit further. Oh, that's great. And it's something that I've just gone through the chapter in the book around it as well, is you can't do that because of forms of life.

So what works for us at London Lions Academy, as I was saying before, works because we have long athletic kids that want to be able to get out and play in transition. Now, if we were in a different part of the world where we didn't have access to the pool of players that we have in central London, we would have to manipulate that style of play, that terminology, and everything that we do To work for the players that we have in that environment.

So yeah, I would completely disagree that it's something that you just would roll out and it works for everybody.

Love it. Liam, I think you'll be the same in terms of what we've accomplished together this year is one of the things I'm proudest about. Really, it's just been an amazing year. And I think take the opportunity just to thank Vanya and Jacob, as you know, academy leadership, and then you guys in terms of yourself,

George, Will, Pierce. It's been an amazing experience. And I think this is the first of a few episodes where we're going to also get some of our other coaches on. And I want to do one with Vanya and Jacob too, just debriefing the year.

And I think there's a lot of uncertainty in terms of where we all go next year. I think credit to you guys, a lot of you now are in demand with teams all over the world because of what we've accomplished this year. But I think it's just what we've developed here.

I think there can be lessons which we're going to take with us in whatever environments we're all coaching in. And hopefully this can inspire the work of other academies, teams, whatever, around the world, just through some of the stuff we've spoken about today.

So thanks for everything you brought to the table, and I really, really enjoyed this episode.

No, pleasure. Thanks for having me on, and looking forward to getting everybody around the table, like you said, debriefing on the season and what we've all learned as a collective as well.

Definitely. Thanks so much, Liam.

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