Alex Sarama is joined by Martin Andrade, a coach that is known for his creative and innovative approach to skill acquisition and player development.
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In this episode, Alex Sarama is joined by Martin Andrade, a coach that is known for his creative and innovative approach to skill acquisition and player development. Martin shares how he came across the Constraints-Led Approach (CLA) and ecological dynamics, and how it has transformed his coaching style. He discusses the importance of creativity in coaching and how he designs practice activities and constraints to help players develop functional solutions on the court. Martin also shares his insights on shooting and how he incorporates differential learning and CLA principles into shooting drills and small-sided games.
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This transcript follows the original English audio.
This is the Transforming Basketball Podcast hosted by Alex Sarama. This is the podcast helping coaches and practitioners change the way we think about basketball performance. Our goal is to provide the ultimate resource for making sense of applying contemporary skill acquisition ideas within basketball.
Within this podcast, Alex and his guests unpack how an ecological dynamics framework Impacts our perspective of the game. If you're ready to join us in our quest to transform the basketball world, this is the podcast for you.
Welcome back to the Transforming Basketball Podcast. Delighted to have our first guest from South America, Martin Andrade, joining us from Montevideo in Uruguay. Now Martin is one of my favorite follows on social media, and. Normally I get extremely frustrated scrolling through Instagram, Twitter, and seeing some of the things that emerge on my feed.
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But every time I see one of Martin's posts, I love it. I've taken so many things. So Martin, thanks so much for coming on.
Man, it's been a pleasure, dude, to be here on your new project. I'm following you for years and I love your work and I love to be here, man.
Oh, much appreciated. Of course. I Just in our last conversation we had when we were just talking about skill acquisition and all these things, it's just, it's amazing to me just seeing how coaches are doing such an amazing job applying these ideas all over the world.
And you're just a great example of that. So I think a good starting point, Martin, is just how you came across the CLA, because you've someone— you read a lot, you've studied a lot, and I think this is a great story for coaches to hear.
Honestly, man, I don't remember well how I found the CLA. But I think, yeah, for sure you was one influence, big influence on this. And then my friend Coleman Ayers, he was another guy that, you know, put that in my mind. And once I started learning about CLA and ecological dynamics, it changed everything.
How I see the practice, how I see the player development. Yeah, how I design the practice. I really like it because I can express my creativity as a coach. To now be, uh, more like an architecture of design of the environment through the manipulation of constraints, and to help the player to be in a more in-depth relationship with environment and help them find better solutions to what they're going to see during the game.
I really like that as a coach, you know, that part of being creative, not just, okay, we're gonna train this move. What is the the creative part of that, you know. If we just train on air and repeat movements, I like the challenge.
Like when you see, I don't know, some tendencies from a player and how I can, you know, get him better through the manipulation, you know, the constraints and how you create environment to help them, you know, develop these functional movement solutions. So I really like that every day I learn something new in the practice.
I mean, that's what comes across just watching. If coaches just spend a few minutes on your Instagram, it's only about And I think what strikes me immediately is how creative you are with the task design. Like, just give you one example, a really simple one, which I use from you like all the time now with the under-14s and the under-12s at London Lions, a 2 against 1 with both offensive players having a ball and one defender.
And the constraints, maybe you have 2 seconds from the moment you start outside the 3 to score in the smile, a gold medal, always coming from a different location. I took that from you and it's like, it's so creative just having—
Yeah.
2 balls at the same time and 1 defender. It's so simple, yet it is so good. That's what I love, just watching your thought process behind how you go about doing this. So maybe this is a hard question, Martin, but how do you go about designing these activities and these constraints?
Because it's hard for a lot of coaches, and they kind of rely on the same small-sided games. But what you're doing is you're always changing them.
I reflect a lot on practices. I get inspiration from coaches. Reading books, watching other sports, trying to get more in touch with other stuff, uh, not just basketball. And I think that influenced me on my thought process. And then how I come up with that ideas, I read, I watch videos, I listen to episodes like this, I'm trying to learn.
And then, uh, with all that knowledge, my head, my brain, like, start figuring out things, you know, with all that information. And I come up with ideas during like every day, during the day, when I'm— most of the time when I'm relaxed and I'm not doing work, when I'm not stressed, when I have a good idea about, you know, practice, I write it down.
Okay, I'm gonna try this, try to, uh, then like design the practice or expose the player to that. And I go to the practice, I see, obviously I get ideas from the players that I'm working with. What they need to improve. So first I have a roadmap with that, what they need to improve.
Okay, this. So I watch them playing and then my head start, you know, just with that question, like how I can improve this. They need to improve on finishing, like finishing with a defender on the hip or managing pressure, how I can come up with, uh, with ideas.
So I just ask questions and let my brain, uh, just come up with ideas. I like to obviously write it down at the time, but But then, like, during the day, uh, I had ideas and I just put it on paper. And then, um, go to the gym and try it out with the players.
Try to be open-minded every time and just not be fixed with anything. Try new things and challenge myself as a coach and challenge the player. For me, once I learn about ecological dynamics, every day it's a trial and error. I try a lot of things.
See how the players respond to that. And with the knowledge that I have right now, I just analyze, maybe this constraint or the design of this is not that good. How can I improve this? So I just make it easier. And yeah, I try to be creative as a coach to get the players motivated to train, to come and see, okay, what are we going to do today?
I love a lot of the things you said in there, Martin. I think firstly, we've spoken about it, how our best ideas come when we're relaxed, and that's why it's so difficult to use this approach when you're in an environment where you're just work, work, work, work.
And that's so much of professional basketball, but it's so conducive to actually allowing the coaches to be creative. And then I think the second thing is, like you said, you're always experimenting. And, and what I've been doing here in London just since starting is you— I've been using the CLA for coach development.
So I'm looking at it from how obviously we all know like now what it means on the court, but how can we actually use this in other areas of the organization? So I've been kind of manipulating constraints with coaches. And just something we did today in our practice was all the players— we had about 20 players in the gym, all different age groups and abilities from under-12 to under-16.
Why? It makes our coaches more adaptable. And, you know, we're all in different groups. Each coach had anywhere from like 2 to 4 players, and they had 3 minutes with each group before they rotated, and they could never do the same activity twice.
And we did about 10 rotations. And just something simple like that, it forces you to think differently. And like you said, try something new.
Yeah, exactly. I force myself every practice to come up with new ideas, get used to that. Um, yeah, I don't know if it's just about my personality and about myself, just I want to keep pushing myself, getting better, understand more about this, help the players too with this.
Let's get to shooting, Martin, because this is an area we spoke a lot about just when we caught up last time, and I, I really like what you're doing in this space. So what have you found just You know, using an ecological approach, it's obviously such a big difference to traditional shooting.
And I think that's kind of— you noticed it because as a player, I know you went through that traditional approach and you really struggled with that, right?
Yeah, I struggled a lot when I was a kid. I remember when I was 16 years old, I started changing my shot because my coach, he saw potential in me, but my mechanics were fluffy. So he's saying to me, you have to improve your mechanics to have a better chance to make it to the league.
You're good. We started to practice that, and we did it in a traditional way with all the famous 90-degree elbow. You have to watch the rim under the basket. At that time, like, doing that, it was tough for me because I'm small. I'm 1 meter and centimeters.
I don't know how to say it, you know, but I'm small. And at that time, I was weak. So my coaches started to put in me more like a 2-motion shot. My body couldn't adapt to that. So I remember that year was super difficult to me to shoot from 3.
So my confidence went really low. I didn't see the rim at all during the game because I knew that I was frustrated. So I remember I started working more and more and more and go and shoot and shoot and shoot. And that year was just transforming a lot.
I was adapting a lot of stuff. I was super conscious about everything, all the details. And I think it was a combination of a lot of things. Obviously, I went to the gym during that year. I get stronger. My shot was smoothing and I could shoot with less effort.
Incredibly, my shot got better when the next year I moved to USA, to the States. I studied there one year and I bought a rim and I put it like on the back of the house.
Yep.
Started shooting, like shooting a lot, just put music and, and go. Like, and I was doing a lot of variable training because I was shooting like every time different. I didn't know that. And that year my shot got better comparing that with the year before when I started doing like with this methodological approach, with this traditional approach.
But I think, uh, my coach, I really like him, but he forced me into a type of shot that wasn't built for me. My body, my individual constraints were not adapted to that. I was small, I had short arms, short leverage, so shooting in 2 motions for me was not good.
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Such a good example, Martin. Like, and, and this is what we're seeing where what could be maybe one good movement solution for one player, just because they're effective with it, it doesn't mean it's going to be functional for another player. Right, anatomy and our individual constraints, like you said, they're completely different.
So let's talk about what you do now shooting-wise, because you're a big fan, I know, of differential learning as well, like me, and you mix that with the CLA. So maybe could you just talk about how you— maybe some practice tasks that you're doing in both the differential learning and the CLA?
For sure.
For example, right now I'm just— remember, I'm working with a guy, with a, with a kid. He's 15 years old, and I think he needs to improve, for example, the speed of the lift. So I try to force him to speed it up.
I didn't say to him, lift faster, shoot it faster. I tried to put constraints. So for example, some stuff that we were doing these days, for example, one, shoot without jumping, seem to, you know, create more velocity with the upper body.
Cool.
Shooting in one leg, so you have less power generation from your legs. Your body has to adapt to that. If you shoot from 3 on one leg, how you, you know, create force, momentum, you know, how do you create force to push the ball?
So the body has to adapt to that and has to create velocity, moving the ball faster. For example, another crazy thing that we, we were doing at the beginning of the practice was to— I wanted him to feel the impulse that you create when you lift the ball.
So I just sit him on the floor grabbing the ball, and he has to lift his butt Moving the ball fast. So he has to create impulse, you know, and just learn the feeling of create that upward energy. Okay, with that feeling, try to now put it on the shot, you know, shoot with that feeling.
I'm playing with all these constraints, shooting without jumping, shooting on one leg, shooting farther. So I want to expose him, you know, his body, his mind to lift the ball at different velocity.
I love that last example, shooting further instead of shooting closer. Like, it's actually, you know, most coaches will start with players closer, like you spoke about. How do we force this adaptation? Well, it's not going to happen shooting at those distances to the basket.
No, because the body is going to slow down, you know, the lift and the speed you put on the ball. So yeah, we, we were playing with that, shooting from different positions, different distances, and contrasting that with a normal shot. Okay, how do you feel?
Take 10 shots in one leg. Take 10 shots without jumping. Take 10 shots, normal shot from 3. So to expose his body, his mind to all this movement information.
I love it. What about, Martin? So that's an awesome example of kind of a mix between differential learning and some constraint-led approach ideas I've been actually mixing here and there, because I think you can blur the lines sometimes. Like You know, for instance, you could say, all right, shoot off one leg, always changing location, which is a DL task.
But then you could also manipulate— you could add a defender to that and come from different places. And there's so much you can do.
Yeah, exactly. I put pressure on you, uh, with defense, something chasing you, and you cannot fake the shot, so you are forced to speed it up.
What are some of your favorite small-sided games when it comes to shooting? Like, because you've got a lot of creative one-on-one Let's see, maybe you could share a few, Martin.
New variations every day, trying to not do the same. Even in a small-sided game, the players are gonna find different reps. They're gonna rep without rep, but I like to just change the game to get the player exposed to another type of game and not get monotonous.
So, okay, yesterday we did one. I really like it. 2 players were outside the 3-point line. They were facing each other, so they were like passing the ball like a hot potato. Yep. And when I say go, the player has to shoot, the other player has to reach, has to play defense.
So the players during the reps, they didn't know which is the role they're gonna have during the rep. So you create that—
It's unpredictable.
It's unpredictable, exactly. So you have to adapt to that faster. I really like that.
I love that because so much of the shooting is you always know who the shooter is, and just doing that is not realistic because in the game, within the environment, you never know when you're gonna shoot.
Exactly. You never know. I like that we did that. We did, uh, from the dribble, something like a chase. I like to expose the player when I create drills. I like to think on like geometry, planes of motion, and expose the player to all degrees of movement and different speeds.
For example, I can do a chase, a chase drill, a chase game, and I can change the plane of motion where you're moving. You're moving like on a straight line, maybe it's easier. If I get you rotating, you have to rotate before the shot, get balance from that, you know, like relocate, you know, the eyes, fix the eyes to the rim faster, then shoot.
It's difficult. I like to mix, you know, and think on this. My mind works like that.
Martin, let's go. So you're working with a whole kind of mix of players from professionals in Uruguay to youth players. I'd love to maybe— this is putting you on the spot a little bit, but talking about maybe one of your practices and your small group sessions from like the moment the players arrive and like the first warm-up task to when they're finishing.
Could you maybe talk us through what a practice with you looks like?
I like to start the practice engaging the players with each other. I like to start practice with games just to move them, to get warmed up and challenge their brain, their coordination, their movements. I use the warm-up to try the weirdest stuff.
Like different movements?
Try different sports, use different objects, you know, relate with different objects. It can be like a soccer ball, it can be a fitball, it can be a med ball, it can be a stick.
And they just have to interact with it differently.
Yeah, for example, something that I do is, okay, this week, I don't know, we're gonna do this stick. How many things we can do with this?
It's the best warm-up versus these stretches.
Exactly. How many things we can do with this? We play, I don't know, games of like tag, plays of reaction, like with the stick, like drop the stick and grab it.
Great.
Grab and pull, for example, if you want to create some, I don't know, Chaos and perturbation and some tension in the body. And so yeah, we pick an object, for example, and try to, okay, improve the relationship with it in different ways. So we create a lot of games, how we can use this, you know, like challenge your mind, elevate your temperature, challenge yourself at the beginning, or just have some fun.
While you had the bottle up, just so the coaches listening to this, not watching on YouTube, It made me laugh because you were, you were talking about, you know, experiment and you were referencing the bottle. And I did a college prep, a lot of the times I let— I gave the players the obstacles or the objects and I let them design it.
And one time they came up with spin the bottle, right? Like amazing game. And then whoever, whoever it landed on had to escape and the other guy had to tag them or pass the ball and try to hit them with the ball. It was amazing.
It was really funny.
It's crazy because, yeah, if you give the players that autonomy to create, you know, and design their own games, your mind can't come up with all the ideas. You have to—
See what they can do, right?
Exactly. See what they can do. So if they understand what is the line of work, what are we doing, I let them— okay, we did, for example, I don't know, 2 or 3 variations at the beginning, and then the last one I ask them, okay, now it's your time, create a new variation.
I give them the space to think, let their brain think, okay, how we can create a new variation. You see really good responses from them. That was amazing.
That's so true. And that's the biggest thing I've seen with those warmups, just like how it unlocks the players. They co-design involving them in it, like you just mentioned, and then just seeing how they think, how they interact, and then just seeing from a basketball perspective when they're warming up like that and during the course of a season when they're moving in all these different ways, Of course it's going to transfer to being more skillful when we're getting to small-sided games and all that.
So you finish your warm-up, Martin, then you're straight into any type of activity, small-sided game, whatever your focus is that day.
Exactly. We finish the warm-up and then we go to the idea that we are going to train every time depending on the athlete that I'm having in front, because I train with a lot of different groups and the groups are constantly changing. And that's tough for me because I'm not having all the same players during, you know, a long period of time.
The athletes are coming in, for example, for 1, 2 months, maybe then they leave, come the next 2 months, and every time I have new faces. The players are different, their needs also are different. Depending on the group, I set a goal, something to work on.
I don't know, maybe we are gonna spend more time this practice on finishing or maybe shooting. Or maybe we mix it. We do half and half because I know players in the same group need to improve. You know, one player needs to improve more in shooting, but one player needs to improve more in finishing.
So I like to mix it up and let them have time to train, you know, and improve that area, a specific area. And yeah, we started with— generally I like to vary also 1-on-1 with the less representative task, and then we add players.
1-on-2, 2-on-2, 3-on-3. But maybe we start with 3-on-3. Let's start with a 3-on-3. 3-on-3, we start with a 3-on-3, I don't know, without dribbling. Play a game without dribbling. So you can use that as a warm-up if you want to. If you are working in a specific principle, well, you can just put a constraint or like, okay, do you guys remember what we worked the last week?
Okay, we're gonna start working with that. 3-on-3 without dribbling. We maybe some days start with like group drills or games. Yeah, I have days that we start more in a 1-on-1. This last month I was thinking on how I can, during the practice, let the players shoot more.
During the practice, I like to give the players small blocks of just shooting, you know, to get more volume, but aligned with the principles of the CLA and ecological dynamics, because I don't want them to just get all the reps with defense, because the volume of your shooting, you know, if you just shoot on air, but I think something players need to improve, to improve, it's just precision, accuracy.
You get that, that coordination, you know, with reps. So I like to just mix it up and play drills with defense, and then immediately after that, give them, give them, okay, you have now the 10-minute block of shooting, and everyone has their own challenge.
For example, one challenge that we were setting this month was reach a number of made 3s, 8 3s without missing 2. And you have to vary every shot, the position. So we train with variability and just, that's it, you know, and you put the mind, you know, the focus on, and you let the player, you know, have more volume shooting with variability.
It's the easiest way to do it. And I think you have to do that because like you said, like if you're only doing true CLA, it's not enough repetition without repetition. And it might not be enough to really get a shooter to adapt.
That's where if you're just doing something like that, Martin, I just consider that differential learning. It's variable, right? And you can still get shooting challenges within that. But if they're just slightly changing, even if it's just one step every shot.
Exactly. And yes, I like to give them that space to get more reps with variability. And for example, from that small blocks, I just switch small stuff. For example, if I want to make it more difficult, I can say to them, okay, reach the same amount of shots, but now in every shot you have to change It can be a catch and shoot or just one dribble, 3-point shoot.
So now you mix. You can catch and shoot, or you can, for example, visualize, fake, one dribble, and take a shot. So you're mixing with the dribbling. Or for example, uh, some— the group of pros that I'm training right now, uh, I have one player that is— he's a sniper.
And for example, I say to him, okay, now you have to make 10 without missing 2, but you have to change speeds during the— around the perimeter.
Yep.
You're moving, and when you change the speed from whatever you want to go, you have to receive and shoot from that. So we just make it difficult because you're moving faster with momentum. You have to, you know, have balance receiving the ball, you know, going to the right, going to the left.
It's not easy to add— it's not— sorry, it's not difficult to add variability. And, and this is what we're getting at here. It's the just thinking, all right, what can we do here to change it? And it makes just such a huge difference from a skill acquisition standpoint.
It's crazy. So Martin, I want to say thanks so much for coming on the podcast. I love just— it was like an informal chat. It was like, you know, when we'd catch up without even being on a Zoom and a podcast. I think those are the best ones where coaches can just get more practical ideas for what this looks like in a practice.
What's the best way for coaches to follow your work, Martin? Would it be your Instagram account?
It can be my Instagram.
I would really recommend that coaches go follow you on that account, and maybe they could ask you a question about what they listen to on the podcast. today, if that's cool.
And for sure, I love to receive questions and talk about this because I think as coaches, we say after this conversation, we have to push, uh, help each other, be more like a community. And because we are trying to push the development of basketball in the same way we are trying to do that, it's cool to, to be more in a group, more like a community, and help each other.
And that's exactly what we're going for. And I think with so many more trainers and coaches now using ecological approach, it's, you know, we're united as a community and there's space for all of us. And I think when we view the world from this perspective, naturally we're way more cooperative anyway, I think, just because of the perspective we're viewing life from.
And yeah, that's what, you know, we need more of and more communities of coaches who really believe in contemporary skill acquisition. So Martin, thanks so much for coming on, man.
It's a pleasure. Like I said at the beginning, it was a pleasure, and I love your work, man.
Much appreciated.
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