Advice for Using a CLA in High School with John Murray
Alex Sarama is joined by John Murray, who shares his journey from grassroots youth basketball to high school coaching, emphasizing the transformative power of CLA in…
31 min
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Alex Sarama is joined by John Murray, who shares his journey from grassroots youth basketball to high school coaching, emphasizing the transformative power of CLA in…
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In this episode, Alex Sarama is joined by John Murray, who shares his journey from grassroots youth basketball to high school coaching, emphasizing the transformative power of CLA in developing player skills and enhancing game understanding. Throughout the discussion, they explore the challenges of implementing CLA at different coaching levels, addressing common barriers such as terminology and traditional coaching mindsets. They reflect on the importance of open-mindedness and adaptability, revealing strategies for effectively communicating and adapting CLA principles
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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. Really pleased today to be joined by Coach John Murray. And John reached out to me a few weeks ago, but he's been a coach who I'd say is really doing a great job exploring what it means to be applying these concepts at the high school level.
Explore Transforming Basketball membership and continue your coach development.
And John sent me a great email with some questions related to CLA. And I think a big part of this and continuing to spread the movement is making the terms more accessible. And I'd like to do more podcasts where we can really just break down these ideas.
And I thought just John and I having a discussion today and recording that would help a lot of other coaches exploring this space. So John, thank you so much for taking the time and joining us today.
Yeah, it's definitely an honor. I appreciate it. When I think about the coaches that have had a big impact on my life, you're definitely one of them. Chris Oliver, Brian McCormick, Mike McKay. When I first got into coaching, those were the people that, you know, I followed very closely and learned a lot from.
And I'm applying a lot of those principles as well as evolving into my own. I think it's important for coaches and whoever's listening to kind of understand my background. I've been in basketball roughly about 10 years. I've coached at the lowest levels, youth rec league basketball.
I've coached at the elementary school. I've coached at the middle school. And now I currently coach at North Hardin Christian, a very small school in a small county in Kentucky. And it's important, you know, just right now to recognize everything that I've done.
Before I started basketball, I was really a nobody. You know what I mean? I was a plague to society. And when I came out of that, And basketball really saved me. And then I met a man who shared the gospel with me. And ever since then, man, I've been taking off.
And to be at this point right now talking to you is definitely— I want to give a shout out to God for that, for real.
Absolutely, John. So you've given us a little bit of the context and the background. I think just that, you know, you mentioned some esteemed company there with the coaches who you learned from. And I think it's so cool just to hear that, you know, these ideas are starting to have an impact at the high school level.
What do you think is the hardest thing for me, you know, maybe a coach discovering Transforming for the first time? What do you think is the first barrier to access that would maybe help them or helped you begin to understand some of these ideas?
Well, really, when I think about it, because before I became a high school coach, I visited a lot of practices, and it's really just a misconception of what coaching is, really deeply ingrained in skill development. And then how we develop our principles of play and our strategies behind what we do, right?
And so when you go to this practice and that practice and you see the same things, you know something's wrong. Now, really, it's an open-mindedness, and this is everywhere in life. We kind of have these ideas of what it should look like, and we're not open-minded to new ideas and new suggestions.
And I actually experienced that with my assistant coach when I took over at North Hardin Christian. I had an assistant coach that was basically given to me, and he's great. I don't want to knock him in any way, but he had this idea of how fundamentals and how the game should look based off of his high school career that was 30 years ago.
And it's been a long process trying to evolve that mindset of what it looks like. So open-mindedness is the first one, and then the language barrier, I think, is always going to be the second one.
Yeah.
You know, we see these big terms and we think sciencey and we think nerdy or whatever, and we're like, well, that don't apply to basketball. Well, it actually does.
Yeah, absolutely. Would you say, John, that— are there some common recurring themes that you would like to learn more about when it comes to CLA, or any like aha moments maybe you've had over the last few months or something of that nature?
I could say that the funnest part of CLA for me is the skill development stuff. Me as a coach, I'm still developing on my messaging, my communication on how to tie everything together in the big picture. But the skill development stuff really sticks out to me because I'll give you an example.
I have a girl on the team right now. Her name's Kenzie Bright. She was a 6th grader when she came to us. This season was her 2nd year. When she came to us, she had no experience, none at all, right? And I dropped her in the middle of our high school practices and the way that we do things, the environment that we create, and she struggled.
For a good 2, 3 months. And at the end, you started to see her figure it out, right? Her solutions to the problems. And we come back the next season and now she's starting for us right now. She didn't have these crazy stats or anything.
And she had to get used to the speed of the game as far as the physicality of 5v5, because she didn't have that experience as a 6th grader. But I watch her very intently and the solutions that she comes up with in our skill development.
She did a Eurostep one time. I've never taught her a Eurostep. She did an in-and-out one time. I've never taught her an in-and-out, right? But she has a solution, and now I can just— I can coach her on her solution, right? The technique behind the solution that she has.
I didn't give it to her. She came up with it herself. It's hers now. Now can we refine it? And so that was kind of the aha moment, right? Like, and then working with some of the younger players.
Yeah.
And seeing the progression and the speed of the progression based on what we did. It's all experience for me. And that made the world of difference. It's almost like a revelation. It's like an aha moment, like you said, then you can't take that away from me.
I know this stuff works.
That's it. Would you say, John, there's, you know, in your experience going through this, was there one common theme that made it really difficult to grasp what this was? Or maybe like, for instance, some coaches say to me, the terminology. Like they say, oh, the word affordance, you know, they give— they talk about things like that.
Would you say, did you find any similar stumbling blocks and how did you overcome them? Was it just studying more, researching online?
All of those things. Really what told me that I was struggling was my players were struggling. You know, when I would ask some questions and, you know, I would get like a billion answers in 17 different directions, you know, I was like, okay, I'm not communicating this effectively.
Yeah.
And I think probably mid-season, I just brought the team together. I said, you know, what are we struggling with the most as far as our offense? Because that's where we struggled the most was our offense. And I said, what are we struggling with the most?
Is it the terminology? Is it, you know, we only had 8 players, so we couldn't play 5-on-5 a lot. So what was it? And the main thing they told me was it's terminology. Like, we're just not understanding how it all fits together. And that's really my deep dive this summer, is just how do I put it together in a package where it's understandable?
I think the terminology piece is so key. Just having like a glossary of the most used terms you use in a program and having really short, punchy words that helps make sense of it all. I think then when you are, like you said, when you are debriefing with your players during the practice, when you have that sense of shared language, Mike McKay talks about this a lot, I think it's so much easier to get everyone's intentions on the same page.
I think that's something we've been really focused with Transforming, trying to— we've almost developed like our own language, which is, I think, is really cool because when you have these words and they're catchy, I really think it resonates with the players. And just some of the work I've done here in London with the London Lions this year, it's pretty cool when you see like a 10 or 11-year-old kid talking about things like ghost cuts and dominoes.
And I don't think it's too difficult once you have that language.
Most definitely. Some of it is experience too, like, because most of my players— I had 2 high-level players and my 3rd one doesn't really have a lot of skill but has experience, but the rest of them were new to basketball. And so I had to balance that too.
Like, you know, is it they just don't know the game yet, they haven't had the experience yet, or maybe they're just not able to apply it in practice yet? But really just questioning Everything that we did, having those mini conversations and talks, it really opened my eyes.
Okay, and really, I think I was just doing too much, right? Like I was trying to throw too much on the plate. They didn't need a 32-ounce steak; they needed like a little baby steak and some vegetables. And so, you know, there was a lot of reflection in there, and I think that's something we have to do better job of.
It's just reflecting on what we're doing on a day-to-day basis because it gets lost in a season because you got film, you got you're trying to plan for practice, and you're. evaluating things. And if you don't have a good support staff— like this year I coached without an assistant— then it's really difficult.
Most definitely. I think I used the phrase trimming the fat. I think I was— it was really funny, I was actually going through some of my videos from my time in Italy. We had some really good successes, but I still felt like we had too much going on in the offense.
And it sounds crazy, but I even think at the highest levels Depending on obviously the players you have, I think, you know, when you're in a conceptual offense, the triggers can be so subjective to the guys you have. But I really believe just having, if you have the personnel for it, having 80% of your offense just being a middle or a side pick and roll is enough.
And I think that's one of the biggest things. I think especially now in the NBA, we're seeing too much variety with the triggers. And I think if players actually did less, but they were more attuned to how to create dominoes out of all the sequences, it would be so much better.
I think that's the biggest thing I learned this year at London. We literally just had 3 pick-and-roll spacings, and that's our offense. Just seeing how clear it is for the players, it makes such a difference.
And there was also a lot of growth in— we play a lot of zone teams. So now how do we apply these principles to zone? And so we actually did better at zone just because we only had a few triggers Opposed to, you know, on our man offense, we got like 5 different triggers that we want to combine to create a good offense.
And so really, like what you said, you just got to trim the fat. You got to understand when your team is just overwhelmed with the information that you're giving them.
That's it. It's really fun, John. I've been experimenting against zone offense for the first time because with my team in Italy, we never played against zone. So because teams just didn't do it at that level. But here in the UK, it's a different story.
And we've literally just had the exact same triggers. Just, we call it RAB, middle pick and roll and side, side pick and roll. And it's these spacings, and we've done it with a short, which is a player in the dunker the whole time.
So it's basically, we always have a player in the dunker, and that pick and roll is happening, and they're basically just finding windows and punishing the zone. And it's— we literally just had a whole practice where I was creating these small-sided games, and basically I'd take parts of the zone.
So I'd take maybe the 2 players on the right playing against 3 offensive players, or maybe the bottom 3. Yeah, the bottom 3. against 3 players and basically coming up with all these crazy small-sided games based on the zone or configurations. It was amazing, George.
And we literally just did that. We had a 7-second shot clock and they could only score catch-and-shoot 3 or rim finish, gold or silver medal. And just the solutions in 2 practices, we were blown away with the zone offense. And it was as simple as that.
And this is kind of leading into individual constraints. And just knowing your player's skill set. You know, I had a player that shot more 3s a game than she ever did 2s. And for us, that's an issue because obviously our— the shot that we value the most is the layup, and we're not getting there, right?
So either you're not applying yourself to get there, or we're doing something wrong in practice. Well, okay. This trip, for you individually, for your team, if you get a layup, then it's 5 points. If you get a 3, Let's just say it's 3 points or it's 2 points, whatever, and devalue that 3-point shot to make her drive the basketball because she was a wing player and we did a 1-3-1 alignment.
And I basically just taught the concepts of how to beat the zone, let them play, figure it out. And then we added some triggers, but I just kept noticing 3s every single time, every single time. Okay, let's constrain you now. That opened her up and you start to see late in the season she gets it a little bit more, but you really just got to understand your players, what their skill sets are.
And constrain them in practice to force them to find other solutions.
Yes, most definitely. I think that's a good example. And it's always— I was actually speaking with Adam about this yesterday, who obviously is a big part of what we do at Transforming. And it's always tough to know, all right, this player has something— like we had a player last year in prep, right, with the shooting example where literally this was all he could do.
And if he wanted to play at college, we felt he could have been a Division 2 scholarship player. Then he just needed to make his shooting even better and he could have got there. But the problem was he wanted to actually do all these other things like handle the ball and triggers, be a target.
We call it a target player, a player who's allowed to create the domino out of a trigger. And we felt like he was never, even with all the CLA in the world, he wouldn't be at a level where he could do that at a high enough ability to earn a college scholarship.
And that's where it's so complex, because it's— I think some things, like you said, some things you could change with one constraint, and it really leads to enormous differences. I did this the other day with the under-12s. Somehow, suddenly, they just started hoisting up all these off-the-dribble 3s in our London Lions practice.
We just banned off-the-dribble 3s. Sure enough, the behaviors after that were really, really cool and creative to see. Whereas obviously other things, I think this is where it's so subjective, really knowing the player, building the relationship with them over time. It's complex. And that's why with all this stuff, John, like I always say, there's no cookie-cutter answer.
There's no copy-paste. If you really want to learn CLA, you've got to be willing to put the time in and really experiment. It's not just suddenly going to come overnight.
It's definitely a long-term approach. And if you're looking for instant results that you're going to find in the 5-on-0, Then you're going to struggle here mentally because there are some days where we just practice looks bad, but the little bitty seed that's been planted, it just takes maybe a week.
Maybe it takes a month to sprout, but it's going to sprout if you just stick with it. I had a thought and it just disappeared. Yeah, I guess I'll end my answer there.
We'll come back to it. It's funny. I remember all the messy practices at prep and sometimes thinking back to it, John, I, it was like, you sometimes feel bad after that practice. You're like, why was it just so chaotic today? What did I do as the coach where the players just really weren't getting this?
And you could be the best CLA coach in the world, and I think a lot of the time, yes, if it's too hard, you can reduce challenge point, you can experiment with constraints. But especially from my perspective, John, I wasn't at the level even in Italy, like early on, I couldn't do that.
I wasn't adaptive enough in the practice where I saw we were really messing up in one area. I just didn't have the skill set. To adapt and know, all right, I could change this and maybe it's going to help. And I think that's why you've got to be willing to go through that.
Naturally, one, you're going to have practices like that even if you're manipulating constraints and simplifying anyway. It's just the way it is working with kids. But number 2, even if that's all happening, it's just the nature of the game is you can learn from those practices, decompress, go back and think, all right, what might I do next?
What might we as a team do slightly differently next time? And I always remember we had A bad practice, it was good because I knew the next one the guys would come out firing and their intentions would be, would be very different. Would you like to learn more about conceptual offense?
Well, we've got you covered with our free conceptual playbook. You can learn more about the offense, understanding key concepts such as spacing templates, dominoes, and transition. Head to the show notes to access your free copy.
So before I took over head coach here at North Arlington Christian, I was at another school locally, and the practices to me were so boring that it literally sucked the life out of me, right? And even though I wasn't the best CLA coach when we first got started, it's just so much more enjoyment Because not only do the players become mindless going through the 3-man weave and the on-air drills and whatnot, skill development, but you as a coach become mindless.
And I just remember that whole year I was miserable. And basketball is my sanctuary. You know what I'm saying? Like, if I'm having the worst day in life, I can go outside, shoot hoops, and be better when I come back. And that's what's so fun about the CLA is that, you know, I'm at a point now, it's only been 3 years, but I said previously that I'm a lot better with the skill development using CLA, that, you know, just in a— we could just do, I don't know, a layup drill and just ideas just start
firing out of my head. You know what I'm saying? I'm like, oh, okay, let's try this. Let's try this. And you, sometimes you get some Mercedes-Benz that come out of it. Sometimes you get a Kia, you know, some just stink. Some are really powerful.
And once you open your mind up and you start seeing even basketball games differently. I was watching a playoff game and it was inspired by, you know, you had mentioned on a previous podcast you had the big book of like activities and whatnot.
And that inspired me to go grab a notebook. All right, well, let's just start writing stuff down, whatever comes to mind. So I'm watching an NCAA game, that's what I was watching, and a player comes to a 2-foot stop and there's like, he was surrounded by like 3.
And so I see that, I'm like, well, huh. That could be a good activity. So I called it tree finishing, where the defense literally can't jump. They can't try to block the shot, but we're going to put like 3 people in the paint, 4 people in the paint, and you got to finish around them off of 2 feet, right?
So you still got your step, you can pivot and do all that, but you got to figure out what to do. And then I started thinking, well, why don't I give the trees a ball? And when they're done, when the offensive player shoots, the trees can now shoot, right?
So now they got to finish in the congested area with 3 other players.
Yeah.
And it's this stuff that is so much fun. And you don't get that in a layup line. You know what? You don't get that doing 3-man weave. And so, and I'm just going to encourage any coach out there, when you start, your painting may look ugly, right?
But as you progress, it's going to be a Picasso.
I love that, John. I really, I really liked the Mercedes-Benz and Kia analogy because that is so true. And I think it's a good sign when you experiment. I've actually said to the Lions coaches here, John, that I don't want any of them to do practice plans in May.
I want them to just go and experiment every single practice and do new things as much as possible they've never done before. And I think when you are getting to this point where you're watching a basketball game and you're actually thinking, all right, how could I design an activity around what I just saw?
With that example you gave of the player finishing in traffic, that's when you know you're understanding and using the CLA. When you're, when you're getting at that point and you're Just seeing that even what I did in games, John, was I kept a notebook and just when I saw something happen or consistent rate limiter, I'd literally just— an idea would suddenly come to my mind for an activity, I'd just write it down.
And when I was— especially when I was watching the games back on film, that's obviously— but basically all the practice planning came as I was watching the film. If you are using the CLA lens to watch film, you can plan your whole week of practice And you have new activities.
And it's, it's kind of like what I say a lot. Unfortunately, most coaches, John, are approaching practice through just filling time. It's like, all right, we got 2 hours. What random drills are we going to do in each block today? All right, here's a shell drill.
Here's 5-on-0 script. Let's put some competitive shooting in. And the problem is we're not actually addressing learning when we're doing that. We're just doing the same old stuff. And, you know, we can't expect players to get better within that backdrop. It's impossible. Whereas if we're actually being, like you said, highly specific, highly intentional, everything we do in a practice has a reason.
And if we don't know why we're doing a drill, it's probably not a good drill.
And I was sitting here thinking, like, I'm guilty of that too, of filler time. Like, okay, let's just put a finishing drill right here because we have 10 minutes left in practice. And as I was sitting here thinking, as you were talking, I'm like, well, what if I just left the 10 minutes open and that's going to allow me more time to teach, or it's gonna— if something's not working out, maybe that's gonna allow me more time to just kind of stop there and say, okay, let's rerun that again until we come to a solution
to our problem.
That's a really good point. I call it a cushion. And actually having that in your practice, because again, the reason why a lot of coaches don't adapt based on what they're seeing is because, to their credit, they mean well, but they plan every bit of practice to the second.
I think it comes from the military, this obsession with planning, organization, you know, all of that. And I'm not saying that you don't have to be organized during the CLA. No, like, I'm very organized. I'm obsessed with organization. But I don't believe it's always conducive to have the time on a practice plan.
Yes, you need to have an idea as to where you are going to put and allocate the majority of your time in what activities. But I just think you're negatively constraining yourself as the coach Because like you said, you might need to spend more time on something or go back to something later.
I love like doing one activity, let them forget for 45 minutes, forget the principles of play, and then do it again without telling them and seeing if the intentions are there. And you can't do that if every single second is planned.
It's honestly one of those— I think you said the word obsession, and that might be correct, right? Because I am so intentional about not wasting time that it can become a detriment. To the point where if we're doing a development drill, like if you don't sprint back to the starting spot or whatever we're doing, like I am so obsessed with time that it is a detriment.
And I'll tell you that I've been moving slowly. So on my practice plan, at the top of the page, I have dynamic starts, I have constraints, like I have all those things listed out for quick reference. And I'm slowly starting to move towards less of a rigid structure.
And more towards let's plan an activity. And then I have all these things on a document. I can have them on a paper. Okay, let's start the 3-on-3. Look at my paper. Let's do a dynamic start of ball to back or shoulder game or, you know, whatever it may be.
And where you have, you know, just things available to you that you can go to in the moment. And I think that would cut down on a lot of stress, right? Because I just think of myself, I'm working a 9 to 5. I'm not a teacher.
I coach at the school, but I'm not a teacher. I do a 9 to 5. And so while I'm working, I'm constantly thinking of the plan, and that adds stress because I got to get it done in time to get to practice. Whereas if I just have a few things, if I know what we need to work on, and then I just have a list of constraints, if I have a list of dynamic starts that we can use, burst, whatever it may be, well, now we just flow and we're still going to get better.
John, I, I really want to build on that because I I get a lot of questions from coaches saying, oh, I've got volunteers, like moms and dads coaching at my club in Europe, or maybe I've got an assistant coach and I'm trying to get them understanding CLA.
And they ask for, you know, activity books. But instead, like you said, it's so much better to just have a one-pager, like a constraints builder, where you give them some different activities and then all on one page. So it's easy. You have a whole bunch of constraints for them to choose from.
And all right, it might be a little bit more games approach at the start, but the idea then is Well, if they're doing that, it's way better than doing drills, number one. And secondly, with some more kind of facilitation discussion, then they might start inventing their own.
You could encourage them to be like, all right, can you find a new constraint in response to what you're seeing emerging here? And that's such a good way about it. I got a question for you because like I said, that question we get the most at Transforming is, all right, how can I help my JV or my feeder club?
do this. You know, I'm maybe the high school varsity head coach, but I want this to be done in the whole program. Or maybe I want my assistant coach to understand it. Have you had any breakthroughs kind of introducing some of these terms with your staff?
So this is where I got to be fully honest, right? Like, I didn't do a great job prepping my assistant coach. And I think I mentioned it in the start, you know, he was— he thought about all the things from his high school days, and skill development for him was cones, and it was 3-man weave, and it was, uh, The zigzag drill.
And so right away my antenna is up, you know what I mean? I'm like, oh my God.
Right.
And so one, you really got to spend time, right? You got to invest in time. And unfortunately, that's something that we didn't have because he worked at the school. So, you know, after school he's got responsibilities, um, because it's a small school, so everyone's got to chip in to get the kids home and whatnot.
And he would show up, you know, at practice and we're already in practice, right? So we didn't have that intimate time. To discuss these things, right? Like, I would send articles and we would have discussions and whatnot. And it got to a boiling point.
Like, it did. Like, we were— you could cut the tension in the air, right, with a butter knife. And so I actually just made a phone call yesterday and I said, man, because he's a man of faith, right? And everything that I do is going to reflect God, right?
And so I wanted him back. And I told him, you know, I want to invest the time in you. Right. And you have knowledge. We just need to adapt it and get it, even if it's game-based, right? If we can just get you off the zigzag.
Yeah.
If we could just get you off the zigzag and get you thinking differently, right, then we'll have somewhere to go. But you got to invest the time. Your new book just came out. When he gets back from Missouri, I'm going to give him the book and I'm going to say, hey, dive into it, right?
And then the second thing you got to do And, you know, my pastor was actually talking to me about this, the make a disciple. So I have to disciple him. I gotta be in the same way that Jesus discipled his 12, right? And it takes patience, it takes love, it takes correction.
You know, that was the one thing I was good at, and that's probably why, you know, things didn't work out. You also gotta let 'em fail and you gotta throw 'em in there and you gotta say, hey, you can get this 15 minutes, 20 minutes, and you gotta guide 'em through it, right?
And that's kind of the commitment I made to him yesterday, funny enough, on the phone, is that, you know, I'm going to put you in there and let you fail. But again, it goes back to the open-mindedness I talked about. You asked, what's the barrier?
It's the open-mindedness, right? It's— we were like this, you know, here's me, here's him. This is ecological dynamics versus dominant approach. And this is what happened. Friction. And, you know, you just got to disciple people, really. You got to be patient.
Yeah.
My son's soccer coach, we kind of talked about this off camera. He likes to dribble through cones, right? Well, because he coaches my son, because we have a relationship, you know, that opens the door for me to kind of talk to him about some of these things.
And so what I ended up doing, I've been working on some documents this summer to try to make— so like if I bring a coach in, like here's the theory and try to simplify it for them, kind of like a handout booklet you can always refer to.
Right.
Well, I just kind of use that as a way to get into him or to get it to him. Like, hey, you know, I'm editing this document. Can you take a look at it? It talked about intent. It talked about non-representative practice, representative practice.
They didn't really dive into constraints and all that. It's just basically how to move to a games approach type of thing, right?
That's great.
Yeah, man, you just gotta be patient.
I think it's the first step, John, because, you know, I think it's so easy for us and a lot of people who are in this transforming bubble to forget what the base level is. Like, I was having a conversation with a coaching friend the other day and he said, you know, a lot of coaches are talking about Transforming now, and a lot of traditional coaches who were completely black are now at least in the gray.
And they might not never be CLA purists, but let's be honest, if we're getting people at least doing a games approach as opposed to drills, way better. Now, maybe from that, maybe even if it's just 20% of coaches who gravitate to the next step, CLA, Well, that's a huge win.
And I think I'm really pleased with this podcast, John, because it was exactly how I envisioned it. Just tons of practical takeaways. And at the end of the day, high school youth basketball, it's so important. I think it's— if more youth coaches could just listen to some of the ideas we've exchanged today, you know, I think they could really have a little bit more confidence as they go down this path.
Yeah. You also got to take every opportunity that you have in front of a parent to explain, right? Because I was listening to Chris Oliver the other day and he made a great point that, you know, we think of parents as the enemy when really they're our ally.
They want what's best for their child.
Absolutely.
So when you're in a gym, if you're in a youth gym, or even if you're just anywhere, take that time to explain what's happening, what you're seeing. And back to the disciple point, make them a disciple. Right.
Because you can just send them a research paper, do a presentation.
Exactly. Yeah. I'm getting into training now. Like, I see a lot of, you know, we have 2 main trainers in our area and they both are kind of the dominant approach. And so I was like, you know what, a player asked me to train with them last summer.
It opened my eyes to a whole different world of basketball and I found it very fun, uh, to train. And so I'm opening it up this summer and man, where was I going with that?
The training. Yep.
Uh, with the parents, explain everything. Because let's just say a youth practice, right? You got 12 kids on your team. Okay. If they want more training for their child, right, they're just going to go to what— to what and who they know. But if you put some, you know, if you give them something else to think about, right?
Like, okay, uh, Coach John was talking to me about this. I went to this training session and all we did was dribble versus cones and we did crossovers for 45 minutes. Like, is this really How I want to spend my money. If we can just create a different perspective for people, we'll slowly make progress.
We will, 100%. So, John, big thanks for taking the time to join today. Really keen to see how— I know, I'm sure you'll be prepping for next season. Be great to hear how you do. And yeah, thanks for your support of Transforming, and it's really cool just to see how, how committed to this you are and how you're applying it in your part of the world in Kentucky.
So thanks again for taking the time, man.
And it's been a pleasure. Thank you so much. It's an honor.
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