Adam Omiecinski sits down with skill acquisition specialist Derek Panchuk to discuss how an ecological dynamics framework shapes our understanding of basketball…
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In this episode, Adam Omiecinski sits down with skill acquisition specialist Derek Panchuk to discuss how an ecological dynamics framework shapes our understanding of basketball performance. Derek shares insights from his extensive career working with elite and emerging coaches across multiple sports and explores the concept of the Quiet Eye—a critical aspect of visual perception in skill execution.
Esta transcrição corresponde ao áudio original em inglês.
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Hi and hello. Welcome back to the Transforming Basketball Podcast. I'm Adam Omiecinski, and I'm here with Derek Panchuk. Derek, if you could introduce yourself to the audience, give us a little background of who you are.
Yeah, thanks for having me along. Excited to be talking to the community today. Like I said, Derek Panchuk. I am probably a skill acquisition specialist, coach developer, whatever you want to call it, interested in helping coaches build bridges between the science of learning and art of coaching so that they can discover new ways to develop talent and teams.
Canadian, been in Australia for the last 16 years though after finishing my PhD. I've worked sort of in academia, worked at the Australian Institute of Sport, and for the last 6 years have been working sort of independently, doing a lot of work with coaches across all sorts of different organizations, everything from the NBA right down to grassroots.
My main area that I work in though is probably around working with elite and emerging coaches in a lot of the Olympic sports. I think my tally is probably up around 30 different sports these days that I've worked with, but all sort of focused on helping coaches find ways to get the most out of the practice time that they've got.
And just to build off that, Derek, since you've been consulting these past few years, like, what are— what's like the most common struggle coaches come to you with?
I wouldn't say there's one. I'd say there's lots. I think the— but I guess in the context of learning, I think a big, big challenge for coaches is trying to figure out how to make it work for them and developing the confidence to make it work for them.
I mean, there's a lot of good information out there. Things like Transforming Basketball, for example, are great resources for coaches to go out there and discover these ideas, sort of unpack them. But I think a lot of coaches, they understand the value in understanding learning, but at the same time, struggle sometimes with thinking, how do I bring that to life in my environment?
My job, I guess, is to try and help them decode some of the information that's out there and then help them realize that when they sort of strip things back and start looking at things a little bit closer, it's actually not that difficult to try and squeeze a little bit more learning out of the things that you're doing.
It's just sort of, I guess, developing the right mindset And mind frame, and then coming up with some practical tools to help you sort of implement those ideas in the right way that work for you.
I guess basically what you're saying is like they have plenty of, they have so much skill and so much experience. They, they have so much to offer. They're almost looking like skill acquisition or learning is like a whole separate category. Is that more or less like what you're saying?
Yeah, maybe a little bit. I think, I think they, it's probably, I guess, and maybe it sounds a little bit arrogant to say so, but it's kind of learning is sort of, I think the glue that kind of brings everything together. And I think coaches know that.
I think where they struggle is just trying to figure out how to bring that to life, how to make it real in the places that they're working, because there's lots of good information out there, you know, and it's great, but sometimes it can be a little bit overwhelming.
So it's trying to figure out, okay, well, what's going to work for me? You know, I've got a group of 10-year-olds that I'm working with. How do these concepts that they're talking about apply in my space when it sounds like it's, you know, something that's a little bit more advanced?
Or if I'm working with a professional coach, it's like, okay, well, These things sound a little bit remedial or my players might struggle with that. How can I sort of navigate those risks and come up with ways to make it useful for them?
I guess that makes sense because, yeah, as soon as you think about it in this line of work, I mean, everything is contextual. Everybody's circumstances are different. Like a professional coach may have constraints above them as far as limiting for time, travel, what their athletes are willing to do to explore.
Whereas The 10-year-old dealing with a group of 30 10-year-olds, that's, that's a very different context. And it's kind of cool that you get to navigate all those different things. I'm sure you've learned so much since starting consulting.
Um, yes, I think it's one of those things where I think the more you learn, the less you realize that you know. And I think for me, a great interaction with coaches is when I'm learning from them as well, and we're sort of piecing things together and figuring it out as we go.
Bringing, I guess, my experience in sort of the science of learning together with their experience in the space that they're working in, in coaching and thinking, okay, how do we bring these 2 together to help create great experiences for the athletes we're working with?
Now, a lot of your previous work was with, I guess, visual gaze behavior and what is often termed the quiet eye. Can you start first by defining what the quiet eye is? And then I'll have a follow-up question as far as visual gaze behavior.
Yeah. So it's sort of a thread that's kind of weaved through my life at various times is this area in visual perception. But it's what I did my PhD in at the University of Calgary with Professor Joan Vickers. And the quiet eye is a term that she coined, but basically it's sort of the last good look somebody has before executing a critical skill within their performance environment.
So in basketball, it's sort of the last good look a player has on the hoop before starting to execute the shot or the extension of the arm, sort of the point of no return. And basically, to put it into really simple terms, it's sort of thinking, okay, well, we need to be able to, I guess, use information from the environment to establish a relationship between the way we're coordinating our actions and what's happening out there.
And so this quiet eye is almost this bridge between the environment and the performer. We talk a lot about performer-environment systems. And so it's basically a way of, I think, sort of coordinating how we pick up information and coordinate actions. And what the research shows is that when a basketball player, for example, has a good quiet eye, so when they lock into the hoop as early as they possibly can and maintain their eyes on that location, then their body starts to self-organize and coordinate itself in a way that, you know, they perform better.
So players who have an optimal quiet eye, and I say optimal for them, they generally tend to perform better. And optimal, typically what we see is that it's about getting eyes on the hoop early and maintaining a fixation there for a certain amount of time before executing the shot.
Compared to when they're less successful, they won't sort of see the hoop for the right amount of time. It doesn't give them time to sort of organize their body in the right way. And things just sort of don't go off the way that they should.
Hmm. So are we talking, I guess, like what comes to mind as soon as you describe that, like a long fixation, is it like a singular point or is it more or less like, I guess, could you even build off that, Derek, as far as like, Wow.
I'm really struggling here.
No, you're right. I think it's— so it's basically in a targeting sport like basketball, right? So we want to be able to get the ball to the hoop. We need to sort of figure out where the hoop is relative to where we are in space.
And so what's really helpful in that case is to sort of almost lock in and have sort of this sustained period of attention. And it's not super long that I'm talking about. We're talking about basketball. It's a short amount of time, but particularly in things like jump shots, because it's sort of, it's an open sport, we'd sort of say.
It's sort of the timing of everything is controlled by what's happening in the environment, right? So the quicker I can get my eyes to the target and the longer I can sort of maintain a fixation there, generally the better I'll start to perform.
And it's not sort of a silver bullet by any stretch. I mean, there's lots of different factors that contribute to being able to successfully shoot the ball. But it's one of the ones that's really important. And there's sort of like almost 30 years of research that a lot of great people have done in this space that sort of says that it's a factor that helps people do it.
And so we need to get sort of locked in on one spot and one spot only so that we're picking up the right information to allow ourselves to execute the shot that we want.
Okay, so I guess more or less like you're studying not necessarily what the individuals are looking at, but more so how they're doing so? With the Quiet Eye?
Yeah, it's a little bit of both. So location definitely matters, right? So I haven't seen any basketball players that I've recorded using an eye tracker look at anything other than somewhere on the hoop when they're shooting the basketball, which makes sense. That's kind of like no-kidding science.
But then what we see is that there's different periods of time where optimal starts to sort of creep in, right? And so if a look is too short, Then I guess what we sort of see is that the body isn't able to organize itself in quite the right way to figure out the shot.
And, you know, it struggles to kind of execute the way it would unless— but then if we can get the right amount of information coming in, then it starts to self-organize a little bit more effectively. And so at the end of the day, you know, what definitely matters— so we need to be looking at the right spot, but then it's also the sort of the timing.
Yeah.
So how we're looking at it, when we're looking at it, starts to become more effectively, right? So if I can get my eyes to the hoop quickly and maintain a fixation there for longer, then it almost kind of makes sense that I'm going to be able to execute the actions more effectively because I've been able to establish probably a better relationship about where I am on the court with where that target is, right?
And so And conversely, you know, so if I've got like a defender closing in on me, hand up, and they're sort of interrupting that, distracting my attention, then basically they can kind of break up that relationship as well and maybe less effective there, right?
So it's all about being in the right place at the right time for the right amount of time.
And I guess like what, as far as like coaching strategies and interventions to kind of invite that more quiet eye tendencies, What kind of things would coaches look to do practically to enhance that aspect of their visual search?
Yeah, well, I think a big part of it can be just sort of changing the language that we use, right? You've coached as well, and you've probably seen a lot of coaches, and there's a big focus on sort of the mechanics, the technical side of things.
But when we sort of think about perception-action being the performance, we're only focusing on this side of things. So let's start changing the language so we're talking about, okay, get your eyes to the hoop. Or eyes up, maintain that focus, those types of things.
So, so just changing, changing the language to wording around perception, I find, can be really helpful. And then at the end of the day, being able to change, I guess, the way people prepare, right? So there's a lot of, a lot of research looking at free throw routines, right?
And so instead of coming up with a routine that focuses on the mechanics of the free throw, Let's come up with a routine that focuses on what our eyes are doing, where we're looking while we're performing. And so, you know, some of the most classic studies that were, I think, done early 2000s were basically looking at how we could develop almost like a visual routine for performing.
So, you know, a player would get set on the line, get the ball, and then they would, you know, say dribble nothing but net. Get set, look up, sight focus. So the idea is that when they're saying sight focus, they're actually looking at the target and maintaining.
And so the idea behind that is to sort of let's stretch out this quiet eye period so that we're optimizing information and then shoot. And so coming up with routines that focused on the visual side of performance can be really helpful. And there's a lot of research that showed that If you can, if you can develop those routines, you can improve free throw shooting.
But there's also some really interesting work that's been done that shows that you can also start to create a bit of a buffer against pressure, right? So people who have focused on the visual side of performance when training actually suffer from less anxiety or performance anxiety when they're on the line.
And it comes back to the idea of, you know, like paralysis by analysis, right? So if I've learned to shoot Through learning a lot of the mechanics, all of a sudden I'm on the line and there's a lot of pressure on me. A lot of times I think about, start to overthink what I'm doing from a mechanical point of view and things freeze up, get the yips, whatever, those types of things.
And for some reason, when we start to train people on the visual side of performance, those effects don't start to appear. They don't really, if you start talking about vision, they don't have the mechanical side to fall back on. Right? And so as a result, they don't suffer from this paralysis by analysis, and they're able to maintain performance if they've got this sort of good quote-unquote quiet eye period.
Another thing you could potentially do too is also get performers exploring the visual side of things, right? We talk about, you know, players going out trying moves and those types of things. Set up activities where— and just where they're focusing on vision and say, I want you to just do a quick look and shoot.
I want you to do a long look and shoot, those types of things, and trying to figure out, okay, well, what's optimal for me? What feels right? How much information do I need to be able to perceive in order to be able to effectively shoot or feel like I'm effectively shooting?
And so those are a few different things you can do, sort of just changing language, developing routines, and also exploring to optimize.
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It seems to line up, especially when you're talking about the choking aspect, because you don't have a reference point as far as disrupting the self-organization of your body and When we're doing perceiving using our visual system, everything is pretty much external. I mean, yes, you can see your hand or something like that, but again, it's separating us from the intention itself.
Mm-hmm.
I guess I would be curious for your take, and I think you did discuss this on Dave Love's podcast as well, is, I mean, as far as shooting goes, there's nomenclatures where you keep your eye fixated on the target versus, hey, there's tons of evidence where top-flight shooters such as Steve Kerr, Michael Jordan, Reggie Miller follow the ball in flight.
What do you think, what kind of information do you think they're gathering? Because again, this bottom line, they're searching for information. What information do you think they're gathering by either watching the ball flight or not watching the ball flight?
I think, so I guess sort of to the first part of that, I think debate between whether or not to follow the ball or not, I think those good players Once, once the ball's left your hands, there's nothing you can do about it anymore.
So, um, from like a quiet eye perspective, there's, there's a point in time, probably shortly after the ball has been released, that it's okay to move your vision and start tracking the ball. It's not going to matter. There is some research that shows, because there's close connections between the visual system, which is all over our brain, and how we coordinate our actions in the hands, There's overlap between those.
So if we take our eyes off the target too soon, that can be disruptive and it can cause little blips in our performance, so to speak. But once I've sort of gone past the threshold and it's, you know, we're talking about, you know, milliseconds, you know, 100 milliseconds, a 10th of a second.
Once I've sort of let that time period go, then that's not going to influence my performance anymore. So what I think there— Yeah. If I see a player who's shooting, who's lifting their gaze too early, and that's having a negative impact on performance, I would encourage them to try and maintain their gaze there just a little bit longer.
Afterwards, I think what they're trying to do is basically it's confirmation. They're just trying to get feedback from what's going on. And I think they're trying to, I guess, almost close the loop between this is how it felt, this is what it actually looked like, right?
And then it's, for me, that's sort of a, that starts to refine what they're doing from a coordination standpoint and the action standpoint.
Oh yeah. And then from the other end of the spectrum, say like a shooter was struggling and they were just locked in on the hoop the entire time, would you encourage them to actually explore, hey, what would it, what would it be like if you took your fixation off the hoop a little bit earlier and, you know, paid attention to the ball flight?
Where's the arc going? Where's the ball going?
Yeah, yeah, yeah, potentially. Like, I think there's— it's one of the things too, like, it's, you know, everybody's different, right? So we need to try and optimize it, right? So I wouldn't say to somebody, okay, just look and stare longer. Let's figure out what works for you, right?
And so I think being able to play with it a little bit, play with vision a little bit, you know, in practice, those types of things can help kind of figure out, okay, well, what's working for you? And, you know, Sort of going to the visual side of performance kind of unlocks this whole other realm of potential things that you can work on and look at.
We know that vision matters for performance. It's hard to shoot a basketball with your eyes closed and be successful. I mean, you can obviously shoot it, but whether or not you're going to hit baskets or not is a different story. So we know it's important.
So let's start to focus on it. Let's start to train it. Vision is like a muscle. And at the end of the day, it's probably a muscle that we're not spending too much time developing and growing, right? Where there's a lot of good research across all sorts of different fields that says expert performers develop different visual characteristics, right?
So my argument would be like, if let's focus on some of these visual characteristics and develop them, hone them a little bit more through deliberate types of practice where we're sort of coming up with activities that constrain vision in particular ways or let athletes explore it in other ways.
I can't help but think of strobe glasses. I've yet to experiment with them. Have you ever experimented around with them?
Yeah, played around with them a little bit. And I think there's something that I think can be useful as well if used and deployed in the right way, because the idea behind the strobe glasses is we can take away vision. So we're basically constraining athletes to certain windows of performance when we can start to sort of say, okay, well, I want you to get better at looking at things in this particular space of time, right?
So I'm going to close off, I'm going to close off the glasses from here to here, and you're only going to see this. And I want you to start to really be able to maybe get quicker at establishing that relationship between yourself and where the basket is, right?
So you can kind of speed up how how you process information, for lack of a better word, but how, how quickly you're able to use information to, you know, establish that relationship between what your body is able to do and what's out there in the environment, right?
Because it's hard to perform in a vacuum, right? And so the quicker I can establish that context, the better off I'm going to be.
And I guess this opens up things to, um, I guess more or less like the representative scale, because again, when you're in the chaos of, of sport, obviously in like our sport of basketball, there's 2 to 3 referees, there's 5 opponents, and there's also 4 teammates, let alone a crowd.
So there's a lot of visual stimuli going on. Whereas you take us into the context of practice, even if it's 5-on-5, the stress on the visual system seems to be much less. So perhaps like some utilization of, of strobe wear could be beneficial and could actually make things a little bit more representative as far as—
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, it's, it's sort of a way that you can kind of stress the visual system, right? Like, so, you know, like in a lot of practice situations, you know, we, we can't develop scenarios that are always realistic or representative of what we want to do, right?
But we can kind of start to develop some, some of the underlying mechanisms by maybe overtraining the visual system a little bit, right? So maybe using smaller windows so that it's, it's stressed in different ways, right? And so the idea behind that is if we're If we're adding little stressors to the system, then the system has to adapt and respond, right?
And I think that can only be useful in situations like the game where it is a lot more chaotic. There is a lot of information. But so being able to train somebody to get the most out of what they see in front of them in the shortest amount of time, I think, would be really useful at the end of the day.
Because yeah, I mean, there's so many situations where things aren't optimal visually in the game, right?
Yeah.
Whereas in practice, they are going to be. And so, it's just another probably thread that a coach can start to pull on in terms of thinking about how do I create a good practice environment, right? And a lot of times, it comes down to they think about, okay, the interactions and how I'm interacting with somebody physically, but you can also sort of think about, okay, well, how am I manipulating or constraining or creating different scenarios from a visual standpoint as well?
Might overstress the visual system or the way the performer performs.
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