The Five Pillars of Holistic Athlete Development with Robby Bostain

This is the Transforming Basketball Podcast. 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, we unpack how an ecological dynamics framework Impacts our perspective of the game.

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Welcome to the Transforming Basketball Podcast. On today's episode, we have Robbie Bostein. Robbie is the founder of Level 10 Basketball in Bakersfield, California, where he trains athletes through a holistic, 5-pillar approach: skills, fitness, mentality, nutrition, and leadership. A former D1 player at Furman and a 7-year European pro, Robbie blends high-level playing experience with a Kaizen-inspired level-up plan.

And today we're going to learn a little bit more about what Robbie does using the CLA with his athletes. So welcome, Robbie.

Yeah, George, thank you so much for having me. It truly is an honor to be on the podcast. I'm a big-time follower and been a member, read the book, and, uh, you guys have had a huge impact on my coaching approach. So I'm really glad to be on.

Amazing pleasure to meet you as well and have this conversation, talk some basketball. So Robbie, I want to know, tell me a little bit about yourself. Played overseas, you know, work in California. You're from Atlanta or from Georgia. We spoke a little bit before.

Just tell me about, you know, your professional experience all the way to how you transition as a coach.

Yeah. So I've been in basketball pretty much since I was a little kid. Yeah. So grew up in Georgia, played my high school basketball there, had The opportunity to play Division 1 basketball at a school called Furman University, which is in South Carolina.

And I always had a dream of playing in Europe, even when I was a little kid. It wasn't the NBA. For some reason, I had this aspiration of playing in Europe, and I was fortunate enough to get that opportunity. Played in the Netherlands for 4 seasons, and then I got the opportunity to play in Israel for 3, and then I transitioned to coaching.

After I decided to stop playing, and I worked with a friend of mine in Georgia back where I grew up, where we were working with young kids, teams. And then I had an opportunity to coach at my alma mater, my old university, Furman University.

So I coached there for a year, and I was married at the time, and my wife and I decided we wanted to move back to where she was from, back here in California. And I had no idea what I was going to do.

I didn't know if I wanted to stay in the college route, but I knew I wanted to be involved in basketball and help athletes. So I decided to start from scratch and start my own program. And one thing I experienced when I was working with athletes is when I would work with an athlete and then they would go away and maybe I would see them the next week, I found myself a lot of times like repeating or going over things we'd already worked on.

So when I designed Level 10 Basketball, I wanted to athletes, I call it like their level-up plan. So it's almost like homework and it's a list of challenges that they do on their own. So, you know, from my experience to be truly really good at basketball, like you have to take some time on your own and not just let the coach.

And so I wanted to give athletes like tangible ways to improve. So I created 5 different categories. So I have basketball, I have fitness, I have mental challenges, leadership, and nutrition. And I give them all the challenges. I give them videos. For how to do it and practice it.

And then I put it in their hands and I really want kids to have the internal motivation to want to get better. So I don't really check up on it. It's for them if they really want to spend time on their own. And I have different levels.

So my company's called Level 10 Basketball. So they'll start at level 1 with challenges. And whenever they complete that, they'll go to level 2 and each level gets harder. And, you know, these are challenges I've created from my experience as far as You know, I want them to experience or experiment with different foods, read different books.

I really focus on the mental side of like how you talk to yourself and then leadership aspects as far as, you know, what can you do to form better teammates or to have better teammates and be more a leader on your team. So all that together created Level 10.

And then, you know, when they come to my group sessions, I discovered the CLA. So that's my practices are all about the CLA, but The holistic approach is alive for them to do at home if they choose to.

Absolutely. And let's just stick with this while we're on the topic of Level 10 here. You spoke about giving players homework. Can you share with us what specifically the kind of homework that you give the players?

Yeah, absolutely. So, so the way I look at it, homework is, and to truly do that, and we'll get into this, I'm sure, to do the CLA truly, like you need offense, defense, and it helps to have that and they allow it. And I think it's that perception-action, but sometimes when you're at home, it's hard to do that.

So I want to give kids things to do that they can do without. So I grew up on, you know, Pistol Pete homework basketball, taking the ball around your waist and all these drills. So a lot of the basketball or ball handling drills that they can just do without a coach present.

Like fitness is going to be a lot of bodyweight stuff. So a lot of jump rope. We got pushups. We got, you know, short sprints with a basketball, trying to get up and down the court with a basketball, working on things different sit-ups, planks.

I have a lot of eye-hand coordination with like tennis balls where you have to juggle them. And then for nutrition, sometimes I'll give them like a short, maybe video clip of somebody talking about different foods you can eat. Or when you go to a supermarket, like where, where are the healthy foods versus a lot of times the processed foods are in the center and all the healthy foods are on the perimeter.

Right. I didn't even know that.

Yeah. And if you look at how a supermarket's set up, all the healthy stuff is on the outside. And then all the, all the process stuff's on the inside. And, and then with mental challenges, I do a lot with affirmations. So learning how to, learning how to talk to yourself.

So I'll give the kids little sentences that they can say to themselves throughout the day. And these are things that I, from my experience as a player, like helped me so much. So I want to scale it down to like task simplicity to like a younger version where they can apply these principles.

So I give them books that really, you know, whether it's mindset books or leadership books. And then for leadership, I'll have things like, you know, start your day by making your bed. And again, I'll use like different video clips of maybe performing like different basketball moves so they can kind of see it in action.

So I'll have like film.

That's amazing. Essentially, you're giving them the tools that maybe they haven't found yet. So maybe they can come across these, you know, in, in the future when they're 18, 20, 25, 30, as they develop and they get into their, you know, their Hopefully professional playing careers, or even not, you know, maybe they're just, you know, working professionals.

Absolutely fine. They'll find some of these tools later on in life, books, self-development books, whatever the case is, but you're giving them these tools early to develop them holistically to be the best, not only player, but the best person that they can be.

Yeah, absolutely. So it's kind of like, I'm trying to get, I want to give athletes almost like a shortcut, like be able to, I'll pass all my knowledge on to them as far as how to develop. Because, you know, in basketball, I didn't know about the mental side for a really long time.

So I would just, I would grind on just the skills, but I didn't know how to develop my mind to handle adversity and miss shots. And so, and I didn't learn how to eat properly until later in my career and how much, you know, what you put in your body affects how you play.

And then, and same with leadership, you know, how to be a good leader for your team and lead by example and communicate effectively. So. All those things that I learned later in my career, being able to share those things at a younger age for athletes.

It's, again, it's, it's really if they want to, I don't force it on them. I don't, I don't get mad at athletes if they don't do the challenges. I just want them, if it's, if they have this internal drive to really want to develop and get better, I want to give them the tools that they accept to do it.

That is brilliant. And it's like, there's this study, I'm sure maybe you've heard of it. It's like the free throw study. There was 3 groups, 3 focus groups. of how they could improve their free throw shooting. So 2 of the groups involved actually being on the court and practicing free throw shooting.

And one of the groups was just an envision group. So they just had to think about, you know, their free throw shooting. And, you know, I'm probably butchering the study a little bit, but the group that improved the most is the group that thought about it and envisioned and used that as a tool that, you know, that envisioning tool to just think about how you could improve.

And I just think, you know, a lot of athletes, we spend so much time as coaches, as athletes, you know, reps, we want to get reps, but maybe, you know, there's other ways to do it holistically to the point like having the tools where you can, the mental side, as you said, it was so important.

So having the tools where you can use your mental side to get to also help you get the results you want, as opposed to just, oh, I got to get to the gym. I got to stay longer than everybody else. You know, it's about working smarter, not harder sometimes.

Yeah, absolutely. It's almost, it's almost like code if you, if you can add the visualization to it, because, uh, you can go shoot, you know, 200 shots, but then if you can just sit down for 5 minutes and practice and visualize making 200 shots and from spots that you can get in, it's like you just shot 400 shots, but you kind of compress the timeframe.

That's crazy.

Yeah. Yeah. I've heard of that study. That's definitely, it was eye-opening for me. It's like, wow, I need to think about how I want to play in a game. And you see myself like hustling and playing defense and just how your body doesn't know the difference when there's a lot of research that your body doesn't know if it's really happening or is it just in your mind.

So. Yeah.

Well said. So let's pivot now a little bit. I want to talk about the CLA, obviously get into what some of the things that you do at Level 10, but also how did you come across the CLA? And what made it kind of, how did it, you know, speak to you?

I guess I want to ask.

Yeah, no, great question.

Yeah.

So I, I had incredible coaches, a lot of great coaches all through my career. And when I started coaching, I would do what other coaches did or how I grew up. And, you know, all the Pistol Pete basketball, all the homework basketball, all those isolated drills.

And I would watch all the DVDs on Championship Productions and, you know, anything I could find with all these different activities and drills. And so that's how I started out. And then when I was doing that, one, I found myself like almost being not using my creativity and being kind of robotic and just like, okay, here's a plug and play.

Let's use this drill now. You almost get like, not boring, but it's like not as exciting for me as a coach. And then I found like when players couldn't do one of these like specific techniques, like the hesitation move, you got to put your foot here, step here, get the ball below your knee.

And players couldn't do it, it almost made them feel inferior. Like, what's wrong with me? How come that player can do it and I can't do it this way? And that's the last thing I want to do as a coach is have a kid walk away like, oh, I'm not very good at this.

Like, I didn't get better and I got more frustrated than when I was there. And so I'm a very curious person. And I remember I like stumbled upon this article and it talked about, I think, Blake Griffin's like summer workouts. At one point, like later in his career, and he had— he talked about how he had like 8 people in his workout, but the workout was for him.

And he was like making all these different reads and all the defenders were, you know, giving him different reads and he had to decide where to pass, where to shoot. And it mentioned in the article a coach named Noah LaRoche, who was a skills development coach.

And I researched him and he had this whole program about like coaching mentorship. And I contacted him and I just like Absorbed all of it, and then with Alex, I think Alex was working with Chris Oliver at the time, a basketball virgin. I remember when I was coaching in college, my coach went to a clinic and he came home and he talked about this guy like using dance signals to like signal passes and make these players make decisions.

I was like, what is that? So I started researching, and then I started following. I kept following Alex when he went to transforming, and then all these names of these academics that wrote skill acquisition, like I got. Dr. Ian Renshaw has had a huge influence on me and Dr.

Alex Latsky. And I started reading the books and Dr. Rob Gray. So I started reading all their books. And then like, once you get into it and podcasts with like Stuart Armstrong, once you get into it, you start getting all these names and like people have written books and other people have podcasts and you just go down this huge rabbit hole of learning all this information.

So I started learning about the CLA, the ecological dynamics, and then I started applying it. And one, it's so much more fun. Like the players have unlimited fun because there's no, there's no wrong answer. Players get to decide what they want to do and how they want to do it.

And if it doesn't work for them, then they get to adapt and try something new. And as a coach, it's just this huge unlock of creativity. So now like I'm just connected with soccer coaches, hockey coaches, tennis coaches that all use this. And so You can take ideas that they do with athletes.

And I'm always thinking, how can I apply this to basketball? And so like my daughter had like swim lessons last week and they were doing this activity. I'm like, how? I was like, this would be great for basketball. And so it was like, I use it for CLA activity.

And, um, so I'm watching TV shows and like I get ideas from that. And so just your creativity just goes to a whole nother level when you understand the principles of how to use the CLA and ecological dynamics. The players had way more fun.

They were getting better because they were making all these decisions. And so once I went down that road, there's no going back. I love it.

I was just going to say, it's like, you know, sometimes this is how I think of basketball and I do the same thing. I watch different sports and it gives me inspiration to design small-sided games, different constraints activities, because it's like every sport is the same, right?

We could almost make that argument, but they have different constraints. So they have different task constraints, different environment constraints, and then obviously different individual constraints as well. And then it's, you know, you watch the different sports, like you watch football and they play with a smaller ball.

Their field is bigger, different lines, different rules to the game. But it's, you can still apply because it's still movement, right? It's still ecological dynamics applied. So you can still take the same sport and then try to create an activity in basketball That might help, you know, develop different functional solutions like football players or, or soccer players, I should say.

But yeah, I always, when you were saying that and talk about watching swimming, that's what came to my mind.

I think you hit it spot on. Just how they're all, they all involve like perception action. And so they're all making decisions. So once you understand how that works, you can kind of create the environment to do that with basketball. I'm getting so many ideas, bro.

Tennis and soccer especially. They're all, you're trying to, you have an opponent, you're trying to win the point and you get past them.

Yeah. And I want to ask, what has helped you the most practically? So you spoke a lot about, you know, learning and maybe like ingesting some of the theoretical guys like Rob Gray, Alex, Alex Lashko as well. But what has helped you the most in terms of applying this practically?

Yeah, I'm in an incredible position to experiment. So I have my own business. I work with 3rd graders all the way through college and sometimes even pro, where boys and girls. And so I developed my practice times by skill level. And I don't, so I don't coach, I don't coach like, I'm not worried about winning and losing.

So I'm right now, I'm just a development coach. And so I have this unique opportunity to experiment every year. Like I'm doing over 800 practices a year and every practice I take I'm taking notes, I'm trying something new. Like, let me try this today.

What works? What doesn't work? And I have this like over 150 pages of all this curriculum that I use. And so especially with like young kids, like parents, I mean, parents are, I don't have any pushback from parents. Like a lot of times parents just drop their kids off.

And so even if they were there, I would still experiment, but like, let me try some of these crazy ideas and see what happens. And like I started getting results and So I just, every day that I'm coaching is just a chance for me to experiment.

And I don't have to worry about the scoreboard, playing time, and our kids are winning and losing. And I'm not going to be fired for bad performance on losses. So I just have this unique environment where it's constant, constant experimentation. And I've been doing that for a couple years now with CLA.

So that's kind of like my training ground. For all these ideas and getting to do it with kids that, like, I have kids that have really never played basketball and apply these principles to that. But then I have kids getting ready for college.

And so, and being able to apply this principle, you can almost do like the same workout, just manipulate the constraints to make it easier or harder. And so that's, I've just been really fortunate to have that opportunity to get those reps in as far as, hey, how can I manipulate this?

Is this a good constraint? I don't want to— and so like now I really try not to have like any negative constraints as far as like, if you do this, it's a turnover. So instead I'm like highlighting the behavior I want. So I'll give a lot of bonus points for things that I want them to do or I want them to experiment with.

So like understanding how to use the constraints, how to create the environment, that's been kind of where I've got the practical, practical and just getting so many reps with it.

Nice. I think I really liked the turnover constraint that you referenced. I know you said you You know, you try to get away from it, but I think that one, it's such a powerful constraint. And obviously it's, I think you have to be, because you can't do it.

Like, let's say you're playing one-on-one, you can't turn the ball over on the defense, right? So defense can't have a turnover. But if you're at a, you know, team practice, or if there's more players at your skill session, then it can be a turnover for the defense.

And then maybe a new defender comes on. But I really like that constraint because it's just immediate feedback. If you can have quick feedback, and I think players learn really quick. I wanted to ask you, what are some of your more often used constraints?

Some of your more favorite constraints off the top of your head?

This is what I've been experimenting with this lately is like I'll have kids play in maybe either full court or half court, maybe 3 on 3 or 2 on 2, 4 on 4. And if I call, so I want them to work on advantage basketball.

So recognizing the advantage, capitalizing on it. So if I call the name of a defender, they have to like run to half court and And then get back in the game. So at that moment, the offense has to see who's open, take advantage of it.

I started with like a deflated basketball. And so now the kids have to find a way without just dribbling all the time to score. And if they do dribble, they got to be purposeful. So instead of me putting a dribble limit on it, which is kind of more of like a negative constraint, which I'm trying to get away from, I just say, I'll just give them a flat basketball.

And you can try to do all your 8 times between the legs, but the ball—

Yeah.

You're gonna have a hard time doing it. So you could take like 1 or 2 really effective dribbles and then you gotta pass it or shoot. So giving a flat basketball, I'll, uh, I'll get bonus points for a corner 3. So without me telling the kids where to space and to stretch the court, I'll just say, hey, if you get a corner 3 off a pass, you win the game.

And so now all the kids are running to the corner and now the ball handler has all this room. And sometimes I've been playing around with is If you want to work on the offense, constrain the defense. If you want to work on defense, constrain the offense.

So back to your turnover, like if I want the offense to learn to protect the ball more, instead of calling it a turnover, if they turnover, like they lose points or whatever, I'll just say, if the defense, if you get a steal, I'll give the defense bonus points.

So now it's going to encourage the defense to pressure. Or I'll say, hey guys, if you get a trap, you win the game and you force a turnover. So now it's, I get the defense to pick up their pressure.

Yeah.

And now the offense has to work on protecting the ball. Or I'll say if the offense gets an open catch and shoot, they get bonus points, even if they miss. So now the defense is running at them.

Where does that come from? So instead of like penalizing the offense for losing the ball, we want to reward the defense for stealing the ball.

Right. Yeah. So I don't know if negative constraints is the proper term, but what I've found, so I used to, I used to do, this was from Alex, like gold, silver, bronze, and you guys are transforming. And I used to, I would tell the kids gold, silver, and then like gold is a layup, silver is a rock shot in range, open, on balance, and a bronze is you're out of range, off balance, or guarded.

And I used to, in the game, I used to, as soon as kids released a bronze medal shot, as soon as they let it go, I would blow my whistle and say bronze turnover. Even if it went in, I didn't even care. It's like, we're taking good shots.

And I noticed when I did that for a long time, like it just, kids got deflated. Yeah. When they like when they got like this negative, like they got frustrated. Like that's not a bronze. I made it. Like that should have gone in.

That should have counted, coach. So they were like arguing with me. So I was what I was doing is I was I was like imposing my perception of what a bronze medal shot was. They weren't they weren't really agreeing with it. It was like what I thought it should look like.

So I got rid of that, and now I just like I'll get bonus points for a catch and shoot. So that's more of like silver medal. And I'll say, hey, if you shoot. Off the dribble, you only get— if I really want to take it away, I'll say you get half a point if you make a bronze medal shot.

So they can do it. So I still— I don't— I guess what I learned is I don't want to take things away. I want kids to be able to decide anything they want to do. Uh, I just incentivize a more higher percentage decision.

So I don't want to take away something like— sometimes you need to shoot a bronze medal shot, like maybe the shot clock's going down or you're the best player on the team.

There's been discussion— I was listening to the Mind the Game podcast the other day about still like the importance of The mid-range, especially for your, maybe for your better players, right? The players that can hit at a more efficient rate. And I think it's something like 1 in 5 players in the NBA can shoot the mid-range at an efficient rate.

So it's not like we don't want them to shoot those shots if they're getting a good high points per possession on those shots. But it's more so like all the other players, we don't want them to consistently shoot those shots. But to your point, you know, at shot clocks running down, you still would rather a A shot, whether it's a bad shot or your bronze medal shots, as opposed to not having a shot and maybe the clock runs out or it's a turnover, you know?

So you'd still want that.

Yeah, absolutely. I try and allow kids to do anything without like saying you cannot do this. So I want them to be able to make the decision, not me as the coach of like, oh yeah, that's not a high percentage shot. I should take something else as opposed to me having to tell them what a high percentage shot is.

Okay. So I want to pivot. And just quickly, because I know we're coming to the end here, I actually want to ask you, so today, let's say you were to go back to Furman as a coach, as the coach, what are some of the things that maybe you do differently than you did the first time you were there?

Yeah, let me preface this and say I wasn't the head coach. I was the director of basketball player development. So I wasn't— when I was there, like, you got assistant coaches above me and the head coach. So I had a great head coach.

He's still there, Coach Richie. But if I was just to go back to any school working as far as like practice design, I would make sure everything, almost everything has offense-defense. And once you understand the CLA, like you can, you can learn how to make things easier or harder, but there's always what's called perception-action.

I would, I would play based on principles. So I would, no set plays. I would have, you guys call them triggers. And at one point I was, yeah, so triggers, like I would have these Actions that kids can choose from, like almost a menu.

So we have ball screen, we have— I call it like a chase cut. You pass and go get it back. You have handoffs. So based on your personnel, you can have like a menu of triggers that kids can decide what to do when they want to use it.

So you use that to create your advantage. And then after that, like, it's just understanding to play fast. So play fast and quick decisions to keep that advantage. So I would play on principles. What I've noticed with kids I work with is when you do that, it unlocks their potential.

Like, they play so much better because they're And I think that's one, like, one challenge is a lot of times I get players and they play great. And then like, I'll go watch them in a game and sometimes they're very robotic because they have to run from A to B to C and they don't get this opportunity just to understand where the advantage is and attack it.

So they're having to run this play all the way through and it's like very robotic and they're like stiff and not thinking. So when you play by principles, like there's no wrong decision. It's just understanding how to create an advantage.

Yeah.

Offense, defense, and then variability. So even if I'm doing just shooting and I don't want to have defense, just having my players understand that you want to shoot from different— like every shot should be different. Because I know when I was growing up, I would shoot on the gun, the machine, the guard, and, you know, 20 shots in a row from that spot, 20 shots in a row from this spot.

So understanding, hey, let's just every shot move spots or add a dribble or change depths. Let's shoot a pull-up. Let's back up, shoot a 3, maybe back up, shoot a deep 3. So practicing a different type of shot every time you shoot. Those are some things that come to mind.

Yeah. Yeah. It's like you said, perception-action coupling is like, how can we add a decision to basically, and I guess shooting and DL tasks, or maybe, you know, the exception, because then you're just trying to expand the, you know, the action capabilities and the movement solutions.

But how can we add a decision to every drill that we have? Right. And it doesn't have to be, you know, Live playing the whole time. It can be guided defense, scripted defense, but it's how can we add some kind of defense or decision to help our players?

Absolutely. Yeah. I think that's like one of the, you know, one of the things you can add immediately is almost just think about how can I add defense? How can I make a decision be made, a different decision every time? Like you said.

Even if you're shooting by yourself in a game, like let's say you have an open shot in a game, you know, the pass is going to be coming from a certain direction. The closeout is going to be coming from a different direction. You know, the time and score of the game, it's a different situation, your fatigue levels.

So there's still all these, you know, variables and constraints on you, even if it's a, you know, quote unquote open shot.

Something to think about is like, you got to like understand that no shot is the exact same ever. And so, you know, my way of practicing is like the form, every shot, I'm trying to get exactly the same. But it wouldn't transfer. Like all the time I put in, it wasn't transferring to the game because I was practicing like robotically when the game is just chaos.

Absolutely. Well said. So Robbie, I want to just thank you for your time and thank you, you know, speaking to you, you're a person that is constantly learning, constantly evolving. And I think that's what it's all about, especially when we have the space that we have as coaches and teachers in a way, it's super important molding the next generation.

Those that are coming next. So I just want to thank you for that and thank you for your time as well. And the last question I have for you is our transformative tip question. So if you could give coaches one piece of advice that they could apply instantly to their practice environments to get instant results, what would that be?

I would say there's one question I like to ask myself when I'm setting up an activity is, does this activity Allow for interpretation by the player? And if you can answer yes, I think it's a go with it. If it's an answer no, then think about how can you change it so that the player has the opportunity to interpret it the way they want without you telling them exactly what to do.

I think that's been a big, big shift for me just when I'm creating an activity.

Brilliant. I love that. That's a great question. Once again, Robbie, thank you so much.

Yeah, George, this is, uh, been an honor. Thank you so much, uh, for having me and, uh, I love what you guys do, so keep it rolling.

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