Developing a Youth Program with Jon Yu & Neil Houghton (Part 1)

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Head to the show notes to access this incredible free resource. Hi and hello everyone. Wanted to give a brief introduction to this week's podcast. It's with Jonathan Yu and Neil Houghton. We got together recently and discussed Jonathan's new role as a technical director of a youth program in Vietnam.

This is part one of that conversation. So, John, like what is like the job you're actually like taking up? I just knew you were like gonna be doing some level of coach development, but I wasn't sure. Like just give me the background on it, man.

I'll be honest, man. I've been waiting. Then that's the thing with Vietnam. It's like and I love it, but it's they don't get back to me. So last I talked to Neil, I was like yeah, I should be talking to them like this week.

I'm still waiting to hear back. It's been like a month and a half. And so I'm waiting to hear back the final details of what it was. When I talked to them at the end of kind of October, it was me kind of doing a dual role of kind of figuring out how to implement kind of a one-club philosophy and how to develop— well, we have 400, so pretty much we have 400 youth that come through our program.

Okay.

And the retention rate isn't super high. And so I've watched the local coaches coach and I've seen kind of the practices they do and it's There's traditional and there's like old school traditional. And so now we're looking at like old school stuff. Like it's just a different culture, right?

Culture is just different. And so it's very authoritative. It's very like, and I was talking to Neil, it's like coaches are allowed to be not physical with players, but they're not worried about the touch barrier. Right. And what I mean by that is like, you know, if a kid's acting out or whatever, it's like they'll grab them.

They can grab them. Right. And Not saying that it's good or bad. I'm staying out of that. But it's just like, it's different, right? And so it's trying to figure out how to— and especially because some of these kids, they can be pretty young, right?

I think the youngest that we have coming through our program is like U6, U8. And so the retention rates are quite low. Kids aren't enjoying coming to the sessions and the way that the culture that they treat the basketball, they call it a class and you sign up in terms so that you sign up for a team for like 3 months at a time.

And so it's really hard to build because there's also not a lot of infrastructure for games. And so imagine being a kid, you're playing, you're going through 3 months of class, you may or may not get any games, or you may get like one small tournament, that local tournament they kind of put on, put together like a jamboree kind of thing.

And so you're going through these like not super enjoyable experiences and not playing any games, and you may get the last, you know, 5 or 10 minutes to scrimmage in your practice. Right. And so you kind of see that the way that they treat it, especially parents, like it's like an extra math class or it's like a music class or something, right?

It's the parents just drop, they pull up on the motorbike, drop the kid off, they go do their shopping, they come back in an hour, hour and a half later, and then they're off to the next class, the extra class that they got to do.

And so it's trying to figure out, obviously I'm not going to be able to change a whole, that whole thing, but it's trying to figure out, okay, how do we retain these kids and actually give them a more enjoyable experience? Right? And how can we kind of develop these coaches?

And I'm still trying to think about that, especially with the language barrier. Neil and I had a great conversation a few weeks back, and I took a bunch of notes, and he really helped me think. And I think one of the number one things is definitely coming up with that glossary, coming up with that shared language that coaches, parents, players, myself, like everyone in the organization and wants to be a part of this thing can understand, especially because not everyone speaks English.

Right. But we can use that kind of as an example of sharing the language with them. Right. And sharing examples of what that means and trying to help kind of speed up that learning or at least get everyone on the same page. So that's kind of what I've been trying to put together.

And that's kind of my goal this week is try to develop that glossary that Neil kind of had me thinking quite a lot about.

What are some of the things you're going to put in the glossary? Is it like, is this purely on-court stuff or are we talking—

And that's, that's what I'm trying to figure out right now. It's not just going to be on court, right? Because a lot of the stuff, I don't know, it can apply to so many different areas. And it's, you obviously want to make a bigger impact than just on court, especially in a role like this where I can kind of, I'd never been in a situation that, you know, you can really impact 400 kids and a lot of coaches.

And that's kind of what I talked with Neil about. I feel a lot of pressure in that situation. I've never, I'm a pretty young guy. I've never really done it. done anything like this. So trying to make sure that I can give them, you know, as best of an experience and as much as I can in a limited amount of time, because I'm not sure how long I'm going to stay out there for.

The first idea that comes to my mind, John, just hearing you speak about, you know, the mix of issues there, and for me it's like, you know, with my Wildcats club, for me just establishing like an identity for the club, and the identity was just captured in just a couple of words only.

And it was simply play with fun and freedom. That's it. Okay, so that captures my philosophy as a coach, but it also expresses the experience I want the players to have on the court training or playing games or whatever. So playing with fun and freedom.

Every parent understood that straight away. I didn't have to explain anything. I didn't have to go into any X's and O's or anything about CLA or my approach to designing practice or anything like that. But that identity piece, the essence of it in just a couple of words, I felt was really important for me.

That's awesome. I love that. And that's exactly it is. I've been trying to look into more and more, like looking up ways to, you know, have a unified organizational approach and kind of having that shared vision. And I love the, like, it's so easy, right?

That's what, 5 words? And it's, I can just imagine what your practice is and, you know, what it feels like to be a part of that organization. Right. To be empowered, to have fun, to have freedom while playing a game. Like, is that where everyone would want to be?

Yeah, for sure.

I love that.

Yeah, it really serves as a reference point. It's just like, I mean, I know at least at Prep, like, I know I try and carry this out in my own life, is just like establish like values that we have and this is what's going to represent us.

And then yeah, like we can establish like a phrase or whatnot, but we need something that we can reference. Like, what does that look like? And I think that would be the following step after that, whatever vision you have for the program. And like, this is what we stand for and here's what it looks like.

Like we play with creativity or we, we're having fun. What does that look like? It means we're smiling, we're cheering each other on no matter the score. That could be like a touchstone of like, okay, this actually represents us and this is an action I want to see us perform in and out every single day.

Yeah, I love that.

The other common one that was borrowed from everyone else who uses it, of course, was early on I just mentioned we'll be bringing a conceptual offense approach to the way that we want to teach and play. And just borrowing that simple phrase again, learning how to play the game, not learning how to run plays.

So, a very simple distinction, but again, that was clearly understood with just one sentence by people. And then they could see the value that players here are learning how to play the game so they can progress to wherever they end up as their pathway of development progresses.

So that was valuable too. So the identity piece, adding that a bit about the overarching approach to learning how to play the game.

It's making me think, like, because I want— like, I'm all in on conceptual offense. I love it. So with these 3-month terms, You don't know what, especially with a low retention rate, right? You don't know what kids are coming back and they actually just split.

So what happened was they took the top players and actually split them into kind of their own separate club. The top players used to train under the same youth academy program, and now they take all the best ones, they put them somewhere else.

So now we're left with, I guess, not the top, not the very top, right? So your bench guys or beginners, essentially. What I'm trying to figure out, or what I'm trying to think about a lot, is like the best way to share how to develop a bit of a conceptual offense.

But in like in 3 months, it's not a lot of time, right? And especially with, again, they don't play games or they don't get a lot of opportunities to play. So yes, as best we can, definitely try to get them playing in practice and all that.

And obviously you'll, they'll have a lot more fun than again, running those plays like you talk about and teaching them how to play.

Yeah.

But the actual application of like, okay, let's actually play and put this into practice. It's hard. And again, and you've all seen it, right? Scrimmaging against the same guys over and over your whole life now. And because of that, I guess these kids kind of fall into a bit of a bubble, right?

And trying to expose them to other things or other ways to compete because you might be the man in the club right now, but you go to a different city or you go out of the country and you try to play in Southeast Asia or something and It might be different.

So the time crunch of the 3-month terms is something that's really kind of made me really think about and have to put a lot into perspective of what can we realistically get done, right? And obviously, again, number one is retaining them, right? Because then you can build something.

So again, having them be able to play, have fun, have fun with freedom, learn how to play, right? That all is right up the alley of what I'm trying to do and trying to think about how to tackle this whole thing. Yeah.

So how do players enjoy what they're doing? How do players know when they are getting better at playing the game? If you've got a 3-month period, for me, it's really just 2 things that you can do in that time period. And it doesn't matter if you've got your best players there or you've got bench players there, and that changes all the time.

That doesn't matter at all for me. Because even the better players— and this applies to professional players as well— They still are not able to use advantage effectively all the time. So the 2 things are basically creating advantage, using advantage, and that's it.

Okay? And when players get to use advantage, they enjoy doing that. They build their confidence. They have fun with that success. And really, that is one of the most important elements of player development. So, you know, using the advantage that's there. Yeah, they need to create it as well, but in your small-sided games, you can constrain it so the advantage is always there anyway.

So that seems to be— that's where my mind would go first with, you know, like the term, the 3 months, what on earth can we achieve in that time period?

Definitely. And what are your thoughts on how to develop these coaches? Now, I'm assuming obviously they would stay longer than 3 months, but They're all pretty young, or a lot of them are young, maybe university students that do this on the side. They don't get paid much money doing this.

And so I'm trying to think of how best to deliver coach education in a type of format where I'm not sure I'll be able to pull them all together to, hey, everyone come on court and I want you to experience what it feels like to run through a CLA workout with me.

Right.

So I'm trying to figure out what— and I did that last year when I was there. Some of the coaches threw a workout and they enjoyed it. And it was, I think it was good for their learning. But again, with a lot of local coaches that, you know, this may just be something on the side that they're just trying to make a few extra bucks.

How would you guys, or what do you guys think about in terms of developing coaches and maybe not being able to get them all together, or maybe not being able to even language? A lot of like local coaches don't speak a lot of English.

And so again, that goes back to glossary, I guess, and Neal talked about in our conversation before about a lot of video stuff and diagramming and trying to make— help them learn in as many different ways as I can. I'm trying to figure that out.

Yeah, because I don't, I don't think I would be able to just do, hey, every Thursday come on in and I'm going to share, you know, 20 minutes of something. I'm not sure if that's a possibility. So just curious on what you guys are thinking about that.

You go first, Adam. See what's coming up for you.

I was just going to have you go first. What's coming up for me is like, I like the idea of having like these little, I guess, educational snippets where you'd make a video. I don't care if it's whether an activity or breaking down a play or just even expressing some sort of theme and having you voiceover something.

And then like these little like 5-minute educational videos that you could send out that it could be relatively— the language barrier obviously makes that tricky, but that's what was coming up for me. And again, like, As far as like giving them things, I think again, keep it short.

So short videos and then short, like one-pagers on a topic or something like that, or something you wanna emphasize. Always keep it to like one page. That way it's super simple. Like you said, they're, they're guys that are just like doing this in their spare time.

They're, who knows, like how serious they're taking it and whatnot.

I'm curious, what do you guys use for like developing your one-pagers? What program do you guys use? Like, I'm not super tech savvy, I'm not super like graphic designy, and so I'm trying to get better at that. But I'm just curious what you guys use for that, that stuff to make it kind of digestible for your players.

Well, I just use PowerPoint and I just do simple diagramming in there. So you can create some really, you know, jazzy looking stuff in there quite easily, and then you can export to PDF and easily distribute and all that sort of stuff. That's all I do, very, really simple.

I like the idea of the themes that you mentioned, Adam. I think there's a lot of power in that that you could explore some more, John, I think. And then it's like you mentioned the voiceover, and then with like the language barriers too, it seemed to me like, what's the experiential overlay of the theme?

So they don't need to hear it in English language, but they can experience something physically and viscerally when they're there. So I think that'll be key. In part, helping with language barriers, John. While you're taking notes, the other thing that pops into my mind with young coaches who are maybe university students, I think that's a huge advantage, actually, because they're in an environment where they really want to learn.

And every day, lectures and whatever, they're learning about theory. They're learning about theory and practice and the interconnection between them all in whatever disciplines that they're studying within. And for me, that provides, you know, the tap-in for ecological dynamics and the theory underpinning CLA and all those sorts of things as well.

So that might be a little latch, you know, to tap into some hidden motivations for some of the younger coaches as well.

And I definitely saw that. Like, I gave a presentation last November, I guess, so just over a year ago, I think, about CLA and stuff. And I definitely It piqued a lot of coaches' interest and they wanted to look at the PowerPoint again and they wanted the link to it and, or whatever resources I was showing.

And I like that. I think I can run with it for sure. I'm just, I build up the language barrier a lot in my head because I don't understand them. And that's like, I guess that's kind of the hard part too. And so I guess with the, like the ecological dynamics part and the underpaying theory and trying to get them to really understand, I don't know about understand it, but At least consider these things, right?

Or at least take it into consideration when you're designing your practice and things like that. I'm trying to figure out how to make that part digestible.

As far as that stuff goes, I would just take examples of either what they're already doing and have video examples and just talk through different options that, that could be manipulated within that. I mean, that's pretty— I don't know if you would disagree with that, Neil, but I would just like take what they're already using and then just add on to it.

Hey, here's how we can make this a little bit more effective, a little bit more creative. That way, they're obviously already super familiar with it. Ideally, stuff they're literally already doing, and then just reshape it. That's where I would take it.

Absolutely. Yeah, I think I was going to say something exactly the same, Adam, maybe just with some slightly different words. And it's what I did in my club when I went along to other coaches' practice sessions. So I was there doing exactly what Adam said.

But it wasn't watching a video, we were watching the live practice together, but exactly the same idea. And we were talking together, what do we see? What constraint could we modify? Why would we do that? So that's sort of like the voiceover over the video.

That's the coach experiencing actually using CLA in real time, just by our one-to-one interaction, side by side, watching the practice session. And quite often I'd say, coaches, I get coaches, do whatever you had planned for your session, So I wouldn't want to change what they're doing.

Just do it and we'll just observe together and just see what comes up. And that's precisely, I think, what Adam was saying, just a little bit differently, different words.

Yeah, 100%. You could do that like going to their practice like that. That's ideal. I mean, I still do that all the time for friends and other coaches, and it's most effective because again, they're already planning it. They have ideas in their head of what they want to achieve and what they want to see.

So you're just coming in slightly different perspective and then you're adding on this theoretical background you have with ecological dynamics that can really shape things up. And they're like, wow, I didn't think it in real time. That's super effective as opposed to doing it ad hoc afterwards.

Right. Yeah. And I should, I should be able to, to make it through now. I, it's, it's tough cuz again, I'm still waiting to hear on exactly what the final details of the role are and how much Hopefully that they're going to give me time to be able to get out to a lot of practices and connect with a lot of these coaches.

But I love it. Yeah, I love the idea or the thought at least of going there and like you guys say, just talking them through it or observing and talking and trying to figure that out.

Because really, that's what I did when I was learning this. I just observed Alex on video. Yeah, okay, that's what he's doing. He'd talk over. Oh, okay, I see why he said that. So it's really exactly the same process, I think. When you're ready, I think you'll still need to come back to this culture piece as well, because I think that's going to be key.

Even like when we first spoke a couple of weeks back, John, the permission is just so important here. So permission to make contact, that has to be given, acknowledged, received, before any coaches make any contact with any players. And that should just apply across any age group.

At all, really. And I mentioned that that's what I do with my teams, that I ask parents, I ask players, and I get their confirmation that that's okay, and that's fully documented. So that's part of the culture piece, I think.

Yeah, that was the second thing from my notes. I'm looking back at my notes of when we spoke. It was the contact permission from parents and players in the first training session, clear expectation, screening angles with shoulder, writing a confirmation of agreement that it's okay to do that, which is consistent with the player-led approach.

So that's, yeah, that's something that I'm going to be trying to get on this week as well, trying to design that. And then hopefully I can get that over to one of my Vietnamese friends that they can potentially translate that, or at least get that at least in both languages.

So everyone is kind of on the same page about all that.

And you could do that in 2 ways, John, just, just thoughts coming to my mind right now. So you could just do like a 15-second video of you with a player just checking for that permission first. Then you show that and then you could get that translated or you can do it live on a court with you and a player as well.

So coaches experience what you're doing. And I know coaches will watch and listen and, oh, okay. Yeah, that's what he's done first. That will really help rather than telling someone to do this first, just seeing it in action.

Love that. I know Neil's talked about it before on the other podcast, but I love the intention equals just in your practice plans or in the way that you Or approaching kind of how you want to run your session. I think that really helps.

I think for everyone, when you kind of think about that, or you actually have that in your head of, okay, what is the reason we're doing this? Or what are we trying to get out of this portion here, or this constraint here, or whatever?

That really stuck with me. And so that's something I definitely want to make sure carrying forward that I can share at least and try to help others maybe implement, or at least realize like, there should be an intention to what we're doing in the limited time that we have here.

I'm not trying to fill up space. I'm not trying to make these kids run for 10 minutes for no reason. There should always be that intention of why we're trying to do this or how is this going to be beneficial to whatever we're trying to do in that session or in that term or whatever.

Yeah, for sure.

Yeah.

And I think just sort of that early thinking about a coach development plan, I think that's a critical developmental area for most coaches, getting clarity on their intention, whether it's the whole season plan, whether it's this practice plan, or this particular CLA activity, whatever the scale happens to be, even just a single player interaction.

So are these words I really need to say? Am I clear on my intention? Do I need to intervene or not? So I think that's a big edge. For coaches to self-recognize, build that awareness, and then I think that's a key part of their CDP for sure.

I got a question for you guys about coach development plans. Like, what or how, how do you guys approach, or how would you approach developing 1 coach versus 10 coaches versus maybe 50? How would that change things? How would that How would you approach it?

I'm just trying to think of— I don't know what— if I were to run a session, I don't know if I'm going to be like you guys said, one-on-one with a coach on the court. Maybe I have 10 of them coming to a session that I'm going to run for 30 minutes, or maybe I'm giving a clinic.

And so trying to develop these coaches or coming up with a coach development plan or a framework of how we want to develop them or how we want to think about developing. What do you guys— or what are your guys' thoughts on Kind of all that.

The key, I think, here is to invite the coaches to engage in self-reflection. I think that's really important. So it's not an external assessment of you're doing this well or you're not doing that quite so well. It really has to be driven from self-assessment of the coaches themselves.

That's why I know in Australia most of these things are called ICDPs, individual coach development plans. Therefore, everyone is different. Every plan is different. It's tailored for each individual coach. And then if you're doing something with 10 or 50 coaches, the framing of that is more like coaches observe, hear the question, and ask, how does that— how could that apply to me in my coaching context?

Because some things won't apply to some coaches the way they would to others, depending on where they are with their coach development, I guess.

That just has me thinking maybe of coming up with some sort of, I don't know, Google Form or something that just has some quick questions about what they want to get out of it or where they see themselves trying to develop or kind of taking inventory of where they are at that time, right?

Or what their thoughts are, what they're thinking. Or I like that. How can I give them a quick, again, one-page questionnaire and a few questions on what do you want to get out of this or what are you trying to develop here? And then How can we take, I guess, those answers or whatever, and I guess tailor that to still making it individual?

But obviously it may not have time to get, you know, touch base with every individual, connect with them to develop them. But I think, and again, I'm thinking about going through my education in university, a lot of reflections, right? A lot of self-reflections on your learning and where you are.

And, and, you know, I guess I didn't really understand, or I, at the time of what, you know, why are we doing All of these reflections every week on the same kind of stuff. But now it's got me thinking for sure of if I want to get coaches thinking, right?

That again, like you said, that could be your foot in the door. That could be the thing that kind of gets them, oh, okay, yeah, maybe, you know, maybe my kids aren't having fun, right? Or maybe there's not a lot of smiling at my practice or something, right?

Maybe that's some sort of realization. Because I think like the big thing, and it goes back to playing with fun and freedom, but I want basketball to be fun in Vietnam, and the whole a lot of what I've seen is it's not. And even the way that they play, and it's not an enjoyable experience.

And I'm not sure if I would even enjoy it. And I love hoop, but I'm not sure if I would enjoy that experience if that were me growing up. And so it goes back. I think ultimately at the end of the day, it's it's going to be engagement.

How can we build that engagement for 400 kids and the coaches involved that everyone is? Sharing in a positive learning environment.

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