A fun and unique episode this week as Slappin’ Glass sits down with Mental Skills Coordinator for the Pittsburgh Pirates, Andy Bass! Coach Bass shares his expertise on the subtle but game-changing influence of language and learning in sports, coaching feedback, and discusses varied repetition and overcoming mental freezes during an entertaining “Start, Sub, or Sit?!”
Chapters
0:00 Impact of Words on Performance Learning
4:57 Coaching Strategies & Player Confidence Building
18:13 Supporting Mental Health in Coaching
21:25 Overcoming Mental Blocks in Sports
30:17 Repetition in Skill Acquisition Theory
38:08 Coaching for Failure and Skill Development
42:45 Importance of Feedback and Skill Acquisition
50:09 Importance of Varied Repetition in Skill Development
Transcript
Andy Bass: 0:00
So let’s just use the term box out. If we tell them to do that in a game, first of all, by the time they hear a state, it’s too late. And second of all and this is not going to sound like a large amount of time, but 200 to 300 milliseconds before, if we hear the term box out or jump or pass, it kind of creates this interference effect where our motor control areas of our brain have sent the signal down for us to do this. But then if we hear the code say, hey, box out, hey shoot, it’s like two cars trying to merge onto a highway and one of them is going to have to slow down. And so, once again, this is not to say that coaches shouldn’t coach, but when we tell them what to do while they’re in the act of doing it, it can actually constrain their movement.
Dan Krikorian: 0:47
Hi, I’m Dan Krikorian and welcome to Slappin’ Glass exploring basketball’s best ideas, strategies and coaches from around the world. Today, we’re excited to welcome mental skills coordinator for the Pittsburgh Pirates, andy Bass. Coach Bass is here today to discuss words and vocabulary and their effects on performance, learning and feedback, and we talk repetition without repetition and overcoming the yips and mental freezes during an interesting start, sub or sit. Unique and absolute must the most helpful and highest quality coaching content anywhere. These are some of the comments coaches are using to describe their experience with SG Plus. From NBA and NCAA championship coaching staffs to all levels of international and high school basketball, sg Plus is designed to help curious coaches discover, explore and understand the what, why and hows of what the best in the world are doing Through our easily searchable 750 plus video archive on SGTV to our live coaches social Las Vegas. Sg Plus is the assistant you would hire if your athletic director didn’t already get this type of the football. For more information, visit SlappingGlasscom today. And now please enjoy our conversation with coach Andy Bass. We wanted to start with this and I know something that you’re thinking about every day and working on with players and coaches every day the vocab and the words and the way that we use those in a setting, whether it’s a game or a practice, or in a giving feedback, setting off the court and really how those things affect performance.
Andy Bass: 2:44
You know that whole phrase. Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me Unfortunately, not true. Words are very powerful, particularly the words as coaches that we use. So I’ll kind of start broadly with the idea of feedback. I know you use that term purposefully and I think, when we think about motor learning and as coaches, for a long time it’s always been this idea of if I’m talking, the player is learning. There is something to that and yet I’ve always liked the phrase the person that’s doing the talking is the person that’s learning as coaches. When we think of feedback, I think we need to really dive into the idea that less is more and I’ve said this on a couple other podcasts and some things that I’ve come across in my learning is this idea of the guidance hypothesis and hypothesis I use purposefully as well, because in motor learning there’s only one law and it’s fits law and it’s the speed accuracy tradeoff. That’s another story, but with the guidance hypothesis there’s this idea that feedback has these guiding properties. We want to tell an athlete, hey, where to put your elbow on a jump shot, hey, this is where you need to be on the court, and yet because of that, athletes can become dependent on that feedback. And the more that we provide feedback in practice, the more they become dependent on that. And then in the game, we’re not out there like, yes, we’re on the sideline as coach, but we want the athlete to be their own best coach. So we want to lessen our feedback to let the athlete be their own coach, because the more that we provided, they become dependent on it. And now, if I’m shooting a shot and every time I shoot a shot in practice my coach tells me something I’m not being a good self-evaluator. And then in the game, if I’m going in a slump or if I’m missing a lot, I can’t correct myself properly. So, long story short, we want to lessen the feedback that we give in practice and allow the player to self correct rather than constantly talking, talking, talking. Then they don’t have us in a game and we shouldn’t be coaching during a game. We should be strategic, we should be tactical, but we shouldn’t be coaching movement during a game.
Dan Krikorian: 4:49
And if we do that too often in practice, they can become dependent on that, coach, you go a little deeper on that as to why we shouldn’t be coaching physical movements in a game.
Andy Bass: 4:57
There’s another paradigm in motor learning, known as crosstalk, and what that basically says is so let’s just use the term box out, let’s just say, tell the player to box out in a game. Well, if we tell them to do that in a game, first of all, by the time they hear a state, it’s too late, and second of all and this is not going to sound like a large amount of time, but 200 to 300 milliseconds before, if we hear the term box out or jump or pass, it kind of creates this interference effect where our motor control areas of our brain have sent the signal down for us to do this. But then if we hear the coach say, hey, box out, hey shoot, it’s like two cars trying to merge onto a highway and one of them is going to have to slow down. And so, once again, this is not to say that coaches shouldn’t coach, but when we tell them what to do while they’re in the act of doing, it, it can actually constrain their movement in the process.
Patrick Carney: 5:51
Andy, with then feedback and less is more. What are you telling coaches that they should be aware of when they are going to give feedback and maybe, if we look at like a practice setting, when they have to use feedback, what would you say is, let’s say, the best techniques or ways to give feedback?
Andy Bass: 6:06
I’m always going to defer to the expert coach in the room. I am not a strategist. I do consider myself a coach and I know baseball, basketball, football, these different sports, but I’m always going to defer to the coach that has the wisdom in the room. But I would say that number one, try to lessen it as much as possible. And I think the other kind of tactical part of this is there’s this other concept in motor learning known as basically a feedback delay interval, where if we can pause just one, two, three, Mississippi before we say something, so something happens in a drill and the player didn’t notice something, Wait for a little bit of time to then provide that feedback, because then the player is able to proprioceptively and cognitively and perceptually understand what happened before the feedback from the coach comes in, because it happens too quickly. Then the player hasn’t actually digested the environmental and visual feedback and then the coach has just overridden that and now the player doesn’t really understand what happened. Yes, they hear from the coach, but it’s better if we let them kind of have that time and the environment to digest that.
Dan Krikorian: 7:14
Coach, if I could piggyback on this situation in practice providing feedback and you always hear about question asking and coaching versus telling when to use both, how to use them, and so in a situation where you just mentioned, player makes a mistake in practice giving those couple seconds of feedback, but then when to pose a question, when to maybe give more direction.
Andy Bass: 7:39
I will always fall back on the phrase a good question is better than a smart answer, and particularly as coaches coaches, they have to know so much, so it’s really hard to integrate all of this. And yet when we think about let’s just pull in some mental health perspectives here open-ended questions Okay, hey, what did you see there? Instead of hey, why did you turn the ball over? Or instead of hey, you know, we know what they turn the ball over, but questions that elicit or solicit a greater answer from the player. So instead of hey, don’t do that, hey, what caused you to do that? The more the player is talking to us after the question, the better the question is, the more open-ended it is, and that is not to say that coaches can’t give constructive feedback and tell players what to do, but I think the more that we use open-ended questions where the player has to. I mentioned digesting things from the environment, but also digesting things from themselves. All right, so they just did a drill and they turned the ball over. They made a bad pass and transition, what have you? Okay, we wait for three seconds, whatever it is two, three seconds. Then we say, hey, what did you see there that made you make that decision. The more that they’re talking to us after the question, the better the question is.
Dan Krikorian: 8:50
Andy, I love this discussion because it’s always interesting, depending on who that player is to and what the mistake is and I guess that’s my follow-up is okay the first time they miss it or whatever, and then you ask the question, but then like repeated mistakes in the same situation and how that patient’s level of a coach to want them to perform. I guess now trying to handle that situation with repeat offenders to a similar mistake.
Andy Bass: 9:13
Yes, the repeat offender aspect. I would ask myself if I was a coach, okay, what is causing this player to continue to make this mistake? And yeah, of course there’s a time we need to step in and say hey, look, when you see X, y is going to happen and you need to go with Y as in the letter Y in this hypothetical. Once again, I do fall back. I’m going to allow the coach to engage in the art of coaching. They know their players, they know the situation Also with repeat offenders, and I’m going to kind of bring in some anecdotal evidence here. I prefer empirical evidence. You know, my background is in science, but I remember when I was in graduate school I was coaching a youth baseball team and we were really having trouble with cutoffs, cutoffs from the outfield. We were working on it all week in practice. And then we go to a baseball tournament and we’re terrible, we just are not running the cutoffs right. And the parents come up to me and say wow, coach Andy, you know what’s going on, like we worked on this all week in practice, and my answer was I’m not teaching it properly. If a player is a repeat offender, I think we as coaches need to look at ourselves and say, well, how am I teaching this? Or how am I teaching this? Maybe improperly, because it does fall back on us. So if we have repeat offenders, let’s think about okay, what drills are we doing and are they not working properly? And is our feedback not working properly? If a player is continuing to make a mistake, I think for the longest time it’s been the player’s fault. It’s our fault as coaches.
Patrick Carney: 10:39
And kind of on that note, me and Dan were also talking moments in practice or in a season or in a game when maybe the coach has to jump his team. We’ve all been there where you feel like you need to get your team going. What are your thoughts on tone and raising your tone, changing your tone when delivering a message? Does that really have an effect on, let’s say, in this moment of turning your team around or igniting your team?
Andy Bass: 11:00
It certainly does. The consistency of the tone is the most important thing. There is nothing wrong with a coach that wants to be Bobby Knight, not necessarily throwing chairs, but that wants to be that kind of person. But we know that fear is not a good long-term motivator. But there’s nothing wrong with jumping on our team and being dedicated and disciplined and being hard on them at times. It’s the follow-up with that. It’s okay. We just stop practice and I jump down your throat either the team or the person and it’s doing that. But then it’s after the fact that it’s pulling them aside the player, the team and saying look, I know I was just hard on you. This is why I did that. The biggest thing I think with players is, you know, I even remember playing basketball and my coach jumping down my throat is we want to please our coach, but we judge ourselves by our intentions but others by their actions. And so if my intention as a coach is to motivate you, then that’s how I interpret that, but the player is going to interpret my action which is wow, coaches really upset with me. So that’s okay. In the moment we just need to make sure we follow up and wrap around with it Look.
Dan Krikorian: 12:09
This is why I did this and not letting that kind of thought balloon turn into a different narrative from our players and, as we head down this path, a little bit just on how true confidence comes from a coach to a player and what, ultimately, I say, gives them confidence but allows them to play Freely and within the system that you’ve devised, and all these things that we want as coaches and where that confidence can come from and how coaches, I guess, can help as well.
Andy Bass: 12:38
This could be a three-hour long conversation. Confidence has been researched heavily. There’s a lot of anecdotal evidence, obviously, with different coaches, different players. I’ve always enjoyed the idea of confidence being kind of two kind of metaphors. One is this idea of hunting the small game and I’m gonna definitely give a shout out to my mentor with Pirates, dr Bernie Holiday. Way back in the day, when we didn’t have complicated and sophisticated societies and civilizations, we weren’t going out hunting Tigers and bears, we were hunting squirrels and rabbits. And, with that being said, it’s that idea of finding the small victories. And as coaches we need to help our players find those small victories, whether it’s hey, that was a really good passing transition or hey, you’re really focused today during the game. But these process goals, pointing them out and helping players see these small victories Because we don’t hunt the small game, we’re gonna starve by the time we get to that game winning shot. You know that double, double, whatever it is that’s, the bear and the tiger were too weak to even understand it. Or the other metaphors, kind of like building a fire. We don’t build a fire by trying to light a giant log on fire. We start with kindling, we start with small things and build that up from there. And so as coaches, we need to be very dedicated and purposeful and helping our players find those small victories not Small in a pejorative way, small in the sense of their process oriented and the player can control them every step of the way. The more that we help the player see those small victories, build that fire, the better it is. And to kind of wrap this metaphor up, you know, if we’re waiting, our confidence fire is waiting for that game winning shot that all state that you know I’m gonna go play professionally. That’s the equivalent of throwing a giant log on a dwindling fire and if we do that, that fire is just gonna extinguish. So we’re not even gonna be able to enjoy those really great moments that we think about if we don’t build those small victories into that burning fire.
Dan Krikorian: 14:35
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Patrick Carney: 15:46
Andy, when players come to a coach with anxiety or they’re lacking commoness. But they express an emotion and a port of a coach to validate emotions and their players you said it, it’s validation and that is, once again, a cornerstone of mental health in general.
Andy Bass: 16:01
We don’t have to agree with the action For behavior that led a player to feel that way and we don’t have to agree with the reaction. Pat, if I come to you and I say I’m feeling really anxious, oh no, don’t worry about it, you’re fine, like, just have fun, come on now. I think the importance of validating the emotion and saying okay, I hear that you’re anxious, or it sounds like you’re frustrated, or or the game last night really took a toll on you. What’s really interesting about that? Not just from a psychological perspective, but physiologically, the moment that a person validates our emotion, really good things happen. Our heart rate slows down, our veins dilate and the parts of our brain that are more responsible for, like cognitive and conscious thought kick in Versus, like our amygdala, which is the fight-or-flight response. So, as a coach, the first thing we need to do the player comes up and says coach, I’m really nervous. Okay, tell me about being nervous. Sounds like you’re nervous, like let’s listen to them, versus why it’s just a game, don’t be nervous. Okay, well, if I’m the player and I hear don’t be nervous, but I’m nervous, so what’s wrong with me? So, yes, you hit it perfectly. The first thing we need to do with players is Validate the emotion that they’re feeling, because we can’t argue with that. If they say they’re feeling a certain way, they are feeling that way. We cannot disagree with it.
Dan Krikorian: 17:15
And this is probably another Potential three-hour long question I’m gonna ask you but right now, so much more as we’re learning with mental health of Players, coaches and the coaches being in a position where they’re oftentimes hearing First hand from players in some kind of setting, about some of these emotions like patches ask you about, and I think you’ve talked before about Just sort of organic Check-ins or organic mental sessions, where you’re not having a big sit-down to try to figure these things out, but just sort of things that come up organically and then how those happen and, I guess, what you do with those when players are expressing these things obviously, mental health is becoming a big thing in sports and I mentioned how difficult coaching is and as we go through coaching education from mental health, mental sports perspective, I’ve heard a couple of I’m just gonna use the term old-school coaches, but they’ve used the phrase Wow, coaching is more complicated now and I’m like, no, it’s always been complicated.
Andy Bass: 18:13
We’ve actually oversimplified it because we think it’s just a game and so, as coaches, it is our duty. You know we’re not bound by. You know lawyers and doctors, they’ve got insurance and they have to. You know continuing education, but as coaches, we need to make sure that we are understanding of mental health and our players. And yeah, just these organic check-ins and it’s the question after the question. We’re always going through the gym or the weight room and we’re saying, hey, how you doing? And the player says I’m good coach, you know doing fine. Hey, how are you really doing? And I think his coaches really need to be where body language and the tone In which our players are using. And as coaches, we need to be okay, asking the hard questions, bringing a player in and saying, hey, come on, what really is going on here? And as a litmus test, as coaches, we should be less about our win-loss record and more about how open and willing our players to open up with us, and so that organic process of 10-minute conversation. The first five minutes are about the player. Their family, movies, books, tv shows, hunting, fishing Really pay attention to that seven or eight minute mark. Where are they going with it? And that’s when the gold happens. That’s when, as coaches, we are the true sports psychologist is the question after the question how can we get a player to open up with us in a real and process-oriented way?
Dan Krikorian: 19:30
And if I could just follow up real fast on that, because I think this is Probably this point to where a player does tell us something. As coaches we’re just not trained for the most part on what to do next or where to take the conversation or how to Honestly then help them work through Whatever it is that they’re expressing, and just going back to you then there on that seven, eight minute mark when they do start Expressing it, how we can be better in those conversations.
Andy Bass: 19:57
Sure, I’m gonna go really deep and really heavy here to start off with, just because I feel like this is something that we all need to know First of all. What I mean by this is is self-harm or suicidal ideation? There are several courses online. They’re only an hour that coaches can go through. But if a player Starts to mention self-harm or I don’t think it’s worth it, anything like that it is our duty as a person, as a human, to say are you planning on hurting yourself? We have to ask that question Is it difficult? And People listening right now I’m sure just got goosebumps or chills. The first thing we must do is ask them if they have a plan, if they’re planning on hurting themselves. And if the answer is yes, do not leave that player. Whatever is going on in your day is not worth it. Stay with that player until help can arrive. You know till they. You know 988 suicide hotline. But with that deep conversation, if anything comes up to the player, we have a duty to ask are you planning on hurting yourself? Don’t beat around the bush. Don’t say, hey, you’re not playing on the doing. Some the stupid are you? Or oh man, you know, don’t worry about that like everything’s good. We have to ask the question. And then the other part I think as coaches, we should all be talking to someone. Coaches need therapists as well, whether that’s through better health, whatever it may be, or just another colleague. I think the more that is coaches, we have honest conversations about ourselves with others, the better will be able to engage with players when they’re honest with us.
Dan Krikorian: 21:25
Coach, we want to transition now to another segment on the show that we call start, sub or sit, and so, for those maybe listening for the first time, we’re gonna give you three different options around a central topic. Ask you one of them to start, one to sub and One to sit. And so, coach, if you’re ready, we’ll dive in with this first question.
Andy Bass: 21:46
Let’s do it, put me in coach.
Dan Krikorian: 21:48
All right, that was good. This first question has to do with the yips, or Mental freezes, or physical freezes, and we kind of wanted to look at this from a Physical and a mental standpoint, because coaches also can get the yips when it comes to decision-making in game, freezing up things like that. And so we’re gonna give you three different options. You’ll start which one you think would be the best for just pushing through the yips. You know, shooting slumps, poor performance, things like that. So option one is using visualization techniques off the court. Option two is breathing techniques, breathing exercises. And option three is Small physical cues when you’re feeling the yips or a decision coming on. So, for instance, people sometimes will have like a rubber band on their wrist maybe that’s not the best example or Feeling the grass, some steam, some physical touch to help kind of get them out of that loop. So start, sober, sit. Those three options when it comes to yips and mental freezes.
Andy Bass: 22:49
Wow, I think I would probably start with visualization, even though that wasn’t when you started with and that idea of you know visualization is also engages the motoric parts of the brain. You know, if we’re in a shooting slump, if we visualize ourselves shooting, well, there’s actually electrical signals sent down to our muscles. That kind of creates that more fluid movement. Breathing is wonderful. I think that would be the one that I would sit at first, simply because I think when you’ve gotten to the breathing technique, you the first stage has already happened. The first stage is understanding there’s a problem. If somebody’s going through the YIPS, the first thing we need to do is acknowledge that they’re going through the YIPS. The worst thing we can do is just distance ourselves from it, because then it gets worse. By the time we’ve got to breathing techniques, the player has already gotten to past stage, one of something’s going wrong. As far as the cues, I would start with the visualization of probably sub-external cues within motor learning. I know you all know this, this idea of an internal versus external focus of attention. Typically, somebody that’s going through the YIPS, a shooting slump and golf, whatever it is they’re very internally focused. They’re thinking about how they’re moving. The research is pretty synergized on this and that the more that we think about how our body moves, the worse our body moves. If a player is going through a shooting slump and they’re thinking about where their elbow is, how far they’re going down, how high they’re jumping, they’re probably going to be worse at shooting the more that we can create that external cue of front of the rim or explode through the ground, something like that. I would say visualize themselves doing well and then finding that good external cue, something that’s not hey, your elbow is out, your elbow is in, it’s more front of the rim, it’s side of the backboard, whatever it may be. I would say visualization one cognizant external cue and then breathing techniques afterward.
Dan Krikorian: 24:44
Great answers. I love to start with your start, actually, and the visualization let’s say. Now it’s a physical thing. A player is going through the yips, can’t make the throw to first base or can’t throw a strike, or, in basketball standpoint, they can’t make pressure free throws. They’re struggling at the line and everybody’s watching, everybody knows it. What visualization techniques are happening that help with that player before they step on the floor?
Andy Bass: 25:12
With visualization. There’s several aspects from an empirical standpoint to keep in mind. One is to try to make it as POV as possible, like you’re watching yourself through a GoPro or seeing yourself do it from a first person perspective. It’s hard and it takes work. One is to see it in real time within our mind, so not in slow motion, not from several different angles. The third and hardest one is to have the emotion connected with it. At first, it may be okay for the player to feel the anxiety and the nervousness associated with hitting a free throw with the game on the line. The biggest thing is just doing it, just having the player go through it and make it as real time as possible and shoot, even as coaches. If a player is having trouble with free throws, actually strap a GoPro to their head and have them shoot free throws and then have them watch the video and help put them in that moment. From a practical standpoint, especially with all the technology that we have, that would be. My first suggestion is whatever the players have an issue with, it’s okay to mention the problem. It’s okay to say you’re not doing well at this, let’s work on it. Put a GoPro on their head and then have them watch that to help them start to visualize in real time.
Dan Krikorian: 26:27
Coach, if I could just follow up on in general how you help players work through pressure, because some the moment’s not too big, they want to perform under pressure, some it’s harder they shrink, and those that maybe aren’t as good under pressure your thoughts on how to help them?
Andy Bass: 26:44
Absolutely. I’m going to two-part this from a motor learning and sports side perspective. I’m going to start with the motor learning more scientific aspect. So there is a theory in motor learning called reinvestment theory, and this is the predominant theory of why we choke. Reinvestment theory motor learning is such bad words like and they could have felt much better. Reinvestment theory says that when pressure occurs, we reinvest in the explicit knowledge that we have about that skill. And by explicit knowledge I mean if I’m shooting a free throw in a big situation, when pressure hits in my mind I’m going back to and if a coach has taught me how to shoot a free throw, as in put your elbow here, squat down in this way, have your hips at this angle, flick your wrists like this, well, that’s that internal focus that I mentioned earlier. So, as coaches, the more that we provide these internal cues and don’t just allow the player to self-organize, well, when pressure hits, if they reinvest in this internal focus that we’ve given them, they’re going to choke. But, as coaches, if we give less feedback, if we lean into more constraints-led approaches and letting the drill do the talking versus us, well then there’s nothing for them to reinvest in when pressure hits. So they may be less likely to choke if they don’t know as much about how their body moves. Like we all talk about athletes being so aware of their bodily movements. I don’t like that. I’d rather a player just be able. They don’t know why they do it, it just happens because of the way that they move. So I would definitely go with that. And then from a sports side perspective it’s hard to do. But this idea that pressure is a privilege and that nervousness and anxiety they are just another form of excitement. I’m going to bring back my mentor, bernie Holiday, with the Pirates. He has a really awesome presentation where he will talk about the difference between excitement and nervousness and he’ll put on the screen a picture of two men on a roller coaster and they’re going down the roller coaster and one guy has hands in the air. He’s really excited and you can tell that he’s laughing. And the other guy has his head in his hands and you can tell he’s just freaked out. But both of them are experiencing physiologically the same thing. They’re both butterflies they need to poop, puke or pee, they’re sweating, their heart is racing. So it’s helping our players renegotiate or navigate the idea that nervousness, while it doesn’t feel great, it is a privilege and it’s something to be excited about. And to wrap this up as well, there’s a wonderful clip of Simon Sinek, who’s motivational speaker, leadership guru, who says whenever he’s going out to do a talk, he will say to himself this is exciting, I’m nervous, and this is exciting. That could be just a really great thing for coaches. Trying to help players do is when you’re going out for the game, when warm-ups are happening, when a free throw is about to happen, hey, this is exciting. Right, it builds up over time. Big things have small beginnings, so helping our players understand that nerves don’t feel good and yet this can be exciting.
Patrick Carney: 29:45
Coach, I’d like to follow with physical cues and you mentioned the importance of just having one and then also with the physical cue itself. Is it really just whatever helps the athlete, or shouldn’t have a specific purpose? You mentioned front of the rim.
Andy Bass: 30:02
The first one with the one external cue. I’m probably oversimplifying that. I’ve always, from a mental perspective, liked the riddle. If I handed you an empty water bottle and I said, get the air out of here, a lot of people say crush it, stick a vacuum and blah, blah, blah. But the answer is fill it with water. That idea of if our mind as an athlete is filled to the brim with one conscious external cue, it’s really hard for other stuff to get in, it’s really hard for negative space to get in, so that cue can change over time. But it is good to have one external cue and from what is best for the player. That’s where the conversation comes in. Some players may like an internal cue at times, as in my elbow needs to be here, that’s not bad. But work with the player, ask them questions to see what can help them most, whether it be front of the rim, whether it be the explode through the floor, even if it’s something that’s just completely not to do with basketball to get them out of their head. And so with that idea of an external cue which is great, which would be front of the rim, or if you’re trying to work on their verticality instead of thinking about their hips moving, think about their shorts moving fast. The other aspect of this is this idea of a holistic cue, which is just starting to come into the research paradigm. But instead of when I say feel, I’m not talking about feel, as in my hips doing this, my knees doing that, it would be something to the effect of when I’m shooting I want to think quite intensity. This started with a colleague of mine, dr Kevin Becker, who worked with swimmers. He was working with a swimmer. She wanted to feel easy speed when she was doing her breaststroke. So that can with an external cue. It can be something outside of their body, like the front of the rim or, as we ask questions to the athlete, it can be hey, what do they like to feel when they’re playing defense, maybe in order to keep a person from backdoor? In me, I want to feel that I have this. I’m just making this up this kind of extensive gaze. That’s how I want to feel on defense, extensive gaze across the court. So keep it with an external cue or this holistic cue of the feel of the movement.
Dan Krikorian: 32:02
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Patrick Carney: 32:41
All right, coach, our next start Sub Sit. We’d like to ask you about the development skill acquisition theory of repetition without repetition. So, when applying this theory, what do you think the coach should be most aware of? When applying repetition without repetition theory, is it the context of the theory, option two, just the common sense of applying the theory, or option three, moderation and how much you use the theory.
Andy Bass: 33:10
I do love moderation, moderation and all things, including moderation. But I’m actually going to go a little more scientific here and I’m going to push coaches to think context and content of what this means, particularly because I’ve always fallen back on, even when I coach physically, coach athletes. I’ll always fall back on. This is the way I’ve always done it and that’s the worst phrase in the English language. But I think with repetition, without repetition, that is such low hanging fruit for us as coaches to understand what that means from a context and content perspective. We can never repeat a movement pattern. Muscle memory, I’m sorry, not a thing. Muscles don’t have synapses. Muscles don’t have neurons. Muscle memory is not a real thing. We need to engage in variability as often as possible. There’s just never a case where we repeat a movement pattern. Nikolai Bernstein, famous Russian physiologist, proved this way back in the early 1900s. So if we can never repeat a movement pattern, why are we so stuck on this idea of repetition? You know can try to repeat the perfect jump shot. It’s never going to happen. I love watching videos of Steph Curry Davidson alum here, so huge fan the way that he goes about practicing dribbling and shooting. He’s always, for the most part doing different things and repetition without repetition is in trying to put the ball in the basket every time through different ways. Not only is great from a motor learning perspective, but the more that we engage in variation as we move, the better movers will be. And if we have a player that’s really stuck in their own head I know we talked about the yes, or they’re just really having a hard time, this idea of differential learning. So repetition without repetition. So shoot as many different ways as possible. Shoot off one leg, you know. Shoot, falling away. That whole idea of and I remember growing up it was always go straight up, straight down in your jump shot. Don’t lean back, you know, follow your shot. Well, if we train this way, where we are varying our movements, it actually lowers our conscious thinking. So it’s called the hypofrontality hypothesis, it’s dimming our prefrontal cortex. So if we want our players to not think out there, great practice designed to have them vary their movements, and so not only are they not thinking as much, they’re getting out of their own head by training in these different ways. But this also emits two electrical signals. They’re called alpha and theta, these two electrical signals that are emitted when, if I’m not on the court and I’m shooting with different basketballs, or I’m shooting off my left leg, then my right leg and then I’m, you know, even if I’m at the free throw line and I’m trying to do a scoop shot. These two signals are also associated with mindfulness and they’re also associated with helping quell the activity of our amygdala, which is the fighter flight. So the more that we practice this repetition without repetition, we’re actually creating more clutch basketball players, because then, when the game is on the line, that flight or flight response in the fourth quarter is not as high. Interesting.
Patrick Carney: 36:03
So, to start the context, where would common sense and moderation if we kind of complete this game?
Andy Bass: 36:09
Yeah, so I think moderation is just. I don’t have a good answer for that one. I think that’s just the art of coaching. Certainly there’s going to be drills where you’re going to be trying to do air quotes, the same thing over and over, but with moderation. I’m just going to defer to the coach in the room. And the second one was context, is that right?
Patrick Carney: 36:26
Common sense.
Andy Bass: 36:27
Common sense. Yeah, just the coach in the room and you know if you’re coaching younger athletes, sometimes you’re going to do block practice, more repetition. But I think the last thing I would say with common sense is I don’t know if we give athletes enough credit for understanding the fundamentals. I this is going to be blasphemous. We exaggerate how proper fundamentals are. You know basketball, we just made up fundamentals emerged over time as an oh, this is how you shoot a jump shot. Well, nobody began basketball knowing that. So I think that we really fall back in the idea of they need to understand the fundamentals and I think we keep that too far in an athlete’s lifespan. They really don’t need to know as many fundamentals as we think before we can let them start to engage in variation.
Patrick Carney: 37:10
You mentioned block training and this varying training when introducing a new skill to a player, to a young athlete, and I guess, maybe within this common sense, how should you approach this? Repetition without repetition? This varied when maybe the athlete or the skill you’re introducing is so new or unknown to the player.
Andy Bass: 37:28
Yeah, and that also brings in another motor learning theory, the challenge point hypothesis, where if we’re pushing them too far, where they’re failing constantly, then they’re going to shut down. So yeah, you know, the player needs to have a certain level of competency to engage in this training, but it doesn’t need to be as much as I think we think it needs to be. But yeah, of course, you know, if you’ve got a five year old that can barely get the ball up to the hoop, maybe they need to do a little more block training, maybe they need to just sit in one spot in the court and try to bank it in. So it’s just the coach using common sense of how often are they failing and where is their motivation and psychological standpoint at any given point on the court.
Patrick Carney: 38:08
As a coach who maybe has less patience with failure, versus a player who is maybe a little bit more, yeah, has a broader band of what is failure, I guess what would you suggest? Or how judging okay, this is too much failure, this is enough failure that they need to work on to improve.
Andy Bass: 38:25
Dan Coyle. He has a book that talks about this. It’s called the Talent Code, where he says there’s this bandwidth of like 60 to 80% success rate. I think that’s probably limiting it a little much. But let’s just take this from a psychological perspective. If us, as the coach, get really frustrated with a player failing, players can internalize that and now the player is not going to be okay with failing and then they’re going to shut down when they fail in the game. As coaches, it’s actually celebrating. When they’re not I want to say not doing well, let’s just say they’re doing a drill and they’re really struggling with it. Instead of okay, we’re moving to something else, you can’t do this, say, hey, look, all right, this is okay, it’s okay that this is hard, let’s continue to do this. Now, if it’s just really bad and the player is physically shutting down, move on to something else. But, as coaches, embrace when a player fails and I’m not saying, great job, you missed that shot, well done, just let it be okay or just don’t acknowledge it. I think players know when they fail. So I think we as coaches need to back off on calling out the elephant in the room at times. The player knows they missed the shot. The player knows they turned the ball over and so, yeah, I’m kind of getting big picture here. But let’s stop calling out failure as often, and let’s be okay when it happens.
Dan Krikorian: 39:35
My last follow up here for me is about honing skills or honing in specific movements. Maybe for baseball it’s really working on a curveball that hits a certain part of the plate, or for basketball it’s shooting it from a certain spot on the floor that you know your offense is generating for a certain player and so you want to get a lot of repetitions at that shot or at pitching. But how you can then add variability so that, okay, they’re going to get, say, a hundred reps and shooting a corner three, but it’s not just all the exact same 100 reps, if that makes sense.
Andy Bass: 40:11
Absolutely, and I have this conversation especially with you know, because pitching is such a close skill versus basketball. I’ve mentioned constraints and differential learning, but the basic idea of this is random practice. So if you as a coach, have this play set up, where this player is going to get this dead corner three ready for him, if you have a hypothetical hundred shots in practice that he’s going to try, have him shoot 70, but every three or four have him go to a different spot on the court. And that falls back on this idea of kind of action, reconstruction hypothesis in random practice. So I’m just going to do this. But if I were to ask you you know what is 20 divided by five? You would tell me four. And then, if I asked you again, what’s 20 divided by five, you’d say four. I ask you again 20 divided by five, you’d say four by the third or fourth time. You’re not actually doing the math problem, you’re just reciting it. That would be like shooting a hundred dead corner threes in a row. But if I told you what’s 20 divided by five and you said four, and then I said, okay, what’s 30 divided by 10, what’s 90 divided by nine, then I asked you again what’s 20 divided by five? You have to reconstruct the problem again in your head. So it would be if you want them to work on a particular facet of their game, it is okay to make that the majority, but just every third or fourth shot, have them go and do something else or shoot somewhere else in the court. Then come back to that dead corner three where they have to reconstruct the problem in their head.
Dan Krikorian: 41:34
Coach, you’re off the start sub or sit hot seat. Thanks for going through and answering all those questions with us. That was awesome. We’ve got one last question for you to close the show, but before we do, thank you very much for your time, all your thoughts. They’re so detailed. This was a big learning experience for us, so thank you very much today.
Andy Bass: 41:50
I appreciate it. Thank you all for letting me go on my diatrods. I hope I was able to add not just some kind of art of coaching, but the science of coaching as well here.
Dan Krikorian: 41:58
Absolutely Coach. Our last question that we ask all the guests is what’s the best investment that you’ve made in your career as a coach?
Andy Bass: 42:06
Well, I’m probably going to say my PhD in sports psych and motor learning. Philosophically, though, for me it’s wanting to be wrong and it’s looking back on stuff that I do now that I didn’t do five years ago. And just the beauty of oh wow, I used to think this and now I don’t anymore. I used to coach like this and I don’t anymore. Yeah, I would say content wise, it’s the motor learning perspective, and I know a lot of your listeners probably are aware of things like the constraints, lead approach and differential learning, ecological dynamics it’s all over Twitter. So I would say, definitely, the fact that motor learning is becoming more ingrained in sport is fantastic. We need to have an empirical backing, along with anecdotal and tradition, but for me it’s I want to be wrong. I want to look back on what I’m doing in 2023 when I’m in 2027 and say, oh man, I used to think that, I don’t think that anymore, I was just wrong. So for me it’s wanting to be wrong, and I’m going to close this out here with another scientific term empirical falsification. There was a sociologist in the early 20th century named Carl Popper, and he was really leaning into this idea of if you have a theory, you should do everything in your power to try to prove it wrong. So if I think that this is the way to shoot a jump shot, I need to actually try to actively find ways in which I may be wrong. Because if I go out of my way to try to prove a theory that I have wrong and it still stands up to scrutiny, then I know I have something. But human beings, we have that confirmation bias. So I would say, as coaches, whatever pillars you feel like you have that you think are right, go out of your way to try to prove them wrong and then if, after a year of all your research, if you still feel convicted, then you know you have something.
Dan Krikorian: 44:00
All right, pat, you and I were just talking with Coach Bass for just a little bit longer, and one of these conversations where we felt like we just kept going and going yeah.
Patrick Carney: 44:09
You know, I think, before we get in kind of the backstory of her as we put together this conversation and where we wanted to go with it. I mean, obviously we settled on just our words and feedback and the role it plays in player performance as a coach. But I think even to that conversation. Then another conversation that we got to with Start Sub Sit and I think is really important is there’s a ton of these, I don’t know, maybe emerging theories is the right, but these theories on just skill acquisition and learning and you’re seeing them all the time and I know you and me are having tons of conversations about it because they’re all very, very good theories, but it’s what does it look like in practicality? And bringing it to a core and a conversation and I think we’re repeatedly having like within a timeframe of a season and how can you get the benefits of these? And kind of taking the theory, that can sometimes seem overwhelming, you know, just by the straight definition of it and what it is on paper and then what it actually looks like an application. And I thought Coach Bass was phenomenal and explaining the theory and then I think, as we’re going to get through all the anecdotes he explained and what they really mean and what they look like in practicality was, overall, the most important thing, I think, that came out of this conversation today.
Dan Krikorian: 45:23
Yeah, I agree, let’s dive in now to that first bucket on just the words, the vocab, feedback, all that and what it really means, and I’ll kick it to you.
Patrick Carney: 45:33
I wrote down the first thing he said that the importance of less is more with feedback, and I think it’s so true. He said the talker is usually the one doing the learning. It is very true if you constantly are giving feedback. I think he mentioned the guidance hypothesis, but that the players just become dependent on the feedback and so in practice they’re used to just hearing your voice and being cued by your voice.
Dan Krikorian: 45:54
But then in a game they need to be able to react and make decisions on their own and they’re not going to be able to hear your voice to double down on what you just said, with feedback and it being like he said, less is more, and I think that I followed up with the telling versus question asking and, I think, adding to what you just said. I think that’s why, also, there’s so much good theory and evidence rooted in the question to asking and how you asked that question to a player. Now, what happens is the player he just said it, Usually the talker is doing the learning, so but when you ask a question and the players and talking about it, they are learning because they’re then explaining what they saw and they’re giving you good feedback as to Cues, as to maybe what they’re missing or maybe, as a coach, what you’re missing in your teaching, because when you ask, hey, what did you see here? Or can you tell me what you think the next read is, or who you read, whatever it is, if they’re not giving the correct read in your mind, then maybe that’s it goes back to you, tells you what we maybe need to design to help teach more, whatever it is. I just think he was good talking about in general stopping and or rating for five minutes. I mean, I’m not saying I’m not guilty and we’ve been in practices where you just feel like you’re just making the point and you’re teaching and you’re, yeah, if I can just tell them this, they’re going to get it, yeah, and we go on these rants and we’re Billy Shakespeare out there. They’re just, eyes are glazed over. I think that we’ve all done and been there and it’s a different feel for a coach to try to not overdo it. I think you just spoke well on the evidence and the reasons behind why it’s more helpful Most of the time to not over speak. But I go back to he was also really good the whole time of going back to the art and science of coaching and at times when you get to these points where we maybe ask to follow up or in your head as a coach, if you’re listening to this thing, and then there’s this moment where I do need to tell them exactly what to do. I do need to mandate this or demand they do a certain way, for whatever it is that you feel as a coach.
Patrick Carney: 47:51
He kind of left that space to say, yeah, that’s why it’s an art where maybe you do need to step in here and that’s OK too, and I think he made the important point to when we have to give feedback is to allow like a buffer time of whenever the mistake occurred to allow the player or to process and then give them the feedback. Where he said, like if we just immediately come in with the feedback again, it’s now they’re just cheering your words and they haven’t really processed their own and work through it to understand maybe what the problem or what happened and why, where, like, the disconnect was when your feedback comes in. I thought was an important point to make when obviously we have to do some coaching and deliver feedback.
Dan Krikorian: 48:33
Yeah, and I think this is not a miss by him, but one of the things I wrote down would have been interesting to follow up on too is also there’s certain types of feedback for certain types of mistakes and there’s mistakes that are made. I think of West Miller we had on a few months ago, since Natty Men’s basketball head coach he talked about he’s probably the most lax or not lax, but when he said he talked about mistakes made within your skill set trying to be aggressive, to make the right play within whatever your role is on the team I think he said he cares like the least in the country about those mistakes, but it’s the mistakes made outside of your role or who you are, or selfish mistakes or mistakes of character rather than of trying to do it. The right way Is where you step in and have different feedback versus a player that’s just trying to do what you ask but is struggling with it, and I think I could have maybe gone deeper on that with him if we have more time.
Patrick Carney: 49:30
Yeah, I think that’s really interesting and I think an important maybe distinction at this feedback conversation too is we want to limit it when it comes to maybe like these player movements, these player decisions. But, of course, as a coach, focusing like is more feedback on tactical feedback and we can do more of our coaching there and trying to correct those problems, versus trying to micromanage a player’s decision or yelling at them to get in a stance or to box out Yep, or again, now it’s. There really is no learning going on. They’re just mindlessly reacting to what you’re telling them. Yes, that’s going to be met with failure in a game when they can’t hear you and haven’t been taught to think.
Dan Krikorian: 50:09
I agree, moving to start subberset, we had fun thinking about and coming up with these. These were based off of. He’s written a couple of great papers, maybe more than that. He’s been on some podcasts, he’s spoken other places really well and we kind of took bits and pieces other places. But we’ll start with the Yip’s and the kind of physical, mental freezes and we related this to shooting slumps or player just not getting through. Maybe think a little bit of a Phil Beckner. We talked about the plateaus a little bit and you know just where a player gets stuck. And the Yip’s, I think, would be an extra added thing where there’s a psychological element to it, where players having a hard time getting through it, and so all once again, I guess, kick it back to you on any takeaways from that first start subset yeah for sure he acknowledged that it’s okay to mention the problem.
Patrick Carney: 50:59
I think sometimes I don’t like do we talk about it? Do we address it? He can’t make free throws, do we address it? Or we just keep telling him to shoot free throws after practice, you know, dance around the problem. I like that he addressed that, like yeah, we can mention it, it’s fine, it’s not the end of the world and I’ll leave it there, because then I think we had a good conversation on visualization, but I did like some of his external cues and his thoughts there. But I’ll throw it back to you as far as maybe with the visualization and your takeaways, with dealing with the Yips or these mental blocks.
Dan Krikorian: 51:29
I’ll add on to your point about his thought on just discussing it with the player, because I think that one is just like pixie elephant, like out of the room in one sense. But I think the added part was that here’s a way out. It’s not just hey, you’re really bad right now. Yeah, that sucks, but it’s like, okay, yeah, you’re not shooting a well, here’s some things that we can help it with kind of take it off their shoulders a little bit. And I liked I guess I’ll start with sort of the visualization. I think we had a good conversation on that. But I think you and I both went back to the physical, the cues a little bit Ways to just get a player out of their head. I think was that thought for us and what he spoke about. And he also gave some other examples just for physical stuff on the player not overthinking their movements, like you don’t want them thinking about their slide or their movement, you want them just to feel it. And he talked about some other ways to Express those things. The feel of something I thought was really good was in that.
Patrick Carney: 52:26
The holistic cues yeah.
Dan Krikorian: 52:28
The holistic cues. So, like going back to you, I took that the holistic cues were really good within this conversation.
Patrick Carney: 52:33
Yeah, he mentioned what the swimmer wanted to have feel easy, speed, quiet, intensity. Good examples of what he’s meaning, because you said it’s not a straight application to everyone. But you want to avoid the internal cues, like he always kept in groups. For you know, elbow in elbow in external cues, stuff that takes your mind kind of off of the mechanical process so your body can just flow naturally. As he kind of hit on several times, If you start thinking about a movement, you can’t do the movement.
Dan Krikorian: 53:02
I think I asked a follow-up a little bit about pressure and things like that, and that’s another, I guess, technical miss for me. I told you right before we hopped on I love discussing the art of pressure and when it comes to performing from a player’s standpoint. But I think too the pressure and decisions of a coach to in crunch time and the decisions you make from subs to play calls, all that, and that can be a time where we freeze too a little bit. There’s so much input coming into your brain for a coach in the pressure situations and how you kind of work through those things. I think it’s interesting too. Yeah, I agree.
Patrick Carney: 53:37
I’ll let you kick off our repetition without repetition. Question your takeaways from this conversation.
Dan Krikorian: 53:43
Yeah, I think that we’ve had this in spots before our partnership, working with Drew Dumlop and Jake Grossman, the pro lane. They’re really good at this stuff too. Coach Bass has written about it before. You’ve seen other places, but it’s how do you get quality repetitions into whatever it is you’re teaching without it being a straight block rep over and over and over and over again? You know we’re all thinking, hey, just taking straight 100 jumpers from the top of the key, that’s not the worst thing in the world. Obviously there is some benefit to it. How do you vary it and how do you get these reps without it being the same thing over and over again? And we took these three examples from stuff he said somewhere in all of his writings and speaking about this conversation the context, common sense and moderation. And I think that the start and what he discussed first was to me and you, I think, really important as well is when you’re devising a way to get shots or reps in an action, you know you want it to be varied enough over and over again. Really, thinking about the context is really important and not just doing something that’s out of context and just looks cool but doesn’t really apply to your team or to your players, and I think he spoke well on that and he gave some theory too, which was good.
Patrick Carney: 54:56
It was important to what I wanted to find out. I was excited to hear him talk about just within this context and this repetition. Repetition is understanding the skill level of your athlete and when to start Varying their training and when block training is necessary in order to help progress the athlete along and maybe, like I said, introduce a skill and so they can grasp what they’re trying to work on before you just start varying it to such a degree. That was really where I guess at times, I get the confusion and applying this and what it means. I appreciate his thoughts there and then I think too, the main purpose of this conversation was what’s it look like in practicality? And I loved your follow up question, because we all have like a set, a system when we do skill to belt, like we break down our offense and like we know what we’re going to get. This shot, these are the shots we want. So we want to, of course, practice them. But how to get the most efficient training out of it or, within this, reps without reps? And I love the example we gave where it’s like, okay, if you know you’re going to get corner shots, those are still going to be the majority of your shots, but then every third or every fifth just mix it up, have them go shoot somewhere else and then come back. And again the anecdote he gave with the math equations if you just keep asking the same equation over and over, you’re not processing the problem, you’re just repeating the answer without really being aware of what you’re doing. Yeah, I really really enjoyed your follow up and then him explaining this theory in practical terms.
Dan Krikorian: 56:29
I’m just glad he didn’t actually ask us to answer the math questions. He kept them pretty simple. I was getting nervous You’re the math guy between us too, but I could do those. But if he went any deeper struggle kept it pretty blocked. I think he did. Yeah, but I’ll just kind of wrap it all up here because I think we can keep going down. But to your point, that was the most important thing for us is how do you get these reps in your system? And, like my follow up, I want this guy or girl to practice these corner shots or this spot, because that’s what we get a lot, and how do you vary it? The thing he gave, I think, is just something that’s really a good takeaway, and then I think it also you don’t have to use that exact drill, but just a way to think about. Okay, if I’m a coach listen to this I want to add some variability. It’s like a mindset of all right, I can just add those little things, those little tweaks, and you’re kind of getting a better result based off of what he said. Well, I gave a couple of my misses kind of sprinkled throughout. Anything else to add from your standpoint?
Patrick Carney: 57:32
He mentioned at the very end and then we ended up having a small conversation afterwards, but he talked about just basketball being an open skilled sport versus I mean he was referring to pitching being a closed skill. I wish I kind of just quickly followed up on that.
Dan Krikorian: 57:45
To add to your point. I think that’s one of the interesting things when you talk about sort of the I don’t want to sound overly nerdy here but the empirical scientific evidence, the approaches to a lot of these things. There have been a lot of studies that are really good studies, but they take place in isolation to where it’s like studying a specific skill or specific movement and it’s really good for, like, say, a closed skill thing or like for pitching, or like a swinging golf or even a free throw or a shot, I think for you and I are always interested in well. But there’s so much added complexity with basketball where it’s open, where that shot’s coming off of a decision that another person made before that shot and it’s not going to be the same every single time. There’s so much variability in the skill itself but then how that skill fits into a team and then how that team plays off of each other. I mean it just gets more and more complex because of the nature of basketball and I think that’s what’s the art of coaching and why we enjoy it. But I think just going deeper down that rabbit hole for us, trying to figure those things out and talk about those things more I think are helpful. Yeah, I agree. We will thank Andy again for coming on and for being such a great guest.