"Strive for continuous improvement, instead of perfection." - Kim Collins

Hey Matt!!

In this week’s The Deep Three, we’re taking a deeper dive on off-season development with my three rules for leveling up this off-season.

Players, you’ll notice one or two of the thoughts are focused more towards coaching, and I would encourage you to lean into those thoughts as well. It’s important for you to improve by thinking/processing certain things just as your coach would.

Here we go. Three thoughts, ideas, and motivations that will help you and your team be more successful. On tap this week:

• Rule #1: Understand The Four Stages of Player Development
• Rule #2: Take a Game-Like Approach to Training
• Rule #3: Focus on the Individual's Improvement

Matt

There’s a nuance to player development that many times gets overlooked. A player’s improvement will never follow a linear pattern. Instead, it will look more like a line graph with peaks and valleys over time.

To truly level up any player's or team's development, there's a four stage process that any coach or trainer must follow.

Stage 1 - Skill Improvement

This is helping players develop the baseline for any skill they must possess to be successful for their age/competition level. When working on skill improvement, players must be focused on understanding the concept and building habits with good technique. There’s never any live-defense or competition in the skill improvement stage. Coaches/trainers should focus on teaching the skill and celebrating improvement rather than criticizing a players’ results, failures, or lack of ability.

Stage 2 - Decision Making

Once a player/group has gotten the necessary reps to understand a concept or build a baseline ability/proficiency, the next stage is to improve decision making by focusing on reads. These are binary decisions based upon what a player/team sees during a play (i.e. reading the defense, seeing their teammates, calculating best decision, etc.).

A great example of this would be when working on making great decisions in the paint. If you’re wanting your team to level up on deciding when to finish at the rim vs. make a pass to an open teammate, this is done in this stage of training. You’d do this by having one player attack the paint against one defender with one teammate on the perimeter. On the drive, the defender would either show “chest” (rotating to the paint on the drive to protect the rim) or show “space” (staying attached to the perimeter offensive player). On the live drive, the ball handler would read chest or space and train to make the correct decision every time (Chest = controlled stop and pass to open teammate. Space = finish and get a bucket!).

In this stage, coaches and trainers should focus on coaching the process by asking questions vs. coaching individual results of a rep. A great way to do this is by asking a simple question after any given rep: Why?

• Why did you pass it in that situation?
• Why did you try to finish instead of making a pass?
• Why did you make that last decision? What did you see?

Stage 3 - Compete

After a player/team has trained with reps to improve proficiency and reads to improve decision making, then it’s time to COMPETE. Now we’re playing live (small sided or in 5 on 5) and allowing the previous training to connect the dots in game situations.

As players are competing, coaches/trainers must view this as bike riding time for their players and realize that they're going to make a ton of mistakes. In this stage, mistakes must not only be encouraged, but also celebrated so that players actually improve through their learning. Great coaches/trainers also understand the importance to only coach one thing at a time! Instead of overloading players by evaluating multiple things on every play, having a laser-like focus to coach one specific thing will expedite their learning process towards mastery.

Stage 4 - The Feedback Loop

In most practices/training sessions, players are accustomed to receive feedback from a single source: their coach or trainer. However, this is a very narrow view and will limit a player's improvement. Every player development session should include intentional, planned time for players to provide feedback to each other (and themselves through the use of video).

Remember, these stages aren't designed to be a process. Once a player has moved from Stage 1 to Stage 2, that doesn't mean they'll never need to go back to Stage 1 and work on skills. Rather, it's a four stage cycle where players will migrate back and forth between stages throughout an individual season and their career as they continue to level up their player development.

One of my pet peeves about off-season development is that too often the things we do as trainers/coaches with our players won’t actually translate once we’re playing in games. To maximize player development, off-season drills (and in all honesty, in-season drills as well) should be ones that mirror game situations in order for players to improve both their technique (skills) and strategies (decision making).

Many coaches and thought leaders refer to this as the games approach to practices.

With this approach, coaches/trainers structure workouts to focus on game-like situations so that players learn what they need to know to play well by replicating realistic situations that they can learn from and then improve through repetition.

If you're ready to begin experimenting with making your practices/training more game-like, here is a check list of the most important things to ask yourself or consider:

1. What skill/decision are we focusing on improving in our training?
2. How/when does it happen most often in games?
3. What structure is needed in a drill to replicate that action through competition or pressure-filled situations?
4. How can I maintain a safe environment during training where mistakes are encouraged in order for players to correct them?

The off-season isn't a time for coaches to triple-down on team strategy or spend a majority of the time talking while players stand around getting bored. Off-season workouts should be focused on improving every player's individual skill, regardless of their role the previous season.

As coaches, we need to keep off-season workouts fast paced with little down time while putting a premium on reps and improvement on specific skills. There are a myriad of ways to do this, but a couple of specific examples include:

• Define for our teams (both as individuals and as a whole) of the 2-3 specific skills that need to be improved upon during the off-season.
• Allow players to plan part (or all) of different off-season workouts.
• Turn off-season workouts into skills sessions and shooting workouts.
• Have competition and encourage creativity through lots of 1-on-1 and small-sided games.

As players, we need to focus on improving on things during the offseason that will actually translate to an expanded role on our team for the next season. If you're unsure of what those are, here are a couple of key questions to ask your coach this spring:

• What role do you see for me next season with my current skills/abilities?
• What 2-3 things must I improve on to earn a larger, more expanded role next season?
• In addition to attending off-season workouts, what are some additional ways I can improve on those skills?

There's an old saying that "a rising tide lifts all ships." The same is true when we focus on the individual's improvement during the off-season. As each individual player improves their personal skill set, the team's ceiling for the next season will also increase.