Developing Skills, IQ, and Athleticism, Thriving In Your Role, and More with Danny Metser (@dmhoops)

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Training podcast. Appreciate everybody who's tuned in right now, everybody who's listening on Apple podcasts, Spotify, Pandora, Google podcast, wherever you may be listening from. I appreciate you guys and everybody who is watching right now on YouTube, drop a like subscribe if you're new. New podcast coming out every week. And, and if you guys are on Apple podcasts, do me a favor, leave a review, let me know what you think about the show. Special episode this week got my guy, Danny Metzer on who just a little bit of a background on kind of how we met. I think I followed Danny on Instagram for maybe two, three months at this point, and we actually connected down at the Master Hoops Player Development Conference in Miami a couple of weeks ago. And it was like, we're going to for sure talk about the conference and I definitely want to hear his takeaways from him. But for me, I kind of did an episode on that last week. But in addition to all that, like, one of the best things about that conference was being able to connect with so many trainers that I had been following for a little bit. Like, I knew their stuff and had finally got a chance to actually, like, meet them. And obviously, I think it's a benefit for everybody listening as well, because now I'm able to kind of bring guys like that on the show. Danny's one guy who I really, for a multitude of reasons, I'm excited to have on. I think he's going to have a unique perspective on, on. On whether you're a player or a trainer or a coach. I think there's going to be some unique insights and value he can bring to you guys. But it was great to be able to connect down in Miami. And so I'll kind of give him the, the, the floor right here to kind of give, you know, a little, little intro on, on, you know, what he's about, how he's gotten to this point. But Danny, thank you for being on the show today.

Dude, thank you so much for having me on. It was a pleasure to meet you A couple of weeks ago. I was anticipating it for so long, like, just waiting for, for the opportunity to go to Miami, not just to meet all the speakers, but to meet people like you that are driven and, you know, have, have unique knowledge in this area. So again, it was a pleasure to meet you. Right now I'm at school, so it was like I had a couple days of like, you know, being in a dream and then once I got back to school, it's like back to reality now. That's kind of, you know, what I was thinking when I got back. But yeah, I know. We're going to be talking about the conference and more details later on, so.

Yeah, so kind of as like an intro on you, because one of the things that I really find interesting is so you're in school right now. Do you look at. Because this kind of goes both ways at the conference. There's a lot of guys there around our age, like college age, maybe a little bit older. And it was kind of a spectrum between some of them would be like, yeah, you know, like, I'm studying, you know, physical therapy, I'm studying exercise science. And I want that to absolutely, you know, relate to what I'm going to do when I'm done with school and I get into whether it's basketball training, performance training, a blend of that is, you know, with what I believe it's athletic training. Right. That's kind of the route you're in. So is that something that you like, Are you looking to go down that route specifically, or are you kind of looking to do something else?

Yeah, so what's, what's. Pretty. People might find this really weird, but I'm actually not studying athletic training. Like, I'm not a mate. An athletic training major to later become an athletic trainer and get hired as one. The reason I wanted to major in athletic training is because I love the curriculum. And as I was doing my search for schools, I was looking at either doing an exercise science or exercise physiology or kinesiology type major. And then I was talking to my college advisor at high school and he was telling me about Quinnipiac. And I had heard of the school before, but I actually started to give it strong consideration. And then when I toured, so he, he told me, you know, they have, they have this major called athletic training. And at the time I honestly thought athletic training was just like, literally what the name says, like training athletes, but come to find out later on. So, so I toured the school and right away it left a really, really good impression on me. I toured, you know, the general school and then they actually do like individual tours where you, where you actually learn about individual majors. And again, it left such a good impression on me. And the thing that set it apart from other majors like exercise science or kinesiology or something like that is this clinical component that came with the major. I would be able to actually be like a student athletic trainer with the sports teams here. This is a Division 1 school, so I thought, man, like, this could be a really, really good Opportunity to get some hands on experience, real hands on experience, really early on in my career.

Yeah.

But athletic training is just one part of sports performance as a whole and helping athletes get better at their sport. We can attribute performance to so many different aspects. We can attribute it to skill development, which is what, you know, we sort of do on Instagram. We can attribute it to developing physical qualities in the weight room, so strength and conditioning. We can attribute it to nutrition, sleep. All these things go into this holistic approach to improving performance. And so athletic training is really dealing, evaluating and treating acute and chronic injuries and doing emergency care. That I would say is the bulk of it. But obviously you do have to have knowledge in some other areas, being that you're a clinician and you're working with athletes. So that kind of like pushed me in the direction of learning more about motor learning and skill development. Plus, I was already a huge basketball fan. I played basketball in high school at a decently high level. And so, yeah, all these things kind of pushed me in this direction. And so I'm really, really invested in learning more about the science behind developing skills and the art of it too.

Yeah, yeah. No, I love that. And that, that was kind of the point that I was, I was hoping you'd bring up was just talking about movement. And I think, like, you know, people ask me, like, if I was in school right now, like, I. That's where I'd be, like, because that, to me, I think is the next step. And Paul talked about this at the conference. He said he was like, the, the future is going to be like, you're going to have a skills trainer who also is your performance coach as well. Like, it's going to merge. He's like, in the next 10 years, like, you're going to have one guy who does both for you because not only does that allow you to have more of like a holistic approach, but also when it comes to managing load and, you know, ultimately being as safe as possible, but also maximizing like the time you're actually putting in. Having one person who can balance all that is going to be the future. So us, you know, me, I've always approached it from a skills perspective, but that was a challenge to me to be like, you have to understand the performance language is what he called it. Like, you as a skills coach, be able to speak that performance language so that you can be able to get to a point where you can kind of be both of those eventually. So kind of the. I actually, I went through your Twitter yesterday And I saw there was a tweet that you tweeted, I think it was last week, but it was. It kind of goes with this. And actually it was something that I wanted to ask you about. And you said, you guys ever play capture the flag and feel yourself making moves and reacting in ways you've never done before? I believe this has legit implications for ball handling training. And so this is like, I kind of want to get your, like, your thoughts on. On this, because I definitely have my own. But I think this also goes back to like, this whole. It's so funny because it's like a. It's like a whole wormhole you can go down where, like, it starts with, like, oh, it's just bad. Like, okay, I want to get better at basketball. Well, what does that actually entail? And what can you actually do to. To move yourself in the right direction? What matters? Right. So kind of talking about how, you know, those other games, other sports working, other movements, how do you see that kind of impacting basketball players? Specifically?

Yeah, the. The. So that's one thing that Cole has been talking about a lot on his. On his. On his Instagram. For anybody that's not familiar, it's by any means basketball. And he's talking about, you know, getting. Understanding the individual puzzle pieces that go into forming the whole puzzle. These are. These could be, you know, physical qualities or perceptual cognitive abilities. Anything that encompasses a skill that we can pretty easily defined. So, like, if we talk about ball handling, you know, since you mentioned ball handling in my tweet, we could be talking about, you know, I mean, it's so many different things. Ankle mobility, hip mobility. These are physical qualities. Being able to produce force horizontally. So being able to access, you know, steep shin angles, you know, again, yeah, I already mentioned producing force. So there are all these physical qualities, but then there's like, you know, as a ball handler, reading how. How heavy the defense is helping where the help defenders are. And that can inform a lot of decision. A lot of your decisions as a ball handler. Am I going to drive or does it make more sense to create an outside shot? So, yeah, I would say, like, that's. Those are some of the things I've been thinking out, thinking about recently in regard to. With regard to using other sports or like, playing other games, like weird games like Capture the Flag, for. I. I came up with Capture the Flag, and I'll talk more about what I was thinking about in a bit. But yeah, just using all these games and different sports to develop General physical literacy that once once applied to basketball and actually, like, explored with, will eventually translate, hopefully, to basketball games, real basketball games. And there's nuance. Like, we could talk about how much, you know, certain physical qualities, how much transfer certain physical qualities have over others. There's definitely a spectrum, but in that way, I found Cole's presentation really interesting. But the capture the flag thing, I mean, I was just thinking about it, like, when you. I'm sure you've done this, you've played capture the flag, and you're waiting for a little bit to seize an opportunity, and then you finally decide, boom, I'm going to go. And, like, you know, you run and you have a little bit of open space, but then eventually, defenders see you, right? Everybody sees you and they're trying to get you, and you don't have a ball or anything. You don't have anything limiting you from moving. Mm. It's just you, your body, and the people that are trying to stop you from getting to the flag. And you end up doing the craziest shit with your body, like. Like, just, like, changing speeds, like, being super deceptive, like, using your eyes to deceive people into thinking you're doing one thing and doing another thing. These are all qualities that we need within the game of basketball that, like, I feel like if we went back to a little bit, players would find it engaging and fun, but we're actually building qualities that are applicable to the game of basketball.

Yeah. No, absolutely it.

Man.

Bring me back to those middle school days. We used to play capture the flag, like, at the end. At the end of every day, and it's exactly what you're talking about. It's like you don't realize, like. Like, how almost how limited players have. Like, a lot of players have become because of how early they specialize in things. You had kids who are, like, by the time they get to, like, fifth grade, they're just basketball players, and they're not really out there. Like, they're not out playing with their friends every day, Right? They're not out. And I think. I think Covid definitely made that worse where you weren't out just, like, you know, with your friends every day playing, you know, football, playing capture the flag, playing, you know, whatever. Whatever sport you might play in your neighborhood. Like, that was stuff that I always remember doing growing up. And it has such an impact. And I think, like, one of the things that. One of the connections that I think players should make when they think about, like, okay, how do I actually become the best player I can be. And I think, especially for coaches, like, if I'm going to be teaching somebody, like, let's take ball handling, for example, right? If we're going to work on ball handling, it's. We're working movement because we're gonna have to. We're gonna work some different stops, right? If we. If we work like a snatch between the legs, that. That can be considered ball handling. Right? But it's more so a movement, right. I'm learning how to stop, how to. How to accelerate and then decelerate. And then maybe out of that, I have to learn how to decelerate, change directions, and then accelerate again. Right. That's all movement right there. So, like, one thing that, that Mike G at the conference was showing us was tag. And tag is like my new favorite thing now, like, because it's literally working those exact same things where we're working a bunch of different stops, right? They don't even understand. Like, I put, you know, I put two players in, like, I give them a circle to chase each other around. One of them. One of them is it. One of them is not. Like, they're chasing each other and they're working those different stops. They're changing direction, decelerating. And again, especially if you don't have a ball, there's nothing limiting them. So they're just be able to work on those movements over and over and over again and get comfortable with them. And then at the same time, we can talk about, okay, now we're working in curved angles as well. So you're able to work that. That puzzle piece, which isn't something that players work on a ton. It's usually. It's just straightforward or maybe straight to the side, but it's never at that curve. So now we're working a couple of really underdeveloped areas, especially with my players that I work with, who are just basketball players who are just doing the same exact movements over and over and getting really good at some of them, but neglecting a lot that they don't get because they don't play football, they don't play, you know, baseball and play soccer, right? And so I think that's something that's. That's really crucial to understand is like, as a skills coach, like, you teach movement like you also are a movement coach. Whether or not you. You recognize that, like, that's what you are. If you do anything where your players are movement, you teach movement. So you should understand how to effectively do. And I think. I think doing that through games is A really, really great way of applying that. I just started. It's actually funny. I was thinking about this when I saw your tweet. I just started up a clinic series for some middle schoolers in my area, and I was actually talking to my mom about it last week. She was asking me, like, oh, you know, what are you guys going to do for the first week? And she, like, my mom is not. She's not like, a big basketball player. She's not. She'll show. She's at every game growing up, but she doesn't really, like, know the game or understand, like, the details of it or anything like that. And certainly nothing when it comes to the training side of it. Like, that's not her wheelhouse at all. Like, not at all. And she. She had mentioned something just, like, kind of as a joke. She was like, oh, so what are you guys going to do today? You guys going to play soccer or something? And I was like, probably not today, but maybe next week. Like, we might play soccer next week. Because it's literally like, those are like that, especially at that age, I think, just working different movements and then building that engagement. Especially if we start off and it's like, hey, guys, only five minutes of soccer right now. All of a sudden, the monotony of, like, a normal training session, like, that's gone because they're like, oh, we're playing soccer now, right? So that, I think, is another element to that. And that was why I loved Mike G's presentation at the conference where he talked about prime time and just being able to build engagement through different games, because that actually makes it a more effective session if you take 5 minutes to play a game. But it's going to make the remaining 55 minutes of your session really, really high quality. And also that those five minutes are going to work. Moving patterns that are going to make your players better, and movements are probably never going to hit anytime else. Well, why would you not do it? And so that was something that I really, really got from that. And I think when you look at players like Kyrie Irving or, you know, anybody else who moves well, we look at these guys who can handle the ball. Steph Curry is another one, or, like, whoever that you can think of that, like, is crossing people up and finishing in all these acrobatic ways. Like, I think a lot of people overemphasize the basketball side of that, and it's, oh, he's so skilled. He's so. There's. He's so good with the ball, but they don't look at the movements that allow him to actually be able to do that. Like, if. If Kyrie Irving couldn't. Didn't have the. His ability to decelerate the way that he does, and if he couldn't play at those. At those angles, at those shin angles that he plays at, then he wouldn't be nearly as effective. It wouldn't matter how. How tight the ball was, how tight his handle was, exactly how much spin he could put on his layups. It wouldn't matter because he doesn't have those general qualities first. So I think, again, going back to, like, kind of the first one that I brought up is, like, as a skills coach, understanding the performance side of the movement side, like, that's. That's the future, because that's where you can really start to build the player as a whole.

Exactly. Yeah. Like, literally understanding. I mean, like, if you're. If you're teaching a sport inherently, there's going to be movement and what is involved in movement. Biomechanics. You have to have understanding of biomechanics at least at a base level. Like, there's a huge biomechanical difference between doing a regular linear sprint and doing a curvilinear sprint. You see crazy stuff going on at the ankle and the hip and all this rotation. And like, you. You have to. You have to at least understand that, like, at a base level. But one thing I wanted to talk about is you mentioned, like, the Kyrie Irving thing. Part of our job is understanding or figuring out, identifying what the limiting factor is for players. Is the ball slowing them down or is their body slowing them down? Because inherently they're going to have to use both. They're going to have to be there. The two are going to have to be combined in live play. And so if you can sort of have a process for how to recognize that, wow, this guy's really good in, like, stationary ball handling drills and, like, just really skilled at manipulating the ball, and he's got good ball control. But as soon as I give him a little bit of pressure and as soon as I get a defender on and pressing up and trying to steal the ball and giving him a little bit of contact, and he's got to accelerate and then stop on a dime and do that in a cycle in a way that he can create for himself and for teammates. If. If we're seeing a clear, like, skill gap, then, hey, like, we gotta work on the movement. You know what I mean?

Mm.

And vice versa. They could be really athletic. They could have really good, raw athleticism. Um, especially, like, players that may have started playing basketball later in their life, um, maybe something to, you know, identify is like, hey, you move really well, but, you know, your ball control and your ability to manipulate the ball is limiting you a little bit as a ball hand, as a ball handler, you could be really good. And so that's where, you know, maybe it makes more sense to do stationary ball handling drills that have a heavy emphasis on controlling the ball and manipulating it. Um, so it's all about identifying limiting factors. That's a huge part of our job.

Yeah, no, I agree with that. And as you're saying that, like, I, I, I'm thinking about different players that I work with who, like, you can even, you can even take, for example, like, if we're trying to work on, like, a, like a punch or like a same foot, same hand, stop with the ball. And there are some players who, like, are really uncomfortable getting into that sort of low, almost lunge position, and they don't like taking, like, either. They don't want to get very low out of it. So, like, they're not able to really accelerate very fast into it because they're not confident in their ability to stop, or they, they might just really shorten up their steps. They're not comfortable taking, like, a long step into it, which might not sell the drive quite as much. Right. And I think that, like, being able to understand that and then kind of, like, backtracking a little bit. So, like, if I see that, and then maybe we start off just working, like, out of a lunge. Like, I think another thing that Mike G. Did, where he started with, like, he did, like, the hand game, your hands out in front of you, and then you had your partner who was kind of, like, pushing you off center. So maybe we just start off working that out of, like, a lunge position that they might be not very comfortable in from, like, a dynamic perspective getting into. So we just can kind of start stationary from it and then seeing how that kind of builds into. Okay, well, once they get comfortable in that position, can we slowly build them up to getting to that in a dynamic position? And I think there's, there's so. And this is an area that I've, I'm definitely trying to get better at as a whole, because I forget who someone at the conference and mentioned it again. I love it. It's like, every single, every single time, like, every two sentences, one of us, like, yeah, the conference, they said this. Like, I love it. But, yeah, someone had mentioned. Yeah, someone had mentioned, like, you don't. You don't know, like, that player might have, like, an injury history where, like, maybe they. Maybe they, like, really, like, roll. Like, maybe they really badly sprained their left ankle a couple years ago, and so now they're not as comfortable planting on that foot. So maybe they don't like stopping on that foot. And so a lot of times it's like, okay, if a player isn't driving left, is it because they actually can't drive left with their. Like, with their ball handling, or is it because they don't like going left because for whatever reason it puts one of their. It puts, like, it's basically they. They were able to cope in a way that they don't have to go that way anymore. So they kind of ignore that they go right because they're more comfortable and more confident in their ability to go that way. I think that is something huge to understand is, like, it's not always going to be a surface level sort of thing. Like, oh, well, they don't drive left, so they're not comfortable with their left hand. Well, that might be the case, but like you said, it also could be that there's a limiting underlying factor to that as well. I think. I think that's a great point that you brought up right there. And honestly, while we're on it, like, since we keep bringing it up, do you have anything, like, specific from the conference that you really took away that you, like. Like, for me, I talked about last week, like, the first thing was the relationship aspect of it at Tim Martin. It was really the first. The first presentation of the first day where you talked about that. That was, like, my biggest thing. I talked about kind of blending the skill and performance side and then. But for you, like, what were your, like, biggest takeaways from the conference?

Yeah, I really liked. Since we're on Tim Martin, I really liked that he. He mentioned the Rudy Gobert example. So quick background. Like, Rudy Gobert was kind of on the fence for making the All Star Game, and that's a goal that him and Tim really had, obviously. And so I think the Jazz, like, also gave him an incentive, like, he had to average a certain amount of points and rebounds. I forget exactly how many it was. It was, like 15 and whatever. I don't remember exactly. But, like, part of you want to. If you're working with a basketball player, right, and they have goals for themselves, you could have, like, you know, something that. That you have in mind for what's going to help benefit them the most. But if the player is not on the same page, you're not gonna. They're not gonna buy in as much. And so I think a huge part of working with your players is, you know, having. Having dialogue with them, having deep conversations with them about what they want and what. What you think they would benefit from the most and sort of meet in the middle and come to a compromise. That this was a pretty common theme throughout his presentation. He also talked about having a. Having again, having dialogue with players, like, within training. So, like, let's say you're. Let's say you're training somebody or a group of, let's say two, three people, however big it is. And a lot of times what you'll see trainers do is they'll, you know, when they're giving feedback and they interject or like they're just starting a drill and they have to give a little bit of context. They'll like, do like this lecture. Like, they'll. They'll go through their workouts in very lecture in a very lecture y style way where they're saying everything to the players. And there's no, like, encouragement for a response or a dialogue. It's. It's monologue. It's basically monologue. And what he talked about was, you know, maybe instead of a really. This is a really easy thing that you can start doing if you're a trainer is like, change your, like, statements, like lecture statements to questions that invoke curiosity from the players. So, like, let's say you were lecturing them about, like, what, like what decision to make when a big is hedging, like doubling you on a ball screen. Maybe, maybe change that to. Okay, you know, I know he works with. I'm bringing up this example because I saw. I think I saw a clip of him working with Tyrese Maxey and. And a couple other guys, and they were going through a wing ball screen and he's like, he. Instead of like lecturing them, he's like, okay, this guy's hedging the ball screen. Like, this guy is jumping way out. What do you. What different options do you have, do you think, on this wing ball screen? Yeah, and then. And then they start. And it starts. Not only do they answer that. That question directly, but, hey, like, it may encourage them to be more curious, which is what we want players to do. We want players to get past the surface level understanding of basketball. We want players to be. And of course, they're not trainers, but if we can give them a little bit of A space to talk about how. How they're thinking the game and. And what their decision map is like when they actually enter a game. That's huge, man.

Yeah.

So that's something that I've been implementing in my workouts, something that I saw because I came across that clip with Tyrese, like, a while ago before the conference, and when I saw that, I was like, damn. Like, I should really. Like, I should think twice about when I don't give my players a space to talk and give their insight.

Yeah, yeah, no, that. I love that. And kind of. I think kind of like, the biggest thing is understanding that there's so much more beyond just the surface level of basketball training. Right. Like, you have the actual skill part, but we just talked about movement, obviously, but then you actually have, like, how are we affecting them when it comes to, like, their understanding of the game as well, and their confidence as well. Like, there's three major aspects to it that a lot of times, like the. To be too honest with you, the skill part usually is the part that gets focused on, and the other two are just kind of like, oh, well, if it happens, it happens maybe sporadically, but there's never a focus on it. So I think. Would you actually involve them by asking questions? Right. First of all, it allows them to not be able to zone out. Right. If we're going to go through something in a session and they can just kind of coast through, okay, they're going to. They know that you're going to lecture them the whole time, so they can just pick up, like, whatever they need to know, whatever they need to do to get through that drill, they can. They can figure that part out and any of the other details you tried to give them, they don't care. Like, they didn't listen. They didn't. Even if they heard it, they're not going to remember it because you said, you said a 10,000 other words to them. So they can't keep all of that in their minds, so they're going to keep the important stuff. But if you change that to literally, like, asking them about it and instead of saying, like, okay, listen, when you come off of. When you come off of this ball screen, right, and your, you know, your defender, or let's say you come off that ball screen and you kind of drag it out so your screener pops out, okay, what kind of pass. What's an option of a pass you might be able to throw to them right there when you ask them that, they answer thing. Okay, well, I guess I couldn't I wouldn't throw a pocket pass there. I could throw a hook pass there. Now they're starting to put that stuff together, right? And, and so now, like, they have a recall to go back to as well when they're in a game and they have to make that quick decision, obviously not going to think about, okay, well, I'm coming off the screen now, what am I going to do? But they, they have the understanding of, okay, just kind of innately, oh, I go to a hook pass now because my guy popped out. That's the, that's the past to make right here. I think one of the one thing I was talking about is just trying to teach things more implicitly. So I think a way to get through implicitly as well is to ask them and have them answer the questions, because then they're the ones who are actually coming to that conclusion instead of you saying, this is how it is, this is how we're going to do it. And they don't have any skin in the game. They didn't have to actually come to that themselves. They didn't have to actually have any context for why that is. And Tim Martin talked a little bit about creating teachers as well. He's like, we want to put players in a position where we first of all build that curiosity, but as they get more experience, they get better at things. Put them in positions to teach the other players in the session who might not be as familiar with a drill or with a concept that maybe they've already done, they're good at. So he had mentioned that with some of, like his veteran. His veteran point guards. So he's like, well, sometimes I'll have them go through the stuff that we're doing with guys who might be newer so that they first of all are able to kind of work that leadership ability and their communication as well. But also when you have to. I think it was Dev who said, to teach is to learn twice. So if I can have you teach something, also, you have to.