Mirror Neurons and Basketball: How To Improve Twice As Fast

Foreign. Welcome to the Vision Driven Battle Training podcast. I appreciate you guys who are tuned in today on Apple Podcast, Spotify, YouTube, SoundCloud, Pandora, Google Podcast, wherever else may be listening from. And of course, everybody who's watching right now on YouTube, shout out to you guys if you're on YouTube. Make sure you drop a like subscribe if you're new. Got a new podcast coming every Sunday as well as different videos spaced out throughout the week. So if you want to become a better basketball player or if you're. I know I have a lot of trainers too who, who watch my stuff if you want to become a better trainer. That's also my goal is to really just share the stuff that I learn. And almost, you know, people say the best way to learn something is a teacher, right? So a lot of times that's, that's kind of what this is. It's a way for me to become better by trying to help as many people as I can through my own experiences. Through me, just trying to learn more about, you know, becoming the best trainer I can be so that I can help the most amount of players that I can. So I appreciate you guys who are rocking with me who are tuned in. I was thinking about this a lot this week, and I was actually thinking about it specifically during a session on Friday. And there's a, there's a ball handling or a passing drill. It's kind of ball handling and passing. I would throw passing into ball handling. I would kind of, I would, I would kind of merge the two. But we do a drill. A lot of my players, we do a drill pretty much every single workout. It's like a four pass series. We're working on four different passes you might have off of a ball screen. So the first one's like a pocket pass, the second one's a hook pass. The third one's gonna be behind the back balance pass and third one's gonna be. Or the fourth one's gonna be a behind the back chest pass. And so we literally will just rep this out like, you know, without any sort of movement, just literally like rep after rep. Like pound pocket pass, pound hook pass, all that, that stuff will run through it. And I was, I was saying to somebody who was there, I was like, you know, this is stuff that I watch my players do. Like sometimes I'll be the one passing it to them, but I'm never the one, like really doing. I might demonstrate it quickly if I'm working with a player who hasn't done it before or whatever or If I want to make a point about something. But for the most part, I'm just watching it. Like, I'm just watching them do it. And for the majority of my players, like, you know, we'll get in and we'll run through that series in five minutes, right? They just get through it quickly. And. And. But I watched that pretty much every single day. And I was saying, like, you know, it's so weird because I feel like, you know, I was playing pickup the last, you know, over two times this past week, and both times I was, like, throwing those passes that they were working. Like, I wasn't working on those passes, but, like, I'm coming off a ball screen, I'm hitting people with that behind the back bounce pass for a three, and it's like, that's something that I don't ever like. I don't work on that. Like, I'm not the one who's actually physically in the gym every single day working on that pass. I'm pretty much just watching it. And, you know, again, I might teach it. I might teach, I might demonstrate it real quick, but I'm not really getting those reps up. It's my players who are getting the reps up. And yet I find myself going into these situations and actually executing that skill, even when it's only something I've ever watched. I've only watched somebody else do it for the most part, and it feels comfortable to do, right? And you'd think, like, oh, if you're not getting the reps, you probably don't be able to do it. But that was just something that I noticed this week. And this goes back to a conversation I had with my guy, Danny Cooper, on my podcast, like, probably two or three months ago at this point. And shout out to Danny, by the way, and we were talking about kind of in a similar vein, just like, you know, you. You watch this film, like, you'll go on. You spend so much time as a. As a trainer, as a coach, you're watching all this film and, you know, whether it's watching guys that you're trying to learn from in terms of, like, okay, how does this guy do this move? How does that get open? How does this guy do this off this screen? How does this guy, you know, execute coming off of a handoff or coming off of whatever, right? You're looking at these. These different players to learn how they do what they do, or you're looking at these different situations. See, okay, what's the most effective way to score? When there's a defender here, or how does this guy handle pressure or whatever the case may be? You spend so much time watching this sort of stuff that it almost becomes innate, right? And. And you almost. Like, the next time you find yourself in that situation when you're playing, you. You can execute that same thing that you watch just because you've watched it, right? And you almost have like, a little two plus two moment where you're like, oh, yeah, like, that's what I'm supposed to do. And it's. It's hard to explain, but it's a real thing. And that's something that I kind of went back to again this past week. We had the guy that conversation with Danny, and he was like, yeah, man, I literally feel the same exact way. I'll go watch all this film and. And I'll. I'll study all these guys, and I'll go out and I'll do this stuff that I haven't actually practiced before just because I've watched it. And that got me thinking a little bit about the power of mental reps, the power of being able to watch stuff and being able to. Your brain is able to take that and emulate it to an extent. And I wanted to kind of dive into, like, is that. Is that a real thing, or is this just the placebo effect? Is this just me? You. You know, kind of randomly, like, just maybe I'm naturally good at. At that, at those couple things that I tried, or maybe Danny and I are both in the same boat with that. So I wanted to kind of dive into that a little bit and see, like, what is the science behind it. And when I did do a little bit of dive into it, there's a lot. A lot, a lot of science behind why that's a real thing. And. And of course, that's one part of it. I want you guys to understand that. But also I want to give you guys some tips that you can take so that you can get the most out of your workouts. Because. Because I think that understanding this concept of the power of mental reps, there's a lot that you're probably leaving on the table in your workouts because you're only thinking about the physical reps, right? You think, okay, when I go in, it's my turn to do this drill. I do that drill. But when I'm off, it's their turn to do it. And there's a lot more that you can take from other people's reps as well. And then also, when it comes to just Like I was talking about watching film, studying other players, studying yourself. There's so much value to be gained from that as well. So we'll talk about all that sort of stuff. But, you know, the first thing that I want to talk about is just a couple of definitions for you, and a word or a definition we're going to go to a few times throughout this podcast is vicarious learning and observational learning. These are essentially the same thing. Some people would define them a little bit differently, but for the most part, for our purposes, we're essentially just going to use these interchangeably. And essentially all that vicarious learning is, is learning through osmosis, or learning through watching something happen, watching through observing something, as opposed to hands on, you actually going out and doing it. Okay, so there's a lot of examples we can take, you know, to learn from this. Let's say, for example, you want to learn a dance, right? So you go on YouTube and you search up, you know, how to do the Dougie, right? And then you watch a YouTube video on that. And that's how you learn, right? That's an example of you learning through observational learning or vicarious learning, whichever term you want to use. It's a process that allows us to learn from others, right? And this is because, you know, we're able to. It's a very conscious process where you actually have to be kind of locked in mentally, because it's not just about watching, but it's also about feeling, you know, what's happening. It's also about having, you know, being able to be empathetic towards somebody, which just means being able to put yourself in their shoes, right? So you see somebody struggling through a workout, and they're, you know, know doing a bunch of sprints at the end of their workout, and you kind of feel like, oh, wow, that's tough, right? That's. That's empathy right there. So your ability to empathize also goes along with your ability to learn vicariously just through watching the experiences of others, right? When we were in school as little kids, right, and we were learning how to. How to. How to write, you know, your teacher would, up on the whiteboard, would draw the, okay, today we're going to learn how to, you know, write the letter R. And then she'd write the R. And then, you know, you'd see her do that, and then you would copy it on your piece of paper, right? That is vicarious learning or observational learning. You're learning through watching somebody else do it. That's the Same thing. You essentially learned that when it came to talking, right? You saw your, you know, your parents talk, you saw your siblings talk, you saw your friends talk. And kind of eventually you started to pick up how they talk, the things that they said to each other. The most of the stuff that you learned how to say, you didn't learn in school, right? You just learned from being a person, from just being around other people. And that is again, an example of vicarious learning where you're learning not directly through your own experience, but through watching other people learning from other people. And so then the question becomes, what form of learning is better? Right? We learn through directly doing something, right? Going back to that, that writing example, okay? Your teacher may have shown you how to write that letter, but then you had to Write it out 10 times your piece of paper so you could actually practice doing it, okay? And the combination of those two things is how you actually learned how to write. You know, learning how to shoot a basketball, right? You might have somebody, you might watch somebody shoot it, or you might learn from a coach or from maybe you're an older sibling or older cousin or something. They maybe taught you how to do that, but then you're the one who actually went out every day and practice shooting. Okay? So typically for, for the majority of things in your life, it's been a combination of both observational learning, but also learning through directly doing it yourself. Okay? Okay. And so now that we have these two kind of distinct ways of learning, which way is more important for you as a basketball player? Right? If you want to become the most, you know, the best basketball player you can be, if you want to develop at the fastest rate possible, then which way of learning is more important? And fortunately, there's a lot of studies that have, have kind of gone into this. And so the first one was a study and it was actually using medical students, and it was called vicarious learning. During simulations, is it more effective than hands on training? And so essentially what I was looking at is that in a simulation of like. So think about like a training exercise, right? So like a drill, they were taking these medical students and they had, I think there was 200 of them. They split them up into two groups, and essentially what they were doing is they were trying to teach effective communication between doctors and patients, okay. And so they took the. This group of undergrad medical students and they essentially compared the difference between learning it in a simulation style, which was vicariously just by watching or observing somebody else, you know, another doctor and a patient kind of go Through a conversation or go through a situation, you kind of were just observing, kind of vicariously learning what was the best way to go about communicating that situation compared to you actually being the doctor who was communicating with the patient. Okay, so you had that vicarious way of learning through the simulation, but you also had just the, the physical like performance, like you were the one who was actually doing it. And they also wanted to see if the, the order of that matters. So does it matter if we do the vicarious way first and then the actual hands on way or, or, you know, if we do it the opposite way, does that affect the results of ultimately how, how good you become at that communication? And so they split those groups, those groups up into two. And they had one group who did the, the first 30 minutes were just observational, and then the third next 30 minutes were them actually doing it themselves. And the other group was just the opposite of that. Just flip flop those two things. And so in order to measure each participant and their knowledge of effective doctor patient communication, they measured the, their understanding of that before, in the middle and after the entire experiment. So they got a chance to see how each kind of phase, each 30 minute phase of learning affected their overall knowledge of effective communication. And the results showed that vicarious learning actually led to a greater knowledge of effective doctor Patient communication than learning through hands on direct experience did. And the order in which you did this, so vicarious first and then director directing the vicarious, didn't really have any sort of major impact. But the results did show that when they looked at the split test, when they took that first group and they had just learned vicariously and they, they measured to see knowledge compared to the other group who had learned just by doing first, they saw that the group that learned vicariously through observation actually had a greater knowledge and gained a greater knowledge than the group that did it just by doing it themselves. So that in that sense, right there in that study, goes to show that the vicarious method of learning can actually be more effective than doing it yourself. And I probably went through five or six more studies going through this similar sort of stuff, talking about how vicarious learning or observational learning can truly help to accelerate the overall learning process by a lot, probably a lot more than you would think compared to just direct experience. But for now, I'll dive into what this actually means for you as a basketball player. And the moral of the story ultimately is that there's a lot to be gained by observation, right? There's a lot that you can learn through not Just doing, not just going out and working out and getting shots up and going to practice, but by actually learning, being mentally engaged the entire time. There's so much more that you can get out of that. You can take a look at this in the context of practice, right, Observation, the context of just your practices. One thing to understand is that every rep is your rep. If you approach every rep as your rep, then you're going to gain so much more out of that practice, out of that workout mentally than you would if you just focus on your physical reps. You know, there was a video I posted on Instagram on my story a couple of days ago and I'll post it again on YouTube here. And it was of two of the Baltimore Ravens rookies this year, Jason Oway, and it was Dalen Hayes, and they were going through just a, just a drill on like the sleds. And so they had Jason, oh, it was his rep up to hit the sled and Dalen Hayes was behind him. It wasn't even his rep. He was off, but he still, as Jason was lining up to go through his rep, Dalen Hayes also lined up and just went through his rep on air at the same pace that that Jason Owen went through his. So now as Jason always getting his rep in, Dalen Hayes is getting another mental rep in before he actually gets his physical rep. So now just take as we talked about, now he's combining that observational vicarious learning with the actual direct hands on experience that he's getting through his own reps. Okay? So just accelerate the process he's going to make in practice by two because he's getting double the amount of reps. And you could potentially even argue that you can raise that by more than two because again, we look at a study where the vicarious learning actually led to a greater gain of knowledge as compared to just direct experience. If you're actually focusing on getting that vicarious experience, then there's a good chance you're actually accelerating at a rate more than twice as fast. And so that was just a really great example, I thought of taking every single rep as your rep. Now that doesn't mean that you physically have to go through every single rep like Dalen Hayes did right there. But just being locked in and focused on the rep that somebody else is doing is such a crucial piece to you. Being able to take advantage of, you know, our ability. And we as humans have what's called mirror neurons, which essentially allows us to see something and then be able to mirror it and just by seeing that thing, we're actually able to physically do it at a higher level than if we had not seen it. Okay? So by Dale and Hayes, watching Jason Oway go through that rep and really being focused on it, he's actually going to be better when it comes to his rep because of those mirror neurons now firing and him creating those patterns in his brain, they're going to allow him to actually physically execute that skill at a higher level just because he's locked in. The best way for you to get better at a skill is by not only doing it, but also by watching it. So when you can combine those two things in practice, it makes it so that you can accelerate your development of that skill way, way faster than you would by just focusing on doing it physically. And another example of this might be if you're in practice, right? And let's say that you're doing some sort of, you know, defensive drill, like a four on four defensive drill, where you have to make sure that you, you know, are getting into help. You're getting to the right position. One pass away, two passed away, three passes away. And, you know, maybe you're, you're really engaged and you watch your teammate, maybe they make a mistake, right? And because you are now able to kind of, you know, recognize that you say, okay, they did that wrong. So that's something that, you know, I'm taking note of right there. You get in a situation that's a mistake that you don't make because in your mind, those mirror neurons have been firing and you've already made that mistake because like we talked about that vicarious learning, your ability to, to be empathetic, you know, they probably messed something up and they probably got scored on or your coach yelled at them. And because you're able to feel that empathy and like, oh, man, that, that sucks that he got yelled at for that. She got yelled at for that, right? Now that was your rep right there. So you're going to get onto the court and you're not going to make that mistake because you've already made that mistake, right? Mentally, you've already made it because that was your rep right there, okay? And again, those mirror neurons are like, that's the science behind it. That's really how it works. So when you're engaged and locked into other people's reps, you actually accelerate the rate that you develop. And that's something that I'm going to go into even further. Another episode is talking about learning and the importance of not just developing physically, right? Physically and getting better at your skills. Shooting, ball handling, finishing, defense, all that sort of stuff is super important. But what's even more important is just your ability to learn, your ability to adapt all these cognitive abilities that actually are what makes great basketball players. This is where you can really start to gain an advantage, is just by taking advantage of every rep that you possibly can, albeit, you know, whether that be physically, but also every single rep can be yours mentally. Okay? So that's one thing for you to consider again. You can theoretically get two times or more the amount of work in. In a workout or a practice just by being locked into other people's reps as well. And I promise you, you're going to start to see some major, major differences when it comes to how quickly you develop, how quickly you get better, if you can focus on doing that. And so the second piece of this is observation through film study. And this is what I talked about to start off the podcast, where I literally would just watch, like, I'll watch a ton of film on something, and then I'll go into, you know, I'll go play pickup. And typically it's against dudes who are pretty good, too. And, like, I'll be able to execute those things not because I've necessarily practiced it physically, but because I've just watched it. And again, those mirror neurons are firing, and I'm putting myself in the. In that situation, and I'm trying to think, okay, so how does he do that? Or how does she do that? How do they. How are they able to get that shot off? Okay, what do they do right here? And because I'm really locked in and mentally almost putting myself in that position, right? That's stuff that. That my brain goes back to in the context of that similar situation. Okay. So, you know, maybe I watch a situation where somebody comes off of a ball screen and, you know, the defender plays over it and there's a drop right there. So maybe they. They hold the defender on their back and. And then wait for that. That drop defender to either recover back to the role guy or stay on you, and then you go make a play off that. That might be something that I don't practice, but because I've watched it, my brain, like, has a response to that, to that decision that needs to be made. Okay? And that's something for you to be able to see and something that you'll recognize if you really press in. And you actually, you know, spend time just watching basketball and studying players that you want to learn from. And that can be you know, NBA players, college players, other, you know, high school players, whatever that can be. It can be that, but can also be just watching yourself, right? I think that's a super, super valuable thing is, you know, watching your own film and seeing, oh, man, that situation, I should have done that, okay? In that situation, I should have done that. Oh, in that situation. That was the right decision to make, right? Oh, I missed that in that situation. And now when you get into that situation again, your brain is going to have that connection. Your brain's made that connection now that, oh, last time I was here, I should have done that. And then the next time you're in the situation, you know, look at it now, all of a sudden, you actually make that right decision. And that's the power of watching film and the power of literally just observing yourself, right? You can gain so much just from that, right? And you'll see the mental reps pay off in the physical because that's typically how things work, right? It all starts up here. And then that's. That's when you get all the stuff that happens out there. Okay? So, and then on top of that, you can also specifically talking about, like, scouting, you know, watching teams that you're going to play and looking for, you know, situations where maybe you can be effective. So if you're playing a team and you see that they, you know, give up a lot of corner threes on driving kicks because they play really aggressively and help with, well, now, you know, okay, I got to make sure I stay wide and my teammates drive, because I'm probably going to get a chance for some wide open cash, do threes. Or if you see that a lot of times when they're one pass away in deny, they turn their head and stare at the ball, you might know that you're going to have an opportunity for some backdoor cuts, right? And now you're in that situation, your brain is going to have made that connection already, and boom, you're going to have an opportunity to get those backdoor cut looks, and you're going to think about it a lot sooner because you've already taken the time to. To build those connections, those mental connections. And again, that's the power of those mirror neurons being able to, you know, make those connections for you when you actually put yourself and find yourself in that situation. So the power of vicarious learning, guys, and learning through watching other people, watching other circumstances, and just being engaged mentally is. Is beyond valuable. And I think that if you guys take advantage of this, again, I've Seen it myself. If you take advantage of this, then you combine that with the physical practice that you guys are doing. The amount of progress you're going to make is going to be incredible. And that's also going to allow you to continue to become. This is one of the things that snowballs, right? As you get better at learning through observing and learning through picking up things from other people, you're going to get better and better and better at it. So while at first it might seem kind of slow, right, eventually something you're going to be pick up very, very easily. And all of a sudden you can pick things up very quickly by looking at it. And that's going to make you a better learner and again, accelerate your process, your progress that you're going to make. So highly encourage you guys to start approaching every rep like it's yours and take time to study players, study yourself, study situations that you've been in so that you can start to make those connections and ultimately become better players. So I hope that this helps you guys out. Um, and I hope that, you know, you guys have found some value in this if you did. Make sure you guys leave a review for me on Apple Podcasts. Um, and again on YouTube. Drop a like subscribe and comment. Let me know what you think. Let me know if you've ever experienced this before. If, if this is something that, that resonates with you or of course you have any sort of podcast recommendations for me, you have any topics you want to hear about, drop them in the comment section below as well. Make sure you guys give me a follow on Instagram @visiondriven basketball. Uh, you have any questions for me, you can DM me on there as well. I'll talk to you soon. Peace.