Why You Should Look Worse In Workouts If You Want To Look Better In Games

Foreign welcome to the Vision Basket Training Podcast. Appreciate you guys who are tuned in today on Apple Podcast or Spotify, Pandora, SoundCloud, Google Podcast, wherever you may be listening from. And everybody who's watching right now on YouTube, drop a like subscribe if you are new. New podcasts coming every week. If you guys are on Apple Podcasts, do me a favor, leave a review for me. Let me, let me know what you think of the show. You have any questions? When I get new reviews, I read them on the show. So if you want me to do that, go ahead and leave a review for me. And again, I appreciate everybody who's tuned in today. So today's topic, as I think is one that I'm really excited to talk about. I think it's going to be really helpful for players and for trainers, coaches. I think there's a lot that you guys can get out of this. And the topic is training with a long term view as opposed to a short term view. And really what that means and kind of like what I want to get into is the claim that it's important that you look bad in workouts if you want to look good in games long term. Okay. And I'm going to explain this a little bit because obviously there's more to it than just that initial statement. There's some, some depth to that. But that's the general point that I want to get across today, is why looking bad in workouts is actually a good thing when it comes to your long term performance in games. And that's the point that I'm going to expound on in today's episode. So kind of hopping into it, having that long term view and long term or shorter, we're going to go to a lot in this podcast. But having that long term view is super important for players and for coaches. And ultimately if you have that short term view and you put too much weight on what's happening right now, how you look right now, how you're performing right now in the short term, in the immediate, then you're actually prioritizing things the wrong way and you're going to be hurting yourself when it comes to getting to the points that actually matter. So talking about getting to games and your overall long term development, that's what needs to take priority over what you're looking like right now in the moment. This is specifically the case in workouts because between workouts and games you have two different goals, right? So in a workout, my goal is to get better. My goal is to get better. That should be the main goal, the main point of a workout and in a game. My goal is to perform as well as I can. So we have two different goals. When you think about it, between a workout and a a game. Yet a lot of times players and trainers especially approach these two things with the same goal. So the goal for a game never changes. It's performance. But a lot of times, players and trainers approach workouts with the same goal, which is, I have to perform my best, I have to look the best in this workout right here. And a lot of times, whether or not they think about it, they actually prioritize that over getting better. And that is ultimately going to hurt you long term. So if you're a player, think about being in a workout, maybe this is by yourself or whatever. And maybe you avoid working on something or doing something that you're not very good at, you're not very comfortable at. You keep trying it, you keep messing it up. And then so what do you do? You revert back to doing what you already are good at, you're already, you know, comfortable doing. And you probably enjoy doing that a lot more. It's probably a lot more fun because you see the ball go in or you don't lose the ball as much. But when you start losing the ball, you start missing shots, so it's a little bit harder for you. And so a lot of times you avoid doing that. Whether or not that's the actual best thing to be doing, chances are. But something you need to be working on, it'll probably be beneficial for you to press into that and be okay with making those mistakes. But a lot of times that's the view. And then for coaches, think about if you are in a workout, maybe it's with a group and you know there's a player that is struggling. And so instead of letting them struggle and kind of figure it out, you immediately are giving them the answers to everything. Okay, oh, you should have stepped there, you should have done that, you should have done this, should have done that. And. And you're just constantly giving them all this feedback. They don't have to learn anything on their own. They don't have to try and figure anything out on their own. You're just giving them every single piece of information that they might need to know. And this is really a human nature thing. You see somebody struggling and you want to help them, but is that actually helping them? Because again, in the short term, yes, it is. It's making them look better right now, but they don't actually have to learn any of those lessons themselves. And that could also be a situation where maybe you start doing a drill and, and they struggle with it a little bit. So you immediately make it way easier for them so they don't struggle with it. And again, they look better in the short term. They probably feel better and more confident in the short term, and you probably feel better as a trainer in the short term because your player looks really, really good. But is that what's going to help them come game time in two weeks? No, it's not going to help them. And you have to think about this from the player's perspective. So obviously they want to look good. Right? Because it's just a human nature sort of ego thing. You don't like, you're not comfortable missing or looking bad. So players are generally going to gravitate towards that view and you as a trainer or a coach are probably going to gravitate towards, okay, well if my players look good, I look good, looks like I'm doing a good job. So that's one thing. But then you also think about if that player has a parent or an older sibling or an aunt or an uncle who's at that workout and they're over on the side, you know, yelling at them every time they miss a shot, or every time they miss a layup, or every time they lose the ball, well, now that player is probably going to try and avoid looking bad or failure even more. So you have those things working against you. The reality is that struggling and messing up and missing shots is a crucial piece to the long term learning that we are achieving, that we are looking to get. And I'm going to kind of define this in a second so that everything kind of comes together. But ultimately we're going to have to sacrifice short term performance in workouts sometimes so that we can get to that long term learning. And what I mean by short term performance is short term shifts in motor behavior that, that can be observed typically directly during a training session or right after that session. All that means that if you do a drill where you're working on mid range pull ups and that player starts off not being shooting very well and then 20 minutes later they're shooting better. That would be short term performance. They look better in the context of that workout. It could be you working on a specific dribble move. Okay, you're working on it between the legs. Maybe they struggle with it at first and 20 minutes later after you practice it, they, they look better in the short term, they perform better short term. So when I say performance or short term performance, that's what I mean. It's just looking better in the context of that singular workout or directly after that workout. And when I say learning or long term learning, that means a relatively permanent change in motor behavior that lasts not just that workout or directly after that workout, but long term. So something that you will see again when that player plays in three weeks from now, right? When I say long term learning or just learning in general, that's what I mean. So there's a distinction right there. That performance, that short term performance is what's happening right now in this workout. And that long term learning is what does that player look like, how well do they play come their game in three weeks? Okay, those are two very different things. And obviously what matters is the game in three weeks, right? The workout right now, like that's not going in the newspaper. There's probably not a ton of scouts who are at that, right? You're not sending that one out to college coaches. You're worried about that game coming in three weeks where there's people who are going to be there and the ultimate, like the record matters, right? Wins, losses, there's somebody keeping score, there's refs, there's coaches, there's all that sort of stuff going on. So we have to think about that. And, and a better way to illustrate this too becomes let's take a player who is really, really good in practice or really, really good in workouts. They make all their shots, they're in the gym working hard every single day. But then games come and they aren't nearly as good. Well, that generally is because their work that they're doing is facilitating short term performance as opposed to long term learning. And so today's what we're going to get into is kind of how we can start to remedy that and help players especially like that, who maybe struggle when it comes to game time to put them in a position where they're able to actually see those, those long term learning improvements. Now the question you might be asking yourself is, well, if I want to look good long term in games, doesn't that mean that my short term performance should be really good as well? And that that might seem like the case off the bat, but it's actually not how things are. And the answer to it really is just not necessarily. Sometimes it will, but sometimes it won't. And when it comes to long term performance, there's something that's called the Goldilocks principle. And for those of you guys who are not Familiar with the Goldilocks fairy tale. Essentially, there's different versions of it, but the most popular version is that there's a little girl who wanders along in the woods and she finds this house. And she walks into the house and she doesn't know it at the time, but it's actually the house of three bears. And the bears went outside to take a walk or whatever because they just made some porridge. And they're waiting for the porridge to cool down. And so the Goldilocks walks into the house and she sees the porridge at the table. So she goes over the table and she sits down on the first chair, which is the papa bear's chair. And the chair was just way too big and it was too hard. She didn't like. She didn't like sitting on it. And the bowl of porridge was way too. It was way too cold, so she didn't want it. So she goes to the next chair, which was the mama bear's chair. She sits in it. And the chair was way too soft and the porridge was way too hot, so she didn't want that either. And then she goes to the baby bear's chair and she sits in that and it's perfect. And then she tries to pour it and it's not too hot, it's not too cold, it's just right. So she eats that. Then after that she feels really tired. So she goes upstairs and she finds a bedroom. And so she lays down the first bed. And the first bed is papa bear's bed. And it's way too big and it's way too hard. She doesn't want to sit on that or doesn't want to sleep on that. So she gets out and tries the next bed. The next bed is the mama bear's bed. And that bed is way too soft. She doesn't like it. So she gets out of that. And then she goes to baby bear's bed. She lays down in that, and that's not too hard, not too soft, and it's just right. And so she takes a nap in that. So the Goldilocks principle basically says that the difficulty in training needs to be just right. It can't be too difficult and it can't be too easy. Because when you do, when you're on either of those ends of the spectrum, the long term learning does not occur right. It needs to be just in the middle, just right for that to happen. So that means that if it's too easy, like you're making every single shot in A workout, you, you're not facilitating that long term learning. So you're not going to see those same effects come game time. Because you're not actually improving, right? Even though it may look like that in the short term, because you're making every shot, that long term learning is not being facilitated when it's too easy. Likewise when it's too difficult. It's the same exact way. You have to find it right in the middle. And so I got this concept, I started thinking about this concept when I read it from Master Hubs. So shout out to them. But they were talking about the zone for optimal learning. And the first part of it is you want to stay out of what's called the thrash zone. So this came from an author, I believe Daniel Coyle is his name, and he basically talked about the thrash zone. So if you are in the thrash zone, that means that you're failing almost every single time, right? So let's say you're doing a drill and you're taking a shot and you're missing like 90% of your shots. So you're going one for 10, basically. Well, that's too much difficulty. So you would need to find a way to scale that back so that it's a little bit easier. Okay, Maybe you're doing a one on one drill and you're losing the ball every single time. You're getting the ball ripped from you every single time. So you might have to find a way to make that a little bit easier because that's, that's, that in that thrash zone, you're mentally checked out because you have no chance to succeed in that drill. It's just too hard. So you're not going to be mentally engaged with that. On the other end of the spectrum, you have just the zone where it's way too easy, right? So you're making 8 out of 10 shots, 9 out of 10 shots, 10 out of 10 shots on every drill. You know, maybe you're doing a one on one drill and you're scoring every single time you're doing a drill, you're making layups every single time. And you're just working on things that you can do effortlessly, easily, you've done thousands of times successfully, and you never mess it up, right? This is where you're succeeding like 90 to 100% of the time. And this is also again, where you're going to be able to be mentally checked out. Because why put in that extra mental focus when you don't need to? Your brain can go on autopilot and you'll be fine because it's something that you can do easily and obviously in a game. We don't want to have our minds in autopilot. Now we'll talk about being in the zone, but I'm making a distinction between being on autopilot and being in the zone, right? Being in the zone is just another level of focus that you have. Being on autopilot means you can completely check out. Think about where you're going to go to eat after the workout. Think, think about, you know, how you're going to get your homework done after the workout. Think about the test you have. Think about the show you're going to watch. Think about, you know, how your fantasy quarterback's going to do in the game tonight. You can do that. When you're in that zone where you're making every single shot and it's really, really easy, you don't want to be there either. So we don't want to be in that thrash zone because we're mentally checked out. We don't want to be in that super easy zone because we're mentally checked out. So we want to be in that zone of optimal learning. And this is the, this is what I got from master hoops as well, where you're essentially succeeding like 60 to 80% of the time. That's a sweet spot because you're succeeding, you're succeeding enough to where you're engaged, but you're not succeeding too much to where you can be on autopilot. You still have to fail and learn from those failed reps, right? So it's the perfect place to be when it comes to long term learning. And so our, as coaches, our job is to put our players into that optimal zone within our workouts. And one way we can do this is just by adding constraints in. So I might tell a player during a closeout drill, hey, you can only go left here. Or maybe I'm trying. We're trying to work on scoring in the mid range. So I say, hey, you can only score in the mid range on this drill. Or maybe we're doing a drill, you know, coming off of a live dribble, right? Maybe coming off of a float dribble. And I say, okay, you get, you get two points for anything you score in the paint right here. Everything else will be one. So now you're incentivizing them to work on something specific or, or you're forcing them to do it again. I might say you get no points if you go right. So now you're forced them to work on going left and maybe that's something that they're not that they struggle with. So you're able to put them into that zone of optimal performance because you think about a player, Maybe they're succeeding 95% of the time that drill and you add a constraint to it and that goes down to 70%. Well, to the player and to anybody who's not familiar with, with the actual what learning actually is, they might think that that's a bad thing, right? Oh well, you went from succeeding 95% of the time to 70% of the time. But you know that them being in that 95% range, that's not facilitating long term improvement long term learning at all. And them going out of that 70% range is actually what's going to help them long term the most compared to them succeeding every single time. So as a coach, we can do that by adding in different constraints and kind of forcing players to do certain things that they might not be comfortable doing. And there's a million different constraints that you can throw into different drills or whatever. But ultimately the goal is to get players into this optimal zone so that their challenge engaged in that long term learning is maximized. And as a, as a trainer or as a coach, your goal should be, and your thought should be not just to put players through workouts, but it should be to be an architect of the optimal learning environment. So you have to find ways to again manipulate constraints, add difficulty or reduce difficulty to different drills that are going to keep players in that 60 to 80% success rate. And that's how you're going to get them the best results long term. Not by putting them in a position where they're going to be successful 95% of the time or putting them in a position where they're going to be successful 15% of the time. We don't want to be in those ranges, but we want to find a way where it's enough success to stay mentally engaged, but not too much that we're the point where they can check out and go on autopilot because it's too easy. As coaches and as players especially, I think sometimes we place way too much credit in what the immediate results look like in a workout or what we look like right now. And I think sometimes as coaches we assess how effective we are at the immediate results that we see in a single session, in a single workout. So did my players look better at the end of the workout than they did the beginning of the workout? And we judge all of our effectiveness based on what the answer to that question is. And the issue with that is that that's not taking into account how powerful the human brain is. Right. So when we give it something super challenging or in that optimal zone of improvement, of zone of learning, where it's 60, 80% success rate with those failed reps, especially, that your brain is going to continue to kind of pick that apart. So even if they go through a workout and they're succeeding about 65% of the time, they're going to go home, they're going to sleep. And I tell this to my players all the time, like, you're going to go home and the way your brain works as you're sleeping, you're not even going to be thinking about it, but you're going to just be going through and your mind's going to be figuring out solutions. Your mind's going to be thinking about, okay, how did I move there? Right? I stepped there. That didn't work. So where should I step next time? Okay, I try to go behind the background there. Didn't work, so what should I do next time? And your brain is going to be subconsciously just working through that. Okay. And so that learning process continues to take place well after that hour long session. Right. As a lot of times as trainers especially, we think that all the improvement happens between 5 o' clock and 6 o' clock PM and then they don't improve anymore until the next time that they go work out. Right. But that's not at all how it works. So we have to understand that the brain is super powerful. And when we as trainers think that all the improvement happens when they're with us, that's, that's taking way too much credit for what their brains are capable of doing. So that's why for me as a coach, I have to make sure that I put my players in that position to where learning is going to take place. Well, after we're done, they're going to be figuring stuff out well after we're done. And that's why a lot of times, and I'll tell them this, like I'll say, okay, listen guys, you're going to go home and you're struggling with this, but you're going to, your, your brain is going to figure it out. And then we come back and all of a sudden the thing that we really struggled with last time, they're doing it way better than when we left off. And they haven't maybe done it at all since then. But again, their brain has just Been like figuring it out. And they've been learning well beyond that last session. So they get back and they're doing something and it's way, way more easy for them. And a lot of times, like, I'll point that out to them, be like, hey, remember last time you like couldn't even do this at all. And now it's like easy for you. And that's because of when we, when we put them in that optimal zone of learning. That's what happens. It's long term learning. Right. And that's why it's called that. It's not just what happens between 5 and 6 o' clock on a Tuesday. It's about what happens well after that that session is done. Okay. And so we need to make sure we put them in that, in that zone and then give them the, give them in their brain the tools to improve. Because ultimately that's what is important. What we don't want to do is create players who are reliant on us. So what I mean by that is that if you are, if you have players in a workout and you're constantly giving them the answer to everything, you're okay, you should have stepped there, should have done that. After every single rep they do, you always have feedback for them. You always have to tell them what the right thing to do was or how they should have done that or how they messed that up instead of sometimes like just shutting up and just letting them figure it out. Then when they get to a game and they have to figure stuff out, they're not going to be able to because you were always a crutch for them where you always gave them the right answer. You always gave them exactly what to do. That's not what we want. We want to give our players the tools to be able to figure stuff out on their own because then they become ultimately way more successful come game time when they have to be able to figure stuff out. So we got to create that environment for them so that they're able to figure stuff out. And that's where we facilitate results come game time. So for players specifically, some actionable things for you to do is, is just look for opportunities to challenge yourself, especially within workouts and pickup. Right. Games that don't really matter. So like I'll tell this to some of my players too. I'm like, listen, you know, you got to look for opportunities to work on stuff that you're not very comfortable doing in the context of pickup or open gyms or whatever you may have where the games don't necessarily matter. Okay, so you might be able to, in your. In your team, open gym, you might be able to just kill everybody. You might be able to just go and do whatever you want, and you might feel great because you went and scored every single time. But how beneficial is that for you? Probably not that. Again, if you're succeeding 90% of the time, probably not that beneficial. Now, let's say that you. You aren't very confident going to your right. Maybe you're a lefty, you love going left, but when it comes to going right, you don't. You don't like to do that. So maybe the next time in your workouts, you think about just going right as much as you can. And maybe now you only succeed 70% of the time. But guess what? We already talked about it. That's better for you. It's better for you to be succeeding 70% of the time than it is 90% of the time. Now, obviously, again, this is different. Come game time, we want to succeed 100% of the time. But when it comes to the games that don't matter and you're trying to get better, then we want to be in that 70 range. So first of all, you have to look at that, say, okay, is this a game that matters or is this something that does, like the score doesn't matter? If that's what it is, then it's about getting better. And if that's what it is, you got to find a way to put yourself in that 60 to 80% range in terms of success. So whatever that might mean for you, it just means putting constraints on yourself. So from a trainer perspective, like, I'm constantly putting constraints on my players throughout workouts, but sometimes if you don't have somebody to do that for you, or if you are playing pickup or whatever, then you as a player should find ways to put constraints on yourself and make it more difficult. And then for coaches, you want to look for opportunities to become that architect, right where you are constructing the perfect training environment, where it's not too easy, it's not too hard, but it's just right. That Goldilocks principle. And you have to allow players to fail sometimes. And you can't just always go and come to the rescue and give them the right answer every single time, too. Sometimes you have to let them fail and let them think about it and let them figure it out. Okay, again, give that. Give their brain the ability to do what it does best, which is solve problems. And that's how you're going to create players who actually have that long term success. And, and that's how you create long term learning within your workouts. And so you don't want to like, you have to get away from putting so much stock in what you see right now, in the immediate present, what you see from your players. Okay, Just because a player got better between, you know, 5 o' clock and 6 o' clock doesn't mean that they're necessarily going to be any better come game time in two weeks. Right? It's very easy to, to manipulate an environment to make them, to make it look like they got better when they actually didn't. Because all you did was work on stuff that they're already good at that is already super easy for them. So they were on autopilot thinking about that episode of, you know, they were just watching the Haunting of Hill House on Netflix. They were just thinking about that and they were, they literally were, were down a whole wormhole deep dive into that, that Netflix show for 45 minutes of that workout because they didn't have to think about anything else because they were just, they're just getting up shots they're already good at. Right? That's what happens. And then when they get to a game and they can't be checked out, thinking about Netflix shows the whole time, well, do you expect them to still be at that 95% success rate? They will not be there. Okay. So find ways to manipulate those constraints and make drills easier or more difficult just depending on how things are going and prioritize long term and them learning stuff long term over just the immediate, the immediate present right now. And that's how you're going to get the best results. And that's ultimately why they're with you, right, is to get those results long term, not to look like heroes in workouts. Okay? So I hope that helps you guys out. And you know, if you guys have any extra questions on this, make sure you drop them below. Send me a DM on Instagram @ Visionary Basketball too, as well. If you want to talk any more about this, you have any other podcast ideas or video ideas or any other questions for me, just let me know. Like I said, guys, if you are on Apple podcasts, do me a favor, leave a review, let me know what you think about the show. I appreciate everybody who's listening and watching on YouTube. Make sure you drop a, like, subscribe if you're new. I'll talk to you guys soon. Peace.