Fake Fundamentals: Volume 4 is available now on Amazon and Apple. This is an excerpt from the Introduction. As with the other volumes, Fake Fundamentals: Volume 4 critiques 10 common beliefs, drills, or fundamentals and provides counterexamples or improvements.
“Coaches tend to continue with old habits rather than continually rethinking what has to be done and how." — Horst Wein
Good is the enemy of great. I first heard this popular aphorism at shooting coach Dave Hopla’s camp. Coaches often implore players to do more, to move outside their comfort zones, to never settle. There is no such thing as good enough. The difference between ordinary and extraordinary is that little extra. Coaches love these sayings and use them in pre-practice huddles, on t-shirts, and posters in locker rooms. However, how many take these messages to heart? While players move outside their comfort zones to practice something new, how often do coaches settle for good enough?
Some Twitter coaches mock the fake fundamentals hashtag because a few have been mainstreamed, if not accepted widely. Even some prominent coaches who responded to my early Hard2Guard Player Development Newsletters to tell me the error of my ways now acknowledge defenders cross their feet on defense (FF1). Shooting coaches who specialized in isolated, block practice now discuss decision-making in shooting practice (FF2), and other coaches question the efficacy of dribbling around cones, using the popular “bones, not cones” mantra (FF3).
Despite these breakthroughs, many people slammed the hashtag when I tweeted, “It's that time of year when college basketball coaches brag about their players’ mile times, and college players post their walks to the gym at 5:30 A.M. #FakeFundamentals” (FF1 & FF2).
I use Fake Fundamentals to encourage coaches to grapple with their current coaching and the reasons certain drills or teaching points persist despite the game’s evolution. Coaches commonly ask, “Why not?” when ideas and information conflict with their experiences. Why not do zigzag drills (FF1)? Why not use fake fundamentals? These drills and teaching points made them into good players; they are good enough. Why not use them at their practices with their players?
Fake Fundamentals asks “Why?” Why teach the same defensive closeout now as was taught prior to the adoption of the three-point line despite the frequency of three-point attempts (FF1)? Why do some beliefs, drills, and instructions persist through generations despite a lack of evidence for their efficacy beyond personal (biased) anecdotes? The game evolves. Why not the common coaching instructions and drills? Including or adding a drill should be harder than excluding a drill. The change is subtle, but coaches should understand their purpose for any drill, practice activity, or teaching point. Something may be right in one situation or with one group, but wrong with another. What is your purpose for the drill or instruction? Never settle.
Vince Anderson, the legendary Track & Field Head Coach at Texas A&M, said, “Drills are only applicable if you’re trying to make a specific point about a position or movement.” Drills should improve a specific aspect of a skill or, in some cases, increase repetitions of a skill or habit. Instead, most drills are so general as to have little effect on skill development. Players improve slightly because of time on task, but the practice environment differs so greatly from the performance environment as to make the same action a different skill. Traditionally, coaches view a skill in isolation and a skill in the game as the same skill, just harder. Instead, skill is an interaction between the performer and the environment. A defender is not something to add to make a shooting drill harder; the defender fundamentally alters the skill.
The discussion of fake fundamentals attests to the dichotomy between these views on skill development. An NCAA Division 1 Head Coach attended an average midseason practice several years ago and asked if we ever worked on skill development. I responded, “Every day.” We practiced dribbling, passing, and shooting in situational and small-sided games, but she pictured skill development as three-player weaves (FF1) and repetitive free throw practice (FF2). Many coaches view individual drills and isolated block practice as more serious, fundamental practice and describe our practice as “just playing”. The nostalgia is cloaked in concerns about fundamentals, mistakes, and the right way to teach and play the game. Skills rely on interactions with teammates and opponents: There are no individual skills.
When a coach has a great reason for using a fake fundamental, by all means continue. The purpose of these books is not to tell someone how to coach or what to do, but to challenge common perceptions. As Tony Holler from Feed the Cats said, “Extreme results never come from centrist thinking.” Continuing along the same path, using the same instructions and drills, and teaching the game as it was taught to a coach years ago is the medium or the beastly moderate attitude, as Nassim Taleb wrote in Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder — a sucker’s game. Coaches hang the posters and wear the t-shirts, but do they follow the message? “Have you coached 10 years or have you coached 1 year 10 times?” Some coaches reflect on their experiences, learn, and improve, whereas others repeat the same behaviors, philosophies, actions, and more from season to season. Throwing a three-player weave into practice is not the problem; coaching without reflection is the issue.
Fake Fundamentals: Volume 4 now available on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0C5CC1VK4/
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