Individual Training and the Learning Spiral

Improvement requires more than physical effort.

A few years into my time as an individual skill trainer, I asked a high-school coach about recommending a workout guru to his high-school players.

“We know what they will get from him. They’ll get up some shots and stay in shape. That’s all we want.”

I looked at him unimpressed.

“Coaches worry you will teach new and different things and expose players to new approaches if they work out with you, and they will show up in the fall asking why they aren’t doing these things. The coaches don’t want to think differently or learn new things.”

Coaches favored conditioning over the possibility players would learn new things because the learning would reflect poorly on them as coaches or force them to move outside their own comfort zones to learn new things.

A year later, I worked in a public facility with a young boy whose dad had been a high-school varsity coach and coached a future NBA player, and a high-school girl whose father was a varsity high-school basketball coach. Another father, there to watch his son’s workout in another area, stood nearby and bad-mouthed my workout to the two fathers, unaware of their relationship to me or the players.

He repeatedly said I wasn’t doing anything, likely because I did not run around or yell loudly. I did not demonstrate much, as it was not the first time I had worked with these players, and my style is not to be the center of attention. I was not auditioning for the other parents. It was not a show. It was an hour to help these players improve, and the facility was public and used by many people, not private as I would prefer. The fathers related the same story after I finished. The first asked if I wanted him to say something to the guy. I said no.

People want different things from trainers. I am not there for intensity, effort, repetitions; those are by-products, possibly, but not the focus or my concern. I do not measure improvement through sweat or fatigue. I focus on the skills; effort or sweat may or may not be part of a specific workout. The fatigue often is more mental than physical because of the demands on concentration to improve a specific part of a skill rather than sprint through as many repetitions as possible.

I do not measure success through shots made in a row during a workout with no defense or the lack of mistakes during dribbling drills. These are fool’s gold, as an individual workout lacks the constraints and variables that cause mistakes in games. We strive to make mistakes because the mistakes show we are practicing something they have not yet mastered; there is potential for learning and improvement.

Once players find their rhythm and make a few shots in a row, we move to something new. The practice centers more on the ability to find rhythm and success, not repeating it over and over, as game shots are primarily individual events, not a series. We add or constrain something to increase the difficulty or the complexity once players master a dribbling drill. Repeating movements the players have learned and mastered is not the goal; challenging players to learn new movements or express these movements in new (faster, lower) ways furthers the learning and improvement.

This is the learning spiral from The 21st Century Basketball Practice: You struggle, you improve, you reach the comfort zone, and then the coach perturbs the skill to cause the player to struggle again. The player reaches a new level through each improvement, spiraling higher and higher. Learning is not a linear process with straight and consistent success, although many workouts portray improvement in this manner.

Individual workouts lack the game’s complexity. Therefore, drills should be very specific to solve a specific problem. Otherwise, players further engrain a habit. A poor shooter often does not need more repetitions, as these repetitions improve the consistency of bad shooting! Instead, they need drills to perturb their skill, to encourage or force subtle changes to improve their shooting.

These specific drills may not require a basketball; I often use a medicine ball to induce certain changes. Other players need to rehab an injury that has changed their basic movement patterns. Some young players simply need more repetitions because their skill performance has not stabilized.

The answer is not the same for every player, and using the same workout with every player is not individual training just because no other players are on the court. Individual training should be specialized for the individual player.

I watched earlier this year as a coach said something to a player, and the player made two shots in a row. The coach started talking to the other players about his knowledge and ability to transform players if they only would listen to him more. Meanwhile, the player missed his next five shots. Were the two shots lucky? Small sample size? Did the player immediately revert back to his previous shooting style? If the lessons stick for less than a minute, is the coaching truly transformative? I am not sure if the player has made an outside shot in a game since this practice. Learning and improvement require retention beyond a few repetitions and transfer to other situations, like the game. Otherwise, “you haven’t taught until they’ve learned,” as John Wooden said.

Blaming effort and lack of repetitions is an easy out, as social norms accept and embrace these explanations, especially as adults view children and adolescents as even lazier and more entitled. In the last week, UCLA Head Coach Mick Cronin criticized a player and said about his development, “That’s on him, not me,” before adding, “You can’t call your mommy; she can’t help you,” (Bolch, 2024). Michigan State Head Coach Tom Izzo said sarcastically, “Nothing falls on players anymore” in a post-game press conference video circulating online, then added, “Sooner or later players need to just muscle up.” This passes for coaching because we, as a society, value hard work, effort, and toughness, and undervalue problem-solving, nurturing, and teaching. We hero-worship coaches who show no real answers, just empty platitudes and cliches, and blame the 18-year-olds.

Identifying good coaching or skill development is hard. Only the final result is easy to see, and even then, attributing the improvement to one thing is impossible. I coached a player who transformed from shooting no three-pointers as a freshman to shooting 40% as a sophomore. We worked on her shooting individually, but I also know our system of play, her more consistent role, her personal growth and maturity, her status as a captain, two years of lifting weights, reducing knee pain that started prior to her first year, changing positions, her personal confidence, and more contributed to the improvement. The same individual workouts may not have a similar effect on another player in a different environment or at a different stage. How does one decide if the coaching was responsible for the improvement with so many other variables?

We see effort and sweat. We do not see how a specific drill or feedback creates long-term change. We want the immediate, the now. The player sweating through his shirt and making shot after shot in practice is easy to identify. He is grinding, putting in work. When he makes a few shots next game, the work is showing. What about the personal growth and maturity, confidence, status, playing time, system, and more? Society believes hard work translates to success; the cause and effect are easy to see with the sweaty player and a few made shots. Everything else is more abstract, although no less important.

The sweat and the effort may indicate pushing beyond one’s comfort zone to struggle and initiate another learning spiral, but it may just indicate a long workout, a humid gym, or a lot of running. The effort we stress during individual workouts should center on the mental concentration and the willingness to make and learn from mistakes. The effort is trying something new, pushing oneself to learn something more challenging, not simply completing more repetitions. Learning is a spiraling process, but too many players and trainers sacrifice the struggle of learning something new and improving for greater physical effort that may not improve anything more than conditioning.

Improving conditioning is one piece of the overall performance puzzle, but it is not skill development. We need to match our effort, our feedback, and our drill design to our ultimate goal.

Bolch, B. (2024) Mick Cronin questions players’ aptitude after UCLA struggles during loss to Stanford. Los Angeles Times, January 3.