In this week’s episode, we’re joined by Dr. Dave Collins for a wide-ranging conversation on coaching, skill acquisition, practice design, and the importance of knowing when different methods fit.
As ecological dynamics, the constraints-led approach, cognitive science, and predictive processing continue to shape modern coaching conversations, Dave brings a balanced and practical lens to the discussion. Rather than treating any one approach as the answer, he pushes coaches toward a more useful question: what are we trying to achieve, with this group, in this moment, and why?
The conversation explores how coaches can blend different approaches across the season, from early skill development and player understanding, to building shared mental models, anticipation, team coordination, and decision-making under pressure. Dave also discusses the role of film, small-sided games, representative practice design, and the value of moving between “thinking slow” and “playing fast.”
We also dive into resilience, failure, and the “informed art” of coaching, including how coaches can design challenges, debrief effectively, and help players learn from both good and bad days without turning every setback into a vague motivational slogan.
For coaches interested in ecological dynamics, constraints-led coaching, cognitive science, predictive processing, player development, anticipation, practice design, and team learning, this episode offers a grounded look at how theory can become more useful inside real coaching environments.
What You’ll Learn
- How ecological dynamics, cognitive science, and predictive processing can all fit inside a coach’s toolkit
- Why the best coaching answer is often not “which method is best?” but “what does it depend on?”
- How coaches can build shared mental models within a team
- Why film still matters, even inside representative and constraints-led practice environments
- How to use small-sided games, whole-part-whole teaching, and purposeful practice design
- Why anticipation is shaped by experience, scouting, understanding, and focused attention
- How coaches can move players from “thinking slow” to “playing fast”
- Why resilience is often overused, misunderstood, and better treated as an outcome than a fixed trait
- How to design challenge, failure, and pressure without overwhelming players
- Why adaptive expertise may be one of the most important qualities for modern coaches
Transcript
Dan 02:02
Before we jump in, we thought it’d be helpful to quickly frame a few of the ideas underneath today’s conversation. We’re going to touch on three of the big ideas in skill development. The first is ecological dynamics, which asks how players learn through the interaction of the game. Teammates, defenders, space, timing, affordances, constraints. In coaching terms, it’s about designing practice environments that help players solve real basketball problems. The second is cognitive science, which looks at how players process information, use feedback, build understanding, and make decisions. This is where coaching language, cues, film, and intervention matter. The third is predictive processing, which suggests that players are not just reacting to the game, they are constantly anticipating and predicting what is coming next. The best players and teams are often able to recognize patterns and update their expectations quickly.
With these frameworks in mind, let’s dive into our conversation with Dr. Dave Collins.
Dan 03:02
Dave, we wanted to start with this. You wrote a great paper called It Depends, Coaching. In our world right now, the CLA ecological design has gotten bigger and bigger, but there’s also these other approaches, predictive processing, cognitive sciences. I wanted to just throw it back to you on the melding of coaching styles and philosophies and how that looks going forward.
Dave Collins 03:28
Okay, happy to. This is a book that we’ve just done that covers all that. Yeah, you’re right, there are probably three broad approaches out there. There were two, for me anyway, there’s now a third. And it’s a case of, for me, all of them have something to offer. I’m not dissing cognitive, I’m not dissing ACO, I’m not dissing predictive processing. I think they all have something to offer. I think the second thing to recognize is that the differences, to an extent, might be of more interest to academics than they might be to coaches. In other words, if you subscribe to this view or this view, what difference will I see? If I turn up and watch your session or in one of your players, what will I feel? What will go on? And frankly, sometimes not a lot.
And secondly, some of these things have moved closer together. Third factor is for me, because my doctorate was in neuropsych, and I’m interested in how things work and why. I’m always going, okay, so how does that work? So if, for example, I would explain getting a team to work in the same way, through an approach called shared mental models, that comes from a naturalistic decision making. I know that my colleagues in the ecological world would talk about attunement. And I’d say, okay, how does that work? Because if it works so that someone learns it isn’t installed in any way, whatever, we’re talking mechanisms, and then predictive processing or active inference or whatever, you know, there’s a number of different titles, again, academics like to get their names into the learned journals, viz or Abino or whatever, but they like to get them in, they’re mad, whatever, but they like to get their names in. And therefore, they very often, understandably, but not sometimes to the best interest of the coaches, they come up with nuances. And so from where I’m coming, myself and my colleagues, we would refer ourselves as pracademics. We’re academics, but we’re trying to make a practical difference.
So all of the guys that you saw on the It Depends paper are coaches, pretty much all the guys I work with are coaches, or performers, and academics as well. And in closing, this answer, I’m very familiar with a friend of mine who used to work at INSEP, which is the Parisian, the Center for French sports performance in Paris. And he said that he would always be asked by the coaches, why the scientists were so insistent upon answering questions that didn’t need to be asked. So very, very much, where am I coming from? I’m saying I recognize that all of these different approaches have somebody to offer. I’m probably more aware than many as to where that one fits, that one fits, that one fits. But I’m also very keen that when someone is making a decision as to which approach they might use, they look at the mechanisms of it. Sorry, one other thing, I realize that in making this statement, I have been pilloried, often behind my back, but rarely, but in a little bit about how can you do that?
Dave Collins 06:22
How can you be so stupid, unquote, as to, you know, mix up these approaches? And my answer is, it’s called real life.
And that’s where I’m coming from. So as a coach, as a coach, developer, as a researcher, as a practitioner, I’m saying that there’s a whole variety of different methods, which method you choose, it depends.
Dan 06:43
So the coaches listening, I think, have some familiarity with the CLA, ecological design. Could we maybe for a second, before we talk a little bit more nuance about the three different approaches, maybe go a little deeper on the other two, which you mentioned, the predictive processing and then the cognitive sciences.
Dave Collins 07:00
Two things on that. I’ll do it chronologically because the cognitive or the information processing approach is the older one. ECD has been around since the 40s or earlier, but certainly that was the one that was based. When I went through Penn State doing the Masters in 1980, that was a thing we studied. When I was at college learning to be a teacher, that’s the thing we studied.
So the cognitive approach is saying that, for example, there’s a lot of things that each approach will use whereby, if they want to be critical of the other approach, they look at a straw person of what’s going on. I think that they often choose a straw person that’s an extreme. For example, cognitive approach would say, I look at a situation and I evaluate what’s going to happen and I make decisions on that by referring it into my brain and thinking about what am I seeing, what does it mean, etc., etc. Whereas the ecological approach would say, no, all the information you need is in the display. You don’t need to have this internal representation. You don’t need to go through it. The predictive processing approach would say, well, sometimes you do, sometimes you don’t. Now, to that extent, it’s a little bit of a halfway house because it’s saying, I think this is most likely to happen. Therefore, I will wait, focus my focus onto the picking that up. If that occurs, if my prediction was correct, that occurs, I’ve probably already got my response already sorted. If something different occurs, I go, gosh, this is where it gets technical because the scientists call it a surprise. Isn’t that technical? So if I’m surprised that I go, blow me or whatever the expletive and I’ll now need to think about it. So cognitive, the idea that things are going into your head, they’re being interpreted by some form of internal representation or internal processing. Ecological, the idea that all the information in front of you has what you need. You don’t need to do that. In fact, one of the biggest things from the ecological approach would be, you can’t do that because it doesn’t work quick enough. And then the predictive processing that says, well, I’ll look, I’ll make a guesstimate a prediction as to what’s likely to happen. And if that happens, according to my prediction, it’s all right, because I’ve already got my responses ready. And if it doesn’t have to go, gosh, a little bit back to the drawing board, think about that. I wonder why that happened. I wonder what I can do now.
Pat 09:37
Dave kind of sitting in these three fields, you talked at the top about it depends. It’s kind of blending and it’s finding where each of these fit in and your experience to better understand these three and how they interact.
Where do you feel that each of them maybe has their limits or where you shouldn’t stick too long in predictive processing because this is actually maybe where CLA or cognition is a better application where each of these ones may can have a limit as coaches try to find where each of them fit in.
Dave Collins 10:05
is a personal opinion. I find people in each of these areas somewhat evangelical. They’re a little bit, this is how it is. So I’m always going, well, okay, but maybe there’s something nuanced here.
But in simple terms, for a simple man like me, the cognitive approach offers a good explanation of how people learn initially. So how you would coach younger players, it doesn’t mean that you drill the heck out of it. It doesn’t mean you break it down. But it means that they need to learn what’s going on, especially if we’re talking about techniques. The constraints, the ECD approach works very well with people once they’ve got established, and especially when they’ve got enough equipment, mental, physical, technical, tactical to be able to come up with their own answers. So it’s a process of creation, or co-creation, where the coach is giving them a challenge and shapes what they experience, so they come up with their answers. Predictive processing is probably, as I say, something that you could use at any stage, but for me, more likely when someone’s got that base. So if you were to think of early stage, low level, getting their ability to co-create, I’ve got sufficient vocabulary and constructs and concepts to be able to come up with answers, this thing over here, I’m now thinking through even more. Big difference. And something as a coach, I want you guys to ask themselves, is the importance of understanding. So my ability to be able to verbalize to you, okay, they’ve got a 1-3-1 defense, they’re man on man, therefore we’re probably going to do this. How can I verbalize that? Can I spot it? Can I understand it? And how important is that verbalization or understanding against my ability to do what it takes to break that down, that defense, or attack it?
Dan 12:05
Dave, go a little bit deeper on the blendedness of these three approaches, and I think one of the things that comes up a lot in our world with basketball, and a lot on this podcast too, is when you’re training for basketball, there’s all these different times of the year, or goals, I guess you could say, when it comes to coaching. At certain times, you are trying to build skill.
Certain times, you’re trying to just isolate certain things as a coach. But then, in a season, then you’re trying to have more team cohesion and this shared cognition where you understand how all five players are moving and playing together. It’s a little different of a goal than it would, say, be in a player development session. And so, going more towards the team approach in these models, trying to get five players on the same page with movements and processing information and predicting where people are gonna be and those kinds of things, where do you see these models when it comes to more of a team approach, rather than just an individual skill approach?
Dave Collins 13:00
It’s the role of understanding. So if I’m now playing on your team, and you’re going, look, these are the sorts of approaches we use, these are the sorts of techniques. Now, you know, I played American football to a reasonable level. And we would say, right, this circumstance, we’re probably going to call this defense, we’re going to do this, this is how we’re going to attack, or we’re going to attack like this. But in each case, there were options. So the team understanding, what I would refer to, and what the literature in a cognitive approach would refer to as a shared mental model, would give me a sort of an overall structure. Okay, I’m playing this defense, here’s our team, we’ve got these sorts of players, this is what our strengths are, this is where we’re weak. Okay, we’ll probably attack in general, this way, that understanding, which, in my opinion, players should be able to articulate and discuss between themselves, will shape my focus.
So of course, if, for example, I make a feint, and the defender does or doesn’t take it, then my reaction to that is very, very quick, it has to be very quick. And in that circumstance, the ideas of constraints that approach or the idea of getting me used to spotting and not spotting those differences will be very sensible. But the extent to which I have expected, I’m playing Patrick, and Patrick is particularly quick, very quick on his feet. Yeah. And therefore, my expectation is that he will play like this, or I’m playing Dave, Dave is not very fast on his feet, he’s slightly larger than the average bear, I ain’t going to run into him. And there’s no getting around him without a long walk. However, the nuances of what I would do will be detected about the higher order plan, which we as a team have down to a sort of a lower order plan, which is me for you. So what I’m saying is that the different levels of that, the different levels of thinking, levels of planning, levels of perception, what would you look at? What would you focus on? Well, again, this is another difference. So if we go back to my answer a moment ago, and I say, I think the cognitive is more important when you’re early, and you’re learning, and then it becomes this co creation, and then it becomes this, it’s also a case of a level thing. So the model might tell me what I should and shouldn’t do. I think I’m going to try this sort of attack. But as a player, there will be information coming to me that will tell me whether I should carry on with that attack, or whether I should go no, stop, start again. And the levels of that decision making are where does this interaction for me.
Pat 15:41
to kind of drill down on that model, kind of that decision tree, and your work with coaches, when it look in a practice setting, and maybe it is, again, finding this blend, but coaches that really instill these mental models and help the players with anticipation, what does that look like when it’s going right? How coaches then build a practice around really building out these mental models?
Dave Collins 16:05
I refer you to some work I did with a lady called Pam Richards, who’s a field hockey coach of the highest level. One of the things she did was she would coach select teams, where you selected a number of players and you’re trying to get them together.
Are you familiar with some work by a guy called Daniel Kahneman, which is thinking fast and slow? Yes. We called it thinking slow to think fast. Yeah. Okay. Nothing like plagiarizing a title. Okay. And the idea is this, you look at your players and you go, I’ve got these players. They’re all five foot six, last, I better play a certain style. I’ve got this team. They’re all seven foot six, ah, I’ll play a different style. So I would come up with my style on the basis, like an alpha plan. I would then, in no particular order, we might play games and I might ask them, okay, give me a key point. Give me something where things got difficult. Give me a point that was like a key decision. Oh, well, when they did this, I was really unsure what to do. Okay, fine. Right. Let’s now trace that and look at it. Let’s use match analysis. Let’s use video. Let’s use X’s and O’s, you know, all the stuff that you guys do, chalkboards, whatever, whatever. That’s what we’ll do. That’s the slow bit. We’ll take some constructs and we’ll take them over here into the fast bit, which is practices that challenge that. This is where the constraints that approach is really very accurate and very, very right. I need to put people in situations where those challenges come out. Then I’ll go back and we’ll talk it, play board it, you know, whatever. And then we’ll go round and we’ll go round and round this circle of slow to fast to slow to fast to slow to fast. And what will happen is our alpha plan, we’re all six foot six, we’re all seven, whatever. So my alpha plan will become their beta plan because they’re now talking to each other and they’re now feeling that they’re involved and they’re now feeling like they’re co-creating what’s going on. And then at the end of the day, we have a shared metal model. Jobs are good and we know. So if Dave, Dan and Patrick all play on the same team, God help you guys. But we all play on the same team. If I’m on the ball, you will go, oh, Dave’s on the ball. He likes it like this. I’ll make this movement. I’ll make this cut. He’s likely to do this sort of thing in this sort of circumstance. And the higher order thinking planning is going to be like a cognitive predictive processing. And the lower order is going to be me reacting and me reacting very quickly using all the information that’s in the display because I haven’t got the time or indeed, and this is where the ecological dynamics is correct, the need to go inside and refer it to some internal representation. So you’ve got this alpha plan round and round and round and round with me as the coach, orchestrating, teasing out the points they want to talk about over here, and then orchestrating practices that set it round and round and round and round and round, eventually, beta plan. It’s their plan that I’ve co-created with them.
Pat 19:18
In this process, what is your thoughts or recommendation on how coaches can improve film or how they should be thinking about how they use film to teach their players?
Dave Collins 19:29
You don’t ask easy ones, do you? In actual fact, Patrick, what you’re asking is a key question, because if all the information is available in the display, if the constraints-led approach is the answer and the only answer, why would I use film? Why would I sit on my backside watching the TV and watching a video? Because the amount of information, it’s not meaningful.
You might have heard this word. It’s not representative enough. It’s not like the real situation. I don’t even work in a real situation. My point is video is great, because video is giving me a chance to sit back and go, now, hang on a minute. In that circumstance, why did I do that? Bloody hell, why did he do that? Let’s talk about it. Let’s get a better understanding. Now, I can take those situations and put them into the fast bit and then debrief them. So I think that video is great. And I think video offers a number of different purposes. And again, which purpose? Well, guess what? It depends. So I might use video from a high position, where I could look at the relative positions of the players. My coaching was in rugby, American football, in team sports, it was like that. I would be looking from the end. I wouldn’t look from the side. I’d look from the end, because I’m getting a sense of what they’re looking at, if that makes sense, and where the relative movements and relative positions. Were I interested in those relative movements, I would take shots from behind one ring, looking at my attack or defense from above almost so I can see where we’re going. Whereas sometimes I might use player eye view. I might go, let’s look at this guy working against you. Let’s look at his movements when he’s trying to get around you. We’ve shot video over your shoulder. We might even have used, I mean, if you’re getting clever, might even use the chest cam to see what you’re looking at and what’s coming back. Let’s debrief that. Let’s work that. So the use of video is quite variable. And therefore, the type of video I’m using is quite variable, because the purposes I’m using it for are quite variable.
Dan 21:36
We wanted to take a quick second and say how much we enjoyed being out at the NABC Convention in Indianapolis. We had a great time hosting our classroom session and connecting with so many of you throughout the weekend.
We’re also really excited to continue partnering with the NABC going forward as we both look to support coaches through better ideas, teaching, and a shared commitment to development. And while the convention may be over, the NABC’s work with coaches is year-round through clinics, resources, mentorship, and a community that spans every level of the game, it’s a place to stay connected and keep growing. You can learn more at nabc.com. The off-season looks quiet from the outside, but coaches know better. It’s film, portal lists, and recruiting boards, all running at the same time. Huddle keeps it from becoming a logistical nightmare. Sports code, fast recruit, and Huddle Instat all in one place. One workflow instead of three browser tabs and a spreadsheet. The programs that clean up their operation in May are the ones who aren’t scrambling in September. Learn more at huddle.com slash slapping glass today.
Pat 22:44
When we go to the court and like you said, we’re going to put them in games. Again, if we look at through the lens, I want to build out this shared mental model.
The role of, you know, for basketball, it’s five on five versus small sided games. We’re going three on three, four on four versus if we’re trying to build a model, where does that fit into three on three, four on four? Just always five on five. What the game will represent or what the game’s going to feel like. What’s the answer? It depends.
Dave Collins 23:09
on the nosy, all right? Now, again, some people give me loads of stick and say, that’s just game-saying. That’s just avoiding. No, no, no, no, no. The it depends is the first bit. What it depends on, aha, right? So where might I go? I’ll have 3v3. Where might I go 2v2? When I coach rugby, I break everything down into a 2v1. We move to exploit and put my players in a position where it’s a 2v1. And then the 3v2 is just another version of that. And then a 4v3 is another version of that. And then a 5v4 is another version of that. So I might vary the numbers of defenders I’ve got or attackers I’ve got, depending on the purpose of what I’m trying to get over. Makes sense?
So what I’m going is, what am I after? Now, here’s where you go with the purpose of practice. Because when I’m talking to a coach, I’m going, we want purposeful practice, we don’t just go there and have a go. It’s what it’s sex, comedy, and coaching. It’s all about timing. It’s what am I doing when, in what circumstances? And therefore, 3v4 overload or under load practices would be excellent for certain purposes. Now again, be careful because the received wisdom is that you must have representative design.
A representative design means that what you’re looking at is a circumstance that’s real to the eventual target. So if my eventual target is 5v5, only working 3v3 won’t be as good as working 5v5. And then we start getting into ideas of fidelity. Whereby, for example, experienced F1 drivers might go on one of the simple tools, the simple games, like Grand Prix, just to learn the course. It doesn’t need a very representative, a very accurate high fidelity situation.
So again, what am I trying to achieve? What’s my outcome goals? What steps do I think will take me there? And will they progress through? In the old days, they used to talk about progressive part or whole part whole. So I’m sure you guys are very good breaststroke swimmers.
Pat 25:27
Naturally.
Dave Collins 25:27
Oh, okay. I float really well, so I’m fine. So when you’re learning breaststroke, generally someone hands you a float and says, hold that and do your legs. And they say, put the leg float between your legs and do your arms. And then you say, do the two together, then you try and coordinate them. And there’s always some poor beggar who’s going like the clappers and moving backwards. And generally, as a coach, I would draw the attention to class and we’d all laugh. So the difficulty comes if you are a progressive part coach of, at the end, you’ve got to put these bloody bits together.
As a general rule, okay, and I’ve never ever used the words absolutely in my life. So apart from to say that anybody who absolutely tells you they know what they’re doing is absolutely wrong some of the time. Anyway, what you do is you look at whole part whole. So we’re working this defense. Let’s do this little bit. Let’s put it back into the whole thing. Let’s do this little bit. Let’s put it into the whole thing. So whole part whole is a pretty good way to work, whether I’m teaching someone to lay up, or I’m teaching them a complex offense against a particular defensive set, whole part whole, generally, because it means I have to keep slotting what I’ve got back into the situation.
Dan 26:41
Dave mentioned a couple times and it’s something I’ve always been interested in is anticipation and how the best players are able to just anticipate movements or decisions, a very minimal split second before, say, your average player or even a good player. And then also that teams anticipate each other’s movements at a higher level and the coordination of movements and cuts and all that within these three blended approaches. Sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry.
Dave Collins 27:10
and there’s something else. They also dummy because they think they know what they’re looking at, but therefore we’ll give them what they think we’re going to do and then we’ll do something else.
So yes, I’m sorry.
Dan 27:22
Correct. Yeah.
So, you know, when it comes to these three frameworks, where does anticipation come from? How do we build it as coaches? Because I think from a representative design, you’re playing off of affordances and all that versus the predictive processing you’re kind of predicting where people are. And I guess the question is, where does anticipation come from and how do we as coaches get closer to building that for groups?
Dave Collins 27:43
I can only answer from my knowledge and experience, and I think you might like to ask that question of an ecological dynamics disciple. For me, anticipation comes from me thinking it through. So what I’ve done is I’ve got to look in this circumstance, I think this might happen. If that’s going to happen, I’ll get things ready.
And that’s what scouting is, isn’t it? Scouting is you saying to me, so Dan and Patrick and my coaches, they’re going, look, Dave, you’re playing this mob, they’re likely to do this. So weight your focus, expect that coming. And so that anticipation is a cognitively driven focusing of attention to see what I expect, what I predict, right? Now that level of anticipation is good when it’s internal. I’ve played you before, how often will an NBA side play the same team in a season?
Dan 28:36
maybe four or five times.
Dave Collins 28:37
Jeez, I’ve played you four or five times. I know that you like to do this. Last time you nutmeg me, you did whatever, I’ll have you. But of course, my anticipation can be driven externally as well, can’t it?
It can be driven by you saying to me, watch this, Dave. This probably means this happening. Now again, I’d say to you guys and I’d say to all the coaches, think of the role of understanding. Think of the role that the player being able to articulate this sort of player, this sort of defense, this sort of offense, this sort of opponent means this is more likely to happen. And then sitting down afterwards and going, well, did you get it right? I coach all the martial arts, or used to anyway. And one of the things for you to martial arts is we’ll do a lineup. So you’re a judo player, you’re gonna fight a judoka, you’re gonna fight five different opponents. And I might say to this guy, like, I want you to fight like this. I want you to be left-handed and do that. I want you to fight like this, I want you to fight like this. So now I’m gonna come out. One practice that I would use is to go, right, okay. You’re fighting him, on you go, dum, dum, dum, dum, dum. Now, 30 seconds later, right, what’s he like? Okay, what are you gonna do? Fine, fight him for two minutes. Next one, ah, 30 seconds, what’s he like? What are you gonna do? Yeah, now here, I’m training their ability to think on their feet, hopefully not on their back, in terms of who am I fighting? But also, my ability to stay on a plan. So afterwards, I might go, okay, you’re brilliant, you read him, your plan was absolutely right, but you just fell away because you didn’t stay with him. Or this guy, your plan was, tosh. You read him completely wrong, but by gosh, you stayed with your plan, yeah? But ideally, I want both. So the short answer to your question is that this sort of anticipation is something which, for me, is a cognitively mediated process. And what it does is it focuses, shapes, weights. Are you okay with this weighting scale? Yeah, I’m expecting this, so I’ll look for this, you view. By the way, that also applies to intuition. I don’t think that we pop out the womb with a marvelous intuition for how I’m gonna coach basketball. If we did, it would be an interesting birth. What we do is we go, I’ve acquired this, and I’ve thought about this, and then I might check my ideas against my experience, and that gives me an intuition. Again, when we’ve researched this and we’ve researched it across a wide variety of coaches, they’ll do something, and then you’ll go to them, why did you do that? And mostly, if they’re really good, they’ll have gone, well, because I thought, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh. Just out of interest, there’s a type of knowledge called tacit knowledge, which you don’t know you’ve got, you don’t know where it came from, which might make you very, very clever and very good, but might be a beggar to work with, because you’re unable to tell me what you’re doing and why.
Dave Collins 31:41
Whereas, if you’ve got the declarative knowledge that says, I know what I’m trying to do, and I know why I’m trying to do it, now you can articulate it, you can shape it, you can communicate it, and things seem to progress a little bit easier.
Dan 31:58
Dave, this has been amazing so far. You should get out more than you should get.
Dave Collins 32:02
out more fish is amazing.
Dan 32:06
We’d like to transition now to a segment on the show we call start sub or sit. We’re gonna give you a question with three different potential answers. You’ll start one of those, sub one of them, and sit one of them. So this start sub sit has to do with, we’re just calling it overuse but misunderstood buzzwords. So things that maybe coaches say or bring up in practice or they read about that overuse might be slightly harsh but for the purposes of this question we’re gonna use it.
But all these maybe require more nuance. So your start here would be the one that does require the most nuance to understand as a coach. So option one is the term resilience. Option two is the term emergence. Option three is the term growth mindset. The start sub sit overuse but misunderstood.
Dave Collins 33:01
Resilience, growth, mindset, emergence. OK, anything else? Or can I go now? You can go now.
All right, fine. What do you get your money’s worth? OK, resilience is staggeringly overused and it’s staggeringly overused for three reasons. One, what’s resilience? Now, 15 years ago, there was a thing in psychology called mental toughness. And that was everything. Everybody wanted to be mentally tough. Now, everybody wants to be resilient.
So putting resilience and saying this is resilience training is like putting low fat on something at the supermarket. Everybody buys it. So my problem with resilience is firstly, it’s so ill-defined. Secondly, in part because it’s ill-defined, how it’s achieved is not clear. So, for example, we have a set of underpinning skills we call the PCDEs, psychological characteristics of developing excellence, which you can draw on in different combinations, almost like a hand of cards to achieve what you want. So if resilience in this circumstance is what you want, Dave will need this combination and might use a different combination. Atrick, a third. Dave might use this combination now. Two months later, he uses a different combination. So resilience is almost like an outcome. It’s not necessarily a characteristic. But of course, some people define it as so. It depends. Here we go again. All right. So firstly, it’s ill-defined. Secondly, how it’s achieved. And thirdly, might there be circumstances where you don’t want to be resilient?
Might there be circumstances we want to go in that circumstance I should have just given up? Growth mindset is somewhat similar. Growth mindset is a marvelous idea. OK, so you want to have a mindset that says that you’ll get better if you practice. If you don’t have that mindset, why the heck are you going to see a coach? Right. What a counterintuitive waste of bloody time. What’s the only thing to do? So of course you want a growth mindset. But the problem with the construct of growth mindset, which sounds so wonderful and intuitive and obvious, is once again, how is it defined? How is it achieved? And might there be circumstances where you don’t want it?
Emergence. I’ve heard it defined in so many different ways and explained in some different ways. I think if someone says to me that this is a behavior which will emerge by shaping, then I’m going, fair enough, that’s fine, you know, that’s all right, I can see that. As I say, I’m a martial artist, so I think my response to that sort of fighter will emerge as I develop it, and that’s fine. But again, these are terms that are knocked around and you just go in, are we sure about what that looks like? That’s emergent, that’s not. Are we sure we know the mechanism by which it is best enabled? But like so many terms, I thought you might use affordance or attunement. They’re terms that have come from a particular way of looking at things.
Dave Collins 36:02
My perspective would be, if you’re coming up with a new term, you need to show how your new term is more parsimonious, has better explicative power than the old term. So there used to be a thing called a motor program years and years ago, and the idea of a motor program is pretty dated and shown that it doesn’t work well.
Generalized motor programs, a little bit better, but they were evolutions and they were people. I don’t know, I’m not old enough to remember when we thought that the sun went round the earth, but never mind, there were apparently there were times when they did. And then someone came up with an explanation and said, actually, maybe it’s the other way around. But everybody was so convinced that the earth sat in the middle and everything went round it, that they came up with marvelous, complicated explanations when astronomers were going, but look, if you do this, it works beautifully. So I am always keen to see theoretical ideas which offer predictions, which we can then test. Dave, if you work like this, if you work towards constraints and approach, it will work better. And we can show it will work better because they’ll do this, this, this. Now, we’ve done studies and they’re hard to do. So we’ve done studies where we’ve looked at comparing a cognitive approach, information processing approach with a very sort of structured, deliberate teaching with an ecological dynamics approach, or in certain circumstances, we’ve found this one’s better than this one. In certain circumstances, we’ve found this one’s better than this one. In certain circumstances, we’ve found that no difference at all, except that when you go prone to what the mechanics of the movement in our studies, this one’s better. So it would go again, it depends.
Dan 37:53
Yeah, do you like pounds? Yes, yes. Yes, I did.
One of the things I wanted to follow up on because you’re in this world where you are doing research and you also are working directly with coaches practicing academic. Yes, academic. Thank you. There’s a word. In your opinion, how do you feel coaches best balance theory and practice and things that they read or study up on versus what they see with their own eyes?
Dave Collins 38:20
A clever man somewhere, and it wasn’t me, said everything works somewhere but nothing works everywhere. And that seems to me to be the main idea, that under certain circumstances this is the most parsimonious answer, and therefore these are the best methods, but under different circumstances these are. Makes sense.
In other words, knowledge is contextual. So we talk about a combination of what I want in my players or coaches of knowledge, skills, and attitude. So this knowledge is correct in this circumstance. These skills will work best in this circumstance. This is the attitude I would bring to the party. Change it over here? Yeah? I mean, would I coach a bunch of six-year-olds, difference to a bunch of 16-year-olds, different to a bunch of 26-year-old NBA players? To use an English expression, no shit, Sherlock, of course I would, you know? OK, well, if that’s different, if it depends, then what does it depend on? It’s going back to you, Patrick, you know, OK, it’s all very what’s A depends, but what does it depend on? And what are the implications of those different methods? And that’s what I’m asking coaches to do. So we would use an approach with coaches that we call a big five. It’s a different big five to that new reading of psychology, but this is it. So I watch Patrick’s teacher session, and I go, that’s great, Patrick, really good. What did you do? What were you trying to achieve? Can you give me three different alternatives that you considered? What would have changed in the conditions, the presenting conditions, that make you choose one of those alternatives? And when and how will you be able to show me you made the right decision? OK, what did you do? With what goal? Give me three alternatives you considered. What would have changed in the circumstance to make you use one of those rules? And tell me how and when you’ll find out whether you made the right decision or not. Now, the minute you ask, you work with you don’t do that all the time because a coach will get fed up and kill you. But you do ask those questions every so often. And what will happen is it’s requiring the coach to consider alternatives. So she or he is going to come back to you and say, that’s a good question. I suppose I’d have done this if, yeah, you’re coaching outside, it’s raining. I’m going to do this different. I drove to the court. I’m outdoors, you know, I’m in a rainy environment like Britain. I’d do something different. Or I’m arriving at the court, OK, and there’s loads of noise from next door. I’m going to do a different circumstance. In other words, it’s pretty pragmatic. It’s pretty practical. But it gets people to think about the nuances. It gets people to think about the how would I vary this? How would I adapt what I’m doing? Or do I come in with a plan that says it’s like this? And so I’m just going, of course, there are differences. That, for example, might make Dave a better teacher or coach of certain levels than others.
Dave Collins 41:12
It might make Dave working this style more effective with these guys than these guys. And so what I’m after is really a characteristic called adaptive expertise.
And that expertise, they’re not the finished article. So an expert is not the finished article. An expert is someone who’s always reflecting and always going forwards. So if you look at the work I’ve shown, the reflective coach is a good experimenter. She or he tries out, so I wonder if that would work. Oh, if that would work. Yeah, rather than like this, like this, like this, adaptive expertise.
Dan 41:47
Dave, I want to kind of pivot back to the start-sub-sit for a second before I lose the thread on it. And that was your start, which was resilience.
The outward, the dreaded outward. Yes. I think going back to the question verse trying to make, as a coach, the player more resilient versus just working on the environment so that resilience, I guess, can take place for that player. So the container versus the person. And I know the answer is probably it depends, of course, but as coaches, we have a chance to build the environment every day and how building the environment helps with, I guess, bring forth resilient characteristics versus just working on that individual and how you potentially see those differences.
Dave Collins 42:27
I believe that players need challenges, and as a consequence, they sometimes need to fail. If they fail all the time, they’ll get fed up.
If they never fail, they’ll feel great, but eventually they’ll hit a glass ceiling and they’ll bounce off. Part of the it depends is what we’ve written about and called the rocky road to success. You’re going to have good days at the office and bad days at the office. And what I want is I want you to be able to reflect on a bad day at the office and think about what you could have done to make it better. And I want you to reflect on a good day at the office and tell me what it was that you did, what you got right. So there’s this constant process.
And as a coach in my off-court work, and this is where I can use video again, I might be going, you were marking that bloke called Jordan. How did you do? What was good? What could you have done better, et cetera, et cetera? So does that process of reflection make sense? Therefore, the sessions that I give them will have a pre-mortem, will do it, and then a post-mortem.
And this takes me back to this idea of thinking slow to think fast. Because now I take that video, I come back in and I go, okay, what could be done different? What lessons do we take forwards? Now let’s set up a situation where I expect that. Because I’m a psychologist, I coach in a psychological way. I taught in a psychological way. So what I would do is I’m coaching a rugby team and I go, okay, lads, Tuesday night, red star session, bring a sick bag. It’s going to be horrible. Prepare yourself. It’s going to be really tough. And they turn up and they take it and I go, great. And we benefit from that.
If of course, every time I do that, Patrick shows up and says, oh, really, sorry, coach, I’ve got to pull the Zongula tendon again. Then I firstly, I give him a, now also I check his anatomy because there isn’t a Zongula tendon. But anyway, that’s what I’m doing. I’m setting up challenges in advance. And then I’m seeing how they cope. So if I’m after resilient players, sometimes I will spring challenges on them. I won’t tell them. Sometimes I will. And I’ll tell them it’s going to come up. I don’t know. I’ve got older kids and they’re into club hits. There’s a club hit called Eat, Sleep, Rave, Repeat. I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of it. No, maybe Pat. Is he more trendy than you, Dan? Is that the answer? Yeah. Oh, yeah, very much. Well, if you go away and you find Fat Boy Slim, Eat, Sleep, Rave, Repeat, we nicked it and we went teach, test, tweet, repeat. So we teach the skills. We test them by placing the young player, the player in under pressure. We then sit down and debrief the heck out of it. So they learn and then we repeat. So teach, test, tweet, repeat is the feature of generally how I coach players. And I do that technically, tactically, physically, mentally.
Pat 45:21
Dave, staying on this thread and put on your psychologist hat as a coach, the messaging you deliver around this failure process, you want to build a resilient team and you’re going to get hit with failure during a season. The opponent has a say in this process of teach, tweet, how coaches need to be mindful of the messaging that they’re delivering around failure.
Dave Collins 45:44
Excellent question. What do you feel when you hear the word failure? Do you feel a negative emotion around the word failure?
Pat 45:50
Not now.
Dave Collins 45:51
not now. Gotcha.
Absolutely. So what I’m doing is I’m setting up situations where, okay, and by the way, is failure black and white? No, that was crap. That was great. There are degrees of crapness, or greatness. So all that has happened now, I’m getting to a situation where my debriefs, for example, my favorite debriefs were three and three, I want you to come off and give me three things you did well, and then three things we need to work on.
I had the pleasure of working with a guy who became world champion in judo, and he was a Scottish guy, and Scott’s a very dour.
Pat 46:28
Gotta eat it, baby.
Dave Collins 46:29
whatever. And eventually, he won the World Championship.
He won the World Championship in Britain, and he came up to me afterwards. He said, I’ve got to debrief. You just won the World Championship, but I’ve got to give my three and three. It was so ingrained into him. Love him. Love it to death. So that idea of, okay, there are degrees of grayness, there are degrees of quality, and that’s it. So when now I’m putting environments which are going to be challenging to you, the F word, the failure word, not the other one, the F word, it must have been intuitively and immediately negative, because I’m going to pressure you to make you unable to perform. Of course, I am. That was my military training. That was my teacher work. That’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to place you in situations where things break down. And then I’m going to look and say, what can we do differently? But the line is not a red line. That’s all great. That’s crap. So if I’m now working with challenge, there are degrees of challenge. Not only that, but I will vary the challenge. Imagine you’re an endurance athlete. Imagine you’re a 1500 meter row fight, whatever, whatever. When you’re getting good, you’ve got to train near the edge of the cliff. You don’t want to go train too hard, because you fall off the cliff, and then you’re injured, and the whole thing’s up in the grove. Makes sense. But if you’re not training close enough to the edge of the cliff, you’ll get fitter, but they’ll get more fitter. So you’ve got to train in this sweet spot close to the edge of the cliff. Makes sense. But the cliff isn’t a straight line. It’s wavy. It changes because of time of year, time of month, your fitness level, what else is going on in your life, the fact you’ve got midterms. So now I’ve got to change that sweet spot. Even when we’ve done work on monozygotic twins, which are identical twins in the same house, the same parents, the same sport, the same academy, they’re not identical. They’re different people. So this one is benefiting from this. This one needs an adjustment. So that sweet spot. I mean, some people talk about it as if they say that’s the art of coaching. Yeah, but it’s not just which way is the wind blowing. It’s an informed art. It’s a scientifically informed art. So now all of a sudden, we’re putting people in situations of challenge. We’re doing it because it’s inevitable. Essential. Most of my research at the minute, I’ve got some great people to work with. I see discombobulation. Are you familiar with the term? Great Scrabble score. Really good word. Okay. I see discombobulation, being upset, being traumatic as an essential part of having ambition. Now, where I’m coming from is not only that that’s inevitable, I’m also saying it’s desirable. And so when I’m working with the umpire, and they’re going, hey, Dave, I can’t get this, I’m really stuck. So it’s all right. Don’t worry. It’s all right, you’ll be fine. But this is essential. Some degree of discomfort is an essential part of achieving ambition.
Dan 49:26
Dave, you just are working with so many coaches and you’re studying this stuff at a high, high level. What’s most interesting to you where this is all heading for coaching?
What excites you I guess the most about your work and where coaching is going?
Dave Collins 49:39
specifically in coaching, that I’ve got coaches who are more reflective and considered. The whole point of why I’m doing this is because I want to make a difference.
I’m working with an athlete, I want that athlete to do as well as he or she can. I’m working with a coach, I want that coach to feel the benefit so that she or he progresses. That’s where I’m coming from.
Dan 49:59
Dave, you’re off the start, sub, or sit, hot seat. Thanks for playing that game with us.
We’ve got a final question to close the show, but before we do, thank you so much again for coming on. This was a really fun conversation for us, and I know coaches are gonna love it, so thanks for your time today.
Dave Collins 50:12
Well, that’s great and thank you very much indeed. It’s lovely to work in different sports. It’s lovely to work with different people.
I hope my accent didn’t put too many people off and I apologize for my bad language. It was Patrick’s fault. Yeah.
Dan 50:24
Dave, our final question that we ask all the guests is what’s the best investment that you’ve made in your career? I’m going to say it depends.
Dave Collins 50:33
because it depends on which career. If you want my career as a performance psychologist, it’s military training, because that’s what it is. It’s making decisions under pressure and working it through. If it’s being a coach, it’s working with people who challenged me enough to recognize the different nuances of, well, you might do this, you might do this. People who gave me alternatives and who emphasized to me the importance of those alternatives.
If you’re talking about me as a coach developer and a researcher, it’s the guys I work with, because I choose to work with people who challenge me. The last thing I want is yes, Dave, no, Dave, because I want that open debate. German philosopher Nietzsche, too, argued with Riga, but to disagree without Ranker, as the Michael Schremon. For me, being an academic, he’s like being a rugby player. We have a front on the picture, but we’re on.
Dan 51:36
Pat, let’s jump into this recap. Good hang, good to just talk to, great perspective on all this kind of stuff. Yeah.
Pat 51:43
and it was a conversation we’ve been after for a while, so it was fun to have Dave on.
Dan 51:46
Yeah. Well, let’s dive in to our takeaways here. So for the first one, I will kick it to you.
Pat 51:51
know, I think this is a conversation we’ve been having ourselves. We are really interested in the CLA, but there’s so many different points in the season that require such a depth touch as a coach. There’s so many interplays and it was fun to get him on today and doing our research because I think he has a really good understanding of when he studied it, but in him working with coaches and trying to also help coaches try to understand all these tools at our disposal and when to use them and when they’re beneficial, when maybe there’s some shortcomings or some limited or like when they all start to blend together and how if we have a better understanding of these tools, of course, we’re going to naturally become, you know, hopefully better coaches, prepare better practices and improve our teams and our players. And I thought he spoke really well on just getting like very simplistic, definitely not in a bad way.
Just what is the ecological design? What is the cognitive sciences? What is predictive processing and how they intertwine and they, you know, overlap at times and kind of then get to play their solo and where their strengths are.
Dan 52:53
Yeah. Just to piggyback on your point, I think the CLA ecological design stuff, obviously, we love ourselves and have used within our own teams, but also as these things progress, where are the limits of it if it’s just like a blanket approach? And I think that’s where Dave’s talked a lot about. It’s not just a blanket approach, but how to then predict the processing in the cognitive side of things. I mean, how do they work together? I think this thing is like, they boost each other. Our good friend, Drew Dunlop talks about it really well, like the slice of the pie. Where do these things fit? What are the bridge to the other ones and what parts of your practice and what parts of building out this shared cognition, different parts of the season, that it’s like a toggle. You toggle one up versus down. Because I think at times, as a coach right now, and these are a lot of sports, it’s like, hey, if you’re not just going all in on CLA, like what are you doing? You’re not a good modern coach.
And I think a lot of coaches have pushed back, which we’ve seen and heard from because there are other ways. But I think this is given a good balanced approach of, hey, this is like really, really when CLA is unbeatable. This is when it’s the best. This is when it really works. And then where, when you find it maybe doesn’t work for you or your program, how you bridge to some of these other things that are in the coach’s toolkit so that they work together. And it’s not like you got to just apply one or the other and pick a lane and that’s all you can do as a coach. I think it’s like these things are like part of a good coach’s toolkit.
Pat 54:20
And I like Dave’s point, he talked a lot about understanding the purpose, the intent of the practice setting or the goal we’re trying to accomplish. And I think if you put purpose to it and you understand these sciences, these teaching methodologies, then you’ll know which one to apply, you know, because the other understanding of what you’re trying to reach, what your outcome is.
And yeah, maybe it is this time, Hey, it is like, let’s CLA it. Let’s, you know, give them an environment and let’s see if they can solve the problem versus I think when we need like a film session, this is where we need to go in and we need to be the more the cognitive or help with the predictive processing, trying to help build our anticipation, get point guys in there. What are they looking at? What are they thinking, getting their feedback? And, you know, I like the term he threw out at the end, the informed art of coaching, but a lot of it is starts like your understanding and your purpose of the practice setting, the point of the season. He mentioned it with the resiliency, like where are you at as a team? You know, the fatigue, a high stress week is a low is a preseason. Like all these things interplay to give you the information that you need to know to like what methodology may apply and what blends better and what your purpose is.
Dan 55:26
There’s so many real world coaching examples that for us We’re always going back and forth between you know Do you have a one-day prep for an opponent that’s running some kind of style that? You just need to teach or give the feedback on how we’re gonna attempt to play You don’t have the same amount of time to explore or to have your team try to figure these things out But I think like each practice can go back and forth toggling between everything is representative, but certain drills Hey, the constraint is the teacher here We’re not gonna over teach it and we’re gonna let the constraint teach us for some drills or hey You know what we’re gonna stop and teach Every single time because we have to get this right before we play tomorrow night We don’t have time to let you all figure it out Like we need to give you an answer right now So then we can get back to getting better at the next thing and I think what Dave spoke on real well
Pat 56:12
Yeah, when we talked about building out mental models, to your point, he worked through the nuances that are within each of these like steps. He mentioned six steps like choose your alpha plan games with questions, the video, the analysis practice, the challenges and then analysis repeat and even within those, you know, we had a good discussion around the small sided games five on five, you know, using film and it’s all nuance. It all depends.
But if you know the context and what you need, then that helps clarify what you should be using and why it depends. No doubt. So Dan, let’s shift gears here and I’ll throw it to you for our second takeaway.
Dan 56:48
So my second takeaway is we talked about it and it’s also a miss not by Dave, of course, but just something I think will be interesting to study or discuss this offseason. And that was around anticipation. And I really think this is an interesting area of growth as coaches and just like seeing where the science is on it. But getting your team and your players to just anticipate the next play a smidgen faster or whatnot. And like the great players are always a half step ahead, not necessarily because they’re quicker, but because they just are anticipating all these things a little bit faster. I just think that’s interesting.
And he talked a little bit about it, where that can go. But I think, you know, you look at how we train that, I think Noah LaRoche talked about it for the first time on the podcast a couple years ago about anticipating the great players do reading space, those kinds of things. And then I also just think it’d be interesting to talk about, you know, within all this stuff, the role that experience plays. And I would imagine that goes into like the predictive processing. And you’ve seen so many pick and rolls, or you’ve been in so many situations, that’s where experience starts to help with your decision making. Because one, I think there’s more than just a straight decision that’s being made. Your more experienced players tend to be less, I guess, stressed under pressure. So it’s like their windows are less narrow. Like when you get really stressed, your vision and all that you don’t see as much. I think that’s an interesting field too, that we touched on today, and I thought was really great.
But I also just think is an interesting subject for future podcasts.
Pat 58:18
Yeah, so I find it fascinating. I think you kind of alluded it to it there with the stress, the interplay that like perception and trying to help teach our guys where to look plays such a heavy role in helping build that anticipation. And I think that’s always something I’m thinking about.
I mean, I think it’s film, it’s everything like we’re talking about, but trying to always get our players to focus on like, where are they looking? Ask them questions, point out where they should be looking in certain actions to help build that anticipation. I know we talk a lot about with cutting, you know, we’ll look at your defender if you see the back of their head. And so trying to build that more and these situations, you know, as we kind of build our alpha beta plan that we put our players in constantly and then trying to really teach where should they be looking, you know, where should they be focusing our attention to help build that anticipation, make better reads, make earlier reads, quicker reads, whatever it may be.
Dan 59:06
Yeah, the ecological dynamics, it talks a lot about perception, action, coupling, it’s like that’s the whole thing. And the perception part of that is interesting to me, like what’s going into the perception of the affordance of what’s going on in front of you and I think that’s really interesting, what’s going into that.
Yeah, maybe for future podcasts continuing to dive into just the role that kind of stuff plays. So keeping it moving though, Pat, for our third takeaway, I’ll throw that back to you.
Pat 59:34
Yeah, my last takeaway centers around our conversation we had on resilience for the start, sub, sit, question. I mean, he hit on a number of things. I’ll keep it focused on the resilience conversation.
And I liked the conversation we had about messaging around failure, but I thought he spoke really well when just talking about how anytime we have ambition or attempting to achieve things, we want to be met with failure. But how we approach that, I thought his analogy on we want to try to train at the edge of the cliff, but the cliff is always moving. For me, like a great analogy. I really liked when he spoke on that and just how we think about challenges. And again, knowing our team, knowing the point of the season and that these challenges, these failures is inevitable, but also desirable. I just like how he framed failure. It’s something that of course, throughout the seasons we’re always going to be met with and how we kind of continue to message it to our team and not let it spiral, not be met with where we just have too much failure, you know, but trying to always reframe it I think as part of our jobs as coaches is always trying to reframe, you know, the wins and the losses, but especially when you’re in failure, like these critical times and just trying to keep your team moving forward is crucial. And then that’s where he talked about the informed art of coaching.
Dan 01:00:41
Yeah. And he also had adaptive expertise at the end there for like great coaches going forward. I like that term. I’ll just add the question was around overuse of misunderstood buzzwords.
And I think, you know, one of the things we’ve heard him talk on and things we’re getting out here in this question was just words or phrases we can kind of say to our team or say to players like, hey, you need to be more resilient and not really get into the nuance and the details as much as maybe we should or understand what each one means. And so just sticking on the resilience. I think I asked him towards the end, like individual versus group resilience, the environment you build versus, you know, you and I were talking before the show and he mentioned it a little bit. Resilience is so different per person. Someone can be very resilient personally in one situation and then not resilient in the next. And how do you handle that? Some of the best conversations we’ve had here on the podcast have to do with the environment and the culture that you set. And then also the way that you handle failure and talk about failure, like you just said, goes a long way with building, you know, resilient characteristics for both your group and for people. Pat, I went a little bit into one of my misses, not by Dave, of course, but anything else that you thought we could have went deeper on or missed.
Pat 01:01:56
And the same vein is kind of quote unquote your miss or maybe just something that stimulated more thought is always the debrief. I really enjoy when you have like him, a Preston Klein on a Sarah Sarkis, just how we should be thinking about these debriefs, these postmortems.
You mentioned a really good thing, like a three by three, three things. He did well, three things he did bad. And, you know, even talking about a coach, like he said, like big five questions after a training, what did you do? What did you achieve? Like three alternatives? What would you choose out of those ones? Then when could you tell if it was right? It’s like kind of paraphrase it. But so it just made me think like, you know, one that I’m probably not close to doing them, right. But I’m just always curious. Cause I think this is again, going to the messaging we present our teams and how we want to get their feedback and not just always coming in and speaking to them and narrating, you know, what’s happening, but how we can continue to think about doing these better, getting more player led interactions, you know, and even as he, I think tying it back to like building out your, you have, we start with an alpha plan, but then how do you get to that player led plan B, you know, the beta plan. And I think these things are crucial elements along that path.
Dan 01:03:12
Yeah, I’ll just add within that conversation, he mentioned the pre-mortem, you do the action and then the post-mortem. And I forget who he had on the show, I don’t wanna miss attribute this, but we did talk about pre-mortems being really important.
Yeah, was it Justin Bockmeyer? Yeah, I think it was, yeah. And I’ll just say from a personal standpoint, didn’t do this enough this year, but did try it, did do pre-mortems a few times. And I really enjoyed it as a staff, kinda really gets you to think about what’s the most important things going into practices. Hey, if we’re gonna lose on Friday night, what are gonna be the three reasons why we lose? I think the pre-mortem thing is something definitely I’m continuing to be more interested in and he brought it up and might be fun to explore again. Agreed. Well, once again, we thank Dave for coming on and giving such a great interview. Thank you everybody for listening and we’ll see you next time.