Parenting through the Athletic Process

When I was a child, parenting a wannabe athlete was much easier: in the fall, I played soccer for the club affiliated with my church; in winter, I played basketball for my school; in spring, I played Little League at the league five minutes from my house; and, during the summer, I was fortunate to attend a camp or two around family vacations and going to the local pool and basketball courts.

These days, there are so many choices and, with the advent of the Internet, so much more information and misinformation. There are so many different sporting opportunities. Heck, there is a professional soccer league, poker players on television and mainstream mixed martial arts. There is NJB, AAU, YBOA, BCI and other youth basketball organizations; there are youth strength training facilities; private basketball skill trainers; private basketball facilities; showcase events and more. How does a parent navigate his or her son or daughter through the youth athlete development process?

The Sacramento Bee recently ran an article with the father of two collegiate golfers. While golf is different than basketball in numerous ways, the advice and examples that he offers parallels in many ways the research conducted on talented teenagers and expert performers by sports psychologists and educators like K. Anders Ericsson, Benjamin Bloom, and Mihaly Csikszentmihaly.

My biggest regret – and greatest warning to others – is letting golf become the center of the family to the exclusion of the needs and desires of other family members.

Looking back, the scheduling of golf tournaments should have been subordinate to the scheduling of family vacations. There’s always another tournament to play.

When they were 15, the boys quit going on our church’s week-long youth camping trip because they needed that time to practice for the U.S. Junior tournament…

Interestingly, the closest either of them came to qualifying for the U.S. Junior was the day after they returned from church camp – with no practice – when they were freshmen.

I always see advertisements for big AAU Tournaments that seem to coincide with family-type days: Mother’s Day Madness, Easter Classic, Father’s Day Spectacular. It seems like those would be the best times not to schedule a tournament and to give the players (and families) a week off. As the dad says, there is always another tournament to play. Unfortunately, it seems like we have this mentality that if you miss a week, you will fall behind.

In the athlete development process, we place too much emphasis on the on-court action and ignore the idea of the 24-hour athlete: if we assume that an athlete trains two hours per day, the things that he or she does in the other 22 hours per day has as much of an effect on his or her success. If the player lacks proper nutrition or does not sleep or otherwise does not take care of his or her body and mind, the player undermines his or her on-court training. Skipping a weekend tournament to celebrate Father’s Day or missing a week of summer league to go on a family vacation is not going to stunt a player’s career, but going 52 weeks straight may affect the player’s drive and motivation.

Next, the father suggests:

Find your child a great instructor who can help them as they grow and who understands their swing.

You can look at this in two ways with basketball, either a coach or a trainer. The benefit of a trainer is that you can stay with a trainer as you change coaches. I’ve worked with a player for several years and he has probably played for 10 different team coaches in that time. It is hard for any one of those coaches to take a long term view of the player’s development if he only coaches the player for a short season or a couple months before he moves to the next league or moves to the next level at his school.

On the other hand, some programs do a good job of keeping players together over the course of a number of years. For youth club/AAU programs, I think this should be the goal, as opposed to recruiting new players. Many parents however are persuaded to leave a good club for various reasons. I worked with a club that was a great learning environment with very good coaches who cared about the players and all the players got along really well. However, one parent was nudged by an outside influence and she decided to move her daughter to a more prominent club, and the club started to fall apart competitively. I have seen this happen several times. Most of the time, the local club with caring coaches, plenty of playing time and friendly teammates is a better overall experience than chasing a better coach or more competitive program.

If you find a program with players who stick together over a period of several years with coaches who care and work hard, consider yourself lucky. Don’t mess up by thinking that there is something better out there. The grass ain’t always greener.

If your child has a goofy swing, grip or ball flight, fix it sooner rather than later. At the college level, you won’t see “four-knuckle” grips or big hookers or slicers.

On the basketball side, I see this all the time. Players spending a great amount of time playing the game and training to become better, but they have incredible shooting flaws. If your son or daughter loves the game enough to train – as opposed to playing for fun – find someone who can teach him or her to shoot properly. Now, a couple lessons are not enough. To correct a player’s shooting technique requires a lot of time and concentration, and the player must be motivated to work on his or her own, not just play games or train with a trainer.

When I train players, I help them for an hour or two per week, but the development has to come on their own in the in-between times. If I am a good trainer, I help the player learn the correct feel so that he can self-correct when he works out on his own. But, if the player does not practice in between sessions, my impact is minimal unless their budget is endless and they want to hire me five days a week. Players who want to be great do not need basketball babysitters – they are motivated to work on their own.

If your kid goes from shooting in the mid-80s to a scratch golfer in a few years or less, it doesn’t mean scores in the mid-60s are just around the corner. Sometimes shooting par or the mid-70s is as good as a kid will get. This is especially true if the items above are ignored.

This is an important and neglected point. I hear from parents, players and coaches who seem to think that the hours and money invested in youth basketball mean that the player deserves a scholarship. Unfortunately, that is not how it works. Colleges recruit based on needs and talent. While a college scholarship is a reward, in a sense, it really isn’t. It is a reward in the same sense that when you graduate from college and get a job, you are rewarded for your effort in school. It is not a reward in the same way that being voted all-league is a reward. A college scholarship is the beginning, not the end. Coaches recruit based on what they believe you will do in the future, not what you have done in the past.

Improvement is not a continual forward, upward line. There are hills and valleys. How a player handles the struggles ultimately determines, to a great degree, the eventual success of the player. One of the most important skills for a player to develop is the coping skills to handle mistakes, failure or rejection.

Navigating youth sports is different for parents today than it was during their youth. Unfortunately, there are many questions, but few places to turn for real answers. Most answers on message boards and through the media are tinged with bias and agendas, and most people follow the herd, figuring that if Player A earned a scholarship and went through XYZ, then XYZ is the path to a scholarship. However, the process for one person may not be the right process for another – many players reach a level of success in spite of the road that they took, not because of it.

For more information, read:

• Parent’s Guide to Talent Development
• Developing your Son or Daughter into an Athletic Superstar
• Developing your Son or Daughter into an Athletic Superstar, Part II

Free Play: Passion before Performance

Originally published in Los Angeles Sports & Fitness, October 2007

At the gym this week, I watched a seventh grader work with a personal shooting coach for an hour. After his lesson, his mother spoke to another coach and had the coach watch her son and offer pointers. Then, the child shot for another hour as his mother watched and critiqued every shot based on the coach’s advice. After the child had shot for two-and-a-half hours, he started to whine. He wanted to go home. His mother told him to make 20 free throws in a row. Eventually, a team had practice and kicked him off the court.

 

When I was young, I imagine there were days when I shot by myself for two hours. I know I set goals like making 20 shots in a row before going inside. However, I made the decisions. I initiated the practice, I set my own goals, I decided when to finish. My individual practice was child-initiated and based on my motivations. I practiced because I enjoyed shooting.

 

The mother initiated the kid’s practice, setting goals, hiring trainers and talking to coaches. The kid did not want to continue. He was not enjoying the activity. His body slumped after every missed shot that prolonged his practice, he whined and he threw the ball. Maybe the mother wanted to teach her son a lesson about practice habits, work ethic or discipline. However, I saw a kid starting to hate basketball.

 

In the United States, we face an obesity epidemic. Kids are fat. However, we also have turned childhood sports into a scholarship chase. I believe the obesity issues stem from the same misguided philosophy which turned youth sports into the pursuit of the ephemeral dream, rather than a time for fun, activity, learning and exploration.

 

Parents rush their kids into competitive athletics because they do not want their son or daughter to fall behind. I once received a call from the mother of a six-year-old who wanted individual basketball training for her son before she put him into a league because she wanted him to be prepared and successful.

 

These efforts are misguided. K. Anders Ericsson, author of The Road to Excellence, believes “when it comes to choosing a life path, you should do what you love because if you don’t love it, you are unlikely to work hard enough to get very good.”

 

Ericsson believes a person needs hours of deliberate practice to become an expert performer. In a sense, the mother provided an environment for deliberate practice. This is the approach parents take. They know their child needs to practice and work hard to be successful, so they start the child down this path at earlier and earlier ages, like the mother of the six-year-old. However, the parents miss the first requirement: kids must love what they are doing. Pushing a child into an activity too hard and too soon often has the opposite effect, turning the child against the activity. In these instances, many rebel against their parents or coaches and stop playing sports altogether.

 

When a child quits sports at an early age, he is less likely to resume these activities later. Kids love to learn and explore. They do not compare themselves to others. They enjoy playing and learning. However, as we age, we become more self-conscious and more aware of others. A teenager is unlikely to try a new sport because he does not want to fail. People associate a failure in an activity with a character flaw and worry others might like them less just because they cannot shoot a basketball or catch a football. While it is easy to dismiss these feelings, how many adults actively pursue activities in which they are not very good or have never tried? Now, imagine doing so during adolescence. No wonder P.E. is the worst class of the day for many kids.

 

Once upon a time, kids played hopscotch at recess and jumped off swings at the highest peak. They jumped over (or into) puddles and skipped just for fun. Jumping rope was a game kids played to song.

 

Now, as recess disappears and the pursuit of a scholarship grips parents as soon as their young prodigy takes his first steps, personal trainers painstakingly count the number of foot touches in a plyometric workout to prevent overtraining and burnout. Depth jumps are prohibited for all but the most advanced kids. The play activities of past generations are now carefully regimented training activities used to prepare young athletes for sporting success.

 

In The Art of Learning, Josh Waitzkin, a world champion in chess and Judo, writes: “the most important factor in these first few months of study was that Bruce [his first chess coach] nurtured my love for chess, and he never let technical material smother my innate feelings for the game.” Eventually, Waitzkin moved to more intense levels of training and instruction. However, this occurred after he developed a passion for chess and a desire to pursue the sport.

 

In the gym, the mother failed to nurture her son’s love for basketball. While her efforts stemmed from a good place, rather than help her son improve, she hindered his development. As we change physical activity from fun games to training activities, we lose kids who are uninterested in or psychologically unprepared for the competitive nature of youth athletics.

 

The media points to the dedication of Tiger Woods at an early age to illustrate successful athletic development. However, how many young prodigies never make it? These are the stories left untold. However, parents and coaches latch onto the Tiger Woods’ story. Nobody learns from Todd Marinovich or Jennifer Capriati or the dozens of others who quit sports altogether before they reached any level of noteworthiness. Rather than looking at Woods as the rule, what if he is the exception? What if he developed in spite of the pushing, not because of it? What if Woods, like Waitkin, developed the passion for the game first and then engaged in the deliberate practice which elevated him into the world’s greatest golfer? The media only captures part of the story; maybe the real story is the fun games that he played with his father when he was young which generated his intense interest in golf.

 

Youth sports are not the pre-minor leagues. Kids are not miniature professionals. Whether the goal is to develop your child into an All-American or just to keep your child active, the method is the same: youth sports should be fun, child-centered, exploratory and learning-oriented, not a competitive cauldron or pre-professional training.

Deliberate Practice: The Maintainer vs The Trainer

I am a basketball trainer, one of the legions of former players and coaches who earn an income working privately with basketball players. To some, I am evidence of an epidemic of misplaced priorities, as young players seek additional coaching and training much like a professional athlete; however, to others I offer hope to young athletes motivated to work hard and succeed. It depends on one’s perspective.

Players require tactical, technical and athletic skills; playing or practicing with a team is often insufficient because coaches lack the time and resources to tailor practice to meet the individual needs of every player. Team practices generally cater to the middle, meaning the best players are unchallenged and the worst players are left behind. Coaches have too many tactical concepts and situations to cover in limited practice time to devote sufficient time in-season to individual skill development. So, players seek trainers.

I have mixed feelings about the phenomena. On one hand, our society accepts golf and tennis pros who earn six-figure incomes. While golf and tennis are individual (country club) sports, these pros teach a skill – hitting the golf or tennis ball – which is similar to shooting the basketball. On the other hand, I bemoan the loss of innocence in today’s youth; the lack of athlete-directed play in playgrounds and streets where kids can be kids and experiment and try new skills on their own, away from the critical eye of parents, trainers and coaches.

I believe there must be a balance; young players are not mini-professionals; however, those with the work ethic and aspirations to be great deserve the opportunity to elevate their skill level and maximize their potential. Unfortunately, everyone calls himself a trainer these days, and parents cannot tell between an astute trainer that takes a player to the next level and an average/poor trainer who yells a lot, was a great player or makes players work hard.

Professional trainers fall into two main categories: basketball skill trainers and athletic skill trainers. Basketball skill trainers teach shooting, ball handling, defense, etc; athletic skill trainers train quickness, speed, strength, vertical jump, etc. Within each category, there are two sub-categories: trainers vs. maintainers.

On the court, basketball trainers teach skills and create individual skill progressions; maintainers run players through general drills with little instruction or feedback. Off the court, athletic trainers carefully craft workouts to develop a skill or skills, while maintainers wear out players without a scientific approach to training.

A few years ago, I ran clinics on one end of the court while a maintainer ran clinics on the other end. He summed up the difference between us when he said, “Parents like their kids to work with me because they look tired when they finish.” I answered that I hope parents send me their kids because they know they get better. After the workout, parents gathered around the maintainer while several coaches with kids in attendance gathered around me. He was right; parents have a hard time differentiating between good and bad, but exhaustion is visible. Parents know tired, even if his methods were flawed (plyometrics at the end of a workout when players are fatigued) and dangerous (multiple players jumping onto portable bleachers); they do not necessarily know great teaching methods or logical progressions of drills.

For beginners and average players, almost any training with or without any trainer helps a player improve. These players are not in optimal condition, so a workout to wear out the players improves their conditioning, which makes them a slightly better player. These players often have a poor skill set or are inexperienced player, so more time handling the ball or shooting makes the player slightly better.

However, for good and experienced players, maintainers merely maintain the player’s current skill level, while a good trainer offers a motivated player an opportunity to get better. A good trainer creates an environment of deliberate practice which is necessary for an experienced player to improve. According to Florida State University professor K. Anders Ericsson, an expert in the science of exceptional performance, it takes about forty hours of play to reach an acceptable level. However, to improve beyond an acceptable level, simply playing is not enough; the player requires deliberate practice. Bay Area trainer Jeremy Russotti, in a less scientific explanation, says: “Basketball is like taking the same test over and over and not studying. You might get better at taking the test, but how much better do you think you would have done if you would have studied? Working on your game is studying (Hubbard, NorCalpreps.com).”

Dr. Ericsson writes:

Involvement in the relevant sport activity, access to instruction and training and social support were necessary for the development of high levels of achievement. The main focus of deliberate practice was to explain individual differences among those individuals who had had access to all necessary training and practice opportunities.

Deliberate practice does not require an individual trainer or coach, but it is the reason a player/parent seeks a trainer. Some players invest hours to get better, but their game stagnates, resulting in frustration. Others invest less time, but manage to improve. The answer, explains Ericsson, is deliberate practice. For instance, last year, one of the players I trained told me he shot 200 shots. He was proud of himself, as he felt this showed his dedication to improvement. I asked how many he made. He did not know. Simply shooting around is not deliberate practice. In contrast, a former All-American I trained tracked every shot he took; he had a record of every shot he took for a year as he progressed from a 29% high school shooter to a 50% three-point shooter in college.

Repetition of the same activity is nearly always associated with increased performance under some conditions, namely when the participants are motivated, when the task is simple and appropriate strategies are used, and when immediate informative feedback is available (Ericsson).

The difference between a trainer and a maintainer is the “use of appropriate strategies” and “informative feedback.” Maintainers ensure players get plenty of repetitions and motivated players who shoot a lot will improve slightly; since players improve a little and leave workouts tired, the maintainers appear effective. However, without the use of appropriate strategies and informative feedback, using a trainer is useless. As Dr. Ericsson writes, “In the absence of adequate feedback efficient learning is impossible and improvement only minimal even for highly motivated subjects.”

The appropriate strategies mean the ability to create a workout for a player to meet the player’s needs, attack his weaknesses and improve his strengths. Last year, a player worked out with me for the first time and had considerable balance issues, even from the free throw line. He had been to several other trainers, yet nobody had mentioned his balance. The appropriate strategy was not more shooting, it was first fixing the balance issues, teaching the player to bend and squat properly. As for informative feedback, trainers must be able to see and explain the root cause of the mistake and help the player learn to feel the proper mechanics of the shot or move. When to instruct and how much to instruct is an art one learns as he spends more time coaching; however, feedback is essential to improvement. Last summer, I watched a high DI player work out; he missed seven straight shots and after each one, made a motion with his arm like he was not following through. However, the problem was hip extension, not his follow-through. However, his maintainer made no mention of his hips. He lacked the appropriate feedback, and therefore, there was minimal improvement or efficient learning.

Dedicated and motivated players need deliberate practice, whether with a coach (best for younger and less experienced players with little kinesthetic awareness) or without a coach (possible if the player has good kinesthetic awareness, motivation and drive) to maximize their game and potential. Deliberate practice, with appropriate strategies, informative feedback and a motivated athlete separates the elite and expert performers from the pack, which is why talented players should seek trainers, not just maintainers trying to make some money.