Are You A Player Without a Cue?
#50- Are You a Player Without A Cue?
Cues Focus Players on Elements Critical for Successful Skill Execution
Cues Focus Players on Elements Critical for Successful Skill Execution
by Alan Lambert
Introduction
Basketball has a language of its own. Every team and coach has a multitude of different ways in phrasing skills and providing instructions that, to the outsider, can seem like a foreign language. Even more difficult for a young player wanting to become the best player they are capable of becoming is clearly understanding what a coach wants, when they want it. If you were to spend a day on the practice court at a local college, or pro team you might hear the coach yelling things like; push, funnel, hot, red, 1 and done, pinch, go low, pin, trap and rotate, spread, cross-court it, skip-it, flare, fade, curl, pick and pop, and many more. What is so important about learning all these verbal cues anyway, and why can't I just play? It is a common question amongst young player today. I'm better without learning all this stuff! Just give me the ball and let my skills do the trick. Unfortunately the answer is, that even the greatest player's on the planet today (such as Kobe Bryant, Allen Iverson, Tim Duncan, Kevin Garnett, Shaq O'Neal, Carmelo Anthony, Peja Stojakovic or LeBron James) are limited when well prepared teams take away their strengths through complex defensive stunts which confuse a player and result in poor shots or worse yet turnovers. In Today's Playground Pointer I want to teach you the importance of verbal coaching cue's and why, from a player's perspective they are critical for you learn them at all levels of the game.
Your Memory Has Limits Which Affect Your Playing Performance
Many researchers of the human mind have shown that there are limits to what a person can remember. One of the most famous and ground breaking studies in science occurred way back in 1956 by a cognitive psychologist named G.A. Miller (see Psychological Review, 63, pp. 81-97) who found that these limits were 7 plus or minus 2. More modern research is showing that it may more accurately be in the 4-5 chunk range rather than the rather optimistic 7. What that means to the common basketball player is that roughly speaking your mind is able to hold 7 chunks of information in its memory at any one time.
Hmmm.....how much knowledge does it take for a basketball player to learn their position, all the different skills, on offense, defense and in transition, and with an open, constantly changing environment on the court? It's definitely way beyond seven chunks of information. Stay with me here players because this is an important concept for you to understand and learn. Cues are used by coaches to reduce the amount of information you are receiving at any point in a game and help you to quickly focus on elements of a skill for more successful execution. To be successful at any sports skill we need feedback. Feedback can be either internal (self talk) or external (feedback from coaches, players, or even fans) and this feedback affects our performance. If you doubt what I'm saying try going into a completely dark gym and stand at the free throw line blind-folded with cotton in your ears. Have a friend hand you the ball and then shoot 10 free throws. If you truly were able to block out any feedback, you wouldn't know how many you make, or even if you hit the rim. Successful basketball play requires feedback.
Hmmm.....how much knowledge does it take for a basketball player to learn their position, all the different skills, on offense, defense and in transition, and with an open, constantly changing environment on the court? It's definitely way beyond seven chunks of information. Stay with me here players because this is an important concept for you to understand and learn. Cues are used by coaches to reduce the amount of information you are receiving at any point in a game and help you to quickly focus on elements of a skill for more successful execution. To be successful at any sports skill we need feedback. Feedback can be either internal (self talk) or external (feedback from coaches, players, or even fans) and this feedback affects our performance. If you doubt what I'm saying try going into a completely dark gym and stand at the free throw line blind-folded with cotton in your ears. Have a friend hand you the ball and then shoot 10 free throws. If you truly were able to block out any feedback, you wouldn't know how many you make, or even if you hit the rim. Successful basketball play requires feedback.
Cues Focus Us On Critical Elements
Feedback or cues are important to the basketball player because they help an athlete to focus on critical elements of a skill. Sometimes later in one's playing career you have learned enough (self-talk- internal feedback) you can self-correct your errors. But in team play you still need communication feedback. For example, picks coming up from behind you, changes in team defense, what set play you are running on offense, or cues that help you anticipate what you opponent may be doing. Early in learning basketball skills verbal cue are critical to developing a young players ability to learn to correct themselves later up the skill chain. In shooting you might hear the coach say "point your elbow at the basket", " follow-through high and straight", "use your legs" each of which can help you self-correct your shooting technique without the coach going into a complex and confusing dissertation of what went wrong. If fact, one of the biggest problems in coaching is that coaches want to give too much feedback, a problem in sports behavioral science called "paralysis by analysis".
Clear and Simple Does the Job
For you coach's reading this Pointer today, the key to successful coaching is giving a clear visual image to the learner of the correct way of performing the skill. Then you must attach a simple easy to understand verbal cue to emphasize your point and cement your point. As a young coach I often over-coached kids. Later with more experience learned to teach them simple cues to "correct their errors". "Where's your follow-through" on a shot, "ready-shoot" or "explode low and deep- meaning pushing the ball low and behind the defenders outstretched arms on a penetration dribble step while attacking the basket. Then in the heat of battle when players are getting bombarded with an endless stream of information, your "pre-practiced verbal cues" laser point their focus to the critical element to make the skill work.
Players also need verbal cues to connect themselves to the moment. Internal distractions (Can I make that shot the next time I'm left open? or "I can't stop this guy", or "coach is going to yank me if I make another mistake") often cause you as a player to focus on the wrong information, and lose concentration which then produces more errors. External distractions (such as fans, behavior of opponents, playing surfaces, shot clocks, etc.) can also cause interference and produce poor results. Relevant cues reduce external distractions. What you as a player need is build a "library of relevant cues" that are tied through practice into an automated correction leading to improved concentration on the key element of a skill. Now this shouldn't come as any big surprise. This is extremely important to you as a player is that the more verbal cues you can associate with specific actions, the less active memory will be taxed during competition. Let me say that again because it's a very important part of today's Playground Pointer. The more verbal cues you learn, the more easily you (through self talk) or your coach can focus you on critical elements of a skill's execution and the less taxed will be your memory.
Experienced Players Attend only to Critical Cues
Now let's jump ahead to tonight's NBA playoffs. When you are watching the games tonight, take a look at the players who are experienced and how they seem very able to handle both the pressure of the game and the constant stream of rapidly changing information. They are able to do this because they pay attention only the cues relevant to good decision making and to focusing their play on successful execution of a skill. Less pressure on their memory resources frees a player's decision making capacity to better monitor the rapidly changing environment of the game. At the higher levels the game is played faster and faster, leaving less time to read and react to situations. When you are first learning the game, your failure as a player to attach critical verbal cues to your skills, even when a coach is giving you good verbal cue, might mean you can't translate them into quick action on the court. Practicing at game tempo and "listening" to these critical verbal cues from your coach during those long practice hours, will over the long haul enable you to react and play at a higher level with a better chance of succeeding as a player.
These verbal cues can also help your concentration as a player when the internal and external distractions become overwhelming. Great players at the highest level have the ability to block out these distractions and filter through a lot of incoming information to quickly pick out the "most necessary cue" at the "critical moment". This cannot be achieved if, as a player, you fail to pay attention to critical learning cue" through your development as a player. The more information you can store into simple verbal cues the more freedom your brain has to make decisions.
Cues Must Decrease Processing Power Not Increase It!
To be successful as a coach, you have the ability to develop these critical cues. Great coaches always do. However your cues must be accurate and descriptive to the skill being performed. You cannot give too many cues in any setting. Memory aids area great idea for helping your players develop purposeful self-talk to correct themselves, like "pose for a picture on your release" or "jump off your toes like you’re doing a double flip off the diving board" when shooting your jump shot, or the shortened version "get your legs into the shot". Finally, meaningful cues are only useful if they are relevant to the age and skill level of the player. Teaching young kids to string together complex skills with verbal cues will prove flawed if they increase the amount of information the player has to process, versus reduce it to the critical element. Keep these things in mind when coaching. If you are a player and your coach is giving you too much information, ask them to see if they can give you one, two or three word verbal cues that you can associate with successful execution of a skill. Misdirection of your focus as a player to the wrong cues may mean your coach is over-coaching you. Ask question and pay attention, because most coaches do give you verbal cues. The great ones give great cues. The real question is are you paying attention when they do. If you are a player who hasn't got a cue, concentrate more in practice to these key words that will unlock the door to greater brain power on the floor and more success on the court.
Tips for Enhancing Verbal Cue Learning by Players
1. Listen for short key words used by your coach to describe specific individual or team skill actions.
2. Practice the elements of these skills at game tempo as soon as possible, while using verbal self-talk to reinforce in your memory the coach given cue and the skill being performed.
3. When you are uncertain what a verbal cue really means, don't be too embarrassed to ask for a simpler more clear explanation from your coach. If you are confused, you probably have teammates confused as well. A confused team is a step closer to a loss than a win.
4. Practice self-talk between your teammates as well. I'm not saying to coach your teammate, that is not your job. I am saying that if you can re-use the same verbal cues your coach is providing for the whole team, this will reinforce its use in your brain (and teammates as well) and reduce the processing load on your memory during games. That's what talking on court is all about. Succinctly, and with few words, communicating to your teammates what is going on at any point in the game.
5. Finally, practice what in psychology is called "centering". That is the process of doing something the same way every time as much as possible. When you shoot a free throw, use the same number of bounces and self-talk. When preparing for a shot from a teammate do the same footwork and get your hands in position to catch and shoot with little extra movement. If you are working on stopping penetration as an on ball defender, focus on the mid-section of the dribbler and not their arm or ball movement. When it moves you move. There are many examples of centering in basketball, but key is to do it the same way every time and put a label to it. When centering is combined with outstanding verbal cues, feedback becomes very productive and skills succeed.
2. Practice the elements of these skills at game tempo as soon as possible, while using verbal self-talk to reinforce in your memory the coach given cue and the skill being performed.
3. When you are uncertain what a verbal cue really means, don't be too embarrassed to ask for a simpler more clear explanation from your coach. If you are confused, you probably have teammates confused as well. A confused team is a step closer to a loss than a win.
4. Practice self-talk between your teammates as well. I'm not saying to coach your teammate, that is not your job. I am saying that if you can re-use the same verbal cues your coach is providing for the whole team, this will reinforce its use in your brain (and teammates as well) and reduce the processing load on your memory during games. That's what talking on court is all about. Succinctly, and with few words, communicating to your teammates what is going on at any point in the game.
5. Finally, practice what in psychology is called "centering". That is the process of doing something the same way every time as much as possible. When you shoot a free throw, use the same number of bounces and self-talk. When preparing for a shot from a teammate do the same footwork and get your hands in position to catch and shoot with little extra movement. If you are working on stopping penetration as an on ball defender, focus on the mid-section of the dribbler and not their arm or ball movement. When it moves you move. There are many examples of centering in basketball, but key is to do it the same way every time and put a label to it. When centering is combined with outstanding verbal cues, feedback becomes very productive and skills succeed.
Tips for Coaches Using Verbal Cues with Players
1. Make your verbal cues descriptively accurate. It doesn't make much sense to label your aggressive trapping defense "lazy" or "cold" when "red" or "fire" is a better descriptor of the intended effort and intensity of the defense.
2. Remember the 4-5 chunk rule of memory. For timeouts you might even reduce that to 2 or 3 critical elements. If you want to see a team under-perform try giving them 7 bits of critical information in a 30 second timeout. This is important for assistant coaches to understand as well. For example during a time-out, the head coach may be giving the team 2-3 important verbal cues "were playing 1 and done" off the inbounds pass (meaning we're trapping once for a steal and when it fails we back to regular man pressure), "get a body on the defensive boards" (everybody must make contact and seal out a player after a shot), and "push it up" (we are slow to transition and allowing the defensive pressure to get set up causing us to stall in our half-court offense). Now two eager young assistant coaches, each pull a player aside and give them 2-3 more pieces of useful or not-so-useful information. What does the player remember coming out of that timeout? In addition, will the additional information cause them to focus on the wrong element at the wrong time causing a complete team breakdown out of a timeout? Keep it simple and short. Make your point and get on with it. If you have to teach during a time out, you're not properly teaching during practice with critical verbal cues.
3. Know the critical elements of a skill and attach important verbal cues to those elements. The more simple verbal cues that can be attached to more complex actions (both individual and team) the more rapidly your team can adjust during the heat of battle and the more processing freedom your team will to monitor rapidly changing information on the court. A team that over-thinks on the court cannot adjust. Tie the key elements into key verbal cues.
4. Use colorful, descriptive verbal cues to associate verbal cues and actions. "Hands High", "Mirror the Ball", "Face" on a dribble pick-up, Funnel baseline" are all colorful and clear descriptors for players.
5. Be sure the cues you are using are age and skill appropriate. Trying to use the "colorful jargon" used at the collegiate level will probably not work the same when coaching a youth team. Some of it might, but remember the less experience the players you are coaching the more important it is to simplify the verbal cues and increase the practice time using those verbal cues.
6. Check for understanding when you give verbal cues and fail to get the response you expect. You might be surprised as a coach to see how little your players clearly understand when it was so obvious to you. Instead of getting frustrated with their lack of understanding, simply make it more clear what a verbal cue means and allow enough practice time to make it stick in their subconscious. It is the only true path to rapid adjustment and successful skill execution at the ever increasing difficult levels of play.
2. Remember the 4-5 chunk rule of memory. For timeouts you might even reduce that to 2 or 3 critical elements. If you want to see a team under-perform try giving them 7 bits of critical information in a 30 second timeout. This is important for assistant coaches to understand as well. For example during a time-out, the head coach may be giving the team 2-3 important verbal cues "were playing 1 and done" off the inbounds pass (meaning we're trapping once for a steal and when it fails we back to regular man pressure), "get a body on the defensive boards" (everybody must make contact and seal out a player after a shot), and "push it up" (we are slow to transition and allowing the defensive pressure to get set up causing us to stall in our half-court offense). Now two eager young assistant coaches, each pull a player aside and give them 2-3 more pieces of useful or not-so-useful information. What does the player remember coming out of that timeout? In addition, will the additional information cause them to focus on the wrong element at the wrong time causing a complete team breakdown out of a timeout? Keep it simple and short. Make your point and get on with it. If you have to teach during a time out, you're not properly teaching during practice with critical verbal cues.
3. Know the critical elements of a skill and attach important verbal cues to those elements. The more simple verbal cues that can be attached to more complex actions (both individual and team) the more rapidly your team can adjust during the heat of battle and the more processing freedom your team will to monitor rapidly changing information on the court. A team that over-thinks on the court cannot adjust. Tie the key elements into key verbal cues.
4. Use colorful, descriptive verbal cues to associate verbal cues and actions. "Hands High", "Mirror the Ball", "Face" on a dribble pick-up, Funnel baseline" are all colorful and clear descriptors for players.
5. Be sure the cues you are using are age and skill appropriate. Trying to use the "colorful jargon" used at the collegiate level will probably not work the same when coaching a youth team. Some of it might, but remember the less experience the players you are coaching the more important it is to simplify the verbal cues and increase the practice time using those verbal cues.
6. Check for understanding when you give verbal cues and fail to get the response you expect. You might be surprised as a coach to see how little your players clearly understand when it was so obvious to you. Instead of getting frustrated with their lack of understanding, simply make it more clear what a verbal cue means and allow enough practice time to make it stick in their subconscious. It is the only true path to rapid adjustment and successful skill execution at the ever increasing difficult levels of play.
So here I go, listen, focus, practice, center, and repeat! And good luck with enough effort you WILL GET A CUE!
Check back next month for another Playground Pointers courtesy of The Basketball Highway®.