EP155: Warm-up Design with German Pro League Coach Domenik Theodoro

[MUSIC] This is the Transforming Basketball Podcast. This is the podcast helping coaches and practitioners change the way we think about basketball performance. Our goal is to provide the ultimate resource for making sense of applying contemporary skill acquisition ideas within basketball. Within this podcast, we unpack how an ecological dynamics framework impacts our perspective of the game. If you're ready to join us in our quest to transform the basketball world, this is the podcast for you. [MUSIC] So welcome to the Transforming Basketball Podcast. On today's show, we have Dominique Diogoro. Dominique is a performance coach for Rasta Vecta, a division A pro basketball team in Germany. He, self-acleaned, performance management enthusiast who likes to create rich movement environments for his players to experience different affordances and song problems. He is a master in environment design and we're going to get into that on our conversation today. So, Dominique, welcome to the show. Well, thank you, George. That was a rich introduction. I really liked it. Maybe a little bit too much, but let's see if I can bring that much to the table. I hope I can bring a little bit. Exactly. Setting expectations high. I have to ask you, if you just look at your Instagram, if loads of small-sided games they use for warm-ups, firstly, when did you start getting into this? When did you start? Okay, this is it. I'm going to start doing this. It's maybe not the best reason for change, but I was just so bored with the stuff I was doing for quite a long time. I'm now in season 12 working as a performance coach. At some point, I was like, "Man, these warm-ups, it always depends if you play international, also international competition, then you don't have that many practices as you have when you don't play international competition. But usually you have at least 130 to 150 practice sessions, which include contact where I start with the warm-up. And if you think about that, there is. Even if it's only 130 times, it's 130 times, 12 to 15 minutes. That's a lot of opportunities. But at the same time, in my first years, everything, it was just me running the show and it was me instructing, and I was the chief, and I wanted them to do certain dynamic stretches in a way I wanted them to be done. Like with the technique, I thought of was the right way of going about it. And yeah, it was more like, you know, I tell you and you do it. But there was never anything like the more traditional lunges that you see, you know, like the sidelines, the sideline warwups. To be honest, it is still a little bit like this, but back then, it was always the same. And because I was just so preoccupied with figuring out the perfect warm-up with, you know, where I include the growing wind, include the hammies, you know, the quads, the hip flexes, and everything needs to be in there. And we need to go lateral, we need to go frontal plane. And, you know, this was always my way, okay, how can I get everything in in the time that I have? And at some point, I thought I had it all figured out, and the warm-up never really changed. It was the same. And guess what happened, you know, players were just figuring out the whole routine. You know, at some point they were an autopilot because they knew what was coming. So it was complete devoid of any joy. It was just monotonous. It was repetitive. It was predictable. And this is, this is like they were, maybe physically being prepared, but mentally they were. Mentally they were almost like being unprepared for what was coming at hand. Exactly. And this was basically, at some point I was like, okay, I got to change something because, you know, I think it's just like boring for them, but it was even much more boring to me. And then I thought about, okay, how can I tweak things? And initially, you know, I started thinking, what about like putting in a small game? But then I was like, no, it's not professional. Come on, we're a professional team. We cannot have fun, right? These were my like, my first thoughts. And at some point I did it. And I was like, I'm not sure if this is the right way of going about this. But the feedback from the players which I received was just so much better because all in a sudden they, you know, they seem to enjoy it just a little bit more. Because all in a sudden you forget what you're doing because you just preoccupied with the goal of whatever game you choose, you know, you just, you forget how fast you move because you just want to get the problem solved. You know, the players don't think about that they have to solve a problem, but they just think about the goal of the game, you know. And even in professional sports, you know, players want to win. And you know, even if it's just a small game, it's about winning. And all in a sudden they forget how they're executing things. Just play. Yeah, we were speaking before the importance of the warm up. And I was saying how, you know, you can go on your Instagram and there's all like I said before all the difference games and small-sided games and activities you do to get the player prepared for practice. And I was saying like, I love the warm up. I think it's so important because it not only gives the players mentally physically prepared, like you just said, but it also, you can also work on the skill development part. So maybe as a, you know, a team you're limited for time, you don't have time. Oh, I can't train skill development, but you can add that into the warm up. So you can add ballhand, like you can add passing, whatever it is. So how do you do that? Now your boosters, you're opening a big topic here with skill. Let me just first of all connect to what you said initially. I think like the warm up in general is something we, you know, everybody understands that it's important, right? Everybody is like, okay, okay, we got a warm up somehow. But the way we fill that part, ah, I think we can do a better job there, you know? And there was one quote that I once read, which really got me thinking. And I don't even know who said that. I really, I still don't know. I'm just going to read it out. It's just one sentence. Learning is not the process of repeating a solution, but is repeating the process of finding a solution. And this really got me thinking because, okay, if that's learning, if we can connect skill to this, let me just think about how I always went about warm up. And I said it before, you know, I was always giving the instruction. There was no, you know, there was no problem to solve for the players. And this really got me thinking, and this was the point where I was like, okay, how can I come up with problems in the warm up? And then, you know, if you want me to talk about my light bulb moment, I can talk about this because I think this really fits nicely here. This was when I got to fetch that was 22, 23 this season. And we had our first practice of the season. And at the end of my part, at the end of my warm up, I decided to do, like, I wanted them to build up their speed. And I put them on the baseline. And I just told them, hey, you know, guys, go from baseline to baseline. And then the course of you going to the other baseline, you build up your speed. All right, you don't need to sprint 100%. But please give me 80, 80% at the end. And they did it the first time. It was maybe 50%. You know, from what I was, from what my eyes were telling me. And then when the second time, it was probably the same. And I was like, okay, this is, you know, it was incredibly boring, right? Because there was nothing, it was just very like limited. So and then I was like, okay, I don't want this to happen again in next practice. So what I decided to do next practice, I just gave them a basket ball. And I put them in the corner of the court six and one corner, six on the other. And everybody had a basket ball. And I told them, okay, hey, throw up the ball in the air. The ball needs to bounce three times. And then you need to finish on the other side with a layup. All right, can everybody do that? And they did that. Yeah, they threw up the ball across the whole court. They had to have to bounce three times. And they finished with the layup after two tries. I told them, okay, give me give me two bounces. All right. And then after two tries, I told them, give me one bounce. And guess what happened? They build up their speed. Yeah, because they were so incredibly focused on the basket ball and on the way they were tossing the ball up that they completely forgot how fast they were moving because they wanted to they wanted to solve. Well, I can say, it's not a real problem. It's just a task. They wanted to solve the task. Afterwards, I was like, okay, good, because I try, I always like to reflect on the things that I do. And I was like, okay, good. I saw like way better buildups than the day before. And I had to feeling that they were enjoying themselves because they were picking on each other. You know, if they didn't, if they weren't able to complete the task, they were like, I said, they were picking on each other. Some guys were even helping each other. And they were fearing out the way of how to toss the ball up that they are able to complete the task. Correct. The communication. Yeah. It seemed to me that they had much more fun. But I wanted to ask them. So on the next day, I went individually without telling. I went to each one of them. And I was like, why do you think I did that? And we had some smart guys on the team in that year. But nobody told me, they all said things like, yeah, you want us to perform layups. You want us to figure out how to throw up the basketball and all of that. I can get the layup done after one bounce. Nobody said that it was about acceleration, building up speed. And then I was like, okay, maybe this is smart coaching from our lens because I let them build up speed, but they don't even think about that because they are just preoccupied with something else. And to be honest, now this is not real problem that they had to solve because there was no defender or anything. But it was a little bit kind of a game, right? They still had to solve a problem. And then I was thinking, okay, this is something I should build on. And I was like, okay, what about like integrating more small-sided games or mini games? I'm not even sure if small-sided games is the right term. It's probably more mini games. I go to think it translates differently in German, doesn't it? Because we had another funny was telling you that. Yeah. And then I was like, okay, maybe we implement a little bit like more games from now on because they started to enjoy it much more. And once you implement games, you know, now you have to think about, okay, there you have real, you have problems to solve, right? Yes. And we spoke about it briefly, but can you summarize your unrein rules for basketball warmup? Like what are the physical and mental boxes you have to always take? So it's like a problem to solve. So I categorize into on the one hand, there are my unrein rules. And on the other hand, I have a little checklist. And it always starts with the checklist. And the checklist, I say that it's completely stolen from Charlie Winegraph in I think 2018. I still love this checklist because I think it checks the most important boxes. My checklist is, you know, you need to increase tissue temperature. I think we don't have to speak about that. You need to prep the mobility that you have. You're not going to gain any more mobility in your joints through the warmup because you simply will not work with enough tension to create that change. You need to prep the central nervous system. I think you need to send your body a signal that we're about to start practicing, especially at the end of my warmup. And then you have to somehow rehearse the movements of your sport in this, in our case, basketball. Yeah. So these are the four, like the four checklist from Charlie Winegraph. And I have a fifth one. And the fifth one for me, maybe he also back then meant that already with checkpoint four. But for me, it's also about creating a warmup environment, which is a little bit representative of the game of basketball. And in the very end, I think the gap between the end of my part, if I start with the warmup, and the first drill of practice should ideally be very small. Yeah, it should be a smooth transition. These are just, it's just one of my warmup checklist. And then there are my unwritten rules. The first unwritten rule for me is that no warmup should ever be the same, which is not easy. Although you might think it is, sometimes like the player is enjoying it so much and it does so much for them that you want to make it the same. But then it's like, how can we make a similar game, but still keep it fresh? So I'd love to hear what you say to that. It's very true. Some, especially if I've never played a game before, you know, I'm always a little nervous because I never know how it will turn out. But if it turns out well and everybody is engaged and everybody seems to understand the rules and everything, then it. You know, it's a very good chance that I do it again because then they will remember and might even do it a little better. Yeah. The second one that I have is ideally I won't play. It's a little bit what I said earlier. I won't play as to forget that they are warming up. I just want to create an environment where they don't really think about warmup, where they just think about something else because they hopefully have fun. Then I want a high energy environment, which is also not easy, especially if you're in a season where you maybe lose more than you win or when you come up with a tough loss. Not. It's easier said than done. Let me tell you that. What do you do? How do you do that than those environments? I personally think that I try to be always very energetic because I think if I don't have the energy, how can I expect the players to be energetic or find the energy? So that's why I'm all pretty loud. You know, there are people who say you don't have to be the loudest all the time. But I'm a little bit like, "Ah, but if I don't bring a juice, I'm not sure if they can bring it." And some guys will always do that, but some guys. Some guys it's always tough, you know? That's why I'm saying it's not easy with the high energy environment. It doesn't work all the time. But at least it's my goal. And then one really important one, the last one of my unwitting rules, I want all of them to move. You know, I don't like choosing mini-game. It depends a little bit, you know, if we just have a shooting practice and I start to warm up, then I like to choose warm ups where they maybe don't move as much. Then it's probably more about mental, like their mental preparation, you know? But if we have a game, then minus three practice and I know it's going to be a long practice, and the first drill is maybe already live, then I have to pick something which, you know, prepares them well. And then I, you know, if I have to pick a game, then I pick a game where everybody hopefully moves and moves enough. So that they're ready, like I said, that we bridge the gap, like from the end of my part to the first basketball drill. And these are the unwitting rules. So I have 400 rules and four or five, checkpoints that I always want to try to check. So it's like nine little checkpoints just to make sure that you are a challenge to your players, warming them up, getting ready for practice, making sure that they're mentally engaged. And it's all that there. I love that. You do work with, you know, like load management and making sure, you know, how can we reduce the chance of a player getting injury. Obviously you can never prevent it, but you can reduce the likelihood. I want to ask you in terms of when you're using your warmups, like tag games, there's been a lot of research done of tag games and how it can reduce the likelihood of injuries because you're learning to stop, you know, your work on your deceleration and a lot of injuries occur up during the stopping movement. So tag games are great for that. But how do you, you know, design the warmup to maybe if the player only moves a certain way, you're trying to get them away from those kind of movement patterns to ultimately reduce the likelihood of them getting hurt. How do you do that? Well, I'm probably a little old school. I like flow. I like to have, first of all, I like to have a good flow in the warmup. So what that means is I like to start stationary. I like to start, if I have the time, I like to start on the floor because I believe that it gives the players a little bit of time to arrive at practice also mentally, yeah. And I like them to go from a seated to a standing position from a, we still do dynamic stretches, not to the extent that I used to do it. Yeah. And I like to do it different because I always ask them to perform them in a different way. And from there, like these are like the first five minutes, the next five minutes, I'm just roughly now, yeah, we'll do some locomotion. So they will go sideline to sideline. But this is all within, within my approach of like creating a good build up, let's say. Yeah. So because I want to make sure that we get, when we get to the small-sided games, they're already prepared because I know playing a tag game all in a sudden, it isn't something you can do out of the blue, you know, without being prepared at all. So that's why it's very important to me. Is it different then because I know you work with the youth teams as well and you help them out. So is it different, like with the younger A's group, would you go straight into a tag game? Whereas with adults, professionals, you've got to prep a more. Yeah. It's exactly how you said. I mean, I still would like the youth team, you know, maybe not to the extent I do it with the pros because I believe the youth doesn't need that, let's say they also need preparation, but maybe not that much. Yeah. With the pros, I always take a little bit more time because I know if you have some other guys, you know, they need that. So that's why I always try to progress it, let's say steadily. So I think my main job as a performance coach, you know, I want to impact health as best as possible. You know, the levers are, you know, load monitoring, load management, strength training. And the warm up, of course, right? We said earlier that we have so many warm ups during the season. And if you always play basketball, it's also pretty monotonous, right? I know we never move in the same way twice, but in the end, although no movements are ever the same, in the end, it's the basketball on a daily basis. So at some point, and this is probably goes in terms of your question, I came across the big buzzword movement variability. And in the beginning, I had sort of an idea of what it was, but then, you know, I listened a lot to the podcast from Rob Gray, for example, and there he had one episode where you mentioned the variability overuse injury hypothesis. And I came across, I crossed this term and it basically suggests that greater movement variability allows stress to be redistributed across different tissues. And this maybe has the chance to reduce the risk of overload and eventual tissue breakdown. So another word variability helps spreading the load and maybe we can mitigate the repeated application of stress to the exact same tissues. And this, when I was thinking about that, I was like, okay, so in order for us to like snap out of the attractor values of basketball, we also need to do something else, you know, in order to come up with more movement variability. And then I was like, isn't there a better space and time of implementing this in the warm-up? You know, because this is something we do, you know, it's a staple in each practice. And if it really helps, when we, you know, do something else, if we can then redistribute the loads a little bit more evenly, and if that maybe then helps injury reduction, hey, I'm all for it. The way I do this is, you know, if we are in the, for example, I mean, if we're in the dynamic stretching part or in the local motion part, I sometimes just call out the player. I, basically, I invite them to their own party. I'm like, hey, you know what? The next time we go up and down, I want you, you go to the midline of the court and I want you to dance for five seconds. And all the other guys, they have to do it. They have to be copycats afterwards. You know, stuff, really easy things. Or I, you know, just taking something, calling something, yeah, I don't know. Hey, I want you to be a volleyball player for five seconds. Let's go. And then the other guys, they have to copy that. Yeah, or go to the midline and be a soccer player and perform a free kick. I mean, sometimes I put them in a circle and I put one guy in the middle and I give them a model. Yeah, like two years ago, we had such a great team. They were enjoying that so much. And then at some point, I was like, you know what? We build a circle. You are the guy in the middle and I knew who I picked. You know, I knew the character that I picked and I told them, hey, you are belly dancer. Five seconds. Boom. You know, I don't know what I'm going to do. I asked him, "Hey, you're a lap dancer. Give me five seconds." And it was so incredibly loud in there, afterwards one guy, he made a comment, and everybody lost it. He said, "Oh my God, I want my money back." And the whole, the staff, the players, me, I mean, it set the tone for practice, because then there were like, you know, that doesn't happen all the time, of course, you know? But these are just like, "Well, it's one of the probably best, sorry, I've ever experienced." But, you know, in terms of variability, you can use the concept of donor sports. You know, we play a lot of games that are related to football, for example. And for me, you just borrow a part of a different sport and put it in your warm-up, and just the fact that it's football, everybody knows football. They are just so, and the energy just goes up because they want to win. And this is how I try to spice things up on a daily basis. No, that's great. I said this before, and almost a similar conversation I had with a previous guest, Martina. We were speaking about, like, every sport is basically the same game, but with different constraints. So it's like, that probably look at it when the warm-up designer in the warm-up. Yeah, and if you think about that, there are so many possibilities. They're actually unlimited. But I also have to say, since I look at this stuff always through my lens of things, although I'm thinking that I'm varying a lot already, I'm at the point where I'm getting bored again, because now I'm like, I would love to have more possibilities. I think right now, although I haven't done this yet, but I think that I have done it all, you know? Right, of course, yeah. I guess it's limitless what you can't do. I want to pivot a little bit and ask you about how you think this variability, you spoke about, like, you know, what the kind of the joke hint and how you added the movement variability, you know, made practice lighthearted. But how does this variability in your current warm-ups impact player engagement compared to maybe previous scripted routines that you did? Yeah, one thing is for sure, first of all, I think it adds novelty to the warm-ups, yeah? Because a lot of times the reaction from play, if we start a season, the reactions that I get from players who are not used to it, they're like, "Huh?" They always give me the weird faces, you know? They're like, "What? Excuse me? What do you want us to do?" Because I think it's still something that it's not lived everywhere. Like maybe if there's someone that's been there with you, they're like, "Yeah, it's crazy. It's going to be like this, but for a new player, they're like, "What's going on?" Yeah, and I definitely think that it keeps them on their toes. I think the amount of sleep walking just goes down because they know that I will constantly toss them a wrench. So they have to be engaged mentally, because they cannot rely on previous routines. And I think they're just less on autopilot, right? That's what I believe a lot of variability does. And the fact that it's unpredictable, like I said before, keeps you more focused. It gives the player autonomy and, you know, an SDT self-determination theory that makes them accountable. Exactly. Yeah. And the autonomy thing is awesome because that is something that I do a lot, actually. Sometimes I tell them, "Hey, I don't know, run from sideline to sideline, but you need to do right left one step, left leg four steps." And then they, you know, to me, I'm like, "Hey, do the same, but now we do it laterally. Figure it out." So that is something that I say a lot lately. I always say, "Figure it. Figure it out. Figure it out. Just figure it out." Yeah. And because this way, you know, like you said, it's autonomy. Absolutely. And a question of, you know, have you ever done a warm-up that you're in your mind? This is going to be de-warm-up. This is great. It's going to get them moving, you know, all kinds of different ways. And then you do it. And it's, you know, it flops completely. And vice versa. Maybe you have a warm-up you're not too sure about. And then you're like, "This is great. We have to try this again with different constraints." You know, does that happen for you? This happens all the time, to be honest. I mean, now I have like, let's say a big list of things. Well, I know big list of games where I'm like, "Okay, this one will probably work." But it happened to me. I'm very enthusiastic, always, before I start doing things. But sometimes they just, it just doesn't play out the way I was hoping for. But then it's not a bad thing. Because then you can reflect on it, right? And that's what I do after each practice. I'm like, "Okay, what went wrong? How could I do it better next time?" But on the other hand, it also happened where I wasn't as enthusiastic, maybe, before I was implementing a game, and then all of a sudden it went completely wild. There's one game that I really like, where I was actually surprised of how good it went. I call it, I don't know why. I think Austin Yohkum said that once it's a "Razel Dazzle Football." And what I did, I used the sidelines of the court as the end zones. And you have two teams, like let's say you have two-time six players. The goal was that you receive the football out of football, like an American football that we used for playing. And the goal was that somebody of your players has to receive the football in the end zone. When I did this the first time, I gave them five passes. And there was not really a flow. It was like five passes where. And I also let them run with the football. And I was like, "I know, this is. " And for me, it was no contact. You could only like deflect the ball on defense and stuff like that. But for me, it was much too stationary. They still enjoyed it because it was football. But then, on the next day, I applied the same game. But what I did then, I told them, "Hey, you cannot run with the football anymore." And you have max, two passes, and the third one needs to go in the end zone. Yeah, so you can one pass, second pass. And what I saw, it was much quicker. They were moving much faster. And you had. This is really important. You had much more changes of possession. And the good thing about this is, you don't need a lot of equipment. You basically need a football. You can also use a basketball if you want, but with the football, it's more realistic. And you only need to court. And a little space behind if possible. And that's why I love this game so much because it's so easy to implement. The rules are incredibly easy to understand. And it's a fast-paced game. And most of the time, you have a lot of guys moving, and they score also quite a lot. And this is. What you just asked before, this is a very good example of where I tried it the first time. It was like, "So-so." But the second time, I was like, "Okay, if you do this in that way, man, then you have flow." Yeah, I think it's so simple, right? The time constraint and like passing constraints or dribbling constraints, like limiting them, it just speeds the game up so much. It gets the players to what you want them to do faster. It's exactly to your point. You want them to warm up. So you're gonna make them change, you know, change directions more so they're constantly having to defend and then attack. So it's like, it's a simple constraint, but just reflecting on it and be like, "All right, what can I do? It's just add this really simple constraint to manipulate behavior." One other important aspect, whenever you choose a game, I think the goals for the game, they need to be achievable. Very important. Might sound intuitive, right? But if it's too hard to achieve, they can be disinterested very fast. Do you want a game to last a specific amount of time at what I mean by that is, for example, do you want an ideal amount of time with a game to be a couple minutes so it can be quick or does it just depend on the game? Do you have that? It depends a little bit on the time that I have at my disposal. Usually with my head coach right now, I have 12 minutes, which is not a lot. So when I get to the game, it's not that I can put myself in the middle and explain for one minute and set the stage with equipment and stuff like that because I simply don't have the time for it. So ideally, I want it to be quick. I love it to be competitive and they should all move, of course. But like I said, it's not always easy to get that done. But from it, yeah, for me, it's like always three, four minutes max. That's it. Yeah, now I agree. And I think, you know, when I when I my previous team when I'm coaching, I want them to three, four, like maybe you know, one to two minutes, two to three minutes max. And then it's like change partners so then they get different kind of problems to solve in the game as well. So just come into the end here. I want to thank you for your time. I do want to ask about a few of your favorite games or setups that help player transition from warm to game ready. So what do you have any of those? Yeah, I mean, the one that I just said is a result as a football. I think it's very easy to implement. You just and it doesn't need to be like an American football. If it's some sort of a spiky ball, this is also something, you know, if you come up with weird equipment, they always get like excited, you know, oh, what is this for a ball? Can I have this? So you can use any sort of ball. Let me just take a smaller smaller basketball tennis ball or whatever. Can I just say I one of my favorite things is like going to the sports equipment room and just picking out equipment that I've never seen before and thinking like how am I going to turn this into a challenge for the players to solve. Exactly. I even have now let's say we bought it this season for just for me like a cage like a cage that you can lock and I have so many different like utensil that you tend to different balls like rubber frisbee's foam balls, which you can throw it, you know, at each other. So stuff like that because you know, I just like to vary things, but in terms of your question is the result as a football that I really like one thing that it's awesome. I just play use this game like last week, I think. You know, there's no name for it. I call it basketball volleyball. So you use the whole core and each of the player has a basketball in their hand and one team is on the one half of the Core and one team is on the other half and at the midline, yeah, you have like a zone. After the midline you take like one and a half meters for like on both sides where they cannot, first of all, they cannot enter this zone and the ball that you play with also cannot enter that zone. You have like a different kind of ball could be a small basketball like a kids basketball for example and the way you play it, you can play the kids basketball only with the basketball that you have in your hand to it's like volleyball rules basically. So if you play the ball over to one side, it can bounce twice and you can play like you can receive set and play it over. You know what I mean? It's just basically but you always play the small basketball with your own basketball that you hold in your hands. I understand, yeah. So it's like ball ball but you have a ball in your hand, yeah. Exactly. Ideally you play four and four because then again they move much more but I can tell you since you have this zone at the midline, it's very important this zone because that leads to the fact that you have longer rallies because it's pretty easy to keep the ball alive. But it's pretty hard to score but you can do it because the first time I did this, I didn't have this zone in the middle and then there was it was just too easy to score and with the zone in the middle man, you had like rallies of like 10 to 8 like plays and they it was so competitive in the end the game finished like it finished 3 2 but this took a little longer because we only had a shooting practice after. So that is something they they enjoy it. The other thing I like I always like playing on three basketballs. You know if you have two teams you can use the whole gym or even play on four baskets like baskets. I mean and then I give them like a you have I don't know you have three passes and after the third pass you cannot pass anymore you need to shoot but you can only shoot three. And then there are also so many things you can do you can only score after a given goal for example you can only shoot three but before you shoot you need to circle the ball around your race. Stuff like that you know on three baskets on four baskets you can come up with so many things the other time the other day we did six was a six on three baskets and I told them they are four passes with the fourth pass you need to shoot. But while you shooting you need to call the name of the last guy who passed you the ball I guess what happens the shooting percentage goes down because they cannot focus of course. I guess the main thing there is that they're constantly playing right because they have four passes for the games are big. Exactly and I these days I'm not like when I started I always gave them more passes these days I'm like no less passes are better because you have more changes of positions and there's just more speed. Is that important to you the fact that they like just making them play more possessions what like you know offense defense defense. Yeah because I don't want them to be only an offense or like only a defense for too long and what's also important is always the overall number of players that you have because if you want to play I don't know six if you have 13 players yet and you cannot play six versus six because you have 13 players so what I do then I always choose one guy give him like a little jersey and I tell him it's your lucky day you're only an offense. Right yeah that makes sense and that's a good way to simplify or make the game harder depending on how you shoot maybe you're only a defense you know for example so you can simplify it. Yeah only a defense exactly so there's there's so many possible ways of going about this. Yeah man and I think that's the beauty of the warm up time and it's like you know if you take the warm up time at practice and then the warm up time at games you have a lot I mean I don't want to do quick mass here and be wrong but it's like you mentioned 150 practices a year and let's say 50 games so 200 you know warm up times you're looking at 2000 minutes of just extra practice so if we can really use this to not only get players ready to play mentally and physically but also develop them their movement capabilities move a variability and their skills it's just you're gonna you know the players are just going to benefit so much more from that. Yeah unfortunately and this is but then on the other hand that's also the beauty of it you know nobody will ever be able to quantify what really you know has led to success for example you know it's it's never going to be black and white but on the other hand that's also the beauty of it sometimes I sometimes I'm like man sometimes I would love to know what has led to you know X Y Z but it is simply what it is. I think also like to your point sometimes you you said you take it easier so it's like it's also important to not always be go go go with the players but also be up that space to go okay it's like it's relaxed you know it's it's okay to be here today where you know it's relaxed we got a game tomorrow you know whatever the case but it's also just important to meet the players where they're at. There's one really interesting thing before I had this once we had a warm up game it was football and it was about how Mary's like long passes yeah and we played that two three times in that year and then towards the end of the season we had a we had a game and one player through a hell marry in the game a hell marry pass like through the whole court and are like our other wing caught it and laid it in and the player who threw the pass he came to me because it was in front of our bench he pointed at me and he was like you know dumb that's because we play football all the time that's why I can throw this pass and I was like initially I didn't even notice what he was referring to because I was just locked in on the game but afterwards I was like isn't that amazing I mean he thinks that this is the reason why he can throw this pass I think it's not maybe it is a little bit but as long as the player thinks that this is the reason we all good right as a coach you know whether you're the performance coach or the head coach assistant you always want to make sure you put players in environments that they'll see in the game so that the first time they see it is in the game and obviously that's an impossible job right but the most you can do is like try to get some form what they'll see so that kind of pass whole port is in something that you're going to see every game but having a game where they're forced to do that so now when they do get an opportunity they can see the affordance more clearly and they cannot act on it so that's an awesome story in the end it was just nice I really liked it and the player was happy and that's that's what matters right that's what matters absolutely so Dom I want to thank you for your time I really enjoyed it for coaches listening and whoever's listening check out Dom's Instagram he's got awesome small side of games on their warm up things that he does with his team to check it out it's his professional team that does that you feel me I think it's awesome and and it just you know like I said to you before I kind of remind you what I was trying to do with my previous team as well so again just thank you for the work you do and the passion you bring and I have one more question before I let you get out of here and that's our transformative tip if you could leave coaches with one piece of advice that will instantly change their practice environment what would that be there's no perfect warm up you know one coach once said you know warm up is open space it's a blender of skill movement opportunity and strength and anything is allowed as long obviously nobody gets injured and as it takes those boxes as well then it fits I love it exactly of course you should have a little plan but there's no perfect warm up couldn't agree more Dom once again thank you so much thank you for having me appreciate it and yeah looking forward to the next episodes here because I'm an avid listener of course perfect well I'll let you go have a great rest of your day I really enjoyed it was a lot of fun thank you so much or you too with any questions that you have from the episode see you next time on the transforming basketball podcast