Happy Fire Friday, 🔥

This week I had the opportunity to work as a coach for the NPBA at a camp hosted at the Mamba Academy!! The camp was great--the athletes got to meet and learn from Kyle Kuzma, Phil Handy, Lethal Shooter, and Nneka Ogwumike, and it's so cool to see kids light up when they see their heros. 

In this group of 120+ athletes were 22 players from Japan... who spoke minimal English. Three of them, Takado, Arato, and Mii, ended up on my squad, and with the help of Google Translate and a freakishly good memorization ability (thanks to 7+ years of bartending) I got to learn about their practice style, their coaching, and their hopes and dreams. :) 

Takado (13) was my tall, lanky leader. He BROUGHT THE JUICE every single time and rarely got a chance to come out of the game because they forced me to trade my other big man. On Day 1 he took a MEAN elbow to the forehead, stumbled around a little bit, shook it off, and then looked up an smiled at me with a thumbs up and a quarter-sized knot on his forehead. My eyes got big, but his eyes got right back on defense. Beast.

Arato (12) was cute as a button and FEISTY. Best way to describe Arato is an aspiring AND1 Mixtape player, who absolutely thrived on making his American counterparts lose their footing, scoring on them, and then pointing at them and beating his chest. LOL I know we're not supposed to encourage that but holy wow it was hilarious I couldn't help but be fired up by him! (RIP American ankles.)

Mii (12) was my workhorse--and the only girl in the group from Japan. Her off-ball movement was ELITE and she was the first one I said "Ohayo" (good morning) to on the second day, and her face lit up with this big smile and she let out an audible "Ahh!" of excitement.

Basketball is a universe ever-expanding. It has taken me places I'd never imagined going, and I've met people I'd never imagined I'd meet. 

What a journey this is. :)

I'm gearing up for my next 4-Day Intensive in Buffalo, NY, as well as SPRINTING on Instructional Design and Development for Boosta Inc. 

The whole idea behind the Boosta app is giving athletes all over the world an opportunity to get feedback and mentorship from elite trainers that they already know/follow. Part of my role with Boosta is to coach our trainers on their feedback. Something as simple as saying "Great job! I see you!" is enough to keep an athlete going... but we want to do more than that. As I was developing my first training for our trainers, I combined a handul of master teaching resources as well as skill acquisition research to come up with a simple formula for feedback that can be used by leaders across all industries.
 

The Magic Feedback Formula

Scenario: An athlete (let's call them Jordan) has just submitted a ball-handling challenge where they had 50 Pound-Dribbles with their right and left hands.

Level 1 - Good job!

Example: "Great job, Jordan!! I see you out here putting this work in -- Keep going!"

Level 2 - Good job + Be specific

Example: "Great job, Jordan! I love that you're letting the ball come all the way up to your shoulder so we can get good at handling the ball at all heights. I see you out here putting this work in--Keep going!"

Level 3 - Good job + Be specific + Here's what you can do better

Example: "Great job, Jordan! I love that you're letting the ball come all the way up to your shoulder so we can get good at handling the ball at all heights. When you go back and do this the next time let's really make sure we're really dribbling HARD, like we're breaking the floor with each dribble. I see you out here putting this work in--Keep going!"

Level 4 - Good job + Be specific + Here's what you can do better + Here's WHY

Example: "Great job, Jordan! I love that you're letting the ball come all the way up to your shoulder so we can get good at handling the ball at all heights. When you go back and do this the next time let's really make sure we're really dribbling HARD, like we're breaking the floor with each dribble. We want to dribble hard because this is how we're building our handle muscles in our arms, core, body, etc. The harder you dribble in practice, the more you'll have the ball on a string in games! I see you out here putting this work in--Keep going!"

It takes less than 30 seconds to give Level 4 feedback, and how much more valuable is that than Level 1???

Simple. Repeatable. Effective. -S/O PGC Basketball.

I recommend this formula for all humans who find themselves in positions where they need to give feedback.

 
Until next Friday. :)

Shooters Shoot,

BriAnna