The Cross Over Movement Blog

A couple weeks ago, Vern Gambetta recommended the book The Art of Learning on his blog. THe book is written by Josh Waitzkin, whose early life was the subject of the book and movie Searching for Biobby Fischer. I’m not a chess player, so I ignored it for a while. However, when I decided I needed to read a book to take my mind off my own writing, somehow this was the title that popped into my head when I was at Borders.

I have only read the first two chapters, but it is a great book. It is really one of the best books for coaches that I have read. While most coaches seek out more information on strategy, I am far more interested in how to coach, not what to coach. I feel the what to coach is pretty easy: you can go pretty far playing nothing but man-to-man defense and running 1-2 plays. But how you coach-from your ability to reach players to maximizing their learning to creating a good environment-those are the issues of importance to me.

I read the first two chapters and underlined the parts which paralleled the philosophy I tried to express in Cross Over: The New Model of Youth Basketball Development, especially in Chapter 4 of the Second Edition: “The Psychology of Talent Development.”

He writes from the perspective of a former champion, a player who has seen it all in his sport. And, I am one who believes there is little difference between disciplines. While I used a great deal of research from sports psychologists, as well as my own coaching experience, when writing my book, somehow these passages affirmed even more the accuracy and importance of the book’s message.

Initially, he describes the learning process:

A chest student mus initially become immersed with the fundamentals in order to have any potential to reach a high level of skill. He or she will learn the principles of endgame, middlegame, and opening play. Initially, one or two critical themes will be considered at once, but over time the intuition learns to integrate more and more principles into a sense of flow.

Doesn’t this accurately describe the learning process, especially with regards to the tactics of basketball? To reach a high level of skill, a player needs to learn the fundamentals and use only one or two concepts at a time. But, after years of using these concepts, he and his team can use multiple concepts simultaneously. Unfortunately, we do not allow for this type of learning progression to occur. But, I certainly believe it to be the ideal.

Later, he talks about playing pick-up games in the park and says, “Each loss was a lesson and each win a thrill.” How different is that then our current basketball system? Kids leave games ambivolous about the results. They play so many games in a weekend that they cannot remember what happened and cannot learn from the mistakes. NBA coaches always talk about the pain of losing and the lack of joy when winning; it is a game.

After starting as a prodigy on the street, he starts to train with a famous chess coach. He says about the experience:

Bruce had a fine line to tread. He had to teach me to be more disciplined without dampening my love for chess or suppressing my natural voice. Many teachers have no feel for this balance and try to force their students into cookie-cutter molds. I have run into quite a few egomaniacal instructors like this over the years and have come to believe that their method is profoundly destructive for students in the long run.

Precisely. Unfortunately, because players do not play much outside practice now, there is not a great love for the game to be dampened. However, a coach of young players must build this love for the game, above all else. He continues:

The most important factor in these first months of study was that Bruce nurtured my love for chess, and he never let technical material smother my innate feeling for the game.

In every article, book and research paper I have read regardless of discipline, this is the greatest consistency among the first coaches of future expert performers. However, most basketball coaches completely ignore this in the race to qualify their eight-year-olds for nationals.

My parents and Bruce decided to keep me out of tournaments until I had been playing chess for a year or so because they wanted my relationship to the game to be about learning and passion first and competition a distant second.

I argue against competitive leagues for under-10 players and don’t really think players should play 5v5 before 10 years old. European soccer academies limit full-sided competitive games for youth players as well. However, in our rush to compete, we have u-8 AAU National Championships and believe it is a necessary and positive outlet.

There have been many years when leaving my New York life felt like career suicide-my chess rivals were taking lessons and competing in every weekend tournament while I was on a boat crashing through big waves. But I would come back with new ideas and a full tank of energy and determination.

A vacation from the game? Unheard of. Kids train year-round, non-stop. I remember talking to the mother of a player about a free clinic I was offering. She said he daughter was too busy. It was the off-season, yet she has a basketball trainer for 2 hours on Monday-Wednesday-Friday and a plyo trainer for 90 minutes on Tuesday-Thursday-Saturday and played for her high school team and an AAU team. And, though she was a reasonably talented player, she is headed to a DIII school, even though she told a DII Head Coach that she was going to get a DI scholarship or quit playing. Sadly, this scenario is not abnormal.

I am only two chapters into the book, but I think it is an excellent read and concur with Vern Gambetta. If you are interested in how to coach, the art of learning or parenting your budding superstar, this is a great read.