The full package?

In his first blog, Academy Head Coach Neal Hopkins explores the psychology behind sporting performance and emphasises the importance of accountability in the development of young players

Part 1

I have recently been asked a question that really got me thinking, a young player asked me "what do you look for in a great junior basketball player?" My response "that's a great question" to be honest at the time it was very difficult to give that player a pure answer (if there is one).

I think coaches spend a lot of time (I know I do) considering what it is that makes a player special, of course our job is then to apply that philosophy. The idea behind my series of blogs is to look at what could be required to make 'the full package' or as the question went 'a great junior basketball player' 

As an individual there is usually one quest 'self-actualisation' this in simple terms would be someone who is fully using their potential, they have self-fulfilment. So here is the conundrum; how do we as coaches get our players to this? Does self-actualisation mean that a player can be great? Those are questions to provoke thought for you and for me to think about (probably for a long time) I also feel that the word potential is very vague - It was actually a recent AASE induction I went to that made me think about this, as pointed out then and with reference to Newton’s laws, converting potential (which is something that is static) into kinetic energy (something that is moving) is without doubt part of the coaching/teaching process but I guess we can't really refer to a player as having 'kinetic energy'. I haven't really considered the word 'potential' in the same light since, I feel it's redundant as why would you want your player to be static with their development? We want them to be moving. I guess you could say potential must be justified...  

The concept of 'self-actualisation' is very holistic and there have been a number of theory's behind it, probably most notable would be Maslow's Hierarchy of needs. The hierarchy of needs is what is says on the tin and probably best explained through the diagram below.

 In simple terms to have fulfilment you must build the pyramid. So it's at this point that I go back the initial question 'what makes a great junior player' well... In my eyes you could very easily map what you as a coach, player even a bystander believe are the make-up of a great player against Maslow’s Hierarchy. We take the base of the pyramid, the physiological components and add physical attributes; speed, strength, endurance etc. - the rest of the segments I'll leave with you at this time - that's definitely for another blog... In this instance I want to focus specifically on a word that I think is truly important to being successful (or not) and with reference to the hierarchy, I would run this word up and down the whole thing, that word being accountable.

I think this is a word that is really misplaced, maybe even forgotten by some. In an ever evolving world and with such emphasis on generational change I just think that a large number of junior players, even just young people have lost sight of what it means to be accountable; in context - I recently spoke with a college coach in America, we had a great discussion about recruitment, and the main part of that conversation was around the use of social media (Twitter, Facebook) in short and as discussed; it is so easy to find out all is needed to know about a person from their social media outlet, let's face it - it's a platform for expression. Now I have no problem with that, however it's very obvious and well documented that some express themselves in ways that are deemed un-ethical or incorrect; this brings me back to the word accountable. I believe that it is a responsibility of an educator (to state the obvious) which as coaches we are, to help young players understand that their inner voice is their inner voice for a reason and that there are extremely good methods to help improve those thoughts. I understand that social norms are not for all but when a split second decision (to make these thoughts public) could hinder the 'kinetic energy' or progress of individual, preventative measures should be taken. I think being consciously accountable is a skill that should be taught early and it is most definitely something we should encourage – I have found one of the most productive ways to do this is to goal set; this way players can monitor their performances on and off the court and hold themselves accountable to their goals; it's simple but affective but don't get me wrong, to get a teenager to buy into that process is not easy. 

So to answer the question, what makes a great junior player? First up you must be accountable, accountable to all the areas that are needed to reach self-fulfilment..

Watch out for Neal's next blog ( Part 2 of 'The full package' ),  due to be published in the coming weeks 

A DAY IN THE LIFE: Myerscough College Basketball Academy

Tuesday

Morning

Myerscough College Gym

Academy players wake up at around 7 am on Tuesday mornings. Half of the squad has an hours session starting at 7.30 in the gym with strength and conditioning coach Alex Hodgson and sports therapist Nick McCarthy. Players work on strengthening specific muscle groups, injury prevention exercises and core stability amongst other things. The other half of squad have around an hour and a half to practice shooting or ball handling individually in the sports hall and eat breakfast before their strength and conditioning session begins at 8.30. Following the conclusion of strength and conditioning and individual practice players have a 2 hour lesson with programme leader Neal Hopkins on Assessing Risk in Sport.

Afternoon

After the lesson finishes at 12pm players have an hour to get their lunch and rest before team practice begins at 1. The focus of team practice varies day to day however this Tuesday transitional defense and defensive rotations were the main focus. Although the majority of the squad train on a Tuesday afternoon, 2 players travel to St Peters High School in Manchester (with whom the academy has a partnership) to coach a training session for school children.

Evening

On Tuesday evenings academy players split into different groups and take part in various different activities. Around 6 academy players travel to East Manchester to train with the Manchester Giants professional team. Other players compete for one of the Academy's two partner teams in the Manchester Area Basketball League. For those players not involved in pro training or a fixture there is time to rest, complete classwork, or practice individually in the sports hall. Players eat dinner any time between 4 and 6.30, depending upon their personal schedule. By 11pm most players are in their rooms and are beginning to go to sleep, ready for another day of hard work on Wednesday!

Click here to view sample timetables

For further information about the academy email:nhopkins@myerscough.ac.uk

Inside MCBA: Alex Hodgson Interview

Inside MCBA (Myerscough College Basketball Academy) is a new feature which will see the coaching staff at the academy contribute regular educational blog posts to the site. We will conduct introductory interviews with each member of the coaching staff which will be published in the coming weeks.

Alex Hodgson is the lead Strength and Conditioning coach at the academy. He played professionally in his native Australia and in Europe and brings a wealth of basketball expertise to the programme. We spoke to Alex about his playing career and his role here at Myerscough..

When did you first begin playing basketball? 

I started playing when I was 9 years old in my home town in Australia. I was quite tall as a kid so it seemed a logical way to go with sport! I really enjoyed the sport so I continued to play there onward.

How did you end up playing professionally? 

I just kept playing! I played locally for my town when I was growing up and played representatively. I continued to make better teams and kept progressing until some opportunities arose which allowed me to get paid to do what I enjoyed!

Tell us about the different places you have played (and which was your favourite?)

I have played in lots of different places. My favourite place to play is at home with my friends and people I grew up with in Australia. If  c had the chance to play in Barcelona which was definitely my favourite place I have played away from home. I have also played here in the UK which was a great experience

What advice you would give to young players who aspire to play professionally?

Be obsessed with the game! If you want to be a professional you have to be dedicated and do your best. Not many people end up playing professionally just through cruising along and waiting for it to happen.

How did you end up working at MCBA?

I had played for Neal (academy head coach) for a couple of years. He knew my background and recognised that my basketball knowledge matched well with what he was trying to do here. I had finished my strength and conditioning degree locally at UCLan (University of Central Lancashire) and the opportunity came up and I thought it was a really good match.

What does your role as lead Strength and Conditioning coach encompass?

My main role is to develop the athletic side of the academy players. They're all at a developmental age so we are really looking to strengthen guys up and improve various performance aspects such as speed, agility and fitness.

How do you feel the first term at the academy has been?

It's been a learning curve but I think we've improved every week. I'm really impressed with the way the athletes have progressed so far. We're only a few months in and I think everyone has seen a marked increase in performance and strength. They are all seeing the benefits of all the training we do which is great! We're really looking forward to the future

Watch out for Alex's first blog post, due to be published in the coming weeks.

Inside MCBA: Nick McCarthy blog

 Inside MCBA (Myerscough College Basketball Academy) is a new feature which will see the coaching staff at the academy contribute regular educational blog posts to the site. Our first blog comes from academy Sports Therapist Nick McCarthy. Nick has a wealth of experience working as a sports theapist in the professional game, he currently works for the Manchester Giants and has previously worked for Mersey Tigers. Nick has also worked with Jordan Brand, British Basketball, Midnight Madness and the NBA.

 Prehabilitation

In this blog I will be talking about a few ways young athletes can help avoid or reduce the risk of injury. Obviously there are situations we cannot control where in a contact sport like basketball (yes I said contact sport!) injuries can occur, but as Coach Neal Hopkins always says we can only control the controllable.

Firstly it’s important to just touch on what I mean by injury in this context. Injury can occur to many structures in the body, the main structures that you hear about in basketball are the ligaments, due the high nature of ankle injuries seen usually on the lateral side affecting the anterior tailo-fibular ligament (ATFL), the calcaneo-fibular ligament (CFL) and the posterior tailo-fibular ligament (PTFL)  (or in light of the most recent high profile injuries the anterior cruciate ligament (ACL)). Other structures seen can involve the muscular system; classic examples in explosive sports are the various grades of tear to the hamstring or attachment area to the bone in the tendon.  And it would be criminal not to involve skeletal injuries, I’m sure we have all seen the Kevin Ware injury on various social networking sites. Finally a system that people may not be classically aware of is the muscle fascia.

So on to the ways to reduce our injury risk……

Hydration

This is a simple concept. Keep the body hydrated and avoid pointless and avoidable muscular injuries. But why can dehydration cause injury? A dehydrated muscle fascia can leave the body feeling aches, stiff, and in some cases exhausted. Micro tears in this structure can cause inflammation just like it would with any injury and can cause fluids in the area to dry up. Knock on effects can be the contribution to muscle weakness due to constrictions on the muscle that it envelops and I’m sure you can put 2 and 2 together and realise how that can now tie into muscular injuries if a muscle cannot fully contract it will have a detraining effect and essentially weakness the muscle long term. Keeping yourself hydrated is a very easy step and is easy to monitor. Looking at the colour of you urine can be a good indicator of dehydration the darker the colour the more dehydrated we are in simple terms.

Muscle Function

Functional training is of key importance. Being able to move the body explosively without putting our joints into risky positions is key. At Myerscough basketball Academy, myself and Head of Strength and Conditioning Alex Hodgson focus on the smaller stability muscles in all exercises to ensure correct firing and activation of muscle. A main focus for us is on the Glutes. Control of Rotation at the hip (see figure 1 where the players knee is in the vulnerable position resulting in a rupture of the ACL) ensures that the knee can stabilise in a safe position, this also has a knock on effect all over the body in posture.

Figure 1. Screen grab from Derrick Rose’s ACL rupture. Notice the internal rotation of the left leg combined with valgus knee position and flexion.

If our body is able to stabilise in correct positions then all muscles can work efficiently to prevent excessive forces on structure that may be unable to cope. This is true of all joints in the body when playing, training, or in the gym. Safe and effective training with purpose in the gym is of absolute importance so when your Therapist or S&C coach give you the prompts to correct your form it is very important to do so to ensure that when you are on court and using these functional movement patterns your brain will have learnt a correct pattern and allow you to carry them out in the safest way to reduce risk.

Proprioception

Proprioception is the brains knowledge of where the limb is in space. This can be a common problem with the typical ankle sprain, especially when it comes to reinjury. When injury occurs it’s very easy to think about what structures have ‘strained’ or ‘torn’ what is sometimes forgotten about by players is the neurological effects. Proprioceptive training during the rehabilitation phase is a classic protocol (figure 2 shows a classic used proprioception exercise). In this instance let’s look at avoidance of that injury. As a player I’m sure most of you have used the euro step as a move to get to the basket. This is a great example of a complex movement that will involve knowledge of where to step and place your leg and foot….proprioception. So when training trying to add balance exercises that challenge you and reach out of your base of support can help both stabilise the joint and allow the brain to discover how to stabilise in vulnerable positions. With an increase proprioception you can now tell your feet where to land and how to land in a safe area.

Figure 2. Reaching the toes out along the white lines can challenge balance, and hip stability whilst training where to place the leg.

So there are a few examples of how you can start to avoid avoidable injury. No one wants to sit in the stands when you could be on court.

 Nick McCarthy BSc (Hons) MSOST

Myerscough topple Tyne Met in EABL clash

Myerscough College improved to 2-1 in the highly competitive North Sea conference (EABL) on Wednesday, handing league leaders Tyne Met their first home loss of the season in the process. It was Myerscough's second trip to Newcastle in as many weeks; they suffered a painful 15 point loss to Tyne Met in the second round of the BCS Cup last week.

A closely contested first half saw the two teams tied 43-43 at half time and just two points separated them heading into the final period. The visitors came out on top after a low scoring fourth quarter, winning 72-67. Myerscough's victory was thanks in large part to a dominant rebounding display, they pulled down 43 rebounds in the game, 13 of which were offensive. They shot with impressive efficiency, connecting on 51% of their field goal attempts. Myerscough displayed their strength in depth with four players scoring in double figures and five players pulling down 5 or more rebounds.

Stand out performers for Myerscough were Andre Gayle (18 points, 8 rebounds), Emmanuel Kabengele (10 points, 8 rebounds) Chris Bwana (11 points, 5 rebounds, 2 steals), Montel Dennis (8 points, 9 rebounds) and Trevor Samuel (12 points and 4 rebounds).  Big man Connor Tuxford pulled down 5 offensive rebounds whilst Will Shaw provided a valuable spark off the bench, knocking down two three pointers.

Myerscough College Basketball Academy

Tyne Met's Eddie Matthew displayed his outside shooting touch, hitting five three pointers and totalling 25 points. Myerscough prevented two of Tyne Met's primary scorers from having any real impact on the game. Danny Horta and Alan Sasor, who rank amongst the EABL's leading three point shooters, struggled to cope with defensive pressure from Myerscough. Horta (who averaged 24ppg prior to Wednesday) scored 11 and Sasor was rendered scoreless.


Myerscough Head Coach Neal Hopkins was delighted with his team's victory, he commented; "I'm really happy with the guys, I can't see many team winning at Tyne Met - we had a game plan and it was stuck to. I have to praise the players for their maturity in this win, there will always be ways in which we
can improve but today was a big step forward for us, it was great to see such a team effort"

Myerscough will not play another EABL game until the new year following the cancellation of next weeks game against Priestley. Academy players will be training hard up until the Christmas break next week in preparation for January's game against Loreto College.

Report by Ed McNally