From Cockpit to Hardwood: OODA Loop & CLA Basketball with David Cochrane

A roaring flyover sets the tone for a fast, high-stakes conversation: how do we turn clean drills into game-winning decisions? We sit down with Coach David Cochrane to map the OODA loop—Observe, Orient, Decide, Act—onto basketball in a way that’s practical, challenging, and laser-focused on transfer. Forget perfect lines and cone choreography. We build context-rich reps that force players to read, adapt, and act faster than their defender.

We dig into why perception and action must stay coupled if you want real results. David breaks down shooting that holds up under pressure: high release, true arc, guide hand discipline, and wrists and fingers doing the heavy lifting. Then we stress-test those mechanics with representative constraints—live closeouts from different angles, shot-clock pressure, and fatigue sprints—so a great stroke survives chaos. On the ball-handling side, we distinguish tight control from rhythmic flow, layering taped-box precision with float dribbles, weight shifts, and contact so players can change tempo and attack angles on command.

Team scenarios get the same treatment. We build situational inbounds as a discovery lab: change coverages mid-rep, add time limits, score the drill, and let players see what the defense is actually giving them. Instead of telling them every answer, we shape the environment—task, space, and individual constraints—so good decisions emerge. Along the way, we champion aggressive mistakes, quick debriefs, and the plan-execute-assess cycle that keeps practice honest and game speed natural.

If you care about training that shows up on the scoreboard, this is your playbook. Hit follow, share with a coach or teammate, and leave a review with the one constraint you’ll try this week.

David Cochrane Basketball Academy 

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Chapters

• 0:00 Setting The Scene At Oceana
• 2:28 Introducing OODA And Coach David
• 6:16 Building A Program And Local Talent
• 12:36 Access, Equity, And Work Ethic
• 17:36 Coaching Gaps And Relationship Building
• 22:36 Basketball As A Complex System
• 28:11 Perception, Illusions, And Prediction
• 33:56 Coupling Perception And Action
• 38:41 Tempo, Angles, And Psychology
• 45:01 Shooting Mechanics And Variability
• 53:06 Constraints-Led Practice In Action
• 1:00:46 Simulating Pressure And Transfer

Transcript

Speaker 4: 0:56

Okay.

Brian "Ponch" Rivera: 0:57

Um so what I want to do today is try to blend what you do in skill acquisition for technical skills in basketball and coaching with something known as Observer Orient Decide Act. It's called UDA.

Speaker 1: 1:10

Okay.

Brian "Ponch" Rivera: 1:11

Have you ever heard of OODA?

Speaker 1: 1:12

No.

Brian "Ponch" Rivera: 1:12

Okay. Uh let me build some context and we'll have a conversation about this. So we are at the approach end of runway 5 left, NAS Oceana, right up right above us. Uh in fact, today aircraft are taking off runway 2.3, which is the opposite of runway 5. So just this morning, F-22s, F-18s are taking off right over our heads. So that's actually going to interrupt us every now and then. Sure. So the OODA loop, observorient decide act, is connected to fighter aviation uh slightly. And I'll talk a little bit about that. Um but we'll we'll we'll we'll go into that a little bit deeper here in a moment. But we're gonna talk about OODA. You don't know anything about OODA loop, I know very little bit about a little bit about basketball. My girls play basketball, in fact, yeah uh you train them. So uh why don't you introduce yourself to to everyone?

David Cochrane: 1:53

Yeah hey, what's up guys? I'm uh I'm David Cochran. I'm a small time business owner. I got a training facility right down here in Virginia Beach. I also am the head coach and director of basketball operations at Norfolk Collegiate School, which is a private school in Norfolk. So I'm just basically basketball full-time. I'm I'm not as smart as this guy.

Brian "Ponch" Rivera: 2:10

Oh no. So um getting into your training was a little difficult about four or five years ago. So we're coming out of COVID. Yeah, right. I think uh you know our our girls back, well, they're 16 and 14 now. Um, but then you were in a different facility, yeah, right? And you were training some girls and and some talent in the area. Can you talk about um how many D1 players have you helped get into school and what what's that look like?

David Cochrane: 2:35

So I think even better than Division One, it's just it's just all division C is uh we've got 96 players, we've helped facilitate offers to get to college, which is a big deal for us. Um we started out uh I started out with with three clients in a shed. Not lying to you, down the road, like in a shed, put a basketball hoop up and put a little turf on the ground, and we started trying that. But um those three kind of turned into thousands out of you know, and it just kind of organically uh grew and grew and grew through word of mouth and just result, result-driven business. And um now here I am trying to uh trying to even uh scale it even more.

Brian "Ponch" Rivera: 3:16

So, how many coaches do you have working with you or for you now?

David Cochrane: 3:19

Uh seven, excuse me, six now, but ten overall in my five-year history here.

Brian "Ponch" Rivera: 3:24

Okay, so so you're bringing in coaches and they're generally D two, D three, D1?

David Cochrane: 3:29

Division one, division two, all former they're all former college basketball players. So we all play college ball, half of us have coached college ball, um, and we all do this full time. So what you see out there right now is like a lot of trainers who are uh part-time, was like a side hustle or whatever they want to do. But like for us, we think one of the advantages that we have is that this is all we do. Yeah. I I I'm blessed. I get to wake up and do basketball every day. It's fun. Like I have nothing to do right now. So like this is it it's a it really is a blessing, man.

Brian "Ponch" Rivera: 3:57

So um Virginia Beach is starting to become a hotbed for, in my opinion, and I don't know what you think, but a hotbed for recruiting. Um seeing a lot of talent come through. But I think a lot of talent comes through this this gym right here, right? Yeah. I mean, you you you got you have somebody playing on the USA team, is that correct?

David Cochrane: 4:12

Yeah, Micah Ojo. Yeah. She uh she grew up training here her entire life. Um she's she's a little bit hurt right now. She still comes through when she can. She's on a busy schedule right now for where she's at. Um but you know, uh we're happy to say that we gave her her foundation um and really built her up and kind of created the player she is now, and that goes with uh a bunch of other players, including your girls. Now we don't like we don't like to take credit. Like you see a lot of trainers out there like to take credit for like a player. Yeah, I find that kind of off-putting and kind of weird, but like we help, we help in their journey. Yeah, and and that's that's to me is a blessing because I mean I just want I'm just blessed to be a part of all of these players' journeys. Yeah. You know, I hope they one day see that man coach had an impact in my life.

Brian "Ponch" Rivera: 4:57

So growing up, I didn't know that uh like you can make a business out of training kids. And and then but the even you know, you have parents that have a disposable income, you have dreams of going to D1 schools, D2 schools, you have kids that just want to go to university, right? So I'm gonna tell you something. Yeah, all right.

David Cochrane: 5:13

Basketball has now become a sport where basketball used to be a sport where you could go outside, you you you got a ball, you went to a court, and you just started playing.

Speaker 4: 5:26

Yeah.

David Cochrane: 5:26

If you are not training and you're not putting in hundreds and thousands of dollars, you are getting left behind. It's kind of like baseball or soccer. How it how it still is, but how it used to be. Like, like in order to get better at this sport, I gotta I gotta put in money. Yeah, that's what I was never like that. Yeah, yeah. Unfortunately, it grew to that.

Brian "Ponch" Rivera: 5:45

But let's talk about that. It's it's it's kind of turned into like a nasty thing. You know, there are the the parents, the adults, the families that have disposable income can do this. Sure.

David Cochrane: 5:53

Not everybody can do this. I know.

Brian "Ponch" Rivera: 5:55

But but it doesn't mean you can't do this on your own either, right? Like you can still go out there and put the practices. In fact, sure, one thing I tell my girls is hey, if you want to go work out with David Cochrane, you've got to put two to three hours in a week before you show up here. Oh, love that. Do you know if they do that or not? No, they don't, by the way. No, no. This goes back, this it's fundamentals, right? This is not a place to come practice. This is a place to to to train and uh get some feedback and some other things. We'll talk about that as well. So I want the the girls when they come in here to go out and execute the things that they are were taught and learn. And and um, we'll talk about muscle memory and what that means a little bit. Um, but then you get into coaching. Uh so you're a coach now at high school level.

Speaker 3: 6:33

Yeah.

Brian "Ponch" Rivera: 6:33

Uh what we've seen with coaches, and and we've had Sue Enquist on who actually worked with uh, she called him Papa Wooden, uh, from am I saying it right? Uh from uh UCLA.

David Cochrane: 6:43

Yeah, John Wooden. John, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Brian "Ponch" Rivera: 6:44

Yeah. So she worked with him years ago, and and she's one of the winningest coaches. And here comes the sound of freedom. I know. It's okay. We'll let it go. You're gonna get a lot of those.

David Cochrane: 6:52

Yeah, that's we're right next to the base.

Brian "Ponch" Rivera: 6:54

Yeah. Uh so I just want to make sure that's the recording. Take that, take advantage of that. Oh yeah. All right, so those are F-18s flying over our head, more than likely. Uh, there's that connection we made earlier. We'll talk about that here in a second, but we'll let that fly by. Back to this uh coaching. Um one of the requirements to be a coach, and uh when we had Sue on, she said Ponch, there's really very little training coaches have to be coaches, right? They just follow what they their coach showed them and they for sure they execute on that, and sometimes they get lucky, sometimes they're really good at that. Um but coaches need to be trained, just you know, they need coaches too, right?

David Cochrane: 7:34

Agreed. I I think personally, I I think that's I think that's great. I think uh, you know, you got seminars you can go to, you got coaches clinics you can go to. There's things that you know everyone kind of collaborates and helps each other, right? But I think personally, like to me, the most important part of being a successful coach and really growing yourself as a coach is is relationship building. Like if you can if you can understand and if you can start to let me try to think of how to word this. If you can just build a solid foundational relationship with all of your players, one through eleven, I think to me that's the hardest part because with that comes buy-in. Yeah, and with buy-in comes coachability and it comes it comes uh chemistry and it comes continuity and a lot of different things. So, like to me, no, there's not there's not much going on where like coaches are getting taught like how to get better at coaching. Now there's YouTube now, yeah. So I mean you got basically anything, but anyone can post anything on YouTube. Yeah. Um right now the only really thing is like there'll be like a coach's clinic or seminar, maybe like 20 times a year. You'll have coaches you can go and pay a fee to get in. And but that's very, very technical, that's very entertained-based. Yeah. So um, but they don't really teach you how to build relationships and how to relate to kids.

Brian "Ponch" Rivera: 9:48

Yeah, yeah. So this is huge. Um, in the world of complex adaptive system, it's the relationships or the interactions that matter. It's not the quality. So this goes back to sport. If you look at a high-performing team, even in basketball or football, generally you need decent players, right? You don't need the best players, but it's the interactions that matter, how they work together as a team, and they can dominate. So you've seen this with like the New England Patriots. I think you're a big fan of the uh Tampa Bay Buccaneers. Right? Uh and then uh what's your favorite basket? NBA team?

David Cochrane: 10:14

Uh I I grew up a jazz fan. I still am. We're we're kind of down though. But okay.

Brian "Ponch" Rivera: 10:19

Okay. Uh so last night uh I think the NBA kicked off 2025, 2026 season this past week. We got uh Oklahoma City out there. You had I think the Golden State Warriors beat the Nuggets and Lakers this last week. Last night, right? Yeah, last night. I watched it. I didn't believe they blew it. Oh the Nuggets?

David Cochrane: 10:37

Yeah, yeah. I put a little money on it too. I put a little money on the Nuggets and they blew it. Up seven or two minutes. Sorry.

Brian "Ponch" Rivera: 10:43

No, no, no. That's no, I'm a big fan of the Nuggets. In fact, the first game I took the girls to was uh a championship game NBA for the Nuggets. Uh I think they played the Lakers that night. Uh wow, that's amazing.

David Cochrane: 10:54

West County Finals?

Brian "Ponch" Rivera: 10:55

Uh no, I take it back. We did we went to the uh championships. We played Miami Heat Heat. Yeah, yeah, okay. Their first NBA game was uh Denver, so that was crazy a couple years ago. But anyway, uh back to basketball and and coaching. Uh what I've seen is, and let me let me explain why I think basketball is so important. I didn't play uh when I was younger, I played, you know, uh played around in in college a little bit, got my ass kicked. Um I don't have a lot of skills at basketball, right? So my girls, when they saw uh they were playing soccer at the YMCA and they saw this orange ball and they saw these people having fun, they said, I want to try that.

Speaker 4: 11:27

Right.

Brian "Ponch" Rivera: 11:28

So we took them over the Y, um, it was eight years ago or so, and they started playing basketball there. What I like about basketball is uh there's a solid connection to uh uh the OODA loop, which is Observe Orient to Side Act. Uh at the if you look at the OODA loop uh holistically, it's it's a flow system. And a flow system is really basic. It says you need an input and an output and some type of boundary, right? And what you want to do with that is you want to move a currency from an area to a point, right? So think of the uh basketball court as an area and uh the hoop as a um as the point. So you're just trying to move that currency around the best you can. Sure. And the way you do that is you design, it's through design, how you design, which includes training, nutrition, sleep, all these things, right? How do you how do you get the optimal design to move that currency to a point? Uh the other thing about it is the dynamic reallocation of resources, the resources in this case being humans, right? What that means is it's a highly interdependent sport, right? You can't be a social loafer, you can't just hang out and hide in basketball, you have to participate. Agreed. Not only that, you have to go from offense to defense, right? Not all sports do that. Uh football. You know, they they okay, it's time to go take a 20-minute break and come back and play defense. You know, there's no no time to hide and basketball. Right. So uh your endurance comes into play. Uh the game is constantly changing. Throughout even a game, uh the conditions are changing. The the players are getting tired. Um they may not have slept the night before. They slept in a hotel. They there's so many variables going on to in in it, uh, conditions, temperature, um, sprains, uh, whatever. So many things going on. So that game is is critical, and it's critical for understanding life, right? So if you think of basketball, it is a it's about life, right? Yeah. So getting the kids to play the sport is critical. Small teams, highly interdependent, um, and and you need to put in the work. Right. We already talked about that. Yeah, these kids can't just show up and and do that. And then of course, there's some that's not always a good thing. You get kids showing up in high school who've never played, and they, you know, you're kind of left out. Right. So maybe there's a way to bring them into the fold. So that's why we have the girls playing basketball, and um, it's not about going to university to play D1 or D2 or anything like that. It's it's this may help you get into a university, but more important, you're gonna learn something very valuable, and that's teamwork skills, 100%. And the and the amount of work you have to put in.

David Cochrane: 13:55

Education skills, yeah, leadership skills. Yeah. Uh I I mean, uh uh I know this sounds a little uh like oh duh, but um just how to stay alert. Yeah, I I think that's a skill. How to stay alert, like in life and everything. And uh like in basketball, like you you already just said it. Like it's one of the few sports that you build multiple defense and you're moving quick and it's a lot of moving parts very fast. Yeah. So like having to stay alert of where's the ball, where's my man constantly is a skill. Yeah. So yeah, I was putting piggyback in the yeah.

Brian "Ponch" Rivera: 14:28

So the alertness, we call it situational awareness. I'm gonna talk so yeah, back in the day, I used to fly right here out of NAS Oceana, full Air shows, uh, I was an instructor here. So in that, we learned a few things. We learned the importance of communication, teamwork. Uh, we also learned the importance of planning, briefing, executing, and debriefing. So all teams go through that life cycle. They plan, they execute, they assess, right? The assessment piece is critical. Um and that is a high-performing organization, right? You know, we're two miles from one of the largest bases on the East Coast, F-18s. Everybody's seen the movie Top Gun Maverick, and they're like, what's that about? Well, those lessons you learn in the cockpit can translate to everything you just said, creating situational awareness, being alert. What's what's happening now, what happened in the past, and what could happen in the future. Right, right. Anticipating what's coming next, right? Yep. So it's it's it's amazing to be able to take the lessons from the cockpit and try to explain it to the girls so they can see, hey, when you you know, we use uh Do they understand all the symbols? No, no, no, no, no. No, they they're catching on to it though. That's why we're here. I want to go. How do we how do we make this? Um let me let me get to the fundamental question that I asked you I think when we started, not today, but in the past. How do you get um what you do in this gym to translate to a game, right? How do you do that? And and you told me back then, sometimes it just emerges, sometimes it just happens, right?

David Cochrane: 15:49

I I think I have an answer.

Brian "Ponch" Rivera: 15:51

Okay.

David Cochrane: 15:51

So just from experience, just from the players that I've had that because it's hard to like let me just if you don't mind giving me a broad scope. It's hard to replicate coming into a training session and you're looking out here and it's a blank canvas. There's no one here, and you have the ball, and you have to use an imagination of uh where your four teammates are, where the five defenders are, how's the defender playing in? Is there a hand is there a forearm? Is there a hand check on your hip? Are they on the body on your side? Like, so to me. That's right. Keep going. All right. To me, uh the best way to transfer it over is to take one or two things you've learned from your training, because good trainers they tell you when and why and where you're gonna be using a skill. Okay. You always need to understand why we're doing what we're doing. Okay, and then you gotta recognize, and then good trainers, and I believe we're good trainers, then put you in a situational training here with live with live imagery. Yeah, okay, live defense. And basically, you try to take that, you go to the game, take one or two things that you learned, if you find yourself in a situation, you try to get back to your your training. You understand, all right, I think I know what to do. I'm gonna use a shoulder bump because she's on my left shoulder. I gotta get two more steps and I got her. All right, and and then you can kind of go back to uh the footwork and go back to your patience, go back to your pivoting, just little skills that you've been taught. I think just take one or two things that you've learned, try to remember uh basically your situational training and take it to the lock game. Okay, and that's that's how I've seen the players have the best success.

Brian "Ponch" Rivera: 17:39

So we're gonna we're gonna build on that today, and we'll get into that in a moment. So here's what I've seen in here is when you do the stations, I've seen the live training where you put one of the players against the other one. Yeah. Um, you put one of the coaches up there to show them, hey, this is why you're doing this. So you have a a defender um doing something to force them to go one way, right? It's a constraint, we'll call it that. Yeah, yeah. Um dribbling, when they come over here on the left side, they do their dribbling. Generally they're doing dribbling independently, but as a group, if that makes sense. Yeah. They're going through uh tasks. Trying to tighten up their handle. Yeah, yeah. And then right behind me, um, they'll go back through another series where they're probably attacking from the right, um, going to the uh the basket, right? So yeah, uh attacking from the right side of the court and then maybe doing uh uh something underhand um with the left hand or what have you. All right, so what I've seen here is phenomenal. Uh I think we could take it to another level. Um when you work on shooting, for example, the girls have gotten better at shooting, but over time, their other coaches over time have kind of said, Don't do that, do this. And that's crazy. Yeah, yeah. So now we have to adjust. But that's okay. It's okay. Sure. So here's what I want to do. I'm gonna take you through the the oodle loop, a very basic understanding of the oodaloop. Okay, very basic idea. Yeah, and then we're gonna take that and we're gonna go into something known as constraints-led approach. Um, it's an ecological approach to um training. And we're gonna try to translate that to the some some things you just said. Sure. And then maybe we'll get up and and we'll we'll demonstrate and see, come up with some ideas on how this training is. I'll try to make it not let go over my head then. Okay, all right. So here's what I'm gonna do. Uh you ever go to Jimmy Johns by any chance? Yeah, man. Okay. Um spot. This is Jimmy Johns, right? This is actually uh uh what I'm doing. I went to the Jimmy Johns right up the street. They showed that they have this picture hanging up there. What it is is a brain. And can you just read that out loud? Can you can you read it?

Speaker 1: 19:27

Yeah, I think. It's kind of funny, right? According to research. Research. That's research.

David Cochrane: 19:38

Researchers, yeah. Researchers. That's what messed me up. According to research at the Cambridge University, it doesn't matter in what order the letter is. Perfect, that's fine.

Brian "Ponch" Rivera: 19:45

So so what what and and I'll put uh put this up on the screen. So it this is a study that says all the words are scrambled, excuse me, all the letters are scrambled except the first and last, right? Okay. So the reason you can read is is is you're you're pattern matching. You are um you're not reading every letter when you read a word, right? So what's happening is there's something uh that they've kind of discovered about the brain, how we process information. We predict it, right? Okay. So the reason we predict it is because our brain uses so much energy that it has to find an efficient way to experience this reality, right? So um uh what it's doing is it takes a model, uh, builds on that model and predicts what the next letter is going to be, right? So according to researchers at Cambridge University, even those that thing's out of order. Right. So that's that's one example. Another one is um, I want to show you this one. Show me. This will be kind of fun. We'll get into this. Okay. Uh this is called Adelson's checkerboard, and I'll put these up on the on a slide for everybody too. And the question is uh you're looking at a checkerboard with a ball that is casting a shadow on the different uh areas of the checkerboard, and it asks which square is darker, A or B? So what's your answer?

David Cochrane: 20:53

Man. Such a trick question. Um I'm going B.

Brian "Ponch" Rivera: 20:59

All right.

David Cochrane: 21:01

I'm assuming it's A?

Brian "Ponch" Rivera: 21:02

They're actually the same color. Check that out. It's the same color bar that came across here. Okay. Now, I'm gonna take this one away from you. I can argue A is lighter, but okay. No, no, but you're right. You're right. So uh let me let's talk about this. So the reason you see A as being lighter than B, uh, or B being darker than A is because things that are in a shadow, we have a world model, an orientation that says, eh, it when something's in there, it might be a little bit darker, right? Right. So we predict that, even though you know the answer. I gave you the answer. You still look at it and you say, no, it's still A is lighter than B or B broken. It's because your brain is processing that, like, no, anything in a shadow says it's going to be darker, right? Right. There are other illusions out there we can we can demonstrate. And what I'm getting at is um our perception of reality is constructed top-down inside out, right? This reality you higher in is it's it's hallucination. That's what they're they're calling it right now. So it doesn't mean we're hallucinating everything, it just means that our brain is projecting this thing in our mind. Um, or another way to think about it is our sensory organs are not just passively experiencing this, we're actively engaging in this reality. So, what does it have to do with sports? Well, perception and action are critical, right? Perception is top-down inside out, it's constructed. Action, we need to take an action to change the world or update something. Um when you think about basketball, it's a 1v1, you and I playing basketball, the environment's the basketball court, it's the temperature, it's everything in here, it's the ambient noise, it's the F-18s flying overhead. Um, and you are my environment. I am your environment, right? So what I do, what if I go in a direction or whatever, it creates what are known as affordances, opportunities for action, right? Okay, right. So that's the external environment. I want to understand that. So that perception reality, to see more, to create that situational awareness, I want to be able to help the um players have that. So here's what's really, really important perception and action should be coupled, meaning that if I am doing a skill or working on something, I need to have some type of information flowing to me as to why I'm doing this. Yeah, yeah. Okay. All right. So so this is interesting. And this is where I think we can the feedback, or is it what you're talking about? It can be, um, or it could be a constraint. So a feedback, we'll get into feedback here in a second. So anyway, the OODA loop is is high. It we won't go into a lot of details here. We'll talk about perception, action, and the environment. So again, the environment, you're my you are my environment with this, and then I'm your environment. So when we're competing, I want you to do something or whatever you do is going to allow me to do something. Gotcha. So in basketball, um, you know, the reason we do a hesi. Yeah. Why do we do a hesi? Because I have to explain this to my kids and they don't understand yet.

David Cochrane: 23:51

We do a hesitation, try to freeze the defender.

Brian "Ponch" Rivera: 23:53

Which is to create an opportunity for action, right? So if I'm trying to get inside the defender's observe-oriented side act loop, I'm trying to create disorder confusion. Yeah. And that that is not about me just going through the motions. I'm trying to get you to do something, right? Right. So, in order to do that properly, what I'm learning is um we can't just teach the kids to do a hesit. We have to put somebody in front of them to show them here's what you're trying to do. Why are we doing this? Right. Because I want to get it.

David Cochrane: 24:21

Yeah. Imagery.

Brian "Ponch" Rivera: 24:22

Imagery, yeah. You want you want that. You want that environment. So um what what I've seen a lot of basketball coaches do, and I'm not you you I think you're about 50-50, maybe 60-40, where you're actually putting the environment out there for the kids. Um, most coaches will just go ahead and just run them through the they call it blocks, right? Hey, just go do this, go do this, without the why. Yeah, yeah. I know. So we'll get into so we'll get into that. But the OODA loop will the the people say you gotta get inside their OODA loop. You gotta get you gotta freeze them, create disorder confusion, right? So that's what you want to do. You want to create some type of condition or or take some action that forces you, in this case, uh David, to freeze. Sure. Or or to to lean one way or another. I'm kind of staying with you. Yeah, it's kind of cool, right? Yeah. But but that's what you want to do in basketball. So what what I've seen with the girls, and I think I I've asked some of the coaches in here, I was like, can you explain why they're doing this? Because it's it's you start with the why. Why are we doing this? I want to I want to freeze um uh a defender. Sure. I want to put some doubt in that defender's mind. I want them to be want to raise their hips. Raise their hips, get get them to do something that allows me to do something else. I also check out what I'm playing against, right? Um because that's gonna determine my game. If I know you're a fantastic defender, I I have to shift my whole game, right? 100%. So that's why that that that environment is critical and that explanation needs to be there. Okay, so back to the OODA loop. In in fighter aviation, many people say it comes from fighter aviation. It doesn't. It actually comes from understanding the nature of creativity, right? How do we become creative? How do we adapt to a changing world, right? We'll let this jet go by here in a second. Sound of freedom, right there. F-18. By the way, uh we'll come back to that. Um just so you know, the F-18 was designed by the same person that gave us Doodaloop. Really? Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's crazy. Completely different story. Uh here comes another one with us.

David Cochrane: 26:19

It's gonna be many. Yeah, that's fine. That's fine.

Brian "Ponch" Rivera: 26:21

That's fine.

David Cochrane: 26:21

Sound of freedom.

Brian "Ponch" Rivera: 26:22

Especially in the point, they do their runs. Oh, yeah, yeah. In the point and usually stops around like noodles. Gotta go out there and see the aliens that are flying around whisking the UAPs out there. All right, so adaptability, right? We're we're trying to um adapt to a changing environment. Right? That's basketball, right? 100%. Um when we're playing the game, the environment's changing, we have to adapt to it. That's what we're we're coaching kids on. So um that is a simple way of saying um getting inside somebody's oodaloop. So tempo. We talk about tempo too, right? Yeah, yeah. Can you walk me through a little bit about tempo when you and you teach kids tempo, like critical and speed?

David Cochrane: 26:58

Uh tempo is in basketball is just critical because you have to keep changing it. Why do you have to keep changing it? To keep your defender guessing. Very you know, very simple things. You know, so uh when you're an offen when you're a good offensive player, you can move at different speeds. You can move, you can move at different speeds, you understand how to manipulate defenders, you understand how to attack top foot, you understand how to like we said earlier, how to raise their hips, you understand um how to read the angles at which they're taking, like little things, how to size them up. Um it's it's a lot of believe it or not, psychology. Um a lot of it. And but again, basketball, like most sports, is all angles. Yeah, it's all angles. So it's a lot of, it's it's a lot. If you really want to break it down, it's a lot of geometry, it's a lot of psychology to me, I think.

Brian "Ponch" Rivera: 27:47

We we use a lot of geometry and psychology in the market, by the way. So that's uh that's again, it's another story. Um so the thing that popped up in the last few weeks for us, so let me go back to when I was learning more about the OODA loop, and that is the the idea of comp complexity, complex adaptive systems. You're a complex adaptive system, so am I. The fighter jets are complicated, but you put a pilot in there, they're complex complicated, or excuse me, complex. Um so complex adaptive systems are are um there's a path dependency. So what happened to the path matters. Uh they're self- they self-organize, it's very important. Self-organization is critical. Um there's about 20 to 30 different ways to explain um a complex adaptive system. So your teams are complex adaptive systems. You never know what you're gonna get. 100%. Yeah, you never know what you know, every night, every day you're gonna get something different. Yeah, so within the um OODA loop, and I'm gonna go back to that for a moment, there's something known as orientation. That orientation is based off of three things just genetics, our culture, and our experiences. So genetics being our DNA, um, we'll we talk about epigenetics, which is changing that DNA, uh, your biases, things like that, your size, uh, your strength, um, uh, you know, how tall you can grow to. Then you get into culture, which is language, um, uh symbols, things like that, uh, cultures, cultural issues, and then experiences would be um the training that you get. Uh that that training you got last week here at you know at the Cochrane Academy, how much sleep I got the night before, how much uh uh what did you eat in the last couple weeks? Are you eating junk food when you're going to play basketball? All these things, all these things matter, right? That's your orientation going into that. So all that training, all that previous experience goes into it. But it's the when you get on a court, it's it's it's competition. It's it's almost warfare, right? Yeah. And then you are you said it right. It's about manipulating that, it's about creating the confusion, deception, yeah, right? Um, so there's a couple things I want to do with you here in a moment, and that is um talk about how we can create more game-like conditions for the kids. Yeah, oh, in training? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

David Cochrane: 29:51

You want to tell me about it now?

Brian "Ponch" Rivera: 29:52

Yeah, well, we can talk about uh so this is very important. Um, like I said, uh we're gonna have uh uh Rob Gray on the podcast soon. Uh constraints led approach. You can we can talk more about these things. But the idea is to get away from some of the uh let me grab some notes here. Because uh I'll I want to make sure we get this right. Sure. Uh traditional coaching, let's talk about this. You brought up a few things. Uh a lot of times we learn from our coaches and we go, hey, that's the way things are, that's the way I want it to be. Uh parents come in here or they go watch a basketball team warm up and they see the weave and they see the the lines and they see everybody shooting the layup. That's not what's gonna happen in a game. There's always gonna be competition there, right? Right. So you so that's building muscle memory. Getting yourself loose. Yeah, getting yourself yeah, warm it up, warm it up is good. Um but what we want to do is uh you know, there's no one ideal technique, and I want to ask you about that. So I had it in my mind for the longest time that there's only one way to shoot a bat one way to shoot a basketball. Um there's probably a good practice out there. Um and uh I want to walk through that because uh I can't explain how to shoot a basketball to my girls, but you can, right? Yeah, sure. I can say that a couple things to them. One, a high release point. Yeah, it's important, and a high angle. Right. And the reason for that is uh physics, geometry. Geometry. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Um but then you get into the mechanics of the arm, right? Yeah and what something else I learned is that uh no matter how we try to do this as humans, we cannot repeat the same exact, exact motion. We're gonna get really close. Agreed. Uh there's gonna be very variability in that motion, right? Right. So uh just can you walk us through how you get through a good shooting motion?

David Cochrane: 31:35

Yeah, it's a lot of it's a lot of uh it's it's uh pretty detailed. You want me to go through it all? Yeah, why not? Okay. So uh the way I taught his daughters are it's the way I kind of teach everyone it's what worked for me. Um Growing up, I I was a shooter. So uh I got scholarship offers because I could shoot. That was that was my skill that I um excelled at. And I was taught by an amazing shooting coach who is uh now coaching in the G League, um teaching the uh baseline basically professional ball players how to shoot. And he's the one who taught me up in Richmond when I grew up. And I teach the same way he taught uh he taught me for some slightly different variables, and that is two fingers in the middle of the ball. Always. Hand spread apart, uh opposite hand on the side. A lot of people you'll see will come on the opposite side of the ball. Sometimes uh Cali will do that. Yeah. Uh you want it on the on the ball so the right hand has all influence of the ball. Okay. You don't want you don't want your your weak hand to have any influence of that shot. Sometimes people push into the thumb, sometimes it'll come off their uh ring or pinky. I mean, so there's a lot of different things that can change the course of that shot. The last thing, you're talking about high, uh high elbow. And then that's great. We do want a high extension, but uh our best release point doesn't matter what height for uh the size hoop that we shoot on basketball is what we call 45 degree angle. So if you look at your 90-degree angle, uh, we're trying to get it at the 45-degree marker, yeah, and that's our release point non-stop. And then the biggest thing for us is focusing on the wrists and fingers. That's how you control the rotation and the touch of the shot. Is the last thing is that say you had a pie chart of how do I get the ball from my hand to the wrist, okay? Legs, shoulders, uh, arm muscles, fingers, wrists, the wrist should be about 50%. At least, give or take. It it shouldn't be a lot of people use the legs too much, but if you go look at the greatest shoes in history, in history, I'm talking Reggie Miller, Ray Allen, Larry Burr, Dirk Nawisky, Steph Curry, they barely jump. They barely jump, they barely get off the ground. I mean, it's it's legit like two to three inches. That's it. And but they don't need to because they've been taught how to snap a wrist high and extend it out 45 degree release point, yeah. Uh, and to let that ball slide off the fingers, don't push with the fingers. That's the number one reason shooters fail. They push with the palm, they let it sit on the palm, or they push with the fingers, or they jerk the shoulder to try to get extra power when all you need is a smooth, one fluid motion snap at that 45 degree. Okay. If you can do that, you can make the majority of your shots. And but that takes a lot of practice, it takes a lot of consistency, it takes a lot of, it takes a lot of repetition, like over and over and over and over again to become slightly obsessed with it. So like that that's how I think uh shooting should be broken down, taught. And um so yeah, so I mean I can go on about it.

Brian "Ponch" Rivera: 34:42

So you you brought up the so one of the things I noticed about the the some of the girls that are playing uh for our high school is uh rotation of the ball, I think it rotates left or right. And I I you said the the hand, the the left-hand placement on the ball. Is that why it's doing that? Or it's it rotates left or right.

David Cochrane: 34:57

So it trails right? Uh I think it rotates left. I I think it might be. So so that that's from who who does that, Callie? Callie Callie doesn't. Yeah, because Callie puts the ball in her palm. She's not gripping it. With there should be space between the palm and the ball. So sometimes when you push with the palm, it can it can almost like spin off the palm. And sometimes I had a ball. Sometimes she'll put her hand on the opposite side of the ball. And what happens when you put your hand on the opposite side of the ball is you're basically blocking your own shot.

Speaker 4: 35:29

Yeah.

David Cochrane: 35:29

You know what I mean? You've got to get that thing off before you're supposed to have it on the side. Some people put it, like I said, on the opposite side, and what happens is it it rolls off through uh these three fingers, and that's where you get your slide.

Brian "Ponch" Rivera: 35:40

Okay.

David Cochrane: 35:41

Yeah.

Brian "Ponch" Rivera: 35:41

Uh so um uh one of the things I'm learning from the uh the constraint slot approach is is uh there is gonna be variability in the shot. And I I I was watching this video of Steph Curry, and you know, people watch when he warms up. He looks like he's warming up from the same spot all the time. Right. And he'll come back and say, no, that's not how I do it when I practice. I'm doing this like you just said, it's it's a warm-up just for me to get sure adapted to my environment. But what he ends up doing is he'll he'll do sprints, right? He'll run sprints, get tired. That's a constraint. Yeah, he's constraining his body. He's like, hey, I want to be in a position where I'm tired.

Speaker 3: 36:13

Yeah.

Brian "Ponch" Rivera: 36:14

All right. Um, and then he may uh have a defender in front of him and do all that. So I'll do all because that's gonna alter your shot slightly. Um, but at the end of the day, you still want a high release point and a high angle. No doubt.

David Cochrane: 36:24

Right. Believe it or not, there it is. If you were to talk to like Reggie Miller, Ray Allen, Steph Curry, Darton Wiskey, some of the great, again, these great shooters ever, Clay Thompson, they will tell you straight to your face that they prefer someone right in front of their face when they shoot. Yeah. Because the majority of your shots come with people in front of me. It doesn't come some most some great shooters, believe it or not, or even good shooters, even above average shooters, like they have a they have um trouble shooting by themselves. And there's that pressure of like no one's around, like, you know what I mean? When someone's on you, you you feel like you're just in rhythm. So like a little variables and like that. But yeah.

Brian "Ponch" Rivera: 37:08

No, so this is this is fantastic. And and uh again, it's it's there is no one perfect way to shoot. There's a good technique, right? A good one.

Speaker 1: 37:18

Yeah.

Brian "Ponch" Rivera: 37:18

Um not all kids are gonna have it, right? They're not. No, no, everyone's everyone has their own style, but not. But what's what's it based off? It's it's it's they make it work, right? But but what what are the key things to make it work? Is it still a high release point?

David Cochrane: 37:29

Oh, absolutely. Yeah, yeah. Like you're not gonna see anyone release it at your forehead level. Yeah, yeah. You're still gonna have that, you have to have the extension and get the ball up and over.

Brian "Ponch" Rivera: 37:37

So if you focus on those things, you're gonna be okay. Right. Yeah, yeah. So that instead of focusing on where your elbow is and all that, if you re think about the high release and the high angle and you work towards that, all these things should fall into place for your body. Sure. Um, and then I want to go back to your point about um the uh the shooters. They want somebody in their face. Okay, this is very important. Yeah, that's a constraint. Yeah, that is creating a um an affordance in the environment. What that is for affording me to do is I have to have a high release and I have to have a high angle, right? Yeah, I have to do that. Or I may have to jump too, right? Sure. Depending on height.

Speaker 3: 38:11

Yeah.

Brian "Ponch" Rivera: 38:11

Um, so that's how you want to practice. You want to practice like you're going to play the game. Yeah. And something that this is a phrase I learned recently. Uh, the game is not the best teacher. Hear me out on that. Um people say kids need to go play a lot of basketball games, right, to learn. Um, we need to flip that a little bit and do that teaching in here by putting the constraints in here. Right. By giving them that opposition, that uh that uh the defender, uh, that why. Why are you doing this, right? So um it's a it's it's it's a shift in thinking rather than focusing on the the pure technical skills. You gotta put that perception in there, right? That perception of the environment, the that shooter, that that defender in my face. I have to have that in practice because that's how I'm gonna get it into the game. No doubt. Right. And that's the same thing we did in fighter aviation. I I had to think about this. In fighter aviation, just down the street here, we have simulators. And these simulators are pretty powerful, but they they just don't simulate air underneath the butt, right? Yeah, yeah. You've got to put air under the butt. You've got to get out there and do that. But there's it stimulates enough. It's a good constraint on the body uh to understand how the different works. Yeah.

Speaker 1: 39:22

Yeah.

Brian "Ponch" Rivera: 39:23

Yeah. So we we practice um like we fight, we fight, like we we train, if you want to put it that way. So in combat, what we discovered in combat is that the training we had um was more challenging than the combat missions, right? Gotcha. And that's what you want. You want to create that type of environment here. Is I'm gonna give you the most challenging environment. So when you go out to the game, it it's it's you get more in the flow. We can talk more about that too. So it's it's it's kind of like flipping the script. And I I remember going back to the fundamental question I asked you a while ago is how do you translate this to the game? And I think that what you and I are missing, or I didn't know then, um you you gotta simulate it in here. You gotta you gotta create those games. Right.

David Cochrane: 40:06

Yeah. So um Can I tell you a couple drills we do to help to help you? Yeah, yeah, yeah, I do. Yeah, yeah. So I think that the the best thing that we do to really help get them ready is if we're gonna continue to talk about shooting, is oh man, I wish I I wish I had your variance to demonstrate. I have I have uh like multiple drills where it's a changing variable every time. Yeah, which is I like. And what happens is you'll have one player start, say, top of the three-point line. The other person will be in the middle of the paint. Okay. Person at the top of the top of the three-point line, they're gonna pass to a coach. All right, they're gonna go run and touch a cone to where that first player that was in the middle of the paint was. As soon as that ball is passed, person in the middle of the paint, they sprint, they sprint the top of the key. Person that was at the top of the key, they sprint, they touch a cone, they go try to block them. Yeah. And you get a different hand up, you get a different um version of that closeout defense every time. So you get multiple, like basically uh uh imagery of where the hands and how you got how how quick you got to release it. Yeah. And so it changes. So while all your basic principles are still there, like you were kind of talking about it earlier about variables, like you have to kind of change some of your shooting variables, doesn't it?

Brian "Ponch" Rivera: 41:25

So these are the we'll call these constraints or variables. So the there's three types of things you just brought up task, environment, and individual, right? So the individual, I I struggled with this a little bit, and that is the um uh what an individual constraint is get them to run, get them to do something, get them to move around, right? Change change up their space. Environment, you put a cone out there, maybe you limited the space that they're using in. And the task is hey, you can only dribble once, you can only do this, you can only use your left hand, whatever it may be. So those three things we can manipulate as coaches. Yeah. And I see you doing that. Uh you're now going into high school coaching, and I want to bring this away from an individual coach for a moment for coaching individual skills to coaching a team. Awesome. But this this is kind of interesting. So one of my frustrations in watching a game is an inbound pass, uh contested, right? Yeah. Um what I've seen is some of and I'll talk about girls' basketball, um, they just don't know how to throw a ball. And not not where to throw a ball, right? How to anticipate something, right? Right. Um we're big fans of Travis Hunter from uh CU now at Jacksonville playing the cornerback down there. But the way the way he anticipates things or the way he can kind of um mask where he is in relationship to a receiver. Yeah. It's the same thing you want to do as a defender uh on an inbound ball, right? You want to present an affordance, uh, opportunity for action, an opportunity for the inbounder to throw the ball to the person that you're defending. Yeah. Why? Because I'm going to steal that ball, right? Because I know how to anticipate that. Um so what I want to uh know, and maybe we can do this here in a few minutes or talk about it, come up with an idea. How can you use the constraints of task, environment, and individual constraints to teach a group, a basketball team on how to inbound a ball?

David Cochrane: 43:15

Or on how to inbound a ball underneath your own hoop? Uh anywhere on the court. Anywhere on the court? Uh you just give them different situations. Okay. That's what I do. So what we do at the end of every practice, we call it situationals. And what we do in situationals is we'll get and we always start out of bounds, believe it or not. Either baseline out of bounds or sideline out of bounds or full court out of bounds. So we'll mix up what we're doing. We'll mix up how the defense is playing. We'll mix up if the person guarding the ball is icing aside with their hands. We'll mix it up if they're going and running out and trying to full denial. We'll mix it up if they're trying to play safety over the top. We'll mix it up and saying that the defense stays in man to get in the inbounds, and then once you once they pass it in, they fall back in zone. So like we we we we try to get them ready for everything. Yeah. Every changing part of the environment in the game. Um I'm not saying we're perfect coaches, perfect people, perfect team, but we're trying. Yeah. And we're trying to just get them ready to see and be ready for every defensive coverage that you can while understanding what our options are, while being able to see, all right, what are they in, what are they doing, what are they trying to take away, you know.

Brian "Ponch" Rivera: 44:26

So what you're talking about is giving the kids an opportunity to make decisions uh under time constraints and pressures, right? So um this is so representative drills, and I want to talk about this. Um have this idea, and I want to bounce it off you. Yeah, because I want the girls to kind of try to take this in there. And it again, it's it's something I notice in in girls' basketball, and that is um the idea that I'm gonna look at the person I'm gonna throw the ball to and stare at them, and then tell everybody I'm throwing the ball, right? And the line bound the ball.

David Cochrane: 44:52

It's terrible.

Brian "Ponch" Rivera: 44:53

But remember we talked about it's all about creating mismatches, uh, confusion, disorientation in the minds of the defender. That's not helping them, right? I'm sorry, that's not doing that. No, it's not helping. You're you're helping them out, in fact. You're like, I'm going to throw here. It's I think there's a couple things that go into that.

David Cochrane: 45:10

Girls' basketball is different than boys' basketball from a single fact that boys are stronger, boys are taller, boys have usually more experience than girls. That experience comes from when you're young and you're and you're a boy, like if you're playing a sport, it's almost always gonna be basketball, football, baseball.

Brian "Ponch" Rivera: 45:28

Well, you you learned deception early in America, at least.

David Cochrane: 45:30

And girls, like when you get introduced to sport as a girl, you're talking field hockey, you're talking like I got my girl right now in gymnastics, I got her in tap dance, I got her in uh soccer. Uh like there's those like boys don't go into those things as much. Like, so I believe they have more experience from a younger age. I believe they have um more tutelage, I believe that they have more opportunity, and they're stronger, taller, a little bit faster. So some of what you're talking about just has to do with like passing angles, has to do with um just being able to throw a pass to certain lengths that some girls can't make. Like some girls that and at certain ages, like fifth, like honestly, from like five years old to even 15, can't even make a skip pass for strength. You know what I mean? So it's hard. So like I don't know. So like just going back to what you're saying, like it's just I feel like they're a little bit more limited in that, but a lot of it has to do with coaching too.

Brian "Ponch" Rivera: 46:26

So let's build that up, right? So the the simulations or representative drills are critical here, and that is um I'm gonna throw an idea at you. So I'll uh if I was to go coach girls on how to inbound a ball, and I I wanted to do it where they're we can turn it into a game, like turn that into a game where defense gets points or offense gets points or something like that. We'd put a constraint on it with time. Okay, we're gonna do three minutes of this, and I'm gonna do 5v4 in a small area, right? And what I'm going to do is let them just struggle with it. Like, hey, what defense is up 20 to 1. You got one inbound, defense got all of them, right? Let's have a quick conversation on what's going on and figure out what they're seeing, right? So this flips the script. It's not being prescripted to them. It's like, let's put you in that situation and have you tell us what you see. Now, how what can we do next time? Let them come and I don't know what you call the little handoff when um somebody just comes to the inbounder and you just kind of hand them the ball. Yeah. Most kids, they don't even know how to they don't even know how to do that, right? And you're like, but you want to get them to discover these things on their own, too, right? Sure. So we don't want to be too prescriptive with it. So the um the drills that would you know that that I see not working are let's talk about the weave, you know, when we weave a ball up the court. Yeah. It's it's usually done on on a post, right? Yeah. Okay. What are your thoughts on that?

David Cochrane: 47:45

Is that okay? Or yeah, yeah, I I think so, man. It's just an old school drill. One, two, um, get the ball moving, hot potato. You're trying to get you're trying to give them that mindset that, hey, I don't want it to stick for too long. And two, it's just it's just a warm-up drill to be the body moving.

Brian "Ponch" Rivera: 47:59

Okay. So if we treat if we treat it like a warm-up drill, I'm okay with that. Now let's talk about that drill in particular when it comes to perception and action. Um there is no opposing force, there's no information, there's nothing, there's no decision making. It's just learning the method. Muscle memory. For the parents, you know, we're like, oh, that looks great. They're so good at that, and that girl can't do it, or this person can't do it, they need to work on this. That's not what we want, right? Yeah. We want we want to get them in situations where they're making decisions, right? Right. Um and one thing that I so again, it it's that the design that we want to move towards. So the the old school thinking is we want to have those techniques. We we learned it from other coaches. Um, we want to shift from that to an ecological approach, which is the having them in those situations, creating the conditions where they have to make decisions. And another example of this is um um when you teach the girls to attack, um and I it this drives me nuts, and I try to explain to them all the time. Yeah. When you have a live defender and you don't attack, you're missing a huge opportunity. Agreed. Even if the defender is better than you, you want that.

David Cochrane: 49:01

Yeah. You want to find out in training or in training, in training. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Brian "Ponch" Rivera: 49:05

Yeah. So when I walk in here and we watch the girls and they decide just to shoot over somebody, I'm like, are you you can shoot over, you know. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You can do that at home with that.

Speaker 3: 49:15

See what you can do?

Brian "Ponch" Rivera: 49:16

Yeah. Yeah. Go try, go attack, and see what you don't know. Go fail. Go fail in here. Right. Right. So we want them to fail in these conditions. We want to push them, yeah. Right. Um, and that's one thing that I tell the girls is go ahead, it's okay. If you're gonna fail, go do that right there, figure out right.

David Cochrane: 49:30

No doubt. And fail, and and it's one thing to fail, it's another thing to fail conservatively. I tell everyone this if you're going to make a mistake, it needs to be an aggressive mistake. Yeah, yeah. I don't need conservative, defensive um mistakes, like scared mistakes. Like you're gonna do it, go do it. You know, so that's just my thoughts. Yeah, yeah.

Brian "Ponch" Rivera: 49:53

Yeah, so uh I do have uh another one for you. Yeah. Um I was thinking about this, and I want to run this by, and maybe we should go get a basketball here. But the elbow, um making contact, uh, the girls have learned that to make contact on offense, right? It's a good thing. Um the elbow can only go up to how high when you do that? Is there a rule you can't you can't push.

David Cochrane: 50:15

You you know, you can you can put up as high as you want. It's just the extension. Okay, this this, right? Yeah, yeah. You you extend it, it's it's going the other way. But you can hold. I know players, I have my best player in high school, six seven, he's a six seven, two hundred and five-pound strong kid and uh all state last year, all of reach. I saw somebody last year. And he'll drive with a stiff arm. Like, and he's just not letting you get past that stiff arm, like it's a like he's a football player. Yeah, but he never gets called for because he never extends. He just keeps it there. So you can push it up, you can do that. Yeah, you can I can say you're trying to say you're trying to take a ball for me. Yeah, I can just Okay. Right? If I extend on you, yeah, that's another thing. But I can hold a forearm on you, I can hold a hand on you, really.

Brian "Ponch" Rivera: 51:03

Yeah. Um, so So I was working with Callie the other day, and I was like, you know, Callie, when when when this is out, you don't want to collapse it on me, right? Right, right, right, right. So I'm like, I'm like, it's not just to do it, hold it once, it's to hold that, hold that pressure out there. So I said, okay, let's come over the game. And what I did is uh we had a yellow line in the basketball court, and I said, your objective is stay on the yellow line. You can't go past me. Oh, yeah. But you've got to remain contact with in contact with me. Yeah, straight on my drive. Yeah. And I want you to do this with a um dribbling with your left hand, right, right forearm out, making contact with me the whole time. That was smart. And and I tell you, it was it's fun, right? Because that's a game, that's what I'm like, I don't play basketball, but I was taking the lessons from all this and saying. That was smart. Yeah. So that's what I was trying to get to the girls is uh how do you create the conditions so you know I hate to call it muscle memory, but you you you you know yeah. It's it's tough to create.

David Cochrane: 51:59

You can't create every condition. And you can't create a game environment. You just can't, but you can do as much as you can. Most of it, like we said earlier, is game imagery. Most of it is getting live bodies on people and having them create offense with those live bodies, making live reads, making seeing seeing how the defenders are covering you and countering. And you're doing you're working on our straight line drives, which we do in here constantly. Constantly. Last time you were in here, we we did it. So, like, and to me, it's kind of like the number one thing with a lot of young players, especially girls. Uh girls want to be able to get to the ring without being touched. Yeah. Most of them. Yeah. It's just not gonna happen. Yeah. It's just not. It's just too many moving parts, too many moving bias on the court.

Brian "Ponch" Rivera: 52:44

So like Mike, Mike can drive and she'll take contact with it. Yeah, but she wasn't always like that. Okay.

David Cochrane: 52:49

You know, and and and I I got these two twins, my first two clients ever. Um they they were in here trained two nights ago with me. And we're working on that still. The first time I ever had it, we were working on that.

Speaker 4: 53:02

Yeah.

David Cochrane: 53:02

Two days ago, six, six, seven years later. We're working on that. Yeah. So it's just like it's just like you, you're gonna have to keep keep doing um game like scenarios in training. It keeps you fresh, it keeps you, it keeps you updated, um, and and it just keeps your your muscle memory uh at a good level, man.

Brian "Ponch" Rivera: 53:23

Yeah. So I I want to talk about dribbling now. One of the things that I've noticed the girls do is they'll go in the garage and they'll dribble, they'll go through their exercises and all that. It's it's kind of good. I used to think it was great, right? Now my mind's starting to shift. Like, wait a minute, um, what are the things we can do to help the girls dribble under pressure and practice? Two different things.

David Cochrane: 53:42

Yeah. Okay. So the first thing is uh yes, agreed. You wanna you want to be able to dribble with pressure, and and that's a whole different thing. But in order to dribble with pressure, you gotta learn to dribble.

Brian "Ponch" Rivera: 53:57

Yeah.

David Cochrane: 53:57

Yeah, I mean you gotta do it by yourself.

Brian "Ponch" Rivera: 53:59

So let's talk about that. So the constraints on dribbling. Let's just so let's talk about task, individual, uh, and then of course environmental. So dribbling, I think, I think what you guys do is you use constraints. Hey, we're gonna do um I we switch with little kids, dribble to your left, right? Yeah. You can't use your right arm. That's a constraint. Yeah, sure. Right. Because everybody who's right-handed dribbles with the right. Right. So that that is a basic constraint, and I agree with that. The um can I say another constraint?

David Cochrane: 54:26

Build nice. Yeah. Okay. Another constraint is um not all dribbling is the same. There is such a thing, there's multiple styles of ball handling. Ball handling, you can be tight. What what you probably see them in the garage doing is tight. One, two, three, four. I'm going behind between. I'm I'm gonna create ball manipulation in and out. I'm gonna go uh in and out between, in and out between, behind, double behind, cross-cross. Like you can mix up different understandings of like patterns of dribbling. Yeah. And that's what that's what we call tight ball handling. You're trying to, you're trying to create, uh, you're trying to get that thing on a rope. Okay. Everything's on a rope. You need that to get yourself understanding of timing and space of the dribbling. That's the start. And then you gotta start to learn.

Brian "Ponch" Rivera: 55:08

Well, let's build on that. How can we build, okay? So what you just shared with me is you're gonna put a box around them and say, stay on this box and dribble. Yeah, 100%. So we can use that as a constraint. It's a feel, it's a timing and spacing thing. Yeah, okay, so so um timing. Uh let's talk about that. So if I were to put a tape on the ground and tell them to do that, you've got to stay within here, and that ball has to stay within that. That's a constraint.

unknown: 55:29

Right?

Brian "Ponch" Rivera: 55:29

We can video it and go, hey, that ball came out ten times.

David Cochrane: 55:32

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Brian "Ponch" Rivera: 55:32

Okay, so okay, that makes more sense. So you can actually do that type thing.

David Cochrane: 55:36

But the thing, the thing that, you know, you're talking about another thing is then then you have like rhythmic ball handling. You gotta understand how to flow and move with the ball. So, like if you cross the ball over, you want to create space and you want to shift weight. And you there's so many things, so many things I could I could talk forever.

Brian "Ponch" Rivera: 55:53

No, no, but how would we how would that look as a constraint? Like the you know, getting the girls a flow. So I try to I try to metronome my.

David Cochrane: 55:59

You were here the first day I told them, actually. Yep. You're here recording. And so we're trying to get them. Again, this all comes back to manipulation of defenders, but we're we're trying to get them to move with the ball. So then, say you get a rhythm dribble and you you kind of skip over four feet with the ball. You float with the ball. Floating with the ball. You float with the ball, and then you go back to tight one, two, three, and you kind of stiffen up their legs. Yeah. So so there's m so many different styles of ball handling you have to learn before you can even understand how to negate pressure with it with the ball handling. Yeah, and you've got to understand how to change up, and again, all the things we we've talked about, changing of pace, changing of rhythm, changing of type to rhythm, changing your hip levels. Yeah. Trying to get them to raise their hands, and then I get back low and I move by you. Like, there's so many different things. But like, I think the number one thing is teach them everything, teach them it all, progress on it, and then once they finally have progressed on it, they then they have to do what they're doing in your garage. They gotta work on it daily by themselves. Because if they're not going in there and doing it by themselves, then when say you're dribbling and I start smacking, I start putting elbow in you, and I start trying to poke at the ball, little things like that, or I need you to get from here ten feet that way, and I'm right here. What are you gonna do? There you go. They can't do those things without the little drills that they're working on in the garage. Okay. So I'm actually with them on this one.

Brian "Ponch" Rivera: 57:25

Okay, so so now we we you just brought up the other constraints now. You're gonna go ten feet, you're gonna do these things. Yeah. Uh I've seen uh kids do the uh dribbling with hands, you know, somebody else has their hands on their shoulder.

David Cochrane: 57:35

Yeah, yeah. What's walk me through that? What's what does that do? First step speed. First step speed. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. It's creating a quicker first step.

unknown: 57:42

Okay.

Brian "Ponch" Rivera: 57:43

Okay. Okay. No, that makes sense. Yeah. So um I think there's a lot of things you guys are doing right in here. Um, and then just some some numbers that they're throwing out there is you know, 70% of the time, roughly, maybe a little bit more, uh, in that in that real type of game field that you know, create those little games where they have uh perception, where they have it situations. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And then um I think most coaches try it the other way where they do it where the drills they go through all the drills and then they play the game. Um you want to do games within your games, right? So that's what you're trying to do here. And by the way, you're constrained by the area that you have in this gym, right? Yeah, which is fine, which is actually a good thing. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. So, you know, with this there's a pole right behind the camera here. I know. Um, but that's okay. That's a constraint. No, it's a constraint, right? It says we've got to keep this tight, we're gonna play in this in this uh these areas. Um yeah, but hey, so this has been great, man. I've learned a lot from uh uh this I want to show you one last thing here. Yeah, sure. Um so this is the oodaloop. That's what it is.

Speaker 1: 58:38

All right, let me see what this looks like.

Brian "Ponch" Rivera: 58:39

Yeah. Oodaloo. Yep. Um it's pretty confusing. That's what my shirt is. I'm gonna flip it around real fast. And that's another way to look at it. We talk about perception uh at action and then the environment, right? So this is a boundary that goes around whatever, a cell, a neuron, a human, a basketball team. Um pretty good, man. I went to the University of Colorado. What'd you study? Uh economics. Uh but I wrote a book on all this stuff too, which is uh the flow system. I did that. So we talked about perception, we talked about action, but what we did talk about today is the intuition and skills. How do you build that up? Um that's important. So it's all relative, right? Relative effectiveness. What we want to do is we want to take um what we know or we think we know, challenge those assumptions, and see what else we can learn from uh other environments. And that's what we were talking about is uh bringing the perception and action um into training. Yeah, not just doing cone drills, right?

Speaker 1: 59:38

Yeah, yeah, 100%.

Brian "Ponch" Rivera: 59:39

Yeah. Cone drills are they call it fake agility. Uh that's what we see in industry too. They go through cone drills, um, they go through training that teaches them how to dribble around cones and in their business, if you will. But they're not learning the real information side, which is how you interact with the environment. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, 100%, man. Cool, man. Do you have any other any questions, uh comments, anything we you want to cover today? No, man.

David Cochrane: 1:00:01

I mean, listen, I appreciate you bringing me on, dude. I a lot of this is all in my head, but uh I can try to give you whatever I got.

Brian "Ponch" Rivera: 1:00:08

No, this is great. So here's here's what I'll give you some. We're gonna we're gonna end up having a conversation with uh Rob Gray uh out of ASU, Arizona State University UD.

David Cochrane: 1:00:17

He's flying there?

Brian "Ponch" Rivera: 1:00:17

No, no, no, no. He'll he'll he'll he'll he'll stay where he is. We'll do it remotely. Uh I listened to his podcast called Perception Action. Um I'm gonna go back. So when I like I said, I started learning about complex adaptive systems, which Doodle Loop is, uh it's uh some neuroscience, physics, psychology. But I looked at this thing that the um coaches were doing constraints led approach, ecological psychology, they call it. Um and they were using complex adaptive systems to talk about it. That is the same thing we're doing in business, um, but it just applied for sports. And we've also learned about, I'll give talk about some bigger pictures, free energy principle, active inference, Bayesian brain, predictive processing, um perceptual uh control theory, all these other things. They're all embedded inside the Oodalooop. What does that mean to you? Nothing. It just means what do I have to do to make my players better? Yeah. And that is couple the perception, the the uh situational things, create games for them, um, create constraints, yeah, and and repeat that over and over. Don't let them don't let them dribble around cones for 20 minutes, don't let them do that stuff. Yeah.

David Cochrane: 1:01:24

I agree. Yeah. Anything else, man? That's it, man. Thanks so much. Having you on, buddy.