Talent Code
In The Talent Code, the process of building talent is described in depth. In order to create a talented basketball team I will use principles from this book. Talent is not entirely dependent on genes and you are not a finished product (talent wise) when you are first born. Growing talent in players requires three aspects that are described in the book.
First, Deep practice is required to learn the skills necessary to become a skillful player. Deep practice is not about the amount of time spent practicing, but the concentration and effort given in the time while practicing.Second, Ignition is required in order to have the energy and passion required to practice and develop into a good basketball player. Ignition is the responsibility of the coach, because he/she must call on primal cues in order to ignite the players. Thirdly, master coaching is required in order to get the most out of each individual player. It is the responsibility of the coach to read each player and decide what style of coaching is most suited to inspire and teach that player. Deep practice is perhaps the most important aspect in developing talent.
Deep Practice is the best way to produce myelin. Skill and talent is a result of nerve fibers firing fast and smoothly and myelin helps to make these firings happen faster and smoother the more times they are fired. Deep practice in basketball can be done in multitude of ways. The main idea of this practice should be targeted learning. What is the target? The target is to improve in every aspect of the fundamentals of basketball dribbling, shooting, and passing. Deep practice requires the player to be challenged enough to make mistakes, correct those mistakes, and keep improving.This is the most efficient way to create myelin and improve overall skill and talent.
Practice should be held not with the idea to practice for as long and hard as possible, but with the idea to practice efficiently. Drills should be broken up into chunks in order to learn each specific movement . This will target each specific nerve firing required for the action. Secondly an idea would be to practice each drill in slow motion. This will help to make sure the movements are being done correctly so that the myelin is being used efficiently.Players should be one hundred percent focused on their drill. Deep practice requires a lot of energy that comes from ignition.
Ignition is the motivation that comes from primal cues that players are largely unaware of. These primal cues mostly come from our distinctly human personality trait that gears us toward future belonging. It is our desire to be a part of groups of people who are accomplishing something worthwhile. In order to get ignition from a basketball team they must be inspired to want to be like a certain player or team. Videos should be shown of those teams and players.The challenge should be set forth that in order to be like those teams and players a lot of hard work will be required. This should ignite the players into wanting to belong to that same exclusive group of players or teams.
The coach has the most responsibility to inspire players into deep practice and ignition through Master Coaching. It is the coach’s responsibility to build myelin circuits for each player based on their individual personalities. The coach must tell the player how to practice in order to develop the skill circuit to fire the right way.The coach must know how to coach and interpret each players learning style. Each player may require a different style of coaching in order to ignite them and get them to fire the correct way. Once a skill is taught the coach should increase the level of difficulty quickly in order to shock the player. This is the fastest way to grow skill and challenge the player into deep practice.
Coach should point out errors honestly and correct them in order for continuous improvement and in order to make sure myelin is being applied correctly to the nerve circuits.Good coaching should help support which circuit should be fired at the correct time. In short, myelin is the key to growing talent. The only way to grow myelin is deep practice that comes from ignition from primal cues. Talent is not a fixed thing for human beings and it can be learned. There is a lot of improving that can occur no matter what the starting skill level of the player is. Talent is more about commitment and concentration on the task being practiced.
This is the best way to fire nerves quickly and grow myelin so that they keep firing that way.
