Pattern Recognition
What does pattern recognition have to do with basketball? Everything..It actually has to do with everything in our lives. It is how our brains work. The human brain has evolved to recognize patterns, perhaps more than any other single function. Our brain is weak at processing logic, remembering facts, and making calculations, but pattern recognition is its deep core capability. Please google it if you doubt it. Superior pattern processing is the essence of the evolved human brain. Lets connect his concept to basketball and specifically to what we are trying to teach and develop at Imagine Believe Achieve Basketball.
We teach the read and react system. A system that allows a player to make a read and make the appropriate reaction or play if you may. We also teach and stress habits. “Hands touch leather, eyes see rim” ,etc. Now if you know anything about habits you know that there are a read and a react. A smoker smokes when he gets stressed. So when his brain reads stress its reaction is to smoke. They key to making or breaking habits is to know when the brain is making the read and change the reaction. Sounds a lot like pattern recognition. When you hear that players do not raise to the occasion but sink to the level of their training, it is really the brain doing read and react on what the patterns it has been taught. Now lets take a quick dive a little deeper before we back out and see the bigger picture.
We are a skill driven academy. One where we teach players the skills needed to perform plays and be effective on the court. There are a ton of trainers that teach skills and drills, and you see their product on the courts all the time. How many times have you seen a player do a hesi and blow by his defender only to do drag back jump shot right back to the defender he just blew by? He wasn’t playing basketball he was doing the drill his trainers had him do 100 times. The issue is applying those skills. That is the difference between playing with skill and playing skillfully. Not only having the skill but knowing when to apply. In other words, the skill is the reaction. But it is the second part of a two part equation. The read is needed to know what reaction to use. So how do we teach the read? That is part of the bigger picture.
An answer can be found in engineering and artificial intelligence. An easy and relate-able example is email spam filters. How does a program know what is spam and what is not? You give it a bunch of email that is not spam and tell it “This is not spam”. Then you give it a bunch of email that is spam and tell it “This is spam”. The program then looks for patterns that make an email spam. Compare that those that are labeled not spam and look for patterns. The more info you give it, the better the pattern definition and the better then spam filter. If I wanted to teach a computer program about a pick and roll, I would provide examples of what a basic pick and roll looks like and what a pick and roll doesn’t look like. The more examples of each the better the pattern recognition. See this video for further elaboration.
The thing is that all great engineering feats by mankind are modeled after the greatest engineer of all! God! Creator and builder of this world. Therefore, artificial intelligence is modeled after us and how we learn. How does this apply to basketball? We need to increase repetition and emphasize pattern recognition. That is why we are trimming the rosters, in order to increase reps and thus increase data for pattern recognition. That is why we must teach the macro(pattern/read) and the micro(reaction/skill). We must allow the mistakes to happen and teach from them instead of trying to teach the mistake before it happens. The growth mindset is all about recognizing that mistakes and correction create new pathways in the brain. “When teachers ask me how this can be possible, I tell them that the best thinking we have on this is that the brain grows when we make a mistake, even if we are not aware of it, because it is a time of struggle; and the times when we struggle and are challenged are the best times for brain growth. So what is brain growth? Some people read this research and say our brains would be huge if they grew each time we made a mistake! But what is meant by growth is not an increase in volume but an increase in connectivity. Research suggests that when learning occurs there are 3 possible forms of growth/connectivity: 1) New pathways can form in the brain 2) Pathways can become strengthened in the brain 3) Pathways can connect in the brain.” – Jo Boaler.
We don’t want the same mistake over and over again but we want to make the correction after the mistake. This is refining the pattern for the players. Less drills and more reps will help with pattern recognition.
This way of thinking changes the way we approach games and practices. How we approach the way we teach. Remember that we are teaching the players to recognize the pattern and apply the correct action. If the player is not doing what you want you are not explaining it correctly. The issue with not with the player but with the teacher.
There it is in a nutshell. If drills are the “reaction” of our system, pattern recognition is the “read”. Cant have one without the other. Teach in patterns and maximize the data(reps) to refine those patterns.
BTW: Muscle memory is pattern recognition.
Imagine if we practice everything with pattern recognition in mind. Math, science, engineering are all pattern recognition . Recognize the pattern and identify the right equation/theorem/formula to solve. Can we have our kids practice this outside the court to improve on the court?
Books on the subject you would find interesting:
The Talent Code by Daniel Coyle
Talent is Overrated by Geoff Colvin
Growth Mindset by Carol S. Dweck
Videos you would find interesting
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f2O6mQkFiiw
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