The science of coaching: HCSF and Psychology

[Huskerzoo]

I'm back in Lincoln for a few days doing prep for my wedding (t-minus 90). It was fantastic flying from Houston to Lincoln and seeing so much Husker gear. It has seemed like it has been lacking when I've traveled the last few years. I have to imagine that part of this is the excitement that HCSF brings to the table. One of the things that has stood out to me recently has been how HCSF talks about his coaching. There was an article recently that stood out to me (https://www.hawkeyenation.com/football/schwartz-reason-cheer-nebraska). I haven't had time to post a lot lately, but now that I'm on a vacation, I figure that it's a great opportunity to sit down and tease apart why not only is HCSF's method of coaching good for team morale, but it's also arguably the most effective way of teaching when executed correctly. I keep seeing snippits of interviews where I'm seeing the staff indicate that they are using these techniques effectively and I figured I could break this down a bit for people. 

 

The first thing any of you should be asking is what gives me the ground to stand on to talk about any of this. In practice, I don't have a good answer. Most people on the board are going to be more knowledgeable about the ins and outs of football than I am. I've never played, started watching relatively late in life, and I'm about as athletic as a pineapple. However, I know a lot about psychology, specifically about a behavioral approach to psychology. You know those dogs that do really cool things like fetch you beers from the fridge? That's because of the behaviorist approach. This approach works just as well with humans as it does animals, you just need to factor in language. 

 

I'm going to try to keep up a series of posts in the offseason exploring the behavioral science behind what our staff is doing. I figure breaking it down into topics might keep conversations going for a while. I want to start with the freedom to make mistakes and how you can train playing fast. 

 

Positive reinforcement plays the most important role. There are many misconceptions out there about what positive reinforcement means. Positive reinforcement as a technical term means to add something (positive) that results in an increase of the behavior (reinforcement) that happened right before the application of the reinforcer. If any of you have trained a dog to sit, you've learned this principle in some capacity. This also goes against the traditional notion that coaches need to be disciplinarians and (positive) punish mistakes. HCSF has made it sound like he will be using differential reinforcement primarily. This is the same technique used by coaches who train many Olympic sports.  

 

Most football coaches use a combination of reinforcement and punishment. While at gut level, this may seem logical (make the good occur more, the bad occur less), but the use of punishment can slow down play, this ties into HCSF saying play without fear. I'm going to use the example of rugby style tackling as it was one of the many bugaboos that we had last season. One of the reasons that we aim to teach rugby style tackling is that occasionally when tackling in a more traditional style, you make helmet to helmet contact and get ejected (this would be called a variable schedule of (negative) punishment). When operating out of fear, the natural consequences become less salient than the natural consequences. That is to say that having proper form becomes more important than getting a tackle. If you want a good example of this, check out the missed Williams tackle at the end of the Saints vs Vikings playoff game last season. I believe that we saw a bit of this last season too, players were up in their heads far too often. Punishment leads to hesitation and figuring out how to engage in the desired behavior without the arbitrary aversive occurring. If any of you have ever had a boss that was a jerk, you probably understand some of the other parts that come with this. You slow down work to make sure it's done right, you increase anxiety (which is not necessarily good, we'll cover the Yerkes-Dodson Law later), and ultimately create difficult relationships with others. 

 

Focusing on positive reinforcement, however, does not mean that the team has to be soft. This isn't going to be a situation where everyone gets lollipops and pats on the back. Instead, what is used is called differential reinforcement. Instead of using punishment to shape behavior, using differential reinforcement suggests that you correct(without punishing) behavior you don't want to see and reinforce the parts that you want. There are multiple ways of doing this including reinforcement of alternative behavior (DRA), reinforcement of incompatible behavior (DRI), and differential reinforcement of other behaviors. 

 

DRA is probably going to be used the most frequently. DRAs involve not reinforcing undesired behavior but reinforcing an alternative.   For example, if a DL has a tell that they're going to bullrush, you would want them to find other ways to communicate this to teammates without informing the opposing OL. You're finding a new behavior that has a similar function (the same outcome). When the new alternative behavior comes in, you reinforce, when the old shows up, you just prompt for new behavior. The fundamental part of this is that you need to correct mistakes and teach new behavior. Behavior isn't magical, it doesn't appear out of nowhere. Going back to the comments on punishment, if the player only knows one way of doing a thing and they get yelled at every time they do it that way, they're not going to engage in any behavior. This is called learned helplessness. You have to provide the players with a path to receiving the desired outcome. 

 

DRI is like DRA, but is more used for correcting a bad habit. The key difference is you're only providing reinforcement if the new behavior cannot occur at the same time as the undesired behavior. If a player plays flatfooted, you would only reinforce them while in a ready position. An example of this would be tackling with your head down. If the player tackles with their head down during drills, you don't say anything other than do that again with your head up. You make them repeat until they tackle with their head up. Immediately following the correct form, you acknowledge and provide reinforcement (Praise, stickers, you get down for the day, it really doesn't matter as long as it gets the player to do it again).

 

DRO probably will not be used a ton in a football setting, but I'm sure there are times I'm not aware of, but reinforcing anything else. Lets say there's a player who is always on their laptop during meetings. The second they're not attending to the laptop you would reinforce their behavior. Again, I don't think many players get to the level they're at with the type of problem that would require a DRO, but it's certainly possible.     

With these three techniques, you can teach pretty much any skill and eliminate any behavior you don't want to see. It requires attention to detail, effort, time and what we call multiple exemplar training, you need lots of repetitions. This is why HCSF getting team numbers up is a big deal in my opinion. I think that our coaching staff understand the point of these strategies and how to implement them in a skillful way. They may not use the exact language, but somewhere they picked up these techniques which will facilitate players playing without fear and instead playing for love of the game and for their team. 

 

I'll try to get around to talking about building team chemistry next. 

 

If anyone wants to learn more or fact check my write up here are some resources:

Principles of Behavior - Dick Malott If you don't have a sophisticated understanding of behavior analysis this is probably the best book for getting you up to speed.  It's quirky because Malott is a strange dude, but it's a really good book.  Unfortunately, it's pretty pricey. 

 

Behavior Modification: Principles and Procedures - Ray Miltenberger This is another really good book on behavior analysis.  It's more of an applied behavior analysis book but will have significant overlap with the Dick Malott book. 

 

Finally, for a free resource that I think everyone should read, good don't shoot the dog. There should be a free PDF floating around. It's written for a broader audience and is very short. 

 

Also check out any of the work of BF Skinner if you're really into this stuff. About Behaviorism is probably the most important but his other writing is very important as well. 

[ColoradoHusk]

@Huskerzoo I am not sure what field of psychology you do your teaching and research in, but I was wondering if you have heard about or even read Dr. Jack Stark's book from a few years ago.  Dr. Stark wrote it as a way to sum up his work with sports teams and companies over the past 25-30 years.  I am about 60 pages into the book, and I like it so far.  I haven't had time to get back to reading it the past couple of weeks, but he has some interesting thoughts on leadership and how leadership teams create dynastic teams and companies.

 

https://www.amazon.com/Championship-Formula-Transform-Your-Dynasty/dp/193711001X

 

[Huskerzoo]

2 minutes ago, ColoradoHusk said:

@Huskerzoo I am not sure what field of psychology you do your teaching and research in, but I was wondering if you have heard about or even read Dr. Jack Stark's book from a few years ago.  Dr. Stark wrote it as a way to sum up his work with sports teams and companies over the past 25-30 years.  I am about 60 pages into the book, and I like it so far.  I haven't had time to get back to reading it the past couple of weeks, but he has some interesting thoughts on leadership and how leadership teams create dynastic teams and companies.

 

https://www.amazon.com/Championship-Formula-Transform-Your-Dynasty/dp/193711001X

 

 

I haven't seen or heard of Stark. I'll have to look into it. As a whole, I tend to be more skeptical about books like this that get published. You can make a lot more claims without data backing it up. Not all of them are bad by any means, but it's something I'll have to look at more. Thanks for the heads up!

[ColoradoHusk]

5 minutes ago, Huskerzoo said:

 

I haven't seen or heard of Stark. I'll have to look into it. As a whole, I tend to be more skeptical about books like this that get published. You can make a lot more claims without data backing it up. Not all of them are bad by any means, but it's something I'll have to look at more. Thanks for the heads up!

You must not be very old then.  Dr. Stark was the team psychologist for the NU football and basketball teams from the early 90s to the early 2000s.  He left the program when Frank Solich was fired.  Dr. Stark is credited with the formation of the Unity Council for the football team and having a very positive impact on the success of the football program.  After leaving NU, Dr. Stark has worked with Hendrick Motorsports in NASCAR, Creighton University basketball, among other ventures.

[The Dude]

4 hours ago, Huskerzoo said:

I'm back in Lincoln for a few days doing prep for my wedding (t-minus 90). It was fantastic flying from Houston to Lincoln and seeing so much Husker gear. It has seemed like it has been lacking when I've traveled the last few years. I have to imagine that part of this is the excitement that HCSF brings to the table. One of the things that has stood out to me recently has been how HCSF talks about his coaching. There was an article recently that stood out to me (https://www.hawkeyenation.com/football/schwartz-reason-cheer-nebraska). I haven't had time to post a lot lately, but now that I'm on a vacation, I figure that it's a great opportunity to sit down and tease apart why not only is HCSF's method of coaching good for team morale, but it's also arguably the most effective way of teaching when executed correctly. I keep seeing snippits of interviews where I'm seeing the staff indicate that they are using these techniques effectively and I figured I could break this down a bit for people. 

 

The first thing any of you should be asking is what gives me the ground to stand on to talk about any of this. In practice, I don't have a good answer. Most people on the board are going to be more knowledgeable about the ins and outs of football than I am. I've never played, started watching relatively late in life, and I'm about as athletic as a pineapple. However, I know a lot about psychology, specifically about a behavioral approach to psychology. You know those dogs that do really cool things like fetch you beers from the fridge? That's because of the behaviorist approach. This approach works just as well with humans as it does animals, you just need to factor in language. 

 

I'm going to try to keep up a series of posts in the offseason exploring the behavioral science behind what our staff is doing. I figure breaking it down into topics might keep conversations going for a while. I want to start with the freedom to make mistakes and how you can train playing fast. 

 

Positive reinforcement plays the most important role. There are many misconceptions out there about what positive reinforcement means. Positive reinforcement as a technical term means to add something (positive) that results in an increase of the behavior (reinforcement) that happened right before the application of the reinforcer. If any of you have trained a dog to sit, you've learned this principle in some capacity. This also goes against the traditional notion that coaches need to be disciplinarians and (positive) punish mistakes. HCSF has made it sound like he will be using differential reinforcement primarily. This is the same technique used by coaches who train many Olympic sports.  

 

Most football coaches use a combination of reinforcement and punishment. While at gut level, this may seem logical (make the good occur more, the bad occur less), but the use of punishment can slow down play, this ties into HCSF saying play without fear. I'm going to use the example of rugby style tackling as it was one of the many bugaboos that we had last season. One of the reasons that we aim to teach rugby style tackling is that occasionally when tackling in a more traditional style, you make helmet to helmet contact and get ejected (this would be called a variable schedule of (negative) punishment). When operating out of fear, the natural consequences become less salient than the natural consequences. That is to say that having proper form becomes more important than getting a tackle. If you want a good example of this, check out the missed Williams tackle at the end of the Saints vs Vikings playoff game last season. I believe that we saw a bit of this last season too, players were up in their heads far too often. Punishment leads to hesitation and figuring out how to engage in the desired behavior without the arbitrary aversive occurring. If any of you have ever had a boss that was a jerk, you probably understand some of the other parts that come with this. You slow down work to make sure it's done right, you increase anxiety (which is not necessarily good, we'll cover the Yerkes-Dodson Law later), and ultimately create difficult relationships with others. 

 

Focusing on positive reinforcement, however, does not mean that the team has to be soft. This isn't going to be a situation where everyone gets lollipops and pats on the back. Instead, what is used is called differential reinforcement. Instead of using punishment to shape behavior, using differential reinforcement suggests that you correct(without punishing) behavior you don't want to see and reinforce the parts that you want. There are multiple ways of doing this including reinforcement of alternative behavior (DRA), reinforcement of incompatible behavior (DRI), and differential reinforcement of other behaviors. 

 

DRA is probably going to be used the most frequently. DRAs involve not reinforcing undesired behavior but reinforcing an alternative.   For example, if a DL has a tell that they're going to bullrush, you would want them to find other ways to communicate this to teammates without informing the opposing OL. You're finding a new behavior that has a similar function (the same outcome). When the new alternative behavior comes in, you reinforce, when the old shows up, you just prompt for new behavior. The fundamental part of this is that you need to correct mistakes and teach new behavior. Behavior isn't magical, it doesn't appear out of nowhere. Going back to the comments on punishment, if the player only knows one way of doing a thing and they get yelled at every time they do it that way, they're not going to engage in any behavior. This is called learned helplessness. You have to provide the players with a path to receiving the desired outcome. 

 

DRI is like DRA, but is more used for correcting a bad habit. The key difference is you're only providing reinforcement if the new behavior cannot occur at the same time as the undesired behavior. If a player plays flatfooted, you would only reinforce them while in a ready position. An example of this would be tackling with your head down. If the player tackles with their head down during drills, you don't say anything other than do that again with your head up. You make them repeat until they tackle with their head up. Immediately following the correct form, you acknowledge and provide reinforcement (Praise, stickers, you get down for the day, it really doesn't matter as long as it gets the player to do it again).

 

DRO probably will not be used a ton in a football setting, but I'm sure there are times I'm not aware of, but reinforcing anything else. Lets say there's a player who is always on their laptop during meetings. The second they're not attending to the laptop you would reinforce their behavior. Again, I don't think many players get to the level they're at with the type of problem that would require a DRO, but it's certainly possible.     

With these three techniques, you can teach pretty much any skill and eliminate any behavior you don't want to see. It requires attention to detail, effort, time and what we call multiple exemplar training, you need lots of repetitions. This is why HCSF getting team numbers up is a big deal in my opinion. I think that our coaching staff understand the point of these strategies and how to implement them in a skillful way. They may not use the exact language, but somewhere they picked up these techniques which will facilitate players playing without fear and instead playing for love of the game and for their team. 

 

I'll try to get around to talking about building team chemistry next. 

 

If anyone wants to learn more or fact check my write up here are some resources:

Principles of Behavior - Dick Malott If you don't have a sophisticated understanding of behavior analysis this is probably the best book for getting you up to speed.  It's quirky because Malott is a strange dude, but it's a really good book.  Unfortunately, it's pretty pricey. 

 

Behavior Modification: Principles and Procedures - Ray Miltenberger This is another really good book on behavior analysis.  It's more of an applied behavior analysis book but will have significant overlap with the Dick Malott book. 

 

Finally, for a free resource that I think everyone should read, good don't shoot the dog. There should be a free PDF floating around. It's written for a broader audience and is very short. 

 

Also check out any of the work of BF Skinner if you're really into this stuff. About Behaviorism is probably the most important but his other writing is very important as well. 

 

I disagree.

[ColoradoHusk]

12 minutes ago, Husker_Bohunk said:

For years I knew the team had a sports psychologist but I never cared enough to look up who it was. I finally learned that on a message board. Just saying... 

Dr. Stark was known well enough in Omaha and Lincoln the early to mid 90s, that I figured it was fairly common knowledge on who he is, and his history with the NU football team.  I guess I am showing my age.

[GSG]

19 minutes ago, ColoradoHusk said:

Dr. Stark was known well enough in Omaha and Lincoln the early to mid 90s, that I figured it was fairly common knowledge on who he is, and his history with the NU football team.  I guess I am showing my age.

 

Spoiler