Talking Split

Whilst it seems like we have been going for a while, believe it or not we aren’t too far off the season actually starting for junior and senior representative basketball. This week we go through some of the important things that all teams should have in place before the season begins, and unpack how to many the most of your time throughout. And a tip for everyone, work on your passing or you will be hearing from Jenna!

Back for another year of the Talking Split pod, and we are starting on the topic of Coach Wellbeing. We can’t have our coaches not in their best shape to help our players, so the team highlight some areas where we as coaches can be better and focus on to start the year. Are going to do a whole month on Coach Wellbeing this year, so if there are any specific topics you want discussed around that, be sure to send us a message on socials!

It’s our last pod for the year, and to make up for it, we doubled the length to a 2 hour Mailbag extravaganza! All the segments are in play this week, Coach Shoutout, Book Club, Social Sightings, multiple story times, oddly enough no Stoicism, but the answers to a heap of questions that the listeners sent in, including is Die Hard a Christmas movie, favourite BBQ side dishes, and even real basketball questions like Team Balance, Switching off after games, and favourite coaches to watch.
Huge thanks to all the listeners over the year, and what better time than now to go through the whole back catalogue of podcast episodes?

When you talk Strength & Conditioning in the Basketball Victoria space, Durham McInnis from Core Advantage springs to mind straight away. We put it out to the listeners last week to come through with any questions and they delivered! We talk about the need for a good hinge, plyometrics, the best warmup in a short amount of time, some myths around strength training and the ice bath and sauna landscape. 

We are getting into that time of year again as the competition winds down, and there is some downtime coming up – but only for some! This is also the time of year where players and coaches get to work on various areas of their game, and try to make their good, great and work on some of their weaknesses. We cover off what a workout should look like, content, time, and some things that can make a big impact in the off season.

One of the age old debates in coaching, is do you teach the system first, or the skill set? And even then, do you start with the offence or the defence? How do you become time efficient, over the course of a season with limited practice time? We bounce around a few of these topics throughout the pod this week, in the hope that we make it easier for the coaches, but still remaining fun and enticing for the players.

There was a warning before we started the pod this week that this may not have been a good idea, and what was supposed to be a podcast coaching behaviours, wasn’t. What we are left with though, is an hour of varying thoughts on coaching, winning, development, how the game is played and coached, and nearly any other topic or tangent we ventured down. In theory we will get to the behaviour topic in a few weeks time, just maybe not with this group of coaches involved on the pod…

It’s the time of year where we focus on the other orange circular object and talk about the things that can scare us as players, coaches and spectators. We enlist the help of some of our loyal Talking Split listeners who sent in their ideas for the pod combined with some of our own thoughts on the subject. Reminder that we have our Mailbag podcast coming up soon, so any questions for the team, just send them in!

On the back of sometimes feeling we are an imposter last week, a little bit more self-reflection this week as we look at how coaches can progress with their own coaching. We discuss how it can change over time, some of the more underrated ways to improve, and some things we wish we knew when we first started out coaching. Far less Oasis references, but plenty of “Story time” and “Aurelius” drops in there to keep you occupied all the same!

A topic this week that raises the question for a lot of coaches, am I good enough to do this? Imposter syndrome is something that a lot of coaches go through, trying to work out if they fit, if they’re the right person, or even if they’re doing a good job with the team they’re coaching. We look back through some of the examples we’ve had in our own coaching, but also some tools and strategies that we have used to work through this. Bonus points for every Oasis song reference you can find – this will make more sense as you listen, D’You Know What I Mean?