By Dr. Ronald Gallimore, Dr. Bradley Ermeling, and Swen Nater

COACHING
Timeless Lessons
Encouraging your coaches to take a page from the Wizard of
Westwood can turn them into teachers, and have a profound effect.
By Dr. Ronald Gallimore, Dr. Bradley Ermeling, and Swen Nater
TOP: DAYTON NEWS/TEESHA MCCLAM (USED WITH PERMISSION)
E
VERY COACH TODAY,
whether they are a rookie
or a veteran, and no matter their sport, knows of
UCLA’s John Wooden—
and for good reason. His
men’s basketball teams earned 10 NCAA
titles in 12 years, reeled off an 88-game win
streak, and won 38 straight tournament
games. He was named NCAA Coach of the
Year six times, and Men’s College Coach of
the 20th Century by both the Naismith Hall
of Fame and ESPN.
Little wonder he was so successful, some
say. He coached several of the greatest duos
in collegiate basketball history, including
Hazzard and Goodrich, Abdul-Jabbar and
Warren, Wicks and Rowe, and Walton and
Wilkes. But Wooden believed there was a
second factor contributing to his success at
UCLA: teaching.
He often said what he learned about
pedagogy as a high school English teacher
in the 1930s helped him become a better
coach. He acknowledged whole-heartedly
that few coaches can be successful without
talent, but he insisted even superstars must
be taught to play as a team. While teaching
The hero of this story, Fairmont (Kettering,
Ohio) High School Head Boys’ Basketball
Coach Hank Bias, celebrates a win in 2010,
and poses with John Wooden (inset).
AthleticManagement.com | FEB/MAR 2012 43
well might not always trump talent, he felt it
made a critical difference in his career as a
coach. In speaking to groups, he said, “when
I was teaching at UCLA …”
Wooden also believed that teaching can
be improved, and that dedicated teachers
and coaches should never stop trying to get
better. During every year of his career, he
identified an area of his teaching he thought
needed improvement. Based on his research
each off-season, he developed and tried
out various instructional adjustments, took
notes during practices, and refined his practice lessons until he was satisfied that players
were progressing. He thought anyone who is
“through learning, is through.”
But does any of this apply to today’s
coaches? Should an athletic administrator
insist and help coaches work on continuously improving their teaching? After all,
Wooden coached his last game in 1975.
Some might argue times have changed—
what worked so well in Wooden’s era might
not be effective today.
At least one high school coach in Ohio
has found Wooden’s lessons to be relevant.
In fact, they saved his career. The story of
what this coach learned and its effects on his
teaching is a great example of the effects of
using continuous improvement.
WITH A PHONE CALL
In 2003, Henry “Hank” Bias, Head Boys’
Basketball Coach (and Physical Education
Teacher) at Fairmont High School in Kettering, Ohio, had just finished his third consecutive losing season and was profoundly
discouraged by his team’s 3-17 record. He
questioned whether he had what it takes to
coach basketball and mulled changing
careers.
Thinking about going to graduate school,
Bias went to see Dr. George DeMarco, a
professor at the University of Dayton, who
urged him to do some research on coaching
and teaching before making a career change.
One of the articles DeMarco recommended
was a 1976 study of Wooden’s pedagogy
based on live observations of practice sessions in 1975. Bias was intrigued and asked
one of the researchers, Dr. Ron Gallimore, if
he had any films of Wooden coaching. The
answer was yes, but Bias would need the
coach’s permission to borrow them. He was
given John Wooden’s home phone number.
After some initial hesitation, Bias mustered up the courage to dial Wooden’s
number. As Bias started to leave a message,
Wooden picked up and said hello. Bias began
to explain that he was a high school basketball
coach in the Dayton area and had some questions about teaching the game of basketball.
Wooden interrupted and started asking questions himself. To Bias’s surprise and delight,
they talked for 20 minutes about teaching
basketball and how to improve as a coach.
Ronald Gallimore, PhD, is Distinguished Professor Emeritus at UCLA who conducts research on teaching and its improvement, and counts what he learned from John
Wooden about teaching as the opportunity of a lifetime. Bradley Ermeling, EdD, is an Educational Researcher at UCLA and recipient of Learning Forward’s 2010 Best
Research Award who conducts research and development on teaching and performance improvement. Former UCLA and NBA player Swen Nater is staff member at
BeLikeCoach, and author and blogger on the subject of pedagogy and continuous improvement as the means to teaching and coaching success. They can be reached at:
ronaldg@ucla.edu, brad.ermeling@gmail.com, and snater@ihmail.com.
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COACHING
Then, Coach Wooden invited Bias to come
visit him so they could discuss coaching and
teaching at length.
A few days later, Bias was sitting in Wooden’s condo, which was crammed to the ceiling
with mementos and memorabilia. Wooden
shared many bits of advice, but one of the
most important was that better instruction
was the answer Bias was seeking, and the
way to get it was to relentlessly and continuously work on improving teaching, one practice session after another. Bias went back to
Ohio and began following Wooden’s advice
immediately.
The first season after he met with Wooden, Bias’s team doubled its win total, finishing
6-15. The team improved again the next year,
nearly hitting .500 at 9-11. In the third year of
Bias’s efforts to become a better teacher, the
Firebirds’ record was 17-6. After winning the
Greater Western Ohio Conference (GWOC)
East championship, the team went deep into
the state tournament and Bias won a local
co-coach of the year award.
In the five seasons after Bias began implementing Wooden’s lessons, Fairmont’s winning percentage was 62 percent, compared
to 29 percent in the seasons prior to Bias
meeting Wooden. This was the best fiveyear record for the school since the 1920s,
and it was accomplished with no significant improvement in talent level—during a
period when the Firebirds’ competition got
tougher.
Behind the scenes, Bias’s story is one
of steady effort, day after day, week after
week. Bias continued to communicate
with Wooden and was also helped by Swen
Nater, a former UCLA player for Wooden
who played professionally for 11 years. But
mostly, Bias worked on his own to become
a better teacher. He practiced a form of
self-guided, continuous improvement, which
other coaches can also use to become better
teachers of their sport.
CONTINUOUS IMPROVEMENT
The concept of Continuous Improvement (CI) applied to teaching and coaching
is neither a Wooden creation nor a novel
idea. Brad Ermeling identified four actions
Wooden used to improve his teaching on
the practice floor that bear a striking resemblance to common elements of CI employed
in various fields:
1. Identify critical instructional issues.
2. Prepare and implement instructional
plans.
3. Use evidence to drive reflection, analysis, and next steps.
4. Persistently seek detectable improvements.
For Bias, these four steps were the foundation of turning around his program. In one
sense, they are simple—figure out how to
teach the game well. But, in another sense,
they are complex—teaching is an art that
requires constant self-analysis and revision.
Here is how Bias tackled each one:
Identify instructional issues: Contemplating what to work on first, Bias recalled one
incident that haunted him for a long time.
“I remember a player named Brandon commenting that it seemed like we were doing a
lot of drills, but none of them applied to the
games,” he says. “To soften the blow, he said,
‘you’re a good coach,’ but I think he meant my
coaching didn’t add up to anything, because
the team was not getting better.”
players’ efforts fell short of expectations. Bias
followed this idea, focusing on making practices intense, demanding, and precisely two
hours long. Players then knew what to expect,
and there was no need to conserve energy for
fear the session might be extended. He also
began finishing every practice with an activity the players considered fun.
In addition, because Bias’s practice plans
were laid out minute by minute, his managers
and assistant coaches knew when and where
to locate equipment. This cut out wasted time
between drills because players did not have to
wait or search around for what they needed.
Bias’s second goal was to curtail the
amount of time he spent talking during
practices, which he realized resulted in fewer
Wooden’s teachings also emphasize that corrections during games must feel similar to what was
said in practice ... The team then plays the way
it practices.
As he critiqued his approach to teaching,
Bias realized he had no consistent principles
to plan and conduct practices. He had collected a pile of resources from clinics and
other coaches, and he haphazardly picked
from this file to plan and teach. He looks
back now and describes himself as a bull in
a teaching strategy China shop, charging full
speed here and there without a coherent plan
or pedagogical approach. He was a student of
the game, but not a teacher of it.
He also realized that practices had a lot
of dead time. There was too much stoppage,
where he would take extended time to correct
mistakes and lecture.
Bias identified two specific improvements
he wanted to make. First, he would spend
more time developing practice plans that had
specific learning goals for each day. Second,
he would try to eliminate long lectures and
stoppage of activity, and instead relay short,
concise corrections to players.
Prepare instructional plans: In order to
accomplish his first goal, Bias began preparing more detailed practice plans for every day,
and stuck with them. In the past, he would
write out his practice plans, but didn’t always
adhere to them. If a drill was going badly,
he sometimes extended it, cutting into time
for other drills, and causing practice to be
extended.
One of Wooden’s philosophies was to set
a strict limit on the length of practices—no
time was added if drills didn’t go well or his
active opportunities to learn and interrupted
the flow of learning. Wooden told him that
corrections should last no longer than 10
seconds if possible, the player should be
addressed by first name, nothing should be
mentioned that would discourage the player,
and the correction should be packed with
practical information. For example, “Kyle,
make your cut at the right time. You were a
little early. Wait a second and see what happens. Try it again.”
Bias also started delivering corrections
and praise when players learn the most—
immediately after they do something—and
being concise. “Justin, way to go, you cut off
the driver … Sam, good crisp, fast outlet pass
… Mark, don’t pull the ball down when you
rebound, keep it up.”
Use evidence to reflect, analyze, and
change: While working on planning and
practice talk for several years, Bias kept
notes and records of his practices. Team
play had improved, wins were coming more
frequently, and Fairmont started building a
reputation as a tough and competitive team.
Bias felt practices were better organized and
more efficient, and he was confident he had
become a more disciplined “instructional
talker.”
But something was missing. His changes
were not adding up to the gains in student
learning he thought were possible. During
games, his players were sometimes confused
by what he asked them to do and were not
AthleticManagement.com | FEB/MAR 2012 45
executing well—they were not “connecting
the dots.”
At this point, Bias put even more effort
into assessing and reflecting on what he
was doing. He realized that while his players
were mastering the drills during practice,
they were not learning principles to apply in
games when suddenly confronted with unexpected moves by their opponents. They could
not improvise and adapt on the court. Bias
returned to his previous research method:
reading what he could find and talking to
Wooden, Nater, and anyone he felt could
teach him something.
As he dug deeper into his analysis and
reflection, Bias realized he needed to organize
drills so that in practice, players were confronted with decision-making opportunities.
They needed to face exactly the same decision points they would in a game. Precisely at
those points, he had to teach them the various options and how to choose among those
options. For instance, if in a game, a teammate got in the wrong rebounding position
after a shot went up, Bias would make sure to
say the same thing he said in practices: “Brad,
when Jamal gets out of position, remember
to fill in as the short rebounder at the free
throw line.”
Wooden’s teachings also emphasize that
the corrections must feel similar to what was
said in practice. Along with being the same
content, they should be the same tone and
intensity. The coach needs to act the same
during practices as during games. The team
then plays the way it practices.
“I always wished Brandon could come
back and practice with us now,” Bias says. “I
think he would say, ‘Okay Coach, I know I’m
going to be facing every one of those situations in the game on Friday night, and there’s
a connect with what we are doing in practice
right now.”
A few years after he left for college Brandon came for a visit. A current player was
hurt, so Brandon filled in. After the practice
cards, he noted drills that required refinements, activities that needed more or less
time, and specific instruction an individual
player might be helped by.
> Reviewing each practice mentally for 15
to 20 minutes afterwards to see how it could
improve. Bias thought about what went well
and what did not, what he said, and how
players reacted.
> Asking questions of other coaches, for-
The key to Bias’s success was his commitment
to learning how to become a better teacher.
session ended, he said, “Coach, if we would
have practiced like that when I played here,
we would have been a much better team.”
Persistently seek improvements: A CI
process is never truly finished. Becoming a
better teacher is a career-long journey. Along
with continuing to read and research about
basketball and pedagogy, Bias adopted several
important routines to aid his improvement
efforts:
> Making notes on file cards during and
immediately after practices. For example,
if a drill was proving inadequate for the
goal intended, Bias made a note. He tallied
how many repetitions of each offensive or
defensive set the team finished with a goal
of 100—Coach Wooden had a rule that full
mastery required 100 repetitions. On his 3x5
sure
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He worked to adopt for
himself John Wooden’s definition of success: doing the best
possible teaching
instead of focusing
only on the win-loss
column or the final
score. This was
reinforced by a
note he received
from Wooden at
one point.
DEFINING SUCCESS
Along with working hard to improve his teaching of studentathletes, Fairmont High School Head Boys’ Basketball
Coach Hank Bias wanted to further his individual sense of
success. He wanted to enjoy coaching to its fullest and not
feel burdened by its pressures.
mer players, and anyone who might have
insights. Questions included technical details
on offensive and defensive strategies, what
drills work best for specific skill sets, and any
feedback or criticism anyone cared to offer.
> Monitoring the pace of practice. Bias
often used the scoreboard clock to check how
on task he was during practices.
By continually assessing his practices, he
was able to constantly improve his teaching.
Some of the specific upgrades he made in
later years included:
> Tweaking drills to make them more
game like. Bias did this by either increasing
the speed or intensity of the drill or the intellectual process the player must manage. He
added a clock and score to a number of drills.
And he developed more drills that helped the
players practice reacting.
> Identifying areas of needed improvement for individual players, and scheduling brief instructional periods for them just
before formal practices began.
> Adding a player-led offensive execution
time during preparation for summer league
games, so that his athletes had an opportunity to be in the “teaching/leading” role and
build joint ownership of the team’s offense
and defense.
> Not making adjustments on the fly.
When a drill was not going well, instead of
changing it immediately, Bias learned to simply stop the drill and move on. “I learned from
Coach Wooden that it’s better to end a drill
instead of trying to think on the spur of the
moment of improvement,” he says. “Instead,
I made adjustments in the next practice plan.”
> Working with coaches of the sub-varsity
teams with the goal of getting them to adopt
a common approach to teaching basketball.
APPLYING THE STORY
Bias’s story has inspired those who know
it. But it is prudent to keep in mind that
46 FEB/MAR 2012 | AthleticManagement.com
COACHING
it is an anecdote. Even the least skeptical
observer might wonder how much of Bias’s
experience can be repeated by other coaches.
After all, few get direct input from a coaching legend and a former pro player.
However, Nater and Wooden both insisted that while Bias benefited from the encouragement they provided, the real key to his
success was his willingness to change and
relentless commitment to learning how to
become a better teacher. Bias’s experience
points to at least four specific actions athletic
directors can apply in developing the coaches
on their staffs.
Adopt the CI Process: First, urge your
coaches to adopt the CI process Bias used:
identify critical instructional issues, plan
and implement better kinds of instruction,
collect and reflect on evidence, and persist
until there are tangible signs of player progress. Bias’s initial focus was practice planning and “instructional talk,” but the choice
of an initial CI focus ought to be based on
each coach’s careful evaluation and analysis.
Team Up: While Bias used a mainly selfguided approach, CI teams have been shown
to improve instruction in the educational
context. Ask coaches to team up in either
small or large groups that meet regularly. This
allows opportunities to share goals, ideas, and
findings, and provides a setting that supports
sustaining continuous improvement efforts.
Provide Support: CI effort often needs
some support and facilitation to stay focused,
some kind of protocol or guidelines to follow,
and access to resources such as local experts,
reading materials, or face-to-face talks. As
athletic director, you can play the role that
John Wooden did for Hank Bias, connecting
coaches to new possibilities for addressing
critical instructional issues.
Be Patient: Coach Wooden taught
that big changes don’t come quickly—
they require steady work and incremental
improvements—but when they come, they
last. CI takes time, commitment, and persistence to get tangible gains in learning and
performance. Administrators and coaches
that decide to begin a CI journey should
also agree to stick with it over a period of
years.
The commitment to improvement sometimes leads to wins and championships. But
perhaps more importantly, it leads to success as Wooden defined it: “peace of mind,
which is a direct result of self-satisfaction
in knowing you made the effort to do your
best to become the best that you are capable
of becoming.” Few lessons could be more
important for administrators and coaches,
and few lessons could be more valuable to
model and teach student-athletes. ■
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