- Speaker #0
My name is Brianna Joy Garza. I'm a professional shooting coach. My emphasis is on thought development as much as it is on shot development, and today we rise.
- Speaker #1
Welcome, Brianna. Can you please tell us what you mean when you say thought development and shot development?
- Speaker #0
Why I got into teaching shooting, or I think part of what drew me into teaching shooting, specifically within all that can be taught in basketball, is there's such a clear tie. to confidence, to self-worth when it comes to shooting a basketball. Because most players, they really associate their confidence and their worth as a basketball player with how many shots they're making. And so you can't teach shooting just physically. Like, you can't have one without the other. You have to teach the elements of going through shooting slumps, of continuing to shoot despite missing over and over again. You're going to go 0 for 7 one game, but then the next game, law of averages, you're probably going to go 6 for 8. And so that's a metaphor, I think, for all of what we do in life is learning to fail and teaching that through the medium of shooting a stupid orange basketball. And that's what the thought development piece is. Yes, we teach you the mechanics, the techniques, the physics behind shooting a basketball. But within that, we also teach you deliberate practice, how to give feedback, how to receive feedback, what to focus on, and how to focus on one thing at a time instead of all of the things at the same time. And so that's where the thought development piece comes in.
- Speaker #1
That's amazing. And when you're struggling to perform, that can affect your confidence. But one of the challenges with that is that it's easy to get stuck into a vicious cycle because when your confidence is low... then it can also affect your performance. So what do you say to that?
- Speaker #0
We in athletics have a tendency to think that our worth is equal to our wins. And that's just not the case. You're supposed to work really hard at this thing. You're supposed to struggle. You're supposed to fail. And your worth is not equal to your wins. The best of us learn to fail and learn to keep it moving. And so if you're struggling with confidence, good. like we all do and the best of us have I have every day we still even the most confident people in the world still struggle with confidence and so can you continue on this path and enjoy feeling yourself getting better at this thing while also understanding that your worth is not equal to your wins
- Speaker #1
I love that because this is really how it is like you have to accept things going wrong things being hard like adversity is part of this journey, right? And when we talk about mental strength, one key aspect of it is the ability to acknowledge the challenge without letting it stop you, right? So it's like you acknowledge that something is hard, you acknowledge that things are going wrong, and instead of having it stop you, you actually become stronger in the face of it. You actually tolerate it better. and maybe even you use it to become better. Did you always think this way?
- Speaker #0
I always had this chip on my shoulder of wanting just to be great. I was very competitive all the time. And yeah, I had coaches tell me that I was never going to be good enough to play at the next level when I was 14 years old. And rather than hearing that and letting it defeat me, I heard that and I was just like, okay, bet. Like watch instead. And I don't know how healthy this is, but there are very few things that are more motivating than spite, than pure, like unadulterated, like I'm going to be great in spite of you. And that spite, that competition, that competitive nature in me has been, yeah, been the answer, has been the reason for much of my success.
- Speaker #1
Up until now. I am the same. We talk a lot about visualization in the high performance world. And one of my favorite things is visualizing how I want to respond, how I want to react, what I want to do when things go wrong, when things get tough, when challenges arise. Rather than just imagining all the time, you know, everything being easy or my... ideal outcomes, what I want to do and things being perfect. But actually kind of already deciding, like anticipating. Things being complicated and already having a plan through visualization on how to respond to it. How do you prepare a player to face challenges in a game and to deal with the mental and emotional challenges that come with the game, that come with being a player?
- Speaker #0
I prime them in their training sessions. I ask them a question. Who is your most hated defender? What's their name? For me, it was a player in college. Her name was Navia Palou. And Navia would study my film. She knew my go-to moves, which I only have two of them. She made it so difficult for me to perform on purpose. And so I would go into my training and my reps, and I would see Navia in front of me specifically. Why? because there's no one I wanted to score on more. And so while I was in a gym alone, I was never actually in a gym alone. I was seeing her in front of me, her tendencies, the things she was going to take away from me. And so my reps were eliciting the same sort of like physiological response, like the heightened adrenaline. I was like frustrated more on misses and I was like flexing more on makes. And it's, it's really hard. It's really hard to keep yourself there. for an entire training session. It's exhausting. In fact, training sessions are already physically exhausting. But can you keep yourself in this place where everything is personal, where reps are personal? Because if you don't do that, then you haven't gotten any emotional reps, the same kind of reps that you're getting inside of a basketball game. And if you've never repped that out, if you've never gotten emotional reps, then how could you ever expect yourself to perform when those emotions and that pressure is present? for the very first time in a game, like if the very first time in a game is when you're experiencing that. And so that's the technique that I use only once they're at a certain level of mastery is those emotional reps. And that's how I think we've taken players like Emma Cannon, for example, is my WNBA client. We use that with her. Her answer was Nneka Ogumike. was like her, you know, like when she guards me, like, like low key, like it's personal because I like, she has a ton of respect for NECA. Um, NECA is an OG and NECA is a leader. She, she understands the game. She's got one of the highest IQs in the history of basketball. So the last training session I did with Emma, um, before her, her time in Indiana, um, that's who we were, who she was seeing. And you feel a different energy in those sessions whenever you prime them and you keep them there. And that next year, Emma got her first guaranteed contract with the Indiana Fever and she had her career high. If you've never repped those potential things out in your head, then you can't expect yourself to respond to them or to anything similar, right? You're not going to get everything perfect or you're not going to know, okay, two of my players twisted their ankle and the best defender in the league is guarding me. Like... You might not get to that exact scenario, but if you have taken the time to let yourself go there with yourself in practice, then when hard stuff happens in games, you're going to love that shit. You're going to be like, I love it when hard stuff happens because then I just get to show how different I really am than all of y'all.
- Speaker #1
I absolutely love this. It really speaks to me just preparing ahead of time, being ready for, you know, hard things. And when hard things come instead of. you know, panicking, feeling like, okay, this is what I've been preparing for. This is what I worked hard for. And I got this, this is an incredible feeling. But obviously, this mental strength, this mindset, also comes from accepting the challenge of going through adversity of being uncomfortable. And sometimes we don't choose those situations. Sometimes we become strong. Because situations kind of force us to become strong. Do you have a story that has contributed to your mental strength? Like what's your rise story?
- Speaker #0
My freshman year of college, I showed up after my experience. I told you when I was 14, being told I was never going to play at the next level. And so now I'm here. And it's the night before my first game. And in the preseason, I was hooping. like, I was like this 18 year old with like a tip on my shoulder. So it is what it is, right? I was probably a little bit more arrogant at that point in my life. But I really was I was who I was like calling threes off the glass. Like I was behind the bag jelly way. And the MVP, the former MVP that year, she was a senior that year, she had texted me and told me she thought I was gonna start my freshman year. And so I, it's the night before the first game and I go into my coach's office and, um, I walk in and I'm like bopping around. I'm like, what's up coach game day tomorrow. And, um, she looks at me and she like, she like forced the smile. You know what I mean? Like when you walk into a room, you can tell somebody is not really trying to smile at you, but they'll do it anyway. And I remember like my whole like heart and stomach just sank. And she said, Garza, go ahead and sit down. And so I sat down and yeah, she was very direct. She was just like, I'm just going to, you know, come right out with it. And that you're in my bottom eight of 16 players and you probably won't see much playing time this year. So you can either redshirt or try to work your way back up. And I'm like, earth shattering. Like, this is the only thing I've dreamed about for my entire life, like is playing college basketball. And so I asked her. what's a red shirt? And the way she explained it to me was you'd have to come to every practice and attend every game and every workout, but you'd never get to play. She didn't explain to me that I would get the year back. Then she said, or you can try and work your way back up. And so I was like, well, obviously, like, I'm going to work my way back up. And I was like, who are you ranking above me right now? Because I feel like I've been doing well. And so she listed off a couple of names and I was like, what? Like, no way. And so then it was the first time in my life I'd really used my voice and kind of fought for myself. And I was just, I was drilling her, like, tell me what I can do differently because I feel like I've been killing it. I've been, you know. I've logged more miles than anybody. I've been in the weight room and I've actually been taking it seriously and slacking off like everybody else. I'm looking with the post players right now. Like, what could I be doing different? And she kind of just kept talking around it. She wouldn't give me a direct answer. And so finally, I'll never forget this. She looked me right in my eyes and she said, you know what, Garza? I'm just not used to having one of those on my team. And she just found out that I was gay. And this was a different time. Right. This was back in 2010. Gay marriage wasn't even legalized in the States until 2015. And I remember like just feeling I didn't I couldn't I couldn't talk to my parents about it at the time. My parents and I are great now. But at the time it was it was complicated. I grew up in the South as a Southern Baptist. Like it was just being gay was like the worst thing you could possibly be in that like pocket of the United States. And like I remember leaving the office and like. I didn't even go back to my dorm room. There was like this little closet, like this little janitor's closet that I knew nobody ever went into. And I like went in there and I shut the door and I just cried because it's like, this isn't even my fault. Like if at that point in my life, if I could have flipped the switch and become straight, like I would have, I would have right away because it would have been easier for me. And. At that moment, again, we have a choice, a hard one. So for the rest of that year, I rose. I was the first one in every practice and the last one out. On game days, I went and got extra lifts in and extra cardio in. I, you know, still cheer for my teammates. I wrote out all the plays on, like, little pieces of paper because that coach ran, like, 17 different sets. Like, we're supposed to remember that. And through all of that, At the end of that year, you know, I had texts from my teammates and stuff, just how much respect they had for the way that I handled it all. And at the end of that year, I transferred because there's a difference between making hard choices and being hard headed. And there's a fine line between giving up and letting go. Going through that, rising through that, I think defined every hard thing I've been through since then.
- Speaker #1
Yeah, that's a very powerful story to tell. And I'm sure it will help a lot of people listening. I wonder how this experience has influenced the way you coach today.
- Speaker #0
We tend to have coaches that coach through their own traumas, right? That don't know any better. This is the way I was coached. And so this is the only way. And it's not the only way. And there's tons of research that for a long time in my career, I just thought coaches knew about because I knew about it. I learned about it. Like, why, you know, it was my own ignorance is like, oh, like, why didn't you guys know about this? I thought that all coaches knew and they just simply they don't. And so I don't think even it's that most coaches. are bad coaches or bad people. They just haven't had the introduction to things like psychological safety or self-determination and things like that. They're just coaching in the only way that they know how, like this is their only way of interacting with and understanding the world. And so giving coaches the skill of, of how to create a psychologically safe environment, it's not just good for the humans in front of them as humans and in their mental, but also like, if you want to create the most mega athlete out of the athletes in front of you. then creating a psychologically safe environment is going to speak to that. You're going to have better players if they feel better. Players that feel better do better. And so, like, foundationally, your environment is the only thing that matters. Beyond that, we can go X's and O's and skill development and all that. But, like, what do your players believe about themselves right in front of you? And what do their teammates believe about them? Like, are their teammates going to clown them for getting something wrong? And if so, like... That's a non-negotiable. Like you create a safe space for your teammates in here. I've kicked fourth graders out of camps before, which was a really hard thing to do. But I had a fourth grader that did not care, that was not creating a psychologically safe space. And even after corrections and all of that, like that little girl that she was partnered up with almost quit because she was just being made to feel terrible by this other fourth grader. So I kicked that fourth grader out of camp. Like you don't get to be here because hopefully this is a really hard lesson. for you and that she's going to change from this because you don't get to be a detriment to my culture. I don't care if you're nine years old. You don't get to do that. You don't get to make someone else not feel safe. And so I think that's like for coaches, it should be the first skill that we teach, not the last one, not one that they have to discover later on in their career. Coaches tend to focus on X's and O's and their craft and their subject matter experts, and that's wonderful. But you cannot teach your subject matter effectively unless the people that are learning from you feel safe to mess up. I think it's also impossible to fight for a culture that you don't live out every day yourself. If I... don't create psychologically safe environments at every single one of my events that I run or my camps that I run, then it would be impossible for me to speak to it here with you. If I don't protect the psychological safety in so much as picking a fourth grader out of a camp, then I can't pretend that that's my culture. If I don't eat healthy, I can't ask my players to eat healthy. If I don't... you know, wake up in the morning and say, like, it's going to be a good day out loud. I can't ask other people to do that. And so that's what I would say is like, culture is something you don't wave around. Culture is something you fight for every day. And you're not going to be perfect. Like, you're not going to live up to it all the time. But that could be part of your culture, too, is understanding, like, the imperfection in the nature of being human. And just speaking to that and being vulnerable with that and saying, I'm sorry. whenever you mess it up to the people that you lead.
- Speaker #1
Okay. Do you have any final words for all the risers out there?
- Speaker #0
Yeah. My message for the rise community is that your worth is not equal to your wins.
