Mark Brown: How's it going, coach?
Jason Grindstaff: Great.
Doing well, Mark.
How are you doing today?
Mark: Good, pretty good.
Jason: Yeah, good to see you.
Mark: You guys, you just finished up your season.
Jason: We did.
Mark: You had your ups and downs but for the most part it was a pretty good season.
Jason It was.
We had some things really go our way this season.
Overall, fell a little bit short of our goals but I think it was a real good positive growth
opportunity for our guys.
Mark: All right.
Coach, as we're heading to the off season and to next year, tell me what was the most
frustrating thing you have to deal with this year that you would like to eliminate going
into the next?
Jason: Sure.
Well, I absolutely love seeing these young men grow, develop as players, but then that
brings in one of the frustrating things about my job is when I have a player or two on the
team that doesn't always give their best effort in practice.
I think sometimes with some of that loafing, we don't always achieve our full potential
as a team over the course of a season.
Mark: Right.
It's funny you mentioned loafing.
I have a phenomenon here that I want to present to you today.
It's called the Ringelmann Effect.
Basically, the Ringelmann Effect is individual performance decreases as participants increase.
Where you say you may have a guys loafing or not going as hard, that's becoming present
as more and more guys are present.
Jason: That's interesting.
That makes sense.
Mark: To illustrate that, let's say you may have some parts in practice where you may
be doing one-on-one, or you may be doing close outs, so as you have one participant here,
this effect shows that that one participant, he's going all out.
He's giving 100%.
As we add more participants, we start to see the effort decrease here at 93%.
Jason: A drop in effort.
Absolutely.
Mark: Now we add a third.
Generally speaking, we add a third one, we see a decrease here down to 85%.
Now here's the catch.
As we add 8 or more participants, now we have guys not even giving half.
Jason: Wow.
A sharp drop off.
Mark: Right.
We have guys not giving half as much of the effort.
Jason: It makes sense.
Mark: This curve here is the social loafing.
Jason: That's interesting, because as you mention that, that's kind of exactly what's
sort of playing out on the team.
When we're playing 5 V 5, I can get every guy on the team to buy in, maybe except for
that one player, and he's not giving his best effort, but I'll tell you what's so interesting
about that is if we have 3 V 3, everybody is giving their best effort.
Mark: Or even one-on-one.
Jason: Absolutely.
Mark: You've got guys battling it out.
Jason: That's true.
That is very true.
Mark, as you explain that to me, that makes complete sense to me.
Any recommendations since you have an expertise in this on maybe what I can do as a coach
going into the next pre-season to kind of head some of this off?
Mark: My first suggestion would be as a coach, or you can even get your captain or your leaders,
as a coach or a captain, the first thing you want to do is you want to identify roles.
Jason: Absolutely.
Mark: You know, like I mentioned, you have your captains, you have your starters, you
have your six men.
You want to get those guys that's even at the end of the bench, you want them to identify
their roles and let them know that, "Hey you're just as needed or you're just as imperative
as the next guy."
Jason: That makes sense, certainly because for example, if I have Timmy on the team,
who, he's not a starter.
He's more of a bench player where I really need him to come off the bench in key situations
and play extremely hard on defense.
You're saying that if I can get him to buy into that role, that he's a solid defensive
player who gets lots of steals and really emphasize that at practice, you feel like
that will help Timmy give more effort throughout practice.
Mark: Right, so whether Timmy is playing five minutes, ten minutes, whatever, you want to,
"Hey Timmy, these five minutes are key."
If Timmy can come in and go after the best player on the opposing team.
Jason: That makes sense.
Mark: That can take you guys from bridging a gap or even expanding your lead.
Jason: Sure.
Well, what other ideas do you have Mark?
Mark: My second suggestion would be feedback.
Jason: Feedback.
Great.
Mark: As I was taught growing up, you worry when a coach isn't talking to you.
You know what I'm saying?
So if you got a coach riding you or "Hey you should do this," you know, "You should do
that," that feedback will ignite something in the player to perform better.
Jason: Sure.
Absolutely, and I'm big as a coach on giving that verbal feedback, but we also have an
excellent manager on our team that keeps a lot of great stats, so I love being able to
give the players some of those stats after the game, some of the quantitative stats on
how they were doing in the game.
So for Timmy in this case, being able to show when he's giving his best effort what that's
doing for his steals per game.
Mark: Right.
Jason: That's awesome.
That's great.
Mark: And with the stats, say man, "They say numbers don't lie."
Jason: That's true.
That is true.
Well, you know Mark, I loved what you presented with the Ringelmann Effect and how that explains,
and like you said, that social process of how people give less effort as the group size
increases and your recommendations for kind of heading off that social loafing with identifying
roles and the feedback was excellent.
I appreciate that.
Mark: All right.
Coach.
Jason: Thanks a lot.