The Sniper Story: Epiphany #2- Cognition

Georges Niang at one point described himself as only an average athlete. Despite his size at 6'7" and his skill, his speed and leaping ability were average.

I met him in 2016 after his senior year at Iowa State, during the pre-draft training with his long-time coach and my mentor Noah LaRoche before he was drafted as the 50th pick by the Indiana Pacers.

Niang was a product of what Coach LaRoche has developed as CognitionCoaching (https://www.integrityhoops.com/cognition-coach) - focusing attention on the mental side of training and the principles behind learning, principles of invasion sports in general, and principles of offense and defense for basketball.

The result of his training was players that could create massive advantages by out-thinking their opponents in both speed and accuracy, improving their ability to "seek and destroy" any errors by their opponent, and culminating in the concept of Group Cognition - creating a hive mind mentality as a team that could instinctively coordinate their attack by reacting to each other based on principles rather than scripted plays.

What did this mean for shooting?

For one, it meant always seeking opportunity to score, and having absolute confidence in the decision to shoot when open...

The foundation of cognition is pre-programming decisions based on principles so that when a player recognizes a game situation, they instinctively know what to do without consciously having to think about it - creating and multiplying massive advantages over their opponent, which makes even average athletes appear to score with ease!

Tomorrow I will explain how Epiphany #3 helped an 8th grade "rebounder" become a 30 point per game scorer in High School...

See you on the court,
Coach BJ

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