JOHN WOODEN ON "CATNIP"

When his teams first practiced shooting or dribbling, John Wooden often made his players work without the ball.  "One of the challenges I faced during practice," he wrote in Wooden On Leadership, "was the distraction caused by a player's natural instinct and desire to score baskets or grab rebounds.  Either urge is such a powerful siren song that it's hard to make them pay attention and learn the 'dull' fundamentals that ensure success in scoring and rebounding -- such things as pivoting, hand and arm movement, and routes on plays."  Wooden called the seductive draw of things that recall the drama of performance too directly on intensely "catnip," because they can drive participants to distraction.  While our instincts often tell us to recreate those situations to make practice more useful, he tried to remove them during the learning process.

From "Practice Perfect" by Doug Lemov, Erica Woolway and Katie Yezzi