Geckolib Block animations in an if statement

Yo, I have a simple script, some things need to go on during the animation so I have it set its nbt to "playing = 1", in my script if playing = 0 then it runs the animation and does the other stuff. then sets it back to 0. But for some reason it plays the animation anyways, in fact I even right clicked a part that wasn't even in the hitbox and it played the animation without doing the other stuff, (since it wasn't actually hit), does anyone know anything close to how to fix this? I'ma keep doing random tests to see if I can, will update with fix if I do.