3 Keys To Having A GREAT Off-Season (And Making Major Progress) - Podcast 104

Foreign. Welcome to the Vision Faster Trading podcast. Appreciate you guys for tuning in. Apple Podcast, Spotify, Pandora, soundcloud. I always lose track of where you guys are even listening from. Google Podcast is another one. Wherever you're listening from and everybody's watching YouTube. I appreciate all of you guys. For YouTube, drop a, like, subscribe if you're new. And if you're an Apple podcast right now, do me a favor, leave a review. Let me know what you think about the show. If you have questions, leave that in your review as well. I really appreciate that. So right now, early March, as I record this, it's March 3rd for 95% of players out there, the season's over, right? It is now the offseason for 95%. For the lucky 5% of you out there who are still playing, this is like, the most fun time of the year. At least I know for. For me, even just coaching now, like, this is the most fun time of the year. So congratulations to you lucky few who are still playing. But like I said, the majority of you guys out there, it's. It's offseason time. And so today I want to talk about three keys for going into your offseason strong, making sure that you maximize your offseason, and really just having a good plan going forward, understanding what exactly it's going to take for you to get to where you want to get to. I think it's important to sit back and actually give yourself time to consider what you want and then start to build a plan on how to get there. So that's. That's going to be what we're going to go through today. The first thing, though, and I think this is. This is the first part, but this is really, before you even get to that point, really, you just, you want to take a little bit of a break. And this is really in more than one way. Obviously, physically, like, you have to evaluate and say, okay, like, how am I feeling right now? Do I feel all right? You know, do. Do. Am I hurt at all? And I know for, for me, like, when I was in high school, I used to get sick. Like, every basketball season, I would get sick, like, mid January. And then obviously, you're playing every day, practicing every day. You don't really have time to recover. So I'd just be sick for, like, the next two months because it would be during the season, so I would need time off just to, like, not be sick anymore. So, you know, that's. You obviously taking time to just feel better. I think it's Important. And then, you know, I remember my junior year of high school, we had a playoff game, and I. I had LeBron Zoom soldier sevens at the time. And right where the ball of my foot is on my right shoe, there was like. Like the. He had the whole padding on, like the. The insole or whatever. But then right where the ball my foot was, it was just completely worn down. Like, there was no padding. And so I played through that for, like, a game or two. But then we get to the first round of the playoffs, and I get to the locker room before the game, and I realize how bad my foot hurts. And I was going to have to play in the shoes again because the game was about to start and I didn't bring another pair of shoes with me. So I played through that game, and, like, I could barely walk after that. And so I need a little bit of time to just let my foot recover a little bit because of that. And we lost that game, so I had plenty of time after that to take a break. But just evaluating yourself physically, but then I also think it's important for you to mentally give yourself a break, because the season comes along with so much stress. There's so much that goes along with it mentally, emotionally. You know, like I said, even if you're on a good team, the ups and downs that you go through, whether it be stressed about playing time or about how you perform, or maybe you have a coach who, you know, demands a lot of you or, you know, doesn't ever allow you to mess up, and you feel a lot of pressure from that aspect, too. Just giving yourself time, I think, mentally, to decompress from all of the stuff that goes along with, not only physically, the game of basketball, but mentally, too. I think it's good to just give yourself a little bit of a mental break, because what you don't want is to not give yourself that break and go into the offseason still feeling that stress. Then eventually you feel super burnt out. You know, you want to give yourself space from basketball sometimes so that you can come back to it in a better. Like, a better headspace, a more recovered space. I think that's really, really important. And I think going along with that, too, you want to just take some time and be grateful for the success that you saw. I think that's sometimes something that a lot of us don't do. You know, you work so hard all off season to have success in the season. You want to give yourself some time to, like, appreciate that success. Right. And that should Be independent of whether or not you reach the exact goals you set. If your goal is to win a state championship, maybe you didn't get to that, but I'm sure there was a ton along the way that you did do that you can sit back and appreciate because you worked hard to get it. If your goal was to average X amount of points that you didn't do that, that doesn't mean that you, you know, you negate all the other accomplishments that you might have had, right? You negate all the good games you had, all the great moments you had because you work to get those. That wasn't something that was just handed to you. You had to work hard to be able to do that. So taking time and really thinking back and just appreciating the success that you had, I think is a really, really important thing. Because again, you. You work hard for this. It's. It's important to appreciate it at times as well. And that's the perfect. It's a perfect time to do that right when the season ends. And, you know, you give yourself a little bit of time. So taking a week, two weeks to just go through all of this stuff physically, mentally, I think is really important to give yourself, to put yourself in a good spot heading into the rest of the offseason. So that's the first thing, but the second thing. And, you know, if you. If you're listening right now, I want you to really consider this part. I think this really matters a lot. I would even say if you've got, like, if you're on your phone right now, which you probably are, because you're listening to this, take out, you know, open up your phone, go to your notes app, and just write down a swot. So swat, sw, OT is just an acronym that stands for strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. And this is something that businesses will use to kind of evaluate where they are and where they're trying to go. But. But it applies to you as well. And so we start off with the strength part. So the s. So what did I do well this season? What was I successful doing? What can I build on going forward? Did you shoot the ball really, really well? Perfect. There's a strength right there. Were you the main ball handler? Did you do a good job handling the basketball? You do a good job setting up your teammates? You did a good job playing defense. Think about what went well for you, what you did well. Put that in your strengths category, and then weaknesses. What did you. What did you not do well? What do you need to do? Better going forward the next year. Okay, didn't shoot the ball as well as you'd like to. Cool. Maybe you can even get specific with it. So you didn't shoot the ball well from three, you didn't shoot the ball well coming off of ball screens. You know, maybe you didn't defend as well as you would have liked to. Maybe you didn't rebound as well as you would have liked to. There's a lot of things that you can. Maybe you didn't handle the ball well. Maybe you turn the ball over a lot. Just think about areas where you could have been better, where you want to be better, and there's your weaknesses area. So far we have strengths. What did you do well? Weaknesses, what can you do better? And then opportunities. So this is kind of where we start to look forward a little bit and we say, okay, what opportunities will I have moving forward? And this will be dependent on what forward looks like for you. So, you know, if you're in high school and you're a sophomore, junior, you're thinking about, okay, well, what does the team look like next year? What do we lose? What do we bring back? What potential role could I fill next year? What role will we need to have filled? And, you know, do I have an opportunity to move towards filling that? So, you know, maybe as a junior, you were coming off the bench, but maybe there's some seniors graduating. So now you see that there's potential opportunities there to fill new roles. Okay, so now you have an actual, like, tangible thing that you can look at and say, hey, this is what I can work towards is potentially being able to do that. So there's an opportunity of that. If you are from high school, going to play in college, well, that's going to be a completely different opportunity because now you're thinking about, okay, well, how do I get myself on the floor? When I look at the other players in my position, what do they do? Well, what are the. What does this team need for me? What does this offense look like? What are the opportunities I'm going to have in this offense? And then getting an idea of that. And so it's all dependent on where you're at. But identifying opportunities that you're going to have is a really great way to, again, give yourself a plan of, okay, what am I actually working on moving forward? So identify those opportunities. The third part of that SWOT analysis and then threats, that's the fourth part, is just identifying what will keep you from those opportunities. Okay, so if, you know, let's say Our leading scorer graduated and. And I want to be able to score more points. What could potentially keep me away from being able to capitalize on that opportunity? Well, maybe you don't handle the ball super well, and that might be an area that you need to improve, because if you can't handle the ball well, you're not going to be able to score as well. Maybe you didn't shoot threes particularly well. Well, that could keep you from being able to fill that role more. You know, think about it. For, for any role they're trying to fill, if you're. If one of the main ball handlers left, maybe you don't necessarily make great decisions with the ball, so you've got to work on that. Or maybe you don't pass the ball super well, you don't see the floor super well. And these are all things that can keep you from being able to maximize those opportunities right there. Okay? So think about it along the same lines as your weaknesses, but more so how it will impact you going forward. Okay. My opportunity is that that's something that I identify as something that could be an opportunity for me. What could keep me from being able to do that? Right. So now you have, through this SWOT analysis, you now have a framework for, first of all, where you're at, so strengths, weaknesses, but then going forward, what opportunities are there and what can keep you from that. So having an understanding of that and an idea of that gives you really the exact framework of what you need to work on and focus on going forward this offseason. So again, I highly recommend that you write that down, get your notes at your notes app out, or even write it down on a piece of paper if you want to, whatever. But strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats, have that understanding. And now you're going to be able to be focused moving forward. And that's where you want to be, is having a focus and a goal that you can or multiple goals that you can work towards going into the next season. So the third thing is really a question I get a lot, which is, what should this look like? What should my offseason look like? What should my schedule be? When should I do this? When should I do that? And the answer is that there is no one answer. Right. For everybody. It's a little bit different because again, if you go through that SWOT analysis, you may have a completely different focus than another person. So you guys might not do the same exact stuff. So it's really important that you prioritize what matters to you. So if you, if you think that the main threat that can keep you from capitalizing on those opportunities is shooting the ball. Well then that's got to be what your focus is like. That's gotta be your main focus. And there's so many ways you can do this, right? There's a concept that I want you guys to think about here, and it's called using constraints, right? All that a constraint is, is basically you are limiting yourself in some certain way or you're putting some sort of barrier up to force yourself to have to do something. So here's an example of a constraint and it's kind of a weird example, but it's kind of the first thing that came into my mind. And I remember when I was in probably like second or third grade, we had like a computer class where you learn how to type basically. So you play all these typing games or whatever. And what they would do though is the teacher would make us put like a pair of shorts over our keyboard and you put like your arms through the, the, like the openings or whatever. So that way it was covering your hands so you couldn't look down and see what you were typing. So it was forcing you to basically memorize where the keys were so that you wouldn't have to look down when you typed and therefore you could type faster. So that's an example of using a constraint to make you better at something. So now you're not able to use your eyes, you have to get really good at not using them. So there we go. By constraining something, we're trying to improve in a certain area. And basketball speaking like, you could, you could say, okay, a constraint might be you're playing a two on two game and you're trying to focus on making, you know, shooting from the perimeter. So you say to yourself, okay, in this game I'm only going to shoot perimeter shots. I probably could beat this guy in front of me maybe kind of often, right? Maybe I can get by this guy every single time even. But I know that I can do that. But my goal is to get better at this, so I'm going to force myself to have to score this way. So there's an example of that. Maybe you say, hey, for all the pickup games that I play this month, I'm only shooting perimeter shots because that's what I got to focus on. I got to focus on getting those shots, making those shots, getting confident shooting them. I know that I can go to the basket. I know that I'm good at that. My goal right now is to Put a constraint on myself that is going to force me to get better in a certain area. So if you have a focus, you can put a constraint on yourself that is going to force you to have to do that thing better. So could be the other way, right? Maybe you're a great outside shooter. Your goal is to get to the basket. So you're going to say, hey, I'm only driving to the basket in this game right here and now, you know, I could make these shots, I can shoot the ball, maybe I'm open, but I'm going to put a constraint on myself. It's going to force me to expand and grow in a certain area, right? And the team that I coach with, like, this is what we do in the offseason with our guys. Like, we'll play in summer league games, fall league games. We'll force guys to do certain things because they might be good at something else. And we say, no, you can't do that. You got to do this. And that's how you really see growth in an area. That's how you take a player from being a, you know, a single faceted player who can only do this to now being comfortable doing other things. You have to kind of force that, right? And it's uncomfortable at first, but putting constraints on yourself is a great way to be able to expand your game, right? So if you have a focus, if you realize that a weakness for you was shooting the ball and that's also a threat to those opportunities going forward, can you put a constraint on yourself, especially when you play, which should be as often as you can, that says, okay, hey, I'm only going to do this so that I can really target that weakness, target that threat right there. Okay? So finding opportunities to use constraints super, super important and can be a big thing for you, especially in the offseason when performance doesn't matter, right? We're trying to get better. So how you play in a pickup game means nothing. How you play in a pickup game in April means almost nothing. A lot of the AU games that you'll play are gonna mean almost nothing, right? Again, unless you're playing live games in front of college coaches. That's. That's where you're trying to perform, right? You're trying to put your best foot forward when there's actual recruiting happening. But if you're going and playing in a meaningless tournament in March or in June that no one's watching, it doesn't really matter, right? It doesn't really matter. So understand that the goal's got to be getting better. And constraints are a great way to do that. And going with that, too, kind of. Like I mentioned, you should be playing as often as possible. What you don't want to do is isolate yourself and say, okay, I'm just gonna go work by myself for six months. And while that will help you in certain ways, like you're gonna. You're gonna get better doing that, what you don't want to do is isolate skills because you lose context for them. Meaning if I go and I just work out by myself for six months, I'm probably going to get better in that one on no context, Right. Where I'm just working out by myself, I'm probably going to be better. If I start doing that in April and you come and see me in October, I'm going to be better in my workouts. But will that. Will those skills translate when there's now defense, when there's now somebody trying to stop me, and can I make that translate? And for a lot of players, the answer is no. So you need to make sure that you're still playing as much as you can, still working out with people as much as you can, so that the skills that you are improving upon, they translate and you have context for them. You understand how to handle the ball. Not just how do I handle the ball when there's cones in front of me, but how do I handle the ball when there's actually somebody pressuring me trying to see the ball. Right. You get good at shooting shots, and it's not just shooting, shooting shots when there's nobody in the gym. But I can also make shots when there's a defender closing out to me, or when, you know, my teammate just drove and kicked me the ball. And I can make that decision, okay, am I driving or am I open to shoot the ball? Those are. That all goes into actually executing the skills in games. So if you don't play, you're not going to have the context for that, and you're not going to see those skills translate. This is a big, big, big thing that a lot of players do. They don't understand the fact that what you do by yourself, if you're working up by yourself, it's not nearly as effective as working out with other people or playing, because those skills actually translate. If you don't ever expose yourself to defense in the off season and, you know, you don't find ways to be able to challenge yourself by playing against competition, it's not going to translate the way that you want it to right? And that's where you get the oh, coach, I don't feel like my skills are translating well. It's probably because you were working on all of them isolated from the actual context of the game. So moral of the story here, play as much as possible, play as much pickup, play as much 2 on 2, 3 on 3, play against defense as much as you can. And if you can work out with people and you can incorporate different one on one games, do that too. Okay, as much as you can. See defense, see defense, that's going to be big for you. Last thing I'll say is that whatever your focuses are this offseason, so whatever you're trying to be better at, drop it in the comments for me, let me know what areas specifically you're trying to get better at. Obviously I have workouts on a lot of this stuff. I have programs on a lot of this stuff and with more stuff coming as well. But I want to know from you guys, what is it that you're trying to be better at? What are the opportunities that you see and what are you going to do to chase after those opportunities? So in the comments below, make sure you let me know specifically for you or send me a DM on Instagram @ Vision Driven Basketball, whatever. But I want to know where you guys are at right now. That that was really gonna help me moving forward as well, seeing how I can help you. So I appreciate you guys for listening. Like I said, drop a comment below, let me know what your offseason is gonna look like. And you guys, an Apple podcast. Like I said, drop a review for me. Really do appreciate that you guys are on YouTube, like subscribe, all that good stuff. I appreciate you guys a lot. Talk to you guys soon. Peace. Sat.