3 Ways To INSTANTLY Make Your Workouts Better

If you're watching this, you probably spend a lot of time working out and make that assumption. But I can almost guarantee that you're leaving a ton of potential improvement on the table because you're making these mistakes in your workouts, and you could probably be seeing way more results. So in this episode, I'm going to give you three things you can start doing right now in your workouts that are going to instantly make them better so that you get better results, you reach your goals faster, and you also become the best player that you can be. And before we get into it, I want you to drop a comment now and let me know what your definition of a good workout is. So think about if you just finished up a workout, how do you decide whether or not it was good? I'm really interested to know what you think, so drop a comment down below. Let me know. Let's get into it. Before we get into the three things. I think if you understand this one concept, it's going to make everything make more sense, and I think it will actually help you to be able to do a lot of these things naturally. And that's the understanding that you need to avoid autopilot as much as possible. Now, what do I mean by that? Basically what I mean is that whenever you're working out, a lot of times players will do stuff that they don't really have to think about at all. They just kind of go to the gym, they start shooting, they do this, they do that, and they're honestly able to kind of just go on autopilot. So they can be standing there shooting, thinking about 10 different things and not really focused on what they're doing. But you get to a game and your focus becomes on what you're doing. You're not really thinking about other things. Right? And there's the disconnects. That's why a lot of times players will be able to perform well in practice when that pressure isn't there, when they can be on autopilot. But then they get to a game and they have to be able to focus and lock in and be able to handle the pressure that comes along with that. And they're not able to. And it's because a lot of times they spend their time on autopilot in their workouts. Okay? So what these three things are going to do is it's going to help you to avoid that so that not only does it translate better to in game success, but also you get more out of your workouts. So by the time you get to the games, not only are you, is it translating better, but you're getting better results because you've gotten more done in your practices. I think that's the main thing. Like I said, if you're watching this, you probably are somebody who already works out probably is pretty consistent with it. And my goal right here is just to give you something that's going to help take that to the next level so you can get more out of what you're already doing. Because ultimately that's the best way to scale anything, get better at anything, is just take what you're already doing and make it better. So that's the goal of today. The first thing that you can do to instantly make your workouts better is add ways to compete with yourself. And the simplest thing is just to have a goal. So this can be for an entire workout. It can be for a specific drill. I think a simple thing you can do is let's say you have a workout where you have a certain amount of makes you trying to get to, maybe you're trying to get 200 makes. Give yourself a time goal like, okay, my goal is to get this done in 30 minutes or 35 minutes or 45 minutes, depending on you personally, how good of a shooter you are, how long it normally takes you to do that. And now you're going to have to be focused on getting things done quickly. And you know you're not going to be on autopilot because you have that goal, you have that time constraint, that pressure that's on you right there, that's going to force you to be more locked in with everything that you're doing. This is an example of a way to do that. Another way is just to make everything track everything or, or keep an understanding of certain things that you do. So for example, one drill that we like to do is we'll go five spots around the three point line. So both of the baselines, the wings on top of the key. And, and how it starts off is you have to make a certain amount of shots without missing two in a row. So normally what we'll do is depending on who it is, we might go nine, eight, seven, six, five. So the first spot you've got to make nine shots without missing two in a row. Next spot you got to do make 8 and then 7, 6 and then 5. And this puts a lot of pressure on the shooter because you ha. You can't miss two in a row. If you make, if you miss one, all of a sudden that next shot is a lot of Pressure on it. Especially when you get up to 7, 8, 9, and you really are like, okay, if I miss this shot, I'm at back at zero. Right? So it adds that level of just pressure. But then also, we'll give a certain time goals. Maybe it'll be seven minutes or six minutes, right? And now not only are you trying to complete the drill, but you're trying to beat your time. So there's a certain level of competitiveness just within the drill that each player can kind of compete with themselves to beat that time. So adding that into what you're doing, can you give yourself a certain goal? Okay, you know, my goal is for my shooting. I need to make three in a row, and I'm gonna track how many times I make three in a row. Okay, this workout, I was able to, you know, in the five minutes that I was shooting, I was able to get, you know, eight sets of three in a row. And then in my next workout, I'm gonna try and beat that. Okay, My baseline is 8. Every workout, I gotta try and beat that. And that's really how you push and you force yourself to improve. Because when you give your brain a goal of, hey, this is what we need to do, like, you find ways to be able to meet that. But if you're going out there and you're just kind of doing stuff and there's no level of, you know, competition, there's no goal that you have for yourself, then it's a lot easier to just kind of coast along and not really make any improvement. So it's important that you find ways to compete with yourself and just to make things a little bit more difficult on yourself, add a little bit more pressure to what you do. Okay, so again, like I said, that can be a time thing. You can say, okay, I want to get this, my shooting workout done in this amount of time. And it's going to force you to make shots and be efficient. Efficient. And that's going to force you to get better. And as you get better, maybe you decrease that time. Or even within your drills, maybe you say, okay, this drill is calling for 20 makes. But instead of 20 makes, I have to get 10 sets of two in a row. And now you're competing with yourself again, challenging yourself again. So how can you find ways to just make things a little bit more competitive, a little bit tougher? And then can you find a way to push yourself to try and beat that every time that you go and work out? That's the first step. The first thing you can do. First thing you add to your workouts right now, that's going to make you make your workout so much more effective and allow you to see better in game results because of it. The second thing I think this is something that isn't talked about enough, but is really important, is that you need to visualize and use your imagination when you work out. So especially this is specifically for players working out by themselves. But another issue, another reason people going players on autopilot is just because there's nobody out there to defend or pass on the ball. There's obviously no coaches, there's no referees, there's nobody in the stands. It's just them. So it's very easy to just kind of be out there aimlessly, not really doing anything. I think utilizing your imagination, your visualization is such a powerful way to be able to get more out of your workouts. And it's because your brain doesn't differentiate the feelings between what's real and what's imagined. It's why visualization is so powerful. Any of you guys who are an elite ball handling 2.0, we have the mental toughness mini course where we just talk about mental training mini course, we just talk about visualization as one of the modules in there and how powerful that is. And so you guys who are part of that have heard me kind of go in depth on visualization. But essentially your brain can visualize something and you get that same response as if it were the real life situation. And that's why visualization, when it comes to preparing yourself for games or, or becoming more confident in different situations is so important and so impactful. It's the same thing when it comes to your workouts. So being in a drill and let's say you're working on your finishing, imagine that you have a defender who's on your hip, like literally putting that into like your reality that there is somebody there, or you're working on some sort of ball handling drill or some sort of dribble move and you imagine that there's somebody there trying to take the ball from you, someone who there's that's there trying to guard you. You're going through your shooting drills and you're imagining you're visualizing somebody closing out and contesting your shot. Adding just that level of imagination and visualization I think is important for two reasons. Number one, because it adds and as a level of just fun to what you're doing. And that allows you to be off autopilot and be much more engaged while you're doing right. The engagement is such a high thing. You want to be as engaged as possible inside of your workouts if you want to get the best results from it. And one of the best ways to do that is just by using your. Your imagination, visualizing what's going on. That's going to force you to be present, be in the moment, and get way more out of what you're doing. And then the second thing is, like I said it, your brain doesn't know the difference between that. So you're almost able to put defenders and put different. Put yourself in different situations on the court, even when you're by yourself. If you commit to visualizing using your imagination. So just in your mind, come up with instances of think about your workouts and times when you can add in that, you know, imaginary defender or a help defender sliding across. How can you use visualization, your imagination to, you know, get more out of your workouts and really get yourself to be as engaged as possible? Something that we do inside of pretty much all of my programs. And actually, if you guys go to the top link in my description, and I redid the whole perimeter, my free leap score workout, and. And actually it's two workouts now. It's kind of built into more of like a free program. So you guys want to check that out? It's below. We have a drill that incorporates this as well. Actually, we have a couple that do, but you can literally give yourself five minutes and just imagine that you're in different game situations and get different shots out of it. So that's one of my favorite ways to incorporate visualization, imagination. Okay. I'm working on coming off of this pin down, and, you know, we're down to I got to make this shot to win it, right? Or next. Next shot, I'm coming down to transition. My teammate drove, kicked it out to me. Boom, there we go. So just taking time and really imagining these different situations is a great way to get more out of the drills that you're currently doing. So it's a second way to get more out of your workouts right now is to add in visualization and use your imagination within your drills. The third thing that I think is really important, and I think that you can add. Adjust your workouts right now to get more out of them, is you need to flip the way that you judge your workouts. Right? So I asked you at the beginning of the. Of the episode, how do you determine what a good workout is? Is it how many shots you took or how many shots you made. Is it how long the workout was? I think it was either Chris Oliver or it was Alex Sarama, one of the guys who's involved with basketball immersion, shout out to both of them. But it was one of them who said it and they said that they based their workouts and how good they were based on how many decisions were made. Right. And I think that's really, a really, really good way to look at it. Obviously, especially when you're working out with somebody, like how many decision making situations got to be put in, because that's what games are. But when you're by yourself, I think looking at it and judging it based on how many challenges did I face in this workout is a great way to judge how good it was. So let's say again, you did a drill where you forced yourself to make maybe three in a row, right? And maybe your goal was to finish like maybe let's say you went five, five spots around the perimeter, you would make three threes in a row to move to the next spot. And your goal was to get it done in four minutes, but maybe it took you five. There's a challenge that you face throughout that workout, and that's a good thing right there. Even if you didn't necessarily get it in your goal time, you challenge yourself and now you have a goal that you can move towards. What I think is really, really important for players to be able to do. So can you look back on your workout and point out instances where you felt challenged, where it was difficult, we really had to focus and lock in, or where maybe you set a goal for yourself that you didn't even accomplish because it was a challenge. Right. I think viewing your workouts through that lens allows you to really prioritize what matters. And it isn't the amount of shots you make. It isn't the amount of time that you spend on the court, it's the amount of improvement that you get out of that workout. I talked about it last week and this is one of my favorite quotes that is new to me. It's just, you don't need to practice, you need to improve. You don't need more practice, you need improvement. So when I get away from the idea that the amount of shots I take is what matters most, or the amount of time I spend on the court or the amount of workouts I have in a day is what matters most. And instead, what matters most is the level of improvement that I actually see and I actually force myself to go through. I'm going to get better And I'm going to get better way faster than a lot of other people, and I'm going to maximize what I'm doing at a much higher level. So again, changing the way that you think from, okay, you know, how many shots did I make? How good do I feel after this workout? And changing that into how much challenge was there? How often did I feel challenged? Or how often did I feel frustrated because, you know, I wasn't able to do things as easily as I wanted to, or this drill took me longer than I wanted it to. When you start to push yourself and flip the script and that's how you judge your workouts and you chase after that, you're going to get way better. And that's another way you can instantly adjust your workouts so that you get way more out of it right now. And if you guys want workouts to do that already kind of have this in mind, click that top link below like I mentioned before and get my free workout, which again is more like a program now. So you'll go through that for a couple of weeks and you're going to see a lot of improvement. But it really was built with this in mind. So make sure you guys go check that out below. Drop a like subscribe if you're new. I'll talk to you guys soon. Peace.