Basketball Training Q & A Livestream

I saw a couple questions already that were interesting to me. By the way, I appreciate everyone who's in here watching. I'm excited to get to connect with you guys. Drop questions that you have in the chat for me. I got a couple pretty good questions through my email which kind of how I even thought about doing this is a lot easier for me to answer questions when I can just kind of talk instead of having to try and type back everything here. So like I said, you have questions drop down below Eiji. That was the one that I saw before I ended the other stream that I really liked. A lot of skills trainer are teaching the wrong way of basketball to the point of forgetting how to read and react. Like ball screens, down screens, all this other stuff that is like my, I mean that's probably the biggest thing that I talk about now. I just made a video on this on my second channel, the VDB podcast, which you guys should definitely check out by the way, where it's. It's a lot more like this where I can kind of go in depth into stuff and watch whatever. But I talked about how I made a shift in my content over the last few months where I kind of went from talking about everything and ball handling and athleticism and finishing and all that sort of stuff to now talking much more about IQ and all this. And the reason is because of this you can have all the skills in the world, but if you don't understand how to read a pin down, how to read and play in a ball screen, you're not going to be very good. And the game of basketball is completely centered around actions, concepts and when you really simplify the game, it's about that sort of stuff and being great there. And so for me, I think in order to really help players impact the game the most, that has to be like the focal point of what you, what you're focused on being great at as a player. So I'm with you 100% on that. How should I develop my jump shot? Do it as much as you possibly can, especially if you're young and you're new to shooting. It's not the answer that is, you know, the flashiest by any means, but what you need is you need reps at it. And I'm not just saying that because that's what everybody says. I'm saying it because that you have a power called self organization, right. Which sounds complicated. All that it means is that your brain has a very good ability at figuring with figuring things out if you're willing to Put yourself in that position. What I mean is that you're shooting the basketball and you're missing, and you're missing, and then you make one, and all of a sudden your brain, you're able to kind of figure out the pattern, okay, what led to me making that one, and then what led to be missing that one. And eventually you sort of figure out what works best for you, what doesn't work for you, what you need to achieve, what you need to adjust, what you need to focus on, where you need to improve. And you only get that information by reps. Right. So if you're. If you're spending more time shooting than anybody else, you're going to get to the point where you have that information a lot faster than everybody else. And that's how you build a baseline boozo. I appreciate that, man. I love to hear that. I love to hear that. Haven't hooped in about three weeks. How do I get back into rhythm and get as good as I was or better? Yeah, I mean, that's the tough thing. I think the first thing is being able to accept it. Like, if you haven't played in a while, you're probably not going to be great. You're not going to feel great the first time back. Just. Just be willing to eat that one. Like, you know what this is? This is just how it works. What I've kind of felt, because I feel this now, like, I'm not training myself like I was back when I was playing or when I was in high school, whatever. But what I've noticed when it comes to, like, even, like, lifting weights, like, there's times where I'll get inconsistent and I'll, you know, I won't do it for a week, two weeks. And I, in my mind, I build up all this pressure. It's like, oh, man, I had these numbers and I was lifting this amount away. And if I go back now, I'm going to be way worse. And I go back that first time, and maybe that workout isn't, like, groundbreaking, but I literally feel like I'm right back into it after that, just by doing it one time. So just go do it and accept the fact that it might not be your best workout, it might not be your best gain, your best pickup run ever, but you're going to get back into a flow, into a rhythm quickly. When you just go do. How do I slow the game down for myself? I think slowing the game down for yourself requires a couple things. First of all, you need to have a really good understanding of, of the game. Right. So you need to understand like I just talked about, how do I use different actions, how do I read a pin down, how do I read a ball screen? When are the best times to, to cut to the basket? When, when I'm in transition, should I push it? When should I look to slow it down? When should I advance the ball? You know, when I get downhill to the rim, what's the best way to finish? I what do I do when the help defenders rotate over? That requires a high level understanding of the game. And then once you have that understanding, it's about putting yourself in that position to do it as much as possible. As a freshman going into sophomore year, should I do any showcases and is made hoops tournament is good as a 15 year old regarding the made hoop stuff, as far as I know it's pretty good and I think they're continuing to get better. Like it's kind of been hoop group has been like the main, the main group or the main company running like the big time tournaments at least you know in the on the east coast. But I think made hoops is kind of approaching that too and a lot of people are much more or a lot of programs are kind of moving towards made hoops. So definitely good. Freshman and sophomore year showcase is going to be good. In terms of a recruiting perspective, it's not. Very many like rising sophomores are getting looked at or considered at all by colleges. Like for the most part almost nobody is. So if it's a, if it's a good opportunity for you to compete against good players, then go do it. Just I wouldn't set your expectation or your focus even on like getting recruited that because generally that age a little early. Shout out the Philippines. My shot became almost elite when I realized that you have to push yourself harder than game speed while training your shot. I love that when you find ways to really challenge yourself and make it difficult, I don't want to say as difficult as possible, right? Like I don't want you to just, you know, start riding around on a bicycle and shooting, you know, threes and thinking that oh well coach said challenge myself so this is what I'm doing. But when you find ways to really challenge your footwork or challenge the speed you shoot at or challenge the way you catch the ball so that it's harder than you're going to see on most shots, that's when it becomes easy to be a knockdown shooter. How should I deal with sickness and know when to rest without getting feels of guilt? When I miss practice, you know, I think it kind of depends on you. Like, if you feel like, hey, if I take a couple days off, I'm going to be able to come back and be at 100%, then do that. Right. There's no point in feeling bad about it. I think you kind of just have to know yourself and be able to be like. Be able to know, like, what your body needs. How am I supposed to train in game situations? In game, I struggle to make the same reads as I do during practice. Are you talking about, like, you play way better in your team practices and then you get to your team games and you're bad? Is that what you mean by practice? How can you boost your confidence in game pickup games? I'm fine, but once I get in the real game setting, I play scared. This is something that I've been thinking about a lot, actually. I think it's kind of a twofold thing because you have like the actual on court part of it, which is, I think the best way to develop confidence in yourself is to have a purpose every time that you play. So. And every time that you're on the court, what I mean by that is that you should know exactly what it is that you're trying to do. What do I want to hunt to give myself the best chance of being successful? Every time you play, there's no guarantees you can have the worst game ever. But if you know that, hey, if I look for these opportunities as much as possible, I'm going to give myself the best chance of being successful. So, for example, you might be a guard and, you know, maybe you, you're not a point guard. You're kind of off the ball. And so, you know, okay, I'm looking for opportunities to attack closeouts whenever I can. If I got a defender who's a little wild closing out of me, that's. That's what I'm hunting in this game. Or I'm. I'm also hunting opportunities to cut to the basket. Whenever the ball gets in the post or, you know, whenever I make a pass, I'm looking to cut to the basket, and I'm just looking for those opportunities. You go out and you're very purposeful with the process of it and putting yourself in the right position, you're going to play with more confidence because you know you're putting yourself in the best position. That's the first part of it. The second part of it is like, that's the whole confidence conundrum, right? Because sometimes we get in our Mind that, like this is, it's, it's so short term. If I play bad this game, like it's the end of the world. And you have to find a way to almost move past that in order to be able to like actually play with freedom on the court. So going through your mind saying, okay, what's the worst case scenario? Is that, okay, I go over 11 from 3 and then you got to think to yourself, well, Steph Curry's gone over 11 from three and he's the best shooter of all time, right? And then he got up and played the next day. I forget when it was in the playoffs a couple years ago where he had like a terrible game and then he came back and was like incredible as a shooter the next game, right? So one, one game, one performance is not a defining moment for anybody. So that's, I think it's something important to keep in mind playing zone defense. What type of zone defense? How to average 40 in games, you average around 32. What do you do to average 32 and what do you not do? Well, right now, what should mainly be my focus as a 16 year old sophomore going into my junior year. Well, it depends a little bit on where you're at. Like, are you, did you play on the varsity team last year? Were you a starter? Are you coming off the bench? What position did you play? Were you on the team last year? Give me a little bit of context right there. Okay, so Fidel, you are good during team practices and then, and then you struggle in games. I think that, that probably goes back a little bit to what I was saying where there's a lot more pressure in a game, right? Because you're in practice, no one's in the stands watching, no one's keeping score, there's no officials, there's no scoreboard, you're not playing for anything. So it's like the weight of things is, is present there. I think one of the things that the analogies that I use is like, it's like crossing like a balance beam. So sometimes you're like, okay, you know, if you, if you put a balance beam on the ground and you say, okay, cross this balance beam, this 10 foot balance beam, I'll give you a hundred dollars. Everybody would try it at least, because even if you, if you stumble, you lose your balance, you're just going to step off onto the ground. You're six inches off the ground, so there's no, there's no risk, right? You move that balance maybe about 10ft in the air now, maybe if you're really confident in yourself, you're going to go try it, but you know, it's probably split. And if you put that balance of 100 stories in the air, no one's going to do it. The task itself is no different, right? It's the same exact thing, but the risk is higher. So you have to be able to almost accept that part of it and say, okay, just because the risk is there or there's more pressure doesn't change the actual task that I'm doing. And then, like I said, go back to being really purposeful with what you're trying to do in that game. Like, like let that be at the front of your mind. Get rid of all the stuff that, what if I mess up? What if, you know, I last game I missed a bunch of shots. Like, you have to be able to keep yourself in the present and you do that by having purpose with how you play. Do I believe in block training? Yeah, I do. I believe in block training when it's. There's certain times where, you know, I think the best way of putting is that basketball is an art and a science, right? So there's no one size fits all. And I think as a trainer, I have to be able to look at who's in front of me and say, okay, what do they need right now? And sometimes the best thing might be for block training, for example, if you have a big game the next day and you want to go into that feeling really confident, well, the best thing for you might be to see the ball go in a bunch of times. So we might do a lot of block shooting. For anyone who doesn't know what block training is, it basically just means really, really repetitive. Not much thought into it. So think like shooting 10 shots on the wing is like a block style of training as opposed to like a more random style would be you're going to shoot at the, at the wind and you're going to shoot at the elbow, then you're going to shoot in the corner, then you're going to shoot a pull up at the nail and you're kind of changing up. So it's a little bit different. But in terms of just seeing the ball go in the net, I think that's a great use for block training. And then if you're developing a brand new skill, right, if you're learning a new footwork and you've never done it before and you're, you're uncomfortable with it, I think that can be a really good time to use block training. As well. So there's time. There's time and place for everything. What should I be doing this summer as an undersized guard going into high school? Get really strong. So the weight room should be your best friend. You spend a lot of time there. That's got to be, like, your main priority, and that's got to be number one for you. If you lack height, you can't lack strength, so you got to get really strong. And when I say strong, get strong at the compound lifts. So bench pull ups, squats, deadlifts, if you know how to do it, those are a little tougher. You don't need to. If you don't know it. Lunges, anything where you're moving, multiple joints. Get as strong as you can at those things, first of all, and then be around as much, right? So be around your high school coach, be around the team, be at all the workouts. Make sure that everybody's familiar with you. Learn a little bit about who your teammates are, what your system is. All that sort of stuff right there. That's really important when it. When it comes to, especially going into high school. Get familiar with things as much you can. Get really strong and then figure out what it is that you do well and double down on becoming the best at that. So if you're a great shooter, get, like, get to a point where you feel like you're the best shooter in the gym, or if you're a point guard and you're more of a facilitator, get really good at making good decisions and handling the ball and all that sort of stuff. CP appreciate that. Best way to gain the respect of your teammates. I think one of the. One of the most important things is that you want to make sure that you are like, you do all the right things, right? So I think when we talk about a teammate that, you know, guys don't respect, it's somebody who, you know, picks and chooses when they play hard, picks and chooses when they show up, picks and chooses when they decide to focus. And you can't trust those guys, right? So don't be. Don't be that person. Take care of all the controllable stuff first. You know, do what you're supposed to do in terms of your responsibilities. So don't be missing practices because you're ineligible, because you didn't do your homework or, you know, you skipped school or something like that. Like, don't let those things be something that holds you back. I think that's a really important thing. And then be. Just be a Be a great teammate. So be excited when your teammates do well. Be willing to help them when they're struggling. Any advice that you give them, make sure you're also following it. If you're telling them to play hard on defense and make sure you box out, you better make sure you're also doing those things. There's no quicker way to lose respect than to say one thing and do another thing. Should I shoot on a hoop Even if it's 6 inches higher than regulation? If that's what you have, then that's what you have. I'm a good Hooper but lack opportunities for overseas basketball, so how can I get to show up to an abroad high school team as a young, good Hooper? Are you in high school? College? What level are we talking about? Meditation. Is it worth it to boost confidence? I don't know as much if it's directly going to boost your confidence, but meditation, I think, is so important. Kind of going back to what I was saying earlier about a lot of times the lack of confidence in a game comes from being focused on things you don't. Sorry, I got a call. If you're really focused on the past. So I just turned the ball over last possession or I missed three. I missed all my shots last game. Or if you're focused on the future and you're worried about, well, what if I miss my next shot? Or what if I turn the ball over? What is coach thinking about? What if coach gets mad at me? If that's what you're focused on, you're probably not going to be as good as you could be. And it's going to be really hard when things go wrong for you to keep yourself locked in. So meditation is a great way to learn how to be present. And I say that the players who are consistently the best are the ones who are consistently able to stay in the present moment. All you control is what happens on this play. So if you can keep yourself there, you're probably going to be better than a lot of other players who can't do that. And that's where I think meditation is a huge boost to your ability to stay present, which in turn is going to lead to you probably playing more with more confidence. Why do I struggle with turnovers as a point guard? What kind of turnovers? I've been having some trouble with shooting. I make 500 shots a day in game on situations and speed. It's been consistently for a while, but sometimes my shot feels off. So I would say, like, first of all, look at the. You're making 500 shots a day. Ask yourself how, like, if every single one of those shots is really translating for you. Sometimes I think we chase numbers and maybe, maybe this isn't you, But I'm saying just in general, sometimes the thing is like, okay, this guy shot 100 shots or a thousand shots a day. This guy made a thousand shots a day. So if I want to be great, I got to do those things. My, my take on shooting is that quality of your shooting workouts is much more important than the quantity of shots that you're making. So, for example, I just sent out, I think I wrote in an email, maybe I said it in. I think I posted in a video too, on YouTube, like last week, where I was talking about, in my opinion, like, an ideal shooting workout is like 45 minutes to an hour. And as anywhere from 100 to 250 makes, generally, this is for me, again, everybody's a little bit different, but in my experience, that's kind of the sweet spot because you can ensure that every single one of those shots is purposeful. So not only are we going to get volume up, but we're going to make sure we put a lot of pressure on the shots we're taking. So, okay, I got to make a certain amount of shots in a row. I got to go through three for four at this spot. I got to go three for five, four, six, whatever. And then we can really focus on making those shots difficult. So if I want to work on getting better at hitting in game shots, can I hit shots where my feet are imperfect? And I can work on that, and I can make maybe 20 shots with my feet, with my feet a little bit off. But I know that those shots are going to translate to game, to games. Because now when I get into a game and things are imperfect, I've worked on imperfect shots. Same thing if you work on shooting off a bad pass, you might. You might shoot off a bad pass and make 30 shots in a workout. And that right there is going to translate for you because you're going to get into a game and you're not always going to get a perfect pass. So you got to ask yourself is, are those 500 shots that I'm making preparing me for the imperfection that's going to come along with actually playing in a game, right? The saying is, you can't train in a peaceful world and then expect to succeed in a chaotic one. So ask yourself if your shooting workout is chaotic enough that it's going to translate to what a game is like. If competition around me is a little is little, does that mean I can reduce my work ethic or continue working? If I'm understanding you correct, definitely don't like the idea is you want to be the thermostat, not the thermometer. So you want to set the tone. You don't want to be there and just adjust to what the tone is. Right. So if you're doing things at a high level and people aren't matching it, don't drop to their level. You keep doing what you're doing until they reach it. Why does it feel like I'm not getting better even though I'm putting in the work? Luke, what do you struggle with? What's not getting better? I'm trying to get to the NBA and not in the best conference. It's good, but I want to be more prepared for better comp. Jane, I think you were the one who said that you were averaging like 32. Is that. Was that you? If you're not playing in a good conference, and that's the concern, like, if you're. If you're averaging 32 a game in high school, you should be able to play for a pretty good AAU team where you're going to play against better competition. So I would say really lock into that if maybe your school basketball isn't getting you what you need. How should I improve ball handling? My take on ball handling is that there's a couple different things. So I think being able to manipulate the ball or pocket the ball, how a lot of people call it, is a really important skill to develop. I don't do a ton of stationary ball handling with the players that I train, but this is one area that we do a lot of it. It's just working on, like, putting a cone in front of them and going over and back, just manipulating the ball, being able to pick the ball up almost and put it in, like, place it where you want to place it. And like finding that gray area between hand on top of the ball and carrying it, like you want to find that gray area, you can kind of get away with moving the ball how you want to move it. So the best ball handlers do. And then I think the other thing, too, that you want to get really good at is being able to change speeds with the ball. I think at the top end of that, when you think about ball handling or having a lack of ability, usually it's because you can't keep the ball up with your body, so you move at a certain speed. And when you Hit that top speed. Let's say when you're. When you're going at 80% effort, you got great handles and you hit 95% speed when you're moving or you're making a move and you lose the ball. Well, now you're limited by the fact you can't keep the ball up with your body. So one thing I love doing is starting off in a crawl, which, if you guys have seen, like the good drills guys, Bobby Ross, they do this a lot where you're starting off, like almost leaning forward. And then we'll make it simple. We'll go from baseline to half court, and you just have to make moves to half court, going as fast as you can, wanting to lose the ball. And eventually you do that enough, you're going to be able to keep the ball up with your body as you're going at that top speed. And that's going to translate to you being prepared to keep the ball up with your body when you get into games. Then the other thing I would say, ball handling, is that freestyle a ton. Have a ball in your hands a ton. One thing that I noticed, like, when I first started training, like, a lot back in like 2019, is that I felt like I was in the gym for like four or five hours a day. And I would always like, just kind of have a ball in my hands, dribbling around, whatever. And I noticed after a couple of weeks that I just felt so much more comfortable with the ball. Like, my handles were just way better. I wasn't doing any drills for it. I was just dribbling the ball all the time. And that led to me just being able to handle the ball better. Right? And it seems so simple, but I think the takeaway is if you can have a ball in your hands as much as possible and then just kind of like mess around with it, right? So just freestyling, whatever, challenging yourself, that's also how you develop just kind of like that natural feel and ability with the ball. I love that, Ryan. That's awesome. Pressure, getting my pocket pick turnover. So you're struggling with getting your pot with your pocket pick turnover. So handling pressure. The two things with handling pressure, two big things are one, be able to change your speed. So even if you're really fast, if you're always going at that fast speed, you're easy to guard. And if, if you're able to kind of be at 20% speed, bump up to 50, bump up to 80, to 100, back down to 50, back to 20, and you can do that. You're hard to guard. It's hard to pressure you because you're unpredictable. So get really good at changing speeds. And then the other part of it is get stronger, right? It's easier to pressure and take the ball from somebody who doesn't have the strength to handle it. So get stronger, get better at changing speeds. To be a better basketball player, you need to train with a skills coach or train by yourself through watching your videos. I think both is great if you can. You know, when I first started posting videos, it was with the idea that, like, not everybody has a trainer that they can go to, right? So I wanted to create stuff that you can use without a trainer and still be able to get better. But it's a good balance, right? Hearing different voices is a good thing. And just experiencing different things and people having different opinions of, okay, hey, I saw this for you and you know, it's just going to make you better. So if you have opportunity to do both those things, then do it. Do you know Chris Gatlin Gaitlin? If you do what you say, his workers are good to work on. I don't know who that is. Living in the UK, I don't make many shots a day. Maybe 2, 300. I don't know if I need to make more. Also new deals that challenge me more. Two to three hundred makes a day is plenty. That's plenty of makes. Going back to what I said, as long as they're purposeful, as long as there is a purpose behind each shot. So what are you trying to get better at? Am I working on, you know, making shots with pressure on me where I got to make a certain amount in a row so that I get to a game. And with a game, there's always pressure on every shot you take. No matter first quarter, fourth quarter, every shot means something. So you want to make those two, 300 shots mean something as much as you can. You can do that by adding pressure. And I got to make a certain amount in a row. I got to go 3 for 4 at this spot or whatever. And then like I said, preparing yourself for the chaos and preparing yourself for, you know, the, the imperfections going to come with games. So working on shots with messed up footwork, working on shots where, you know, your hands aren't placed perfectly or the pass is bad. I feel I'm blanking on, like more. I'll give you more stuff as I keep going here. And I can think of more ways to challenge yourself, but I've talked about it in a Ton of videos before. So if you go on my channel, you'll find. You'll find some stuff for that as well. Bro, your metaphors are bars. I don't claim any of them. I think pretty much every metaphor I've used today I've heard from somebody else, so I credit them if I remembered. But I appreciate that, though, seeing progress in everything. So mainly live play. Okay. What is your goal, Luke? What are you trying to get better at? Right? What is it that you do best right now? And are you working on getting really, really good at that and focusing on being good at that? I struggle to get through gaps and finishing at the rim. How can I improve without having a training partner? Get stronger. Get stronger. That's going to make it. Make it easier for you. Even if your pickups aren't perfect and you don't have a ton of experience at, you know, splitting gaps or working on that exact, exact situation, if you're way stronger, it's going to be easier to do that. So that's probably the best thing you can do in that situation. And then watch. Watch guys who are really good at splitting gaps and getting downhill and see what little details you can take away from. From guys like that. Is it possible for undersized guards to outwork bigger players who are a bit mature in the game? I'm not really sure how to answer that question. How can I find live play during the off season? Hit up your teammates, hit up people that you know doesn't matter. All you gotta do is find one other person you can at least play once. Averaging 30 really isn't hard to me. And I'm not selfish either. The amount this channel has helped raising IQ with custom transition. It's a difference. Don't work on situations much either. Glad to hear that It's a simple 30 for you. Maybe not simple, but it's an unselfish. It's just a natural 30, right. That's where you want to be, is being able to score without being selfish because you know the game so well. Right. That's the goal right there. So. I love to hear that. Jaden, Shall I listen to coaches? They follow your shot? Yeah, it depends on. I mean, I would say generally, if you're a great shooter, you're probably not always following your shot if you know for sure it's short. Like sometimes it's an easy way to steal a rebound. But I never. I've never. I don't think I've ever told a player to follow their shot. If that answers it for you keep dropping questions in there, guys. If you have them, I'll go through. I got a couple of. Of email questions yesterday that I kind of want to go through. I think it. I think it's going to be a good. I think some good points for you. The first one was on rebounding. Let me find it here. Losing love for basketball. Lot quitting is on the table. Why is that, James? All right, so here's something that. This wasn't the one I was thinking of, but this is a pretty good one, too. So I gotta. I got an email and this player said, I feel bad when I attack too much. Like, I'm being egotistical, even though I'm one of the best players on the team. So I'm not as aggressive as I should be, even though when I attack, I create good opportunities for my team. This is actually, like. This might seem like kind of like, man, you're good. Like, go be good. But I think this is actually something that a lot of players struggle with. Right? You have to understand that sometimes being selfish is the most unselfish thing that you can do. Right? Especially if you are one of the better players or if you know that when I'm aggressive, it opens up opportunities for my teammates and I'm willing to kick out and make them better. Just because you do something a lot, because you're able to, doesn't mean that that's you being selfish. And a lot of times players either, like, shy away from the pressure that that brings because it's kind of on your shoulders. When you're one of the better players and your team doesn't do well, it's probably because you didn't do enough. And that's pressure. That's hard. And sometimes when players feel that they shy away from it and they defer and they say, okay, I'm just going to be more unselfish. I'm not going to attack here, even though I could. And I'm not going to shoot the shot even though I could. And that way it doesn't fall back on me as much. And that's actually the most selfish place that you can be in. Right? So understanding that, at the end of the day, all that matters is giving your chance, your team, the best chance at winning. So you got to be able to look at yourself and say, when I do this, do. Are we better because of it? And if that's the case, don't. Don't worry about who's getting shots, who's not getting shots. Like, you got to do what's best for the team in that situation right there. That was an interesting point. I'm probably going to dive deeper into that in a video coming up here. I got a really good one on rebounding. I got to find it. See what I missed here. What is the best way to get stronger? If you don't have weights, you can definitely do body weight stuff. If you go to my channel, I put out a video in like beginning of COVID So it was 2020. It was just like an at home strength training thing. So if you just go, if you just search that, you'll find it on my channel and just go and do that. You don't need any equipment for it. At least as far as I can think. You can do it all at home because, you know, I made it when we couldn't do anything but be at home. So go check that out. How can I be an effective knockdown shooter with a high percentage of like 70 or above the things that we talked about, right? So first of all, spend a lot of time shooting and start to put yourself through that. That self organization concept of, okay, I missed this shot, I made that shot. What was the difference? You'll figure things out a little bit that way and then get really good at shooting through imperfection. So shooting with your feet, messed up hands, imperfect, bad passes, a little bit rushed, a little bit slow, all that stuff is really good. How do I try to make varsity as a freshman? So I think there's a couple things and I'll think about just the players that I've coached first and what they did to be able to do that. Both of the two that, that jump out to me who like, were starters as freshmen. Super coachable, like super coachable. No sort of ego. Like they didn't come in there thinking, oh man, like I'm the next big thing because I'm a freshman playing varsity. They, they. All they cared about was getting better and being coached and they wanted to be coached. And I think when you're, when you're a coach and you can trust a freshman like that, because you know that they actually want to be great, it makes you want to play them more because you know, you have them for four years. So that's got to be the first thing is you've got to really want to be coached. You've got to. There's got to be something that you do really well that makes a coach look at you and say, okay, we need that because otherwise you're a freshman. It's really easy to defer to an older guy if they can do things about as good as you can, right? So, you know, if you're a pretty good shooter, pretty good ball handler, but there's a junior who's the same things, they've been there for two years. It's easier to trust that player. Okay? So you got to find something, whatever it is you're best at. And like I mentioned to, I mentioned earlier, you've got to focus on that this offseason and make that like becoming lead at that, become the best in the gym at that. One thing, maybe two things. Chill out, Howard. Someone got home. I look like LeBron. I'll take it. What should I mainly be working on as a 16 year old, 5'10 shooting guard going into junior year, not on the team last year. Get really good at. You know what you should do once this is over? Go to my channel. I just posted a video about like an IQ guide for shooting guards. I posted it like last week or the week before. Watch that video and you'll see the examples of the stuff that I'm talking about. At that position, you got to be able to make open catch and shoot threes. Like got to be able to do that, got to be able to defend. So make sure you're strong enough and athletic enough to do that. So be in the weight room sprints, jump as high as you can a couple times a week. Get athletic and then get good at recognizing opportunities to attack closeouts. So momentum advantages. Get good at moving without the basketball. So reading pin downs and when you're coming off of screenshots, recognizing times to cut. So 45 cuts when the ball gets into the post or your teammate drives. Looking at opportunities for backdoor cuts as well. I talk about all this stuff on my channel, but like I said, go check out that shooting guard IQ video that I just posted. Like I think it was last week, the week before. A lot of skills coaches in social media are sharing misinformation. What's your advice if other people don't know about fundamentals, to avoid misinformation. I think my, my take on that is that I think you want to find, like, I don't think you want to listen to everybody. Like, I think this is kind of a good thing for, for players to hear. There's so much information out there. Like there's so many trainers out there, so many people talking about basketball and how to get better. And if you, if you listen to everybody, you're gonna, you, you and I, I looked at this the other Day like I just kind of looked to see what was around that I found this more than one time where somebody will say, do this drill. Somebody will say to do the exact opposite. Someone say, this is how you become a great shooter. This person will say, no, that's not right. This is how you become a great shooter. Before you know it, you've got so much information that you're overloaded. You have no idea what to do. So find two, three people at most that you really trust, that you really buy into and that have, can show some sort of results for players that are using their stuff or watching their stuff and, and just get like, just focus on those, those few people, right? Because sometimes there's misinformation, sometimes it's just differing opinions and, and, and who's to say who's right, who's wrong all the time. So find a couple trainers that you really like, that you really connect with and just focus on what they say and don't let yourself get overloaded by all the other unfair treatment from coaches. Teammates lost love during my long lasting ankle injury. Fear of not making a real living out of this question. If this is my purpose, yeah, man, that's, that's, that's tough. I think. And we'll see if this is, if this answer helps you at all, but that something that I've talked about before is that basketball is if you really do it the right way, you can't fail at it. Like, there's no way that you don't, you don't get something out of it. Because if you really put everything into it and you work at it and you set goals and you're able to overcome adversity and you know, you get hurt and you find a way to come back and you have a coach who's bad or who doesn't see eye to eye with you and you find a way to overcome that and keep going, get better because of it. When you can do those things, it sets you up to be successful in everything else that you're going to do, right? Whether it's basketball or not. Like I talk about this channel, the stuff that I learned as a player, where it was, okay, I'm going to set a goal, I'm going to create a plan, I'm going to stick to it, I'm going to show up every day whether like even just YouTube, for example, even when I'm starting out and this video gets five views or that video gets seven views and oh wow, this video's got 100 views and the next video post. Got 20 right. It's hard to, like, be able to keep yourself going and be consistent. But you learn that skill through basketball if you really commit to it, and then you don't know. Like, you have no idea what's going to happen. Like, things can change like that and you won't even see it coming. So you have to try and prepare yourself for those opportunities as much as possible. But even if it doesn't, even if it's the worst case and nothing comes out of it and you don't succeed, you don't reach the goals you set for yourself right there, the fact that you learn how to overcome adversity, you learn how to be consistent and show up day after day when things are hard. Whatever you end up doing after this, you're going to be really thankful that you went through the difficulty of basketball because it's going to prepare you, it's going to feel easy. I know a lot of people who only hire former college athletes. Like, it's like a. It's like a thing, like companies who would say, we only hire people who played a sport in college because you learn this sort of stuff and you're going to be a way better. You'll be way better at whatever you do when you have those lessons that you've learned, and this is a great way to do that. How do I improve defense against taller players? I would say first thing is I feel like a broken record. Get really strong. Get really, really, really, really, really strong. When you look at the defenders in the NBA who are undersized, a lot of times they're able to survive because they're strong, and that's why they're not liabilities on defense, even so, like someone like Steph Curry. And this is probably becoming less of a thing as people kind of are more in the know. Steph Curry is not a freak athlete in terms of above the rim stuff, obviously, but really strong. Like, I saw a video of him deadlifting like 400 pounds. Like, he's strong, right? And that's why he's able to defend at at least a solid level. Right? And so make sure that that's really what you do and then go do it as much as possible. So get, like, get experience guarding taller players. You have a friend who's a little bigger than you, or, you know, you can go somewhere where there's bigger players every time you're on the court. Make it your mission to guard a taller player, and you're going to learn the nuances of what works for you, what doesn't work for you, where you need to get better, all that stuff. Chill out, dude. Most of the time I'm by myself, so I don't have anyone to guard me or pass to me. How can I get realistic reps? So this is where challenge becomes important, especially when you, when we talk shooting. So you want to be in that Goldilocks zone. So if you're by yourself and the workouts you're doing are easy and you feel like you're making shots consistently, it's like kind of easy for you, find ways to make a little more difficult. So the stuff that I've talked about with, with adding challenge to it, adding pressure to it, where you say, you know what, you get really good at making three in a row, up that to five in a row, and challenge yourself that way. Going back to the ball handling point that I talked about earlier, how to improve your ball handling, like, work on keeping the ball up with your body out of that crawl. Start, you know, freestyling, moving the ball as fast as you can. Make it your mission that you have to mess up. Like you have to lose the ball because you're pushing yourself so hard. If you don't have someone to work out with, then you need to make sure that you're challenging yourself. So you're missing shots because you're making it more difficult or you're, you're failing a drill because you have to make a certain amount of row and that's challenging for you. And then with ball handling, you're pushing yourself and going as hard as you can and forcing yourself to improve. Should your shooting form be adjusted over time? If you're missing shots you should use just stay consistent. Probably a case by case thing, but I think generally, yeah, like, I think, I think the more that you do it, you're going to figure out what works and what doesn't work. And yeah, you're probably going to make some adjustments over time, but I wouldn't overthink it. I think that's, that's a, an issue, is that players overthinking their shooting form so much. Right. Chances are if you struggle to shoot, you probably aren't doing it enough. Now, I'm not saying that there aren't adjustments to make. I'm not saying that shooting form doesn't matter. It's not what I'm saying. I have videos on shooting form. I have a shooting program that walks through shooting form. So I'm not saying it's not important. But generally when you have the Basics down, the inconsistency with form or you feel like one day you're making shots, the next day you're not, or whatever. It's usually because you need more reps at it. I'm thinking probably like five more minutes on here, probably end this at like seven. So anybody else's questions, Any follow ups right there? Any suggestions, anything you, any, any type of videos you guys want to see. Also let me know as 10 it makes me happy that quality is more important than quantity. Is it enough to train one or three hours a day? If I challenge myself for sure I will say guys on top of that. So I put out a, like a free guide and if you, I'll get back to how you can get that after if you guys haven't seen it. But a lot of players I think, and in my experience what I've seen is that players can be getting better so much faster because everybody in the world who plays basketball who's like serious about it is focused on doing their input like their on court workouts, they're lifting all this sort of stuff. And that's going to take you what, two to four hours a day when you're on the court working or you're in the weight room, whatever. And then after that they're not really doing anything right, you're not doing anything else with their other 20 hours of your day to get better. So there's more that you can do to get better than just the on court stuff, just the physical stuff. And so in this guide I kind of broke down like, okay, how can you actually spend time off the court to make yourself better? A lot of has to do with developing your iq, your understanding of the game, developing good habits. So learning how to, how to be present like we talked about, that's going to translate to better on court performance as well. So a lot of times you can get better at a rate way faster than everybody else because you also spend time doing. That guy is called how to get better Basketball twice as fast. If you don't know what that is, you haven't seen it, send me a DM on Instagram or on TikTok or whatever. Just reach out to me and I'll make sure you get the link for that. It's free, so definitely check that out. I know I've gotten some, some good feedback on that so far and it's a great way to, a great thing to add to just your routine every day so that you know that not only you're getting better on the court, in the weight room, but you're also getting better. Like you're almost doubling your process because, or your progress because of the exercise that you're doing off the court as well. Played my first varsity game, spring league. My teammates said that I was playing sped up. I want to be, I want to be aggressive, but I can let the game come to me. Would you say you really turned the ball over or just like shooting bad shots? Like, what do you, like what, what did you do that made them say that you were playing sped up. Working on the weight room, which I'd be working on. The weight room, yeah. So I've talked about this in a couple videos recently and if you go like, you just type in visionary basketball and weightlifting or strength or something like that, and you'll have some stuff come up for it. But the, the general, like the, the synopsis of what you should be doing in the weight room is you want to anywhere from three to four days a week. Honestly, three days a week is probably good enough for most players. You want to get really strong at the compound lifts. So compound lifts just mean multiple, multiple joints. So like for upper body, it could be bench press, pull ups, bent over rows, shoulder press for lower body, squats, deadlifts, lunges, all that sort of stuff. Get really strong at those things. And you know, maybe if you do four days a week, you have two days that are upper body focus, two days lower body focus. And if you, if you just focus on those things, like, you're going to get way stronger if you're consistent with it. What should I work on to speed up my shot without losing my shooting percentage and sacrificing form? I would, I would say make it super simple for yourself. Like go into, like take five minutes, 10 minutes in your workouts and just work on shooting faster, even if it's like borderline uncomfortably fast. And detach yourself from the outcome of it right there. Because your goal is to eventually shoot faster and make it. But the first part of it is that self organization. So you got to put yourself through it and work on shooting faster. And okay, you're gonna miss a bunch of shots, but eventually you're gonna make one. You're gonna figure, okay, here's how I adjusted to do that. And that's like a subconscious process, right? But you just gotta do it. So take 5 minutes, 10 minutes during your workouts and just work on shooting faster. And don't get frustrated if you're missing because eventually you're gonna figure out what works best for you and over time, you're gonna miss less. Appreciate that, Ryan. Happy to hear that. Yeah, as 10, I'm kind of with you. I just mentioned that whole like watch two or three, like trainers or, you know, online basketball people like, you know, if you watch my videos, you watch Coleman with By Any Means and good drills, like that's, that's pretty solid right there. I'm a fan of both those. Well, I guess all three of them, Bobby Ross and Coleman with By Any Means, they're good bad shots. And I was trying to get past my defender like I did on jv. So I mean, part of it is like, first of all, it's your first game, right? So don't like, like I talked about earlier, Steph Curry has had bad games too where he goes over 11, he shows up the next time and he's way better. One game means nothing. Everyone can have a bad game. Okay? So be able to be self aware and ask yourself, what could I do differently? And be receptive to what they're saying, right? If they're telling you, hey, try this, hey, adjust this, do those things, eventually you're going to figure out what works for you if you're willing to continue to adapt, right? You're learning a new level. That's part of it right there. As a small player, how could I have more confidence playing against adults as only a teenager? First of all, I love that you're doing that. This is something I'm big on. It's like a lost art now. When I was in high school, I was 15, 16, every Wednesday night I was playing as adults in pickup. And I learned a lot from doing that because you learn from players who are more experienced and using stuff that I watched them do that I took and started doing because they did it. Kids my age weren't really doing that sort of stuff, but the more experienced players were. So you'll learn a lot from doing that. And obviously it's difficult. You're at a physical disadvantage. They're bigger than you, probably stronger than you, maybe more athletic than you, more experienced for sure. So first of all, like, good on you for putting yourself in that position because now with AAU being so big and really post Covid, there's not a lot of players who are doing that. So you're already giving yourself a leg up here. Don't worry. Confidence is going to come as you do it more and as you get really as you figure out what works for you. So just show up, just keep showing up and then take advantage or take note of what's going well for you, what things work for you and what doesn't. And then if you keep showing up, you're going to be like, it's going to put you really far ahead of players your own age. Right. But just keep doing it. The confidence will come. Can you explain before why you said block training is overrated? So I. There's been a big shift in the whole basketball training landscape. When I think back to when I was playing and how block training was essentially the. The prescribed method of training for everybody. Like I grew up, that was all I knew and that was all most people knew. And so there's been a swing, though, in the pendulum. We're on the other side now where people have demonized block trading to an extent where they say it's not valuable at all. Right. So I'm thinking probably back when I said it as bluntly as that, probably we weren't quite where we are now. Where I think there's nuance to it. Right. You have to look at. Sure. Random training, variable training is great and it's something that is probably a staple in 95% of what I. Of what I do with my players. But there are times where block training can be valuable, right. Like I said, like I just gave the example of working on shooting faster and taking. If your goal is to get a faster jump shot, taking 5, 10 minutes a workout and just doing that, you sit or you go to the left wing and you just go all five minutes there in a block style of training because you're purposefully working on something that's challenging already. That's where block training, I think, can be valuable. I'm obsessed with basketball and training such improving my game, but just lack the same drive for long and focused film study. What's your opinion on this? Something I need to push through or common? Like someone told me I don't. Like somebody told me. Somebody told me I don't love the games because I don't watch enough film. But I just find it so monotonous and I kind of feel guilty. I don't enjoy watching basketball as much, but maybe there's always to improve my IQ that supplements film study. Asher, that's a great question. That's a really great question. Great perspective right there. So everybody learns differently, right? The way that somebody might tell, you have to study the game or you have to, you know, you have to learn something. Not everybody learns the same way. So for you, you might not want to sit down for an hour and a half and watch film for that entire time and that's okay. Can you find a way to like use the snowball effect though where you say, okay, 10 minutes a day, I'm going to watch whatever it is you're trying to get better at. Like whatever sort of skill you know you want to get better at finishing. So you watch Jalen Brunson finishing highlights. Something simple you want to get better at using ball screens. Do you watch Chris Paul ball screen highlights or Trae Young or, you know, college games. You want to get better at using pin downs. So you watch 10 minutes of, you know, pin down breakdowns or whatever you might want to do. It doesn't have to be for an hour, it doesn't have to be for two hours. You can spend five, 10 minutes. And if you do that consistently, then you're gonna get smarter, you're gonna learn the game more. I think that if you can find a way to do that, say, you know what, the next week I gotta spend five minutes every day studying this, whatever it is you want to study. Right? That's where like that, that is better than nothing. And I'll be honest with you, Asher, that's probably more than 98% of players out there are doing. So you can get ahead just by spending a few minutes a day doing that stuff right there. Okay. But don't feel like you have to do things one certain way. You got to find what works best for you. And then here's the other thing too, Asher, that'll become a habit for you. If you're willing to do it, you might struggle to do it now and maybe even 10 minutes feels difficult, but you're going to do it. And it's going to be hard. You're going to do it again, it's going to be a little bit easier. You can do it again. It'll be a little bit easier. And then eventually you might do that for a week and it might just feel like nothing. And then maybe one day, Asher, maybe one day you'll be a person who loves watching film for like an hour, two hours, three hours straight. Maybe you will be right, but you won't know until you just start and build the habit. But it can be a couple minutes a day. Doesn't have to be anything crazy as 10. Appreciate you tuning in, man. And thanks for watching for the support 1am my time. I respect that. Love to hear that, Alex. Appreciate your, appreciate you watching the videos. Glad to be able to help. I love your channel. How can I, as a college player outwork everybody and work harder and smarter. Don't worry about everybody else. You just got to worry about yourself for sure. Asher all right, hey, I'm going to end it here. Take the dog outside before he freaks out more. Appreciate everybody who's watched this and who stuck with it through the technical difficulties that we started off with. I love doing these sort of things, and it lets me kind of get more in depth and connect with you guys. So you guys have more questions, send me a DM on Instagram, leave a comment on YouTube video, send me DM on TikTok or send me an email, whatever. Like I said, if you guys want that guide on how to get better twice as fast, DM me, leave a comment. I'll make sure that you get that. And yeah, appreciate you guys. And have a good rest of your day. Or.