Dangerous Training Myths, Must Have PG Skills, Iso Moves vs. Simple Scoring & More: Q&A Podcast
11 Nov 2025 · 34 min
Episode (Q&A) of the Vision Driven Basketball Training podcast hosted by Ethan Khoza (May 16, 2021). Ethan answers listener questions on: whether to train isolation moves vs efficient scoring (recommends ~80% focus on efficient scoring, ~20% on ISO), practicing contested shooting with partners, handling loss of love/burnout (change routine or take a break), must-have point guard skills (system knowledge, communication, ball-handling, shooting, decision-making, intangibles), building coach relationships (be coachable, know system), the myth that hard work alone guarantees progress (quality > quantity), shooting form work, handling pressure/defenders (change pace, practice one-on-one), and mental prep for big games (visualization, breathing, treat it as another game).
Chapters
Foreign welcome to the Vision Driven Basketball Training podcast. Appreciate you guys for tuning in. Shout out to everybody who's watching on YouTube right now and of course everybody who's listening. Apple Podcast Spotify, if you guys are on Apple Podcast, really would appreciate if you scroll down, leave a review, let me know what you think about the show. As you guys know, before the show, if I have any new reviews, I'll go ahead and read it. So today I have one for you guys. Comes from my guy, Redhead Hooping. Shout out to Redhead Hooping in the comments, basically every video. Really appreciate all the support. He says this podcast is amazing and it makes me look forward to Sunday afternoons. Ethan talks about practical stuff that anyone can go out and apply to their game. Best basketball podcast hands down. I appreciate that. Like I said guys, the reviews are really, really good for the show. So again, I appreciate every single one and the continued support from you guys. So if you are Apple podcast, go ahead, do me a favor and do that. You guys on YouTube drop a like subscribe. So today is going to be a Q and A episode. I haven't done one of these in probably six months at this point, maybe actually probably more than six months, probably like eight months. And so I figured it'd be a good time to just kind of be able to answer your guys questions. I think that's one of the reasons that I started the podcast is like be able to kind of interact with you guys that way and answer questions and have a format to do it more easily. So I definitely want to get to these more often. So I thought this would be a good week to do that. So I have a few questions to get to and we'll hop into it. Don't think there's any other housekeeping stuff to get through, but if anything comes to mind, then we'll go there. Be real free flowing today, but we'll go. First question comes from my guy, Jonah. He says, hey Coach Ethan, I have a question for your Q and A podcast this week. Should players work on ISO moves at all or only focus on being able to score efficiently with minimal dribbles? So a big thing that I'm always on is like, you know, you got to work on stuff that happens the most, right? If you want to be a great player, then get good at the things that happen the most so that you are able to be productive in the largest amount of situations, right? You're just going to have a wider net to be able to be productive if you only focus on things that happen very rarely Then in those situations maybe you are great, but how often are you going to get a chance to actually do that? I think that's really what it comes down to when we talk about, you know, ISO situations or working on ice situations. I think it's a balance, right? I think you should find, you know, there's, there's certainly a time where it just comes down to can you beat this guy one on one? If you're in an ISO situation and it calls for you to pull out something in that regard, like can you do that? I think that's a good skill to have. Just understand that you probably won't get that opportunity as, as much as you will those more simple plays. So I think being able to score efficiently is definitely more important than I, than being able to be a great ISO player. It's never necessary to be a great ISO player. It's definitely a bonus sometimes. But again, the majority of players, probably 95% of players out there don't are going to be asked to be scored to score in isolation. They're going to be asked to score efficiently, catch and shoot, catch, attack or closeout. How good are you at doing those kind of couple things? If you're really, really good at that, then you become more valuable to more teams than that isolation guy. If you have a guy who can only play in isolation and he needs 8, 10 dribbles to score every time, he's not going to fit in with as many teams as the guy who can catch and shoot or can catch and score in two dribbles, right? Whether that's getting into the mid range for a pull up or going, you know, getting to the basket for a finish off of, you know, a jab or a shot fake, like that player is going to be valuable on basically every team that they play on. So understand just that one is significantly more valuable. Right? Being able to score efficiently is way more valuable. But again, being able to beat somebody one on one if the time ever calls for it is certainly a valuable score to have too. And sometimes they can even play into each other. You know, basketball is not a black and white game, right? You're, you might be in a situation that's going to require you to dribble the ball four times instead of two. Okay? It just kind of goes with the flow of the game. So that's certainly one thing to think about. You know, if you're using a ball screen and they, you know, you're, you're, you're a quick guard and you come off the ball screen and they switch. So you've got a, you know, a big guy on you who can't move. Well, that's probably a situation where you've got to be able to beat him one on one. So are you able to do that there. There's your game application right there. But again, that situation is not going to be as prevalent as just you being able to score efficiently. So just. Joe, to answer your question, it's a balance, definitely one. I would say probably 80% of your time should be focused on being an efficient scorer in those situations. We talk about catch and shoot attack and closeouts using ball screens, transition, whatever it might be. And then you can spend that, you know, that other maybe 20% of your time working on your ability to just beat somebody. I think. I think it's a. It's a. It's a balance that's kind of just a rough. A rough number that I'm throwing out right there. But just kind of to illustrate my point. So, next question. Hello, Coach. I want to ask you something. I practice almost every day by myself, but I play pickup games just on the weekends. I figured that. I'm a knockdown shooter. When nobody guards me, when somebody's contesting my shot, it isn't easy to make that shot anymore. I tried practicing shooting faster, literally just catch and shoot, but it didn't work. And now I can shoot quicker, but when the defender is there, still missing. Any qu. Any suggestions, Coach? I would appreciate it. Sorry, I didn't. I. Screenshot of the message from our DMs. So I don't have your name, but I appreciate the question and definitely something. I think I actually got a couple questions kind of similar to this. The biggest thing, and I kind of. I dropped a video this week talking about decision making and how valuable it is to have other players to work out with at times. So one thing that I've been doing in my workouts a lot, almost every workout when I have multiple players, is that we're going to do some sort of contested shooting. So this can be as simple as literally, you know, one. One player will go on the wing and then the other player is going to start at the block with the ball and they're going to pass the ball out to the player in the wing and then they're going to go contest that three. Just catch and shoot three. And so we're working on being able to get your shot off quickly with a contest coming. It's certainly a skill. And obviously in the game of basketball, you don't always have a ton of time. So I think being able to hit shots when it's contested is definitely something that you. You have to practice. I don't think it's just a natural thing. So I think if you're able to do that, if you have, you know, a teammate or a friend who, you know, you guys just want to work contested shooting with each other. You know, you guys do the drone talking about, make it. You. You stay first person of five. You work the, you know, both baselines, both wings, right? Like, you guys can get up a lot of shots and challenge each other that. That way as well. Or if you know, you have, you know, your little brother, you say, hey, you want to come? You know, come contest my shots, right? And just have him help you with that. Like, literally, it's just about finding some way to make your trading a little more difficult. Put yourself in those situations that you struggle with. I would say don't just focus on that. The other. The other piece of it is you have to make sure that your form is real solid, because if it's not, then you're definitely going to struggle when you have to shoot the ball faster. So continue to work on your form. Shooting. I have a couple podcasts recently talking about shooting. Just, I have so much stuff about shooting on my channel right now, so I go more in depth into developing your shooting form and the importance of working your shot close to the basket, all that sort of stuff. So go check out those last couple podcasts, last couple of videos that I've posted talking about that. But I think in general, finding a person to contest your shots is going to help you to be able to feel more confident in those situations that you find yourself in. And then this question from a guy, Malachi, he said, this is a question for your podcast. Wonder if I don't have a love for the game anymore. I don't watch it the same. I'm not excited to play basketball anymore. The difference now from then is that I started training verse where I used to just shoot around or play pickup. I feel like basketball isn't my sport anymore. I feel the need to do something else. I still play pickup, but I train mostly. So this. This is kind of a. This is a question I get semi often and I've talked about it before. I. I think it. It's really about figuring out what it's going to change depending on the situation from person to person might be a little bit different. So for some, like, for some players, I'll say, okay, you know, if you feel like this, you just feel burnt out, like you don't really want to do it. Change up what you're doing, right? So maybe you do different kinds of workouts. Maybe you just start playing more, right? Maybe if you're only playing once a week, maybe you say, you know, I'm gonna play four times a week. If you're able to do that, even if it's like, you know, you have a friend or a couple friends or teammates, you guys get together and play one on one or play two on two or three on three a couple times a week, and you just kind of focus on doing that. I think that's a big, A big deal for players when it talks about just changing things up, like, have fun with it. If you enjoy doing that, go do the stuff that is fun. Because you can get better. If you, if you're focused during a two on two or a three on three, you know, you can get a lot better. And honestly, you can get just as much out of that as you can a traditional training session, you know what I mean? So I think that's kind of the first step is change up what you're doing. But if there's something that you want to do that you find fun, go do that. And so if that means you have to, you know, not work out in the traditional sense for a few days just because you want to do what's fun, that's cool. Because, you know, eventually, again, the, the ideal thing is that you'll get back to being like, you know, I got to go get some, some shots up, go get some work in. And it's just kind of a natural progression. The other thing too, that I would say is, like, sometimes it just comes down to, like, maybe you just need to take like a week off of basketball. Just take a week off and don't play basketball, don't touch basketball, don't. You don't even feel like you have to watch basketball. Just do whatever you want for a week. And a lot of times, you know, absence makes the heart grow fonder. So sometimes just taking a little bit of time off kind of reignites that enjoyment that you have for the game and for your training and all that sort of stuff. So again, sometimes players, like, sometimes it is like, just, you just got to push through it sometimes. Sometimes it's like, you know, it's not always going to be fun, right? That's not the question. The question is like, oh, you know, my training is kind of boring. Well, you know, training is not always going to Be the best. But, you know, it's a, it's sometimes a necessary evil. But if it comes to the point where, like, I just don't even enjoy playing basketball anymore, well, that's where it becomes, you know, sometimes it's good to reel back a little bit, go do what's fun, go do what you want to do for a little bit, and then ideally, it'll kind of balance you out a little bit. So I would try going with that, see how you feel after that. And a lot of times that's going to help you with that. So. Good question. Shout out to my guy Howland. He asked, how are you so cool, bro? Listen, man, I, I, I, I didn't spend a ton of time around you, but it was enough time where it just rubbed off on me, and it's permanent. So, Howland, appreciate you. And so our next question. See where we want to go here. So this comes from Anton. He says, what are skills that point guards need to have? I would say depends, obviously, from, like, team to team, system to system. Obviously, Ben Simmons is a different kind of point guard than, you know, Steph Curry. So that's, you know, there's differences in styles of play, but in general, you want to be an extension of your coach, so you have to be smart. First of all, you have to know your system that you're running. You have to be in constant communication with your coaches so that you guys are on the same page. You can communicate that to your teammates. And you really have to be an extension of the coach if you want to be a great point guard. You have to know how to interact with your teammates effectively. You have to know how to communicate to get the most out of people. You've got to know, hey, does this guy respond well to me? You know, getting on him and, you know, yelling at him, or does he respond poorly to that? Because if I go at my teammate and he doesn't respond well to that, well, I'm going to make him worse. He's going to resent me, and it's just going to cause a rift that's going to make our team worse, and we're going to, we're going to win less games. So you have to know, like, hey, my, you know, this teammate doesn't respond well to that, so I got to pull him aside and be like, hey, man, listen, you're doing a great job. And that, that play you had, that was, that was on me. Just make sure the next time we do that, when you set that screen, get your feet A little bit more narrow, just so you know that, you know, I can get around a little bit quicker. So that's kind of the way you might have to approach it with some of your teammates. You have to know who's who, what's going to work best and how you can get the most out of your teammates. You want to be a great point guard, skills wise, you know, physical skills. Obviously ball handling has got to be great. It's got to be at a very high level. You got to handle pressure, all that sort of stuff. You need to be able to shoot the basketball. This can be catch and shoot. Obviously if you want to be a great player, you got to be able to catch and shoot regardless of position. But being able to shoot coming off of ball screens is big in the mid range from three. Being able to make good decisions coming off of ball screens I think is a very, very, very crucial aspect of being a point guard. Making good decisions in general as a point guard is important, but especially using ball screens, you know, you're kind of the, the, you know, the maestro of the offense. So you've got to make sure that you are not turning the ball over, making poor decisions. You're getting guys to spot, setting guys up and creating and really running the offense. But in general, like making sure again, ball handling is on lock, shootings on lock. And then all the intangible factors are super crucial. Your ability to communicate how smart you are, being an extension of your coach. That's where, that's what separates average point guards and great point guards. So I got a couple questions about coaching or coaches, I should say so, like how to, you know, build a good relationship with your coach, how to, you know, just basically how to have a better relationship with your coaches and, and get closer to your coaches, understand your coaches more. And I think in general it comes down to communicating, not over communicating, like you don't want to be the guy who's, you know, on your coach 24 7, like, you know, just trying to basically suck up to your coach the whole time. You don't want to be that player because that's not going to work for you. But you want to genuinely ask questions. You want to first of all be somebody who's coachable. So be a guy who like doesn't have to be told things twice. If your coach tells, you know, says hey listen, we're going to hard hedge ball screens, you've got to be the guy who doesn't have to be reminded two, three times to oh, you got a hard Edge to screen. You're doing it every time. If you're, if your coaches are telling you, hey, you got to keep your guy sideline, you can't be the guy who's going to forget about keeping your guy sidelined. And you have to be reminded two or three or four times, right? You want to, you know, stand out and be a guy that your coach trusts. Well, be able to hear something one time and remember it. Don't forget it. That sort of stuff. Just like the mental focus stuff. That's, that's the type of stuff where as a coach, like, you just need guys who can, who can handle that. Like, can I put five guys on the floor who just can focus enough to do the things that we've talked about? Because you'd be surprised at the number of players who can't do that. So, you know, if that's, that's step one right there. The other aspect is, of course, knowing your system well. So do you know all the plays? You know, again, the defensive philosophies, what, like, where are you supposed to be in help? Right. Does your coach want you the whole way over and help? Or, you know, where does your coach want you to force the ball? Is he want you to force the ball sideline or force the ball middle? That's basically like, that's, that's, that's a big thing. How does your coach want you to play ball? Screens? Do you guys switch stuff? Do you not switch stuff? Do you communicate well? All the intangible things, guys, that's really what it comes down to. I think in general, we talked about with the point guard question, but also with coaches, like, if you want to stand out as a, as an exceptional player, you have to have the intangible stuff. It's not just about the skills that you have. It doesn't matter how great of a shooter you are, how great of a ball handler you are, how good of an athlete you are. If you don't have the intangible stuff, then you're going to be limited in what you can actually accomplish. You're going to be limited in the amount of trust that your coach is going to have in you. So have that intangible stuff. Be a guy who your coaches can trust, and that relationship will be a good one just because you're that guy that that coach can look to and trust. So, next question. Hey, coach, do you think basketball really requires height to be great? No. To an extent. Obviously, if you're shorter, you have to make up for that. Like, you know, there's obviously the Chris Paul's out there, and Chris Paul is, you know, arguably one of the most skilled players. I mean, it's not arguably he is one of the most skilled players of all time, but, I mean, pound for pound, is there a more skilled player ever than Chris Paul? I think you could argue that he's the most skilled player ever. Obviously, there's a lot of guys up there with him, but that's what it requires at that level to be that size. Okay, Allen Iverson, another guy. Allen Iverson was also a freak athlete, too. So that. That's kind of what you have to have going for. You got to either be exceptionally skilled or you've got to be a freak athlete to be great. Chances are you got to be both of those things. But obviously, you know, you got to control what you can control. Again, going back to it, if you're short, the intangibles have to be automatic for you. Like, if you're, you know, six, eight, and you're a great athlete, you can sometimes afford to not have that the intangible side of things. You can afford to sometimes not be a great communicator. You can afford to sometimes not have your focus at the highest level at all times. You can afford to sometimes not know what's going on. But if you're, you know, 5, 10 and not a great athlete, then you definitely can't afford to not have the intangible stuff on lock that has to be an elite part of your game if you're undersized. This is a good question from King Trey, 73. He says, what is one dangerous, misleading thing pushed by basketball culture that is dangerous for players? I can take this in a couple different ways. I think one thing that I. I've been seeing a lot that. That I would definitely say is probably the. Maybe the most dangerous thing in terms of just, like, players wasting their time is the whole, like, you have to outwork everybody. I think it's so cliche to say, like, yeah, you got to go out. You got to put the time in. You got to go out, and you got to outwork everybody and all this stuff. And I think that, like, literally there are accounts on Instagram that had millions of followers that literally just post the same regurgitated quotes about having to go out, work everybody. I mean, there is, like, there's hundreds of them that have so many followers, and people love that stuff. Like, yeah, I just got to go work hard, and if I work hard, then I'll be the best. And that's just, that's not how it works. Because a lot of times hard work, like, I'll take it from a training perspective, it would be really easy for me to just take a player in a workout and then, you know, make them really, really tired and, and feel like they accomplished something. But when we look back on it, we didn't really accomplish much. If we did stationary pounds for 30 straight minutes, you'd feel real tired. You would have worked real hard. I mean, if you were going as hard as you could, like, you're working really, really hard, right? But that's essentially a waste of 30 minutes, right? You're not really getting much better. And to an extent, you're not getting any better if you already have a certain level with the basketball in your hands. So hard work does not equal progress. Right? Hard work does not mean that hard work does not equal success. It's so much more about the quality of your work. It's so much more about what you do and how you do it. And that's one part of basketball culture in general that just gets completely overshadowed. People think that you can just go out and work hard, and if you just work hard, you're going to be the best. That's just not true. I, I think for players, the biggest focus should be on the quality of the work that you put in, not necessarily how tired you are or how many hours you worked for. You should really be able to look at the work that you do and say, hey, I know that this is going to translate to me being better in games. So that's how I know that I'm out working people. I think that the, the, the issue is that there is no sort of thought behind it. It's just like, oh, you know, go out there and work hard and you'll be great. But there's no context to that. And I think that is a misleading thing for a lot of players that they go out and they just do what, you know, what's kind of been propagated forever is like, oh, go out and do this. Because that's what we've always done. And there's not enough focus on, like, why do we do this? Is there a better way of doing it? Is, is this, is this going to help me progress forward as much as possible? And I think that's the number one thing that I've definitely, I definitely see. And from my perspective, it's probably the most dangerous thing to the careers of a lot of players out there. So it's kind of an interesting question. Where does Russell Westbrook rank all time in point guards? So shout out to Theo for that question. I would say point guards. Well, you got to think about who's he behind? So Magic's ahead of him, steps ahead of him. Stockton's ahead of him, probably Oscar Robertson's ahead of him, Chris Paul, probably Steve Nash too. So that's six guys right there. He might be next, he might be seven. I, I might be forgetting somebody. I, I wouldn't put Jason Kidd ahead of him. I, he might be seven or eight right now. But that being said, I think Dame is going to be up there when it's all said and done. Steph's going to be number one when he retires. I mean, Steph is about to pass Ray Allen and career threes and Steph's career is on the up right now, so that's just ridiculous. But I would say Russ is probably seven or eight right now and he, he could be top five by the time he's done. He could be top five, but I don't, I don't think he's going to be. I think for him to be top five, he'd either have to win another MVP or maybe two or you need to win like a championship or two. And, and the MVP is way more likely to happen than, than the championship. But I just don't know if he's ever going to play on a team good enough to win either of those. So I don't know, man, but I mean, he is pretty incredible, so we'll see. I mean he's got, he's gonna, he's gonna ha, like stats wise and accolades wise when it comes to like all NBA teams and all star games. Like he's gonna have more than a lot of those guys. So that alone might take him up to like five or six, but I'd say now like probably around seven or eight for, for point guards all time. So a couple of shooting questions. First one from Simon. What's the best drill for great shooting form? This depends on what you specifically need. There's not necessarily one specific drill that is the best for form. What I would say in general is that you, you know, your just basic form, shooting right by the basket is great. And I think, you know, I got a, a question today that I guess we can talk about because I, I got it today so it could be part of this podcast too. And someone asked me, they're like, hey, you know, I've been shooting, I've been shooting a hundred form shots before my workouts. Have started and, you know, my shots felt a lot more smooth, felt a lot better. But is that too much? Should I go back down to 50? Because I just don't know if, like, I'm spending too much time. And my response is like, if 104 shots before your workouts is making you shoot the ball better, then you should just keep on doing that because that's what we. That's what we work out for. We work out to get better at shooting. So if what we're doing is helping, then let's keep it. So I think just doing form shooting is a great way to cement in your form and build consistency as a shooter. So in general, like, you've got to make sure every work has some sort of shooting close to the basket. So you can really key in on that form and make sure everything feels perfect, everything looks good, and that's how you're going to build consistency and confidence as a shooter. Next question. How do you get better at shooting over people as an undersized guard? So it's really about a couple of things. I would say changing pace is a big thing. Being able to go from fast to slow or slow to fast, but also being able to quickly create space. Because as an undersized guard, like, you're not going to be able to just, you know, Kevin Durant rise up over people with no space. You're not going to be able to, you know, do what some of these bigger guys can do. You're going to have to be able to create space. You know, a great guy to watch is Chris Paul. Chris Paul's phenomenal creating space, especially using ball screens, you know, finding open space, pushing the ball out, getting there and having enough space to get his shot off that, that way. That's what you have to get good at, is just finding opportunities to get to open space and to quickly separate and create space. And that's where you know, you'll be able to excel at that. So let's see. I think I have a couple more here. So how to deal with pressure coming from shifty Zach. Dealing with pressure, it's kind of what I just mentioned. Like, changing pace is huge. Obviously, the ball needs to get to handle the ball at a high level. So the ball's got to. Your control of the basketball needs to be high. But once you have that, it's about being able to change pace. If you watch guys who can handle full court pressure, really what they do well is that they just, they're unpredictable, so they'll go really fast, slow Themselves down, boom, they're fast again, slow themselves down, changing directions as they do this. And you have the advantage over that defender because you know what you're going to do, and they don't know what you're going to do. So getting good at doing that. I have a workout on. It's a creativity workout. I'll link that above. But there's a drill that we do in that where it's just. It's just basically shadow ball, like full court, working on, like, basically handling pressure, changing speeds, all that sort of stuff. Now, obviously, the best thing you can do is have somebody guard you one on one and then have to work on handling pressure. If you want to get better handling pressure, that's. That's the number one thing I'd say is like, get somebody. Go play one on one with somebody. You don't necessarily have to play one on one full court, but even just doing, like, setting up a lane with some cones and saying, okay, you got to get from this end to that end and just one on one right there, that's a great way to work on being able to handle pressure, having to get forward, having to get somewhere in general. I'd say that's. That's where you want to go if you want to get better at doing that. So see. Okay, so from Mitchell, who shout out to Mitchell. I think Mitchell. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, that is Mitchell. Okay. So Mitchell asks, when. How did you begin basketball training and how did you decide to take it further? So I started. I mean, this is something that I've done, like, probably since high school to an extent. Not obviously not at the level I'm doing it now. But, you know, just whether it was working with some of my teammates or just by myself, like, I always loved, and I was always kind of obsessed with training. You know, I would always tell people that my favorite part of the year, when I was younger, like in middle school, early high school, before, like, the playoffs are a thing, and it's actually something to, like, play for. But back when you just had the regular season, it was over. I used to love when we get to, like, February and season was over because I could just plan out what I was going to do for the off season. That was, like, my favorite thing. And now that's kind of what I do all the time, so it's cool. But once I got out of high school, I was coaching a couple different teams. Ended up not playing in college for a couple of different reasons. And one of the reasons ended up being because I was doing Training and coaching, and that was what I like doing more and what I wanted to do long term, so decided to stick with that. This is like a year out of high school. I. So I was coaching a middle school team, I was training a couple players, and that kind of started to grow a little bit. Then I started this almost two years ago at this point, and so I had all my vision driven. Basketball stuff that was kind of growing too. And, you know, since then, it's just kind of been a steady progress of putting stuff out, trying to help players and trying to improve what I do. At the same time, you know, taking to the next level has been kind of a gradual progression. It's certainly not an overnight thing, but just, you know, again, slowly getting better every day, slowly getting better every video, every week, and constantly, you know, I've been fortunate enough to have people who have, you know, been very instrumental in helping me progress forward. So that's one of the. That's one of the big things for me is just like, you know, really, it's just consistency, you know, for. For. You're not going to be great. I look back at, like, some of the workouts that I did based on, you know, some of the workouts I did early on in person, online. Like, I just look at where I was then and where I'm at now, and I'm just significantly better. And I just. I know a lot more. And I know in a year from now, two years from now, look back where I'm now and be like, man, I knew nothing back then. So that's kind of what. What pushed me to keep going forward is like, there's so much more to know, so much more to learn. And I'm not trying to, you know, I'm not worried about where I am right now because again, it's just about getting better slowly every day because again, I would hope that all of you guys are doing the same thing as you train. So for me, it's the same thing. And that's kind of how I progress forward and how, you know, I'm planning to continue to progress forward. So I think this might be the last question here. So question is, in two weeks, I'll have the most important games of the season. I want to play good because I've been putting in the work. I feel like this is the one and only opportunity to showcase my skills. Any tips on confidence or some exercise to be prepared mentally? I talk about this a little bit. I have kind of two parts to this. I talk about this a little Bit I have a podcast talking about nerves. So just literally how to get rid of nerves before games, all that sort of stuff. So that's a good. A good pocket to check out. I kind of go in depth on, like, what you can do. Some like, breathing techniques and all that sort of stuff. Another big part of it is just like, at the end of the day, it's just another game, right? It's just more games. So what you don't want to necessarily do is like, approach it significantly differently because these games mean more or whatever. You know, if you're. If the way that you prepare now isn't good enough, you should. Then. Then you got to address that now. But if the way that you prepare already is good and you know you're seeing. You're seeing success with that, then there's no need to change it. It's really just about being locked in. So what all can you do to be prepared? Do you know anything about the teams you're playing? Can you prepare yourself for what you might see that that's good, just to have an idea of what you might see going forward? I think visualization is a great thing. So visualizing that game beforehand, you know, making plays that you want to make, kind of seeing the floor, going through your. Your offensive stuff, your defensive stuff. Again, just seeing yourself making plays, I think is a big thing. But then at the end of the day, like, you have to think about it. It's just another game. If you try and psych yourself out too much about, oh, I have to do this, I have to have a great game. I have to. This is my only chance. It's probably not your only chance. Probably not your only chance to be seen. Like, there's going to be other opportunities for you. So it's not that big of a deal. You just really gotta. Just really gotta go out and play. And if you, if you put in the work, then that's all you gotta focus on, is just going out, giving your best effort, and then the results will kind of just fall into place. Um, and maybe great, maybe bad, maybe in between, but again, you just kind of. You got to go out and do the best that you can and everything's going to. Everything's going to work out how it should. As cliche as that is. It really. It's really. It really is what it is. So. But again, end of the day, check out that podcast talking about nerves, if that's something that you struggle with. Because for sure, like, there's stuff you can do before games. I think that are really good just techniques to get yourself kind of mentally prepared for, for everything and in a good state physiologically as well. So I think I got through basically everything. I don't think it's there. Some questions I got that are like video suggestions and stuff. So I'm not going to go through those right now. But yeah, man, if you. I appreciate everybody who asks questions and you know, again, I, I do want to do these more often. So again, continue to ask me questions. Guys. You have questions. You know, a lot of times my full, like those full episodes are coming from dms. I get comments, I get. So questions for me. Let me know. And again, if you guys are on YouTube right now, drop a, like subscribe, leave a comment, let me know what you think. Apple podcast, Go down and leave a review for me. You guys don't know. My Instagram is visiondrivenbasketball. That'll be linked down in the description as well. So you guys can check that out. This past week I did a video on decision making and I had like a decision making check, like basically how to train your decision making. So how do I take that skill, which it is a skill of being able to make decisions in games. How do I take that skill and then work on it. And so I have like a guide, a checklist to do that. So if you guys want that, just check the, the top link in my description below. I'll send it to you for free. Just click on it, get it over to you. And I think that's all I have for you guys. So I appreciate you guys for watching or listening. I'll talk to you guys soon. Pe.
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