How To Completely Transform Yourself As A Basketball Player

As a player growing up, probably until late high school, the varsity years, when you're actually playing for something that matters. I remember my favorite time of the year was when we get to the end of the season because I knew the offseason is right around the corner. And every year I was ready to make a huge transformation. I was going to come back the next season a completely different player. Now, if you're watching this, you've probably had the same thought. Maybe you have the same thought right now when it comes to transforming yourself as a player, you using the offseason to come back and be somebody completely new. Today we're going to talk about what that really means and the steps that you can take to actually make that happen. And I want to illustrate this point by first talking about the Beatles. Now, the Beatles are one of the most iconic rock bands of all time. Forbes has them listed as the second greatest rock band ever. And they've sold the most albums of any rock band in history at over 180 million. Now, the Beatles introduction to the United states was in 1964. They flew over for from the UK to New York City and they got off of the plane to thousands of screaming fans. They each got their own limousine that took them into New York City. Very soon after that they performed on the Ed Sullivan show, which was a massive TV show at the time. They did two performances on the show and over 40% of the United States population watched their performances. That's how big they were when they first came over to the United States in 1964. And obviously after that they went on to become the best selling rock band ever to everybody in the United States. This English rock band had pretty much come over and become an overnight success and taken the world over out of nowhere. But in reality, their success actually started way, way, way before this. Four years before that, in 1960, these guys went from England to Germany, to Hamburg, Germany as a chance to be able to perform and make a little bit of money. So they moved to a very rundown part of Hamburg and were given awful living conditions. All four of the members lived in the same room right behind a really rundown cinema screen. They were directly connected to a public bathroom, so so it always smelled awful. And the only option they had in order to wash or shave was to use the cold water from the urinals to do that. They also were paid horribly. They made a little over three pounds a day as each member, which is not a lot of money, especially living in a major city. And on top of that they worked for over three straight months, every single day with no break. 104 straight days of performing. And their schedule looks something like, oh, on weekdays they would work from 8pm to 2am and then on Saturdays they would perform from 3pm to 3am and then usually on Sundays they would go from 5pm to 1.30am this was every single day for over three months with no days off. So this went off for over three months until one of the members was deported for being underage and then they had to go back to England. When they got back, a lot of people started to tell them about how much better they've gotten since before they left. And even the members themselves commented how, yeah, those over 600 hours of performing we got helped us improve a thousand fold. Like we were way better. Despite putting in all of that work, they got back to England and still had to face rejection and failure and a lack of success for over four years before they got their shot over the United States. They were rejected by a bunch of different record labels and their fame and their popularity was pretty much condensed to the UK until they went over to the United States and were able to finally become an overnight success in late 1963. The they finally had their first huge hit song, she Loves you. And then a few months later, they were on their way on that flight to New York City about to take over the world. Now, to everybody on the outside the world, it looks like an overnight success. These guys just came over to the United States in 1964 and next thing you know, they're performing in front of half the US population, television. And now they go down as the greatest selling rock band of all time. But in reality, it took years and years for them to become an overnight success. The funny thing about this is that even on the plane ride from the UK over to New York City to do those shows, some of the members were talking about how they didn't think that they were going to make it. One of the members, Paul McCartney, said, They've got their own groups. What are we going to give them that they don't already have? And then one of their other members, John Lennon, went as far as to say, we won't make it. And this is on the plane ride over to the United States where unbeknownst to them, they're going to be greeted by thousands of screaming fans. Here's the point I want to make. Despite the lack of early success and the amount of failures and struggle that these guys went through, despite not seeing a light at the end of the tunnel. Even when they were on the plane ride over, about to take over the world, they continue to show up and stack days. And with that, they also stacked hard things as well. Working in horrible conditions in a rundown place for crowds that demanded really high quality performances from them for very little pay, and with 0 days off for 104 straight days, and then coming back to their home and still essentially living in poverty and not having any sort of fame or notoriety and having no idea if what they're doing is a waste of time or if they're ever going to see that success. If you want to make a transformation and become an overnight success, you need to ask yourself if you've earned it. If you haven't yet, are you working yourself towards earning it? And we earn that by stacking days or showing up and. And stacking hard things. So being willing to do things that are difficult that most people are not willing to do, when we do those things for an extended amount of time, that's how we become successful. That's how we make a transformation. Let's talk about the actions you can take as a basketball player in order to make this transformation. At the end of the video, we're actually going to talk about an exception to everything I just said right there. But let's hop into it. So the first thing that really matters is getting great at one or two things. The best way you can go about doing this is by either focusing on one or two things that you know you're going to need to develop in order to become successful at play or whatever role you play. Or what I would say is pick out one or two things that you're already naturally good at or naturally inclined to, or two of your strengths and focus on becoming great or becoming elite at those things. And let's go back to our Beatles example to look about how to do this, right? To make our transformation, we need to focus on taking action towards that overall goal we have every day. So you need to make sure that you're stacking days and then stacking hard things, right? First of all, stacking days, simple enough, right? Do you show up every day? Like, are you able to stay consistent with it? And that might not mean every day the way that they did for 104 straight days. That doesn't mean you can never take days off. It just means that when you set out a plan for yourself, do you stick to that plan, right? Are you able to do that? Are you able to consistently show up? That's half of the battle Right there. When it comes to being a transformation, just being able to show up every single day. And then that second part, which is stacking hard things. So are you challenging yourself when it comes to your training? Are you staying in that Goldilocks zone, which is something that I talk about a lot. Where we want to be in our training, we don't want it to be too easy to where, you know, we kind of can go in and put our brain on autopilot, ask you about how the workout, when you don't know because it was so easy, you didn't think about anything, right? We don't want it to be that. We also don't want it to be so challenging that you know, it's not even worth your time. We want it to be somewhere middle so where you're missing shots, you're failing, you're losing the ball sometimes because you're really pushing yourself, you're really challenging yourself with the difficulty of things. That's how we actually keep ourselves in the optimal zone of improvement. So if you can be successful, you know, on 30% to 70% of your reps in your workouts, you're challenging yourself. And then if we can keep on doing that, that leads to us stacking days and stacking challenging things as well. And when you stick in that zone, that that's how you make a transformation over time. We talk about our skills. The second area want to talk about is getting stronger, becoming a better athlete. As you continue to move up, a lot of times what you'll see is that the ceiling for players is how strong and athletic are you, right? Because everybody has skills at a certain level. But then it becomes, hey, can you move well enough to continue to compete at a high level? So it's very important that we focus on this as well. And I had a player reach out to me a couple of days ago asking about what they should be doing in the weight room. And I have a full in depth video on this and I'll link above here if you want to check this out into more detail. But he asked me about, well, coach, should I be doing a full body split? Should I do in push, pull legs? Like what, what's the right split? Like what's the perfect thing that I'd be doing? And in reality doesn't matter for most players. For most players, again, the most important thing is that you're able to show up and stack days and that you're able to stack hard things or difficult things. If you show up, that's half the battle you're going to get stronger, you become a better athlete. And then if you focus on really challenging yourself with the weight that you use, the reps that you use, the combination of those two things over a period of time will lead to you transforming yourself athletically strength wise. Right. If you're able to focus and do those two things and the difference between any sort of split, whether it's full body, workout routine or push, pull legs or upper lower, whatever, it's really going to be marginal in terms of the difference right there. As long as you are able to show up and challenge yourself again. Those two principles that we're going to talk about right here. Okay, so now here's the third thing I want to talk about and this is worth it, a little bit different, but I think that this is an area that you really need to think about and listen to here. So let's talk about improving your basketball IQ and your deep understanding of the game. So I'm not shy about it when I say that I think that basketball IQ is the number one most important thing when it comes to being a successful basketball player. Player. Every single physical skill that you have, including obviously shooting, ball handling, finishing, those sorts of like obvious things, but also the athleticism, the strength piece of it all that is dependent on your basketball iq. Whether or not it even matters if you have those skills depends on how well do you understand the game, how smart of a player are you? If you aren't a smart player, if you don't understand the game, then these things aren't going to matter for you and, and you're going to struggle to see any sort of success. Even if you are constantly stacking days, being consistent, you're going to lack the ability to apply these things. Right? And that's what really matters. We all know players who maybe, maybe they aren't the hardest working players, maybe they biggest and most athletic, but they just have a feel for the game, they just know how to play the game and that makes them successful. We want to be able to develop that same ability, but then also add to it the showing up, stacking, consistency, showing up every single day, stacking hard things where we can build our skills and our athleticism and then combine that with a high level basketball iq. So where this is different, where the basketball IQ aspect is different from the stuff we talked about before, is that basketball IQ can be developed very, very, very quickly and almost instantly in some cases. And it can be developed without actually being on the court and working towards it, which allows players who are really about it and committed to it to be able to make huge jumps, basketball IQ wise, very quickly, because you don't have to be on the court to do it. I just saw a clip from Paul George where he was talking how he developed his scoring ability and his pace. I thought it was really, really interesting and speaks to the point I'm trying to make here about basketball iq. So let's check it out.

Didn't happen until after I got injured and I broke my leg and I sat out and watched the game from the sideline. You know, crazy enough I used to put myself in situations watching the team play. Like, oh, I would have done that differently or had I slowed, slowed right here. It was almost like I was playing mentally while watching from the sideline, right. And so when I came back, that applied to me now because, you know, it took some time for me to gain trust in my gain how to move and jump and all of this stuff. But I was still out there practicing and playing. That's when I realized, like, all right, I got to be a little bit more smarter because I don't have burst right now. I don't have that quick step. I don't have that athleticism right now. So the game literally slowed down for me. And I think that's kind of when I realized, like, changing the tempo. Like, you know, how to play fast and then down, catch my defender off guard and then now speed up. Like it was learning my cadence, you know. And I would say that was the biggest jump for me, how to play at my pace. I don't ever look at the person in front of me guarding. You know what I mean? It's always seeing the next play, who's behind him. Where's the help gonna come from? Where's the low man at? Where's the nail help? And so it was always reading that person. And once I realized that, then I started to understand, like, all right, I could fake this way and then quick snatch, go back the other way. Cause that's where I'm really trying to go. So to answer that question, that all started to develop after the big injury and, you know, I was sidelined and had to just watch from, you know, boop and put a suit on. So, yeah, so as we see Paul.

George develops basketball, when he was on the sidelines, hurt when. When he couldn't even play, he couldn't even participate, couldn't even work out, do the things that we. We traditionally think you have to do to get better at basketball. He couldn't do any of those things. But he was able to sit there, watch, put himself in different situations and recognize different solutions. And it helped him to understand the game at a deeper level. And he just did this by watching and utilizing other people's reps as his own. If you got a chance to watch him before the injury and after the injury, you could tell that after the injury he was a whole new player and he viewed the game a different way. His game was different and it shouldn't have been because he couldn't have physically worked on it, but mentally he worked on it. And that completely changed his entire career as a player right there. So you can completely transform who you are as a player just by changing and transforming your basketball iq, right? It can literally be as simple as that. And this is why I created Basketball IQ Academy. Basketball IQ Academy is a full basketball IQ program that's not just designed to teach you things, but it's designed to completely transform the way that you view the game and therefore completely transform you as a player. And because of this, you're going to start to score points more easily, you're going to start to create shots for yourself and for your teammates more easily. And you're going to ultimately play with the most confidence that you ever had because you know that you had this deep understanding of the game and the solutions and anything that might come at you. That's why Q Academy is full of over 40 lessons, film breakdowns, classroom sessions, and offensive and defensive diagrams and breakdowns that are designed to change how you see and understand the game. Now I just got this message from Player a couple days ago and it really speaks to this point here. So I want to share with you. Since today I played a one on one with a friend who always beats me and just with one piece of your advice, I was able to get nine out of 21 points. The attack of the lead foot lesson was amazing. Haven't worked on it much yet, but only the theoretical advice has worked great so far, so thanks. So I share this message because it demonstrates the number one thing that I think every player needs to understand. And that's the fact that the mental is so far above the physical when it comes to the game of basketball. Just one change we see right here, just one little change mentally can completely change how you see the game. And then the ultimately the results that you have on the court right there. Now imagine a whole academy designed to do that. So we take instead of just one lesson, now you have an entire program that's built to do that for you. That that's what Basketball IQ Academy is. So if you're interested, you can check that out top link in the description down below. And I also have a free Basketball IQ masterclass you can check out as well that dives into a lot of this stuff. So if you're interested in that, that's also in the description down below. Hopefully this gives you guys some ideas on how to make that transformation again. I know as a player that was always my thought at the end of the year is like, I'm going to come back and transform myself. But you want to actually know what takes, what that actually means and, and then can you ask yourself, hey, I want this big transformation. Everybody wants to transform and become something completely new. But are you doing the things every single day that are going to ultimately lead to that again? I go back to that, that Beatles example, right? They first became a group. They first got together in 1957. They didn't gain worldwide notoriety until seven years after that. And in between that time they were just working, just stacking days, stacking difficult things all until it clicked and next thing you know, the world sees them as an overnight success when in reality, in all that time, all that effort to actually get to that point, right? So your focus has got to be, hey, how do I get you to stack days and stack hard things? And when you do that for a long period of time, regardless of the results you may or may not see, wins, the losses, the light at the end of the tunnel that you may or may not see, if you keep on stacking days and stacking hard things, you're going to be successful eventually. It's inevitable it's going to happen, but that's how you have to approach these things. So again, hopefully that gives you guys some ideas. Like I said, if you're interested in transforming your Basketball iq, check out Basketball IQ Academy link down in the description below. I appreciate you for watching. Drop a like subscribe if you're new if you have any questions, comments for me down below in the comments section because that I appreciate you for watching. Talk soon. Peace.