How To Get Better At Basketball TWICE As Fast As Everyone Else

So you saw the title of this video or this podcast, you probably were immediately like, okay, I'm in. I actually think that that could be underselling it. Like, I think if you really understand what goes into the process of getting better and improving, and if you take advantage of the aspects that you probably aren't taking advantage of yet, you can get better at a rate even quicker than that. The big problem for you, for every player out there, is that you're capped in terms of the amount of time you can spend on a court each day, right? So let's say, you know, you might be able to spend four hours on a court and get some use out of it. Maybe two hours in the morning and two hours a night, whether it be individual skill work, a team practice, workout with your trainer, pickup, whatever it might be, you might be able to get good for like a good four hours on the court. And for a lot of players, if you spend four hours on a court during a day, you, there's a good chance you're not getting a ton out of all four of those hours. For a lot of players, you might only really be getting value out of like two of those hours of being able to go hard enough, being able to be focused enough, having everything be purposeful. So if that's the assumption that a lot of players are basically going to be capped at about two, two and a half hours in terms of the amount of time they can spend on a court and get better, that means that there's a lot of time left over in the day where you're not getting better. And because a lot of players think so, surface level when it comes to getting better, they basically stop at that 2ish hours per day that they can get better. And right, you do that for five, six days a week. Okay, well, you know, we're talking 10, 12 hours a week of you being able to get better. And there's so many dozens and dozens of hours left over throughout the week that you really aren't getting much better. So then the question becomes, well, if you're trying to earn more minutes or you're trying to get onto a better team, you're trying to make it to the next level, you're trying to, you know, achieve a certain award or accolade or, or you have a goal in terms of the numbers that you want to have, is this doing enough? Are you increasing at an, at enough of a rate that you can do that? Also take into consideration a lot of players? Maybe it's you are working out with their teammates, whether it be school teammates, AAU teammates, and a lot of times those workouts are with them. So if all you're doing is the same stuff that everybody else is doing, how are you supposed to separate yourself? And that's the big problem that a lot of players have. And you have a certain expectation of how much better you can get because of that. Everybody's limited in terms of the time that they have and the energy, the physical energy that you can put onto the court. So if you truly want to set yourself apart as a player, you have to start to look beyond just the on court stuff. And a lot of players limit themselves to just the physical reps. I, I got my workouts done, I got my shots up, I went to my team practice, I, you know, had my, my pickup runs, whatever it may be. And they view that as their time to get better. And obviously that's important. It's important to be consistent with those things right there. But we also have to ask, is there a way to get better without being on the basketball court? Now this is where I'm going to give you a quick science term, and we'll get right back to basketball. As humans, we have a superpower, and it's called mirror neurons. All that mirror neurons are, are neurons that essentially mirror any sort of observed action or behavior in your own mind, which essentially simulates it in your mind as if you were doing that action. Now we have this as humans because it's really the first way that we learned things. Think about, you know, as a baby, you look around and see all these other people walking. And, and that's a learned behavior that you saw other people do. And in your brain, you're able to mirror it so that you can attempt it and eventually walk. And then eventually you, you see people jumping and then you start to jump and you see people dancing and you start to dance. So much of human behavior stems from us being able to watch somebody else do something and mirror that pattern in our own mind so that we can then do it and we can utilize this when it comes to getting better at basketball. And this is where we, we can take those on court hours that we're spending the improvement that we're making with the encore stuff. And we can double our, our, our input, triple our input, and be able to get so much better at a much quicker rate. So in this video, I'm going to guide you through how to use these mirror neurons to your advantage so that you're able to get better way faster. I'm gonna walk you through, step by step, how to do this. At the end, I'll talk about a schedule that you can follow that's gonna give you, like, step by step, do this, do this, do this, do this, so that you maximize what you're getting better. And again, you separate yourself and are able to achieve those goals that you have for yourself. So mirror neurons fire when you observe either yourself, like on video, or somebody else in person on video, when you observe an action. And again, those. Those neural pathways are strengthened just by watching. Now, that means that when you watch again yourself on film or another player, execute a certain move, use certain type of footwork, you know, when you watch their shooting mechanics, you watch the decisions that they make or, you know, them react to a defender, it creates those neural pathways that are similar to you actually physically doing the skill yourself. That's why I call it a superpower, because it really is incredible that that is a thing. Now when it comes to using that for basketball purposes, first of all, it's going to allow you to acquire skill quicker, faster skill acquisition. When we observe somebody do something at a really high level, it reinforces those movement patterns, it makes it feel more instinctual so that you're better able to replicate those things when you play. Obviously improved basketball iq. So, you know, when you watch film or you watch a video or even in person, you watch somebody in a certain situation make a decision or react a certain way to the defense, you know, you can learn how to do those same things. You can learn, you know, how to make those type of decisions. This is also a great way to improve mechanics and just little details of your game. Like I said, when you watch somebody who shoots with great mechanics, you're much more able to, in your minds, kind of replay those things and, you know, build those same sorts of habits, same thing. When you watch somebody execute some. A certain type of footwork, it becomes much easier for you to get into those situations and apply those same things. So how do you go about doing this? The first thing is you want to watch other players with intent. Really simple way of putting it would be like, find the best players who play your same position. Maybe you're a wing player. You're like a 3 and D player. And so you watch Derrick White and you ask yourself over and over again, why, right? So you're just watching him and you see that he. He makes a cut or he makes a certain pass. Why did he do that? Put yourself in that same situation as him and see yourself making that same decision. Okay. He saw his defender turn, turn their head to the ball. That's why he cut right there. Or he saw that when he drove, that defender stepped in to help in the gap, and that's why he made that certain pass right there. Or he saw that, you know, his, his teammates better was trailing him over that screen. So that's why he led him with that pass there. So study those players, study their decision making, study their on ball, their off ball, movement, footwork, other small details, and then just the timing of when they do what. And then ask yourself, why do they do these things? Pause, rewind, watch it over and over and over and over and over again. And that's how you really start to strengthen the. Those neural pathways of your brain, observing and be able to simulate those things in your own mind. And then the best thing you can do is when you see a situation that you know that you've been in before, put yourself in that situation again and see yourself making that same read, making that same decision right there, using that footwork that you watch or whatever the case may be. And that's how we really utilize film to get better going with that. Watching your own film can be really, really good. Watch those things, compare it to the situations you've maybe seen other players in, and note how you could do something better. Maybe you made the wrong decision. Why? What have you seen that might be different, that, that could be different, that might have given you a different outcome. And then visualize yourself in that same situation, doing the correct thing, making the correct decision. The third thing is using visualization to your benefit. So before maybe a workout or a practice, just kind of going through and visualizing yourself executing the drills that you're doing and, you know, making shots, whatever the case may be. And then before games, visualizing yourself in different situations, making the right decisions, reacting to the defense, playing with confidence, playing with mental toughness. Visualization is so powerful because it activates those same mirror neurons, as if you're physically doing that thing right. There's been studies done where they'll take subjects and have them just visualize themselves shooting free throws. And at the end of the study, they take them to actually shoot free throws and their sh. Their free throw percentage goes up. That's the power of visualization and the power of what your brain can do by utilizing it. You can make it really simple by watching some of the best players, whether it be at your position, whether you're trying to get better as a ball handler. And so you watch some of the best ball handlers you're trying to get better as a finisher. You watch some of the best finishers take note of what makes them so good at that, and then go out and try and replicate those things. When you're playing pickup, you're playing two on two, three on three, one on one, whatever it might be. If you see a certain finish that works really well for somebody, ask yourself, first of all, why? Why did they do that? And then as. As best you can, go out and try and replicate that, and it's going to be a struggle for you, more than likely at first, and you might use it at the wrong time and it might feel really awkward, but eventually you figure out, okay, when is the right time to do this? Does this work for me? And you start to work through that process of actually applying those things to your game right there. Everybody's a little bit different as a player. Everybody's style's a little bit different. And so not everything's going to work the exact same way for you, but by doing those things, you allow yourself to kind of figure that stuff out on the fly. And then the biggest thing is you want to be purposeful when you play. So like I said, you see some of you to go and try and replicate it when you're playing these games, these pickup games, focus yourself on what it is that you're trying to work on. Okay, what is my current focus right now? What's been working for me, what's not been working for me? Are there any opportunities that I maybe missed that I can maybe relate to because I've watched it? That's all a part of utilizing that film study, that visualization to get better. Now, I've seen examples of this, not even from film study, but just by being around different players. An example I've used before is that there's one player that I coached last year and they did a really, really good job of utilizing like a, like a slow step euro or a panoy step. And so I would see them do it all the time during practice, during games. And I remember one time I went out and played and I was in. In transition on offense, and I went up with just that slow euro. That defender jumped to block really early and it created an open layup. I had never worked on that before. I didn't go into that game thinking that I was going to try that, but because I just spent so much time watching over and over and over and over again, it just kind of naturally applied itself to my own game right there. And that I think is the best example of how you can use mirror neurons, visualization, film, study being around other great players, how you can use that to your advantage. When it comes to really making sure that you apply this, I think the first thing is making sure that you watch film every single day. And this could be full games on TV. You can also have full games on YouTube. This could be watching highlights of individual players. This could be watching, you know, maybe you, you again, like I said, you want to improve as a ball handler and so you spend a bunch of time watching Steph Curry or you spend a bunch of time watching Trae Young. You want to improve as a, you know, wing player. So you watch Derrick White, you watch Jaylen Brown, you watch Mikhail Bridges, you want to improve with the pick and roll. So you watch Jalen Brunson, you watch Steph Curry, you watch Trae Young. You can also use it for players who maybe are similar build to you. So you know, you want to get better as an undersized guard. So you, you watch Jalen Brunson, you watch Peyton Pritchard and then going with that before practices, before games, before pickup. Take 10, 15 minutes to just visualize through different situations, visualize yourself having success, making shots, being in certain situations, making the right reads. So maybe visualize yourself in a ball screen and you come off the ball screen and you see that, you know, the defender is, is dropped really far and so you get to the elbow and you hit a pull up and maybe the next time they switch and you know, okay, there's a mismatch now, so you drag the ball out and, and you entered into your, your big man who's posted up. Now maybe they blitz you and they double team you off the ball screen. So you, you see yourself like bouncing around the outside and getting around it or splitting it or you know, taking a bounce back dribble and then hitting your big on the slip. You want to get better attacking closeout. So you visualize yourself catching the ball in the wing closeouts coming, you rip through hard, get downhill and finish at the basket. The more that you do this, the more natural it's going to feel for you to execute those same things in games going with that. You always want to go into pickup games one on one, two on two, three on three with a purpose. So what is it that you're trying to apply again? If you watch a bunch of different finishes, can you try and get to those finishes? If you watch a certain type of footwork, can you try and get to a certain type of Footwork. If there was certain sort of read you saw that a player got to a backdoor cut off of, can you hunt those opportunities in those ball screen situations? Can you hunt those same opportunities that you've maybe looked at? But having a certain specific goal and purpose going into that is how you're going to figure out again what works best for you and how you can best apply it. And the last thing is making sure that you play against the best competition that you can. This is for a multitude of reasons. Obviously first of all, when you play against really good players, you're going to get better because physically they're going to challenge you and that's an important thing. But also going with all the stuff we talked about here, when you play with and against really good players, you, you're going to see them in different situations, you're going to see them make different moves or use different footworker techniques and you're going to be able to take stuff from them just by being on the court with them and seeing, oh wow, they, they use that finish in that situation, or wow, they got to that certain stop when their defender cut them off, or they made that pass when they saw the help defender do that. And just by being around that, you're going to, like I said, like, like I gave the example of me just coaching a player who executed something at a really high level that got me into, you know, being able to do that same thing when I played just because I was around it. So it's really important that you're around great players as much as possible. Now you do these things consistently, it's going to allow you to improve at a rate way faster than most players because you're purposeful with your time. So you spend your time on the court every day. But then when you're off the court, you're making sure that you know, you're preparing yourself mentally, whether it be through physical visualization, and you're also allowing your brain to build those neural pathways by using those mirror neurons. When you watch film and you know, you try and understand why other players do certain things, it's going to make you feel so much more confident, so much more prepared in different situations you might find yourself in. Now I actually just created a full guide on how to do this, how to apply it, a full schedule. It's called how to Get Better at Basketball Twice as Fast as Everybody Else. It's just a step by step guide on all this sort of stuff. It's completely free. That's going to be linked the top link down in the description below. You check that out. Like I said, there's a full schedule in terms of your off days, in terms of days where you might have school or work or whatever, and how to actually go about building this as a habit so that you improve at a rate way faster than everybody else. Like I said, top link down below. Appreciate you for watching. Talk soon. Peace.