How To Use Film Study To MAXIMIZE Your Confidence (Podcast Episode 103)

Foreign. Welcome to the Vision Gym Fast Training Podcast. Appreciate you guys. Podcast, Spotify, Pandora, wherever you're listening from and of course Everybody who's watching YouTube right now, if you're on YouTube, drop a, like subscribe if you are new. Just opened up channel memberships as well. So for you guys who want to get a little bit extra, I'm posting a lot of like my full length in person workouts where you guys can literally see how I am in the gym with my players for an hour, hour and a half sometimes. And you can see the drills that we go through. If you're a trainer or a coach, you see the way that I go through things, the way that I communicate with my, with my players. And if you're a player, you see the stuff that we do, the stuff that we work on and I think there's a lot of value in that for you guys. So if you guys want to see just like the uncut Raw, just me in the gym, that'll be a part of those channel memberships as well. And it's, it's almost nothing. It's like a $99 to join. So go ahead and check that out. There's also going to be membership polls, some different questions just to get an idea of like what do you guys want to see? Because I ask all the time, but it's good to know like you guys who are really with me is like supporting me. What do you guys want to see more of? Because that's what I want to deliver on. So give you guys access to that as well. And there's a couple other things too, so go ahead and check that out. That's on my channel. I'll have a link for that in the description below. If you're on a phone, you can't see it or whatever, I don't know, YouTube's got to figure that out. But if you guys are interested in that link is going to be in my description for this video. So go ahead and check that out. If you guys aren't on Apple podcast right now, go and leave a review. Those of you guys who've been around, you know that if I get new reviews, I'll read them. And I have a question actually in this one. So I appreciate that, thank you. But I have a question. Hey coach, I love what you've been doing and the podcast are really helping me for the long term in basketball. My skills are pretty good, but my mental side is lacking. Can you tell me some ways to help me get in the zone and lock in another thing I would like to add is that I'm in 8th grade and want to transition to JV. Can you please also help me with that? Appreciate you. Thank you for the questions. Let me start with that last one, which is. Okay, so if you're looking to transition to whatever that next level may be in this case is jv. But if. If you're jv, maybe it's varsity. If you're varsity, maybe you're trying to make. To get yourself to the college level. Whatever the. The best thing you can do, especially as a young player, as like a freshman coming into the high school program, is just be at everything. Be at every lift, be at every open gym, whatever you can. If you're able to play with a team, if you're able to go in any sort of summer league games, folly games, whatever you can do, be at that. Right? Just be around. That's going to help accelerate your progress and where you're at. And you're going to have a leg up on a lot of people going into the season because you've been around. You know, the coaches, they know you. You've probably been exposed to at least a little bit of the system that they run. And so you have a little bit of familiarity, at least with that going into it, which is just going to be very helpful for you starting off. And really, aside from that, aside from making sure you're as locked in as you can be with your program, it's just making sure that you are continuing to develop as much as possible. Because at the end of the day, I can tell you that I can say, hey, be at everything, be at all. You know, every lift, every open gym, play as much as you can with the team. At the end of the day, when it comes to the actual season and it's. It's December, it's January, your coach is looking down the bench to see who he wants to put in the game. He's not saying, oh, that kid came to 50% of the workouts in the summer, and that kid only came to 25%. So I'm gonna put the kid with 50% in. No, they're saying, who's gonna help me win right now? So at the end of the day, you've got to be better than the other options. So ultimately, take this time, this offseason to just get as good as you can, right? Become a better. Whatever position you play, whatever your game is, if you're a shooter, be the best you can be in that area. If you know him, I'M kind of weak as a ball handler. Get better at that. And in addition to you making sure that you're around as much as possible, you being a better player is going to put you in a really good position going forward. So that's the first thing. And then going to that second part of your question where you're basically asking about, okay, hey, my mental side is lacking. How can I get in the zone and lock in? There's no easy, like, simple answer to this. Because it depends on what, why. Right. Is your issue that you lack confidence? Because the, the solution to that is different. If it's a confidence thing, which we're going to talk about in this podcast, is are you prepared for the situation that you're finding yourself in, or is the way that you're training, is that actually preparing you for the situations you're going to find yourself in in games? If not, well, there's the fix right there, right? You've got to be prepared for. For what you're doing. So, hey, like, does your training translate? Right? And I've talked about this a ton. I'll link a video or podcast right, right above here. So go ahead and check that somewhere in the corner of the screen up here, and that'll go more in depth into what I'm talking about. But it could be that, right? And we're talking more about preparation, like I said later on in this episode, too, so make sure you tune in for that. If it's, if it's a confidence thing, if it's actually just a focus thing, like, how do I get more focus? Right? That. That's a whole different solution as well, where you have to be able to take time, especially in the, in the context of a busy day where you're probably in school and then going to practice or you're in school and you're going home, you got to do your homework and then you got to eat, and then you got to, you know, do whatever you got to do, and then you got to go to your game. There's so much going on. You've got to be able to take some time and just focus yourself. Right. Some people, you know, use meditation for that, where they'll take. It can literally be as little as a minute, and you just are focused on just whether it's your breathing or just observing what's happening, just being present in the moment is going to allow you to get rid of those distractions. And as you continue to do it more and more and more and focus on just that. Mindfulness and being present, you just. You're going to get better at it. So it's probably something else that I'll talk about more in depth in an episode, but there's different ways for it. So you got to identify, first of all, why is it that I don't feel like I'm locked in, and then you're more. More able to attack that and get better from that. So appreciate the question. Appreciate the review. Like I said, guys, if you want me to answer your questions, go ahead and leave a review for me. Always appreciate those. So let's hop into it. We're going to talk about preparation. We're talking about confidence. And I want to talk about in the con, in the context of why film leads to those things, right? If you want to be more confident, you can use film, especially in season, to become more confident. And really, I think the first thing is that it's about preparation, right? And they say that confidence comes from being prepared, right? Preparation leads to confidence. So like I said, we can use it in the context of if you don't feel confident in games, if you don't feel confident handling the ball, has your training actually prepared you for those situations that you're struggling in? Has your training prepared you to handle the ball against pressure? Has your training prepared you to be able to change your pace so that you're unpredictable? It's harder for a defender to stay in front of you, right? Have you actually worked on those skills in a way that's translatable so that you can actually feel prepared when you get into those situations? And a lot of times the answer is that is no. So that's why there's a disconnect where you don't feel prepared, therefore you aren't going to be confident. And it's the same thing with anything else. If you. If you're missing a lot of layups, right? But the layups you're missing are where you're going full speed to the rim and you're having difficulty, like putting the. Like controlling the basketball or putting in the right spot. But all you do to prepare for that is the mic and drill with no defense, where you're moving like 50%, it's not going to prepare you, therefore, you're not going to be confident. You're probably not going to be successful in that situation. So it all starts with preparation. And I think that film is the same way. If you are super prepared and you're super locked in, then you're going to feel confident, right? Because you know what's coming. So you know, when you look at it, it's like, do you know what to expect walking into a game? To what level can you prepare yourself before you even get to the game? It doesn't take you a quarter to figure, oh, how are they playing me? How does this work? How is, how does that work? Who is this guy? What are they going to do? What do they want to do? Like, you can have all those answers before you even get there. You're going to feel way more prepared going into that game, therefore you're going to feel more confident, therefore you're probably going to play better on a more consistent basis because you feel good about where you're at, right? And so I'll go through a couple things right here that you can look at specifically when it comes to actually watching film, because I think that that's where players sometimes are. There's a disconnect too, is that they don't know what they're actually looking for. What can they actually use to help themselves feel prepared? And so there's a couple of different things. So we talk about when you're watching defense, right? Let's say you're watching a team that you're about to play. You're just watching their defense, right? So you can say, okay, what defense are they running? Are they running a man, a two, three, a one, three, one? Are they running a press? Is it a man press? Is it a zone press? Do they trap a lot in their presses or in their half court defense? What is their defense? Right? What do they want to do? What kind of defense do they play? Answer that question, right? And this is something you can literally write down. You can go through yourself and just write this down, right? I'm watching this team, okay? They're playing this defense or they play this defense and this defense, and when they play this defense, they're really aggressive or they're not that aggressive, right? Just some general ideas with that. How do they guard, pick and rolls? How do they guard off ball screens? Do they play over on every pick and roll? Do they play under? Do they hard hedge? Do they blitz? Do they ice ball screens? If they're off ball, do they switch off ball screens? Do they, you know, shoot the gap? Do they trail over on every ball, every off ball screen? Good things to know as well, so you can be prepared in those situations. Especially if you're that guy who has the ball and plays and pick and rolls. It's really helpful to have at least an idea of how a defense might guard you Coming off of that pick and roll. Or you might know, hey, they guard side pick and rolls this certain way. They ice every side pick and roll, right? Meaning they don't even let you use the screen. They basically reject you and make you go towards the baseline. But high pick and rolls, they don't, they don't ice. They just play over and drop, right? So if you know the difference between that, now you're going to be prepared for those different situations and you have a leg up on them. And then third thing, how do they guard the other team's best player or best players, right? Do they completely face guard them and deny them? Do they do nothing different? Do they double team them? Do they go bots in one? How do they guard the best players in the other team? What shots do they allow? Are they okay with giving up mid range shots? Are they okay with giving up, you know, threes in their zone? Are they okay with, you know, are they, are. Do they give up a lot of transition points so they don't get back very fast? So I'm going to think about what shots do they allow? How do they guard, how do they guard threes? Like, do they run threes off the line? Do they allow for perimeter shots? How do they, how do they guard the perimeter? Is their help defense good right now? You'll know, okay, if I catch the ball and I attack this closeout, right, Which I've talked about a lot recently, so go back on my channel, you'll find videos on attacking closeouts as well. Do they allow for, you know, basically finishes at the rim because their help defense is always late or it's not there. So I know if I beat my guy, I'm probably going to have nobody to contest me in the rim. Or is their whole defense really good? Meaning now when I attack this guy, I'm probably going to have to look to kick the basketball because I know I'm going to have a teammate open because there's going to be two on me. So something to understand as well, and who are their weak defenders, right? So is number 21 on their team? Is that, is that their weak guy? So I know if that if I somehow get that matchup, they switch on to me, like that's an opportunity I'm going to have to take advantage of. Or maybe I know, hey, this guy is good in this situation. Like he's good around the rim, but he's also really likely to jump for shot fake. So I know if I catch the ball and he's closing out to Me, if I shot fake, he's probably going to jump and I'm probably going to have an opportunity to make a play going downhill. These are really important things to know so that you can feel as prepared as possible going into games. So again, this is something you can write down. You can literally go through, watch a team you're about to play and just give yourself answers. Just go through a complete list of what am I looking for? What can I take advantage of right here? What am I going to go into this game expecting? Okay, and then when we talk about offense, right? So what offense do they run? Do they run a four out? Do they run a five out? Do they go some sort of flex or continuity offense? Do they do some sort of, you know, dribble drive where basically every time they catch the ball, they're just trying to dribble and run these dribble handoffs and overlaps and all this sort of stuff? What, what does their offense look like? What, what's their base? What, like, what do they do? They run a lot of sets, they run a lot of, like, quick hitters. Are they calling a lot of plays? What actions do they like to go to? Do they like, do they like high pick and rolls? They like side pick and rolls? Do they like pin downs? Do they like, you know, back screens? Do they get a lot of high post touches, low post touches, mid post touches? A lot of dribble handoffs? Like, what are the actions that they like to run on offense? Right? What do they do? A lot of okay, and, and then you can also say, okay, what are they hunting with this right here? They like to go pick and roll so that they can get the ball to the rule guy, because that's their best player, right? So now you understand where they're trying to go. When they get to a certain action, they're doing all these dribble handoffs to hopefully get a middle drive. So now you understand what they're trying to hunt with those different actions. Okay, so can you pick up on patterns? Right? And this is how you increase your basketball IQ as well, is just going through and asking yourself, yourself this qu these questions and piecing it all together, what shots do they look to take most? So do they just want to shoot threes? Do they want to shoot 40 threes a game? Is that their goal? Do they like post ups? Is that their goal? Their goal is to get the ball in the post, in the high post, mid post. They like, you know, trying to hunt mismatches in the post. Like, is that what they want to do? Do they look to just run in transition? That's where they're at their best. They're looking at pressure on defense so they can get out and run. Do they ISO a lot? Do they have a couple players who can, who can ISO really well? So they're just going to clear out and give guys opportunities to ISO. What shots do they want to take the most of? Right. And then which defenders do they target? Right. So is there a certain, like, are they going to put defenders in difficult positions? Do they have certain players that have the ultimate green line? They can shoot the ball whenever they want, wherever they want, and they just, if they're open, they're going to shoot it, or if they're not open, they're going to shoot it. Like, do they have players like that as well? Right. So the goal is to determine what the other team and specifically if you know the player you're going to be matched up on to understand this, to know what they like to do, and take away that first option. That's your ultimate goal as the defender. Right. So when you have a goal here, like I want to take that away from them, then you can make the game more difficult for them and hence easier for yourself. Give yourself a leg up right there. Now, the thing is, like, that can obviously change game to game because different players, different teams have different affordances. That team may guard that team differently than they'll guard your team because that team has a certain player that your team doesn't have. Or you guys have a certain player they don't have. And they might go zone against them, man, against you. But now you at least have an idea of what you could be expecting. And maybe it's different, maybe it's not, but that's a way that you can control the controllables and be as prepared as you possibly, possibly can be. And if things are a little bit different, you adjust to that. But you still have that bank of knowledge already, so you still know who their guys are. You still know what actions they'd like to get to. A team is not going to do a complete 180 from game to game. Right. Especially at, you know, pretty much, you know what you have. Like, you're not going to have a team that's going to be completely different, especially if you're at like the high school level. Like, teams can't just completely change up everything from game to game, right. You just don't have enough talent to be able to do that. So when you have an idea of what you're looking for. It makes everything easier for you, even if they do give you a little bit of a different look. So that's the first thing. The second way you can use film to become more prepared and therefore be more confident is to watch yourself, right? Watch your, your film back, watch your team back, right? What did you miss? Like, what opportunities did you miss out on? Oh, I missed that cut right there. I should have tight curled that cut right there. Probably would have gotten a layup, you know. Oh, I should have looked to run out a little bit earlier in transition right there. Probably would have got a layup right there. I missed my a kick to my teammate right there because their teammate helped over and I tried to force up a shot. I probably should have kicked it right there. There's different things that you might not even notice in the game that when you go back and watch it, you're going to see, hey, I missed that. Now the next time you're in the situation, you can, you have that bank of knowledge. You're more likely to make that right decision. So you can get yourself, you can make yourself better just by watching back and understanding, hey, I did that, I did that wrong. I can do that better next time. That's going to be a leg up for you. Were there scoring opportunities that you missed out on? You know, did you make any wrong decisions like we talked about right there? And what's worked for you? What can you double down on? Was there something that you didn't notice you were doing that kept working and now, you know, hey, like going forward, I got to look to get to that more. It's just some stuff to think about right there when you watch yourself. And the last thing is watching other players. So, you know, whether it's watching NBA games, I think can be, can be really helpful. You can watch other high school games, other college games and just see how different players maneuver different situations, right? Maybe you're a player who plays on a lot of ball screens and so, you know, you, you watch Trae Young play ball screens, man, you see something that he does that you hadn't thought about, right? But now you've got again, you just, you're adding to that bank of knowledge you have. You know, you're watching, you know, any, any player you're watching Damian Lillard LaMelo Ball, Steph Curry using the. In these different Boston situations. And you see, see how they play it. And maybe there's some inspiration for something that you can do, something you can look for that you hadn't even thought about, right? So there's something for you to think about right there. And that can be for any sort of situation right there. And how can you learn from how Player X handles a, you know, a closeout or how they run in transition or you know, how they play against the 2, 3 zone? There's just, there's so many things you can learn just by watching and it's going to give you a ton of ideas and it's going to help you become a better problem solver which the best players are just the best problem solvers, right? So by watching and by expanding your knowledge and expanding what you've seen and what you're familiar with, it's going to make you better as well. So there's a lot of ways that you can use film, but if you use it properly, then it's going to help you to not only be more prepared, but therefore be more confident, which is going to lead to you playing better on a more consistent basis basis. And this is all stuff that's very, very controllable if you've access to it, right? Even if you don't. Everyone has access to NBA games. You all have. You're watching this on YouTube right now. If you want to, you know, get better at using pin downs, there's videos on that out there. You want to get better at using ball screens, there's videos out there on that. There's so many ways you can watch, you can learn, you can get better by using film. It's really just up to you to do that. So again, if you want to be more confident, if you want to be film more prepared, this is a great way for you to do it and really help maximize your ability and continue to get better moving forward. So hopefully you guys gain something from that right there. Drop a comment, let me know what you gained. If you have any questions, any suggestions. Like I said guys, if you're interested in joining the channel membership, super, super inexpensive. But I appreciate the support, of course. And there's different stuff in there that will help you guys out that I think is going to add to, you know, know the stuff that you that, that we already do here. And so I appreciate you guys who have watched. If you're listening, I have a podcast, Spotify, leave a review for me and if you have any suggestions on future episodes, you have questions for me, whatever, drop them below in the comments. I'll talk to you guys soon. Peace.