Listen To This If Your Goal Is To Make It To The NBA

Before we get into this video, I just want to give you a quick disclaimer. This isn't going to be as simple as me saying, do these drills or do this workout every day for two hours and you'll make it to the NBA. An easy answer like that doesn't exist. And if that's what you're looking for, this video probably isn't for you. But if you want to learn exactly what it's going to take to accomplish your basketball goals and step by step, how you can do so, keep watching. Let's get into it. So let's start with what I get asked the most, which is what should your training look like if your goal is to make it to the NBA? And, and before I even get to that, there's another question that I get asked usually alongside with that, and it's, well, what did other NBA players do growing up that helped them get to the NBA? And let's start with that question because I think that it is an important question to understand and I think in most cases actually the wrong question to even ask. Ultimately. I think a lot of times the answer to that doesn't really even apply to most players because a lot of players in the NBA were, were born to play basketball. We talk about a insane mix of size, athleticism, movement ability, ability to learn movements and just learn in general. These are the most elite athletes. And a lot of that is genetic. A lot of that is stuff that you can't teach that's just kind of the, the baseline that you're born with. And for a lot of these guys, no matter what you would do growing up, like they're going to make it to the NBA because they just, they're talented, right? And again, that's not every single player in the NBA, but a lot of the players in the NBA that's are like that, right? You can't teach six, six or, or taller with insane athleticism. Like you can't teach that sort of stuff. But when you have it, it becomes much more easy and the room for error into. And I say easy in terms of like what you can do to, to get to where you want to get to, right? Your room for error is much greater meaning, like your workouts don't have to be perfect because you have the athleticism or the size to make up for that fact, right? Or you have just the natural. Like maybe you just naturally have a great feel for the game of basketball, right? And everyone knows players like that. Maybe you're a player like that who just basketball isn't just natural to you, right? And there's a lot of players like that as well. When you combine the size, athleticism and that, you get a lot of these NBA players, right? So that, that's a large majority of them. So that. What that means is that in a lot of cases, these guys didn't grow up necessarily training in the most ideal way, but their talent, their natural ability was able to overcome that and it didn't really matter as much. There are other players in the NBA who that's certainly not the case. Right. They didn't necessarily have all the natural advantages, and so they had to trade in a little bit of a smarter way. But I think that for most players and for you watching, you shouldn't be worried about what ex NBA player did to get to the NBA. You should be worried about, okay, what do I do to maximize my ability? Like, what's the best way to be training so that I could become the best player I can possibly be? And when you train in the ideal way, you take that and then whatever sort of natural advantages or disadvantages you may have, that's, that's ultimately going to be, you know, kind of how you get to whatever your ceiling may be. I'm not going to completely throw away what NBA players necessarily did to get to where they get to in some cases, right. You, you could look at guys like Kyrie Irving, where he talked about how when he was a kid, he would just dribble a ball. He put a plastic bag, like a grocery bag over a ball and would just dribble it all the time, Just do all of his workouts with the, with the bag on the ball, dribble around his neighborhood, whatever the case may be. And I think that's a really interesting thing for a couple reasons. First of all, when we look at like adding a plastic bag to, you know, your dribbling workouts or whatever the case may be, if you've done that before, it makes it a little bit, a little bit tougher. Same thing if you were to add like gloves or something like that to your ball handle. Like, it just, it makes it hard to get a grip on the basketball. And so I think that can be an interesting thing to do. But I think even more importantly with, with that example is that Kyrie just spent a ton of time dribbling, dribbling a ball, right? And it's almost, it's the same thing with Jamal Crawford, who talked about how growing up he, he never did any ball handling drills, he just would dribble the ball everywhere he went and played a lot, and he was able to develop his ball handling that way. Now, I'm not saying that you should do no ball handling drills, because, again, not everybody's Jamal Crawford. Not everybody is. Is. Is wired that way or built that way. 65 super athletic. Like, not everybody's like that, right? So not everybody can afford to just not do drills and just go and. And drill the ball around and make it to the NBA. That's not what I'm saying. But we can take some of those things and look at it and say, okay, when we look at what a lot of MMA players did to get to where they get to a large part of it, like when you look at the best ball handlers is they just dribbled the ball a ton. Everywhere they went, they were dribbling a basketball. So we can. We can rationalize and say, hey, you know what? It probably makes sense that the more I dribble a ball, the better I'm going to be at doing said thing, right? So whether that means, like, you know, every day, you know, you go down to the park and you dribble the ball down there, you get home, dribble it some more. Like, you just have a ball in your hand all the time. Everywhere you go, you're dribbling a ball. If you go somewhere, you know, like, hey, I'm going to have 20 minutes to kill. I'll bring my ball with me and just dribble it around. Like, there are certain things you can do like that that a lot of these guys did growing up. That absolutely can be helpful. Another thing that a lot of NBA players talk about is how growing up, they would play against better, older competition all the time. Like, as kids, they'd be, you know, 13, 14 years old playing against, you know, other kids who are 17, 18 years old, right? Or you might be 15 playing against, like, grown men. And a lot of these guys were like, yeah, like, that's what I would do growing up. And a lot of times, like, I'd get smacked around, right? Playing against grown men as a kid. But that, you know, helps you develop, right? And it forces you. It's essentially sink or swim. You have to figure it out. And especially, like, I remember hearing, I think it was Gilbert Arenas talk about this, where, like, he'd go to the. He'd go to, like, his court and play and, like, it. You know, you'd have to win or else, you know, you're off for, you know, 20 minutes, 30 minutes, an hour, right? And if you've played pickup at places where you know you have to win to stay on, like, there might be four teams waiting. So if you lose that game, you might not play the rest of the day. You might have to wait two more hours to get back on the court. So you have to find ways to win, right? And I think that's another thing that a lot of these guys did growing up is they went out and they went and they seeked out better competition or older competition and just played against them all the time as much as possible. And again develops that kind of sink or swim where you have to be able to figure it out to succeed against players who might be better than you at the time. And I think that's an important thing to be able to look to do as well if you want to become the best player that you can be. So just to recap that thought, there are certainly things you can take away from NBA players that help them get to where they got to. But I don't think that the main question should be what? What's the exact workouts these guys did growing up? And I'm just going to do that, and that's going to mean I'm going to go to the NBA. That's not true. And, and in the majority of cases, you're probably better off not doing exactly what they did or taking some stuff that they did and then also adding in stuff that is the ideal way of doing things. So now onto that first question, which is what should my training look like? And as is the case with pretty much anything that you ask, the answer is that it's going to depend, right? There's not one right answer. But we have to figure out what works best for you, right? And there's a couple things to think about with this. I would say that in general, right, when we talk about like strength training or athleticism training, anything you're doing, like off the court, right. Anything from three to five times a week is pretty solid, right? And again, depending on what you're doing, what your workouts look like, specifically where you're at in terms of how long you've been training for, that can kind of vary on whether that's 3, 4, 5, you know, depending on what kind of program, maybe it's six days, right? Again, there isn't one specific right answer for that. And then your encore work is whatever, four more days a week, right? Again, that's all going to depend on what exactly you're doing, what your schedule looks like, and I think also going with that finding time to play. Kind of like what I mentioned earlier, where a lot of these NBA guys would go and they would play against older guys, they play against the best competition they could find. I think doing that at least a couple times a week, if you can, is a really, really important thing to do as well. So finding a way to balance that, I think is important and you want to find a way to make that sustainable. So if you know that you're not going to stick with two workouts every single day of the week, like, don't do it, right? If you can't sustain that, then don't try to do it. Because it's way better to find a schedule that you're going to stick to and it's not going to burn you out that you can do for a long period of time than you, you know, getting up and working out three times a day for a week and then being so burnt out that you, you don't feel like doing it for two more weeks, right? You don't want to put yourself in that position right there. So if I were to give you just like a sample schedule of. Again, this isn't necessarily the perfect schedule. I don't think there is a perfect schedule. But this is an example of like what a player might do. So maybe on Monday you have like a morning lift and then you do your encore work, and then maybe in the evening you go and you play your pickup. Maybe Tuesday you have another AM Lift, encore work, and then maybe you know nothing in the evening, or maybe you have a practice, whatever the case may be Wednesday, maybe that's a day off from your lifting, but you have an encore work workout. And then maybe at night you go play pickup again and then maybe Thursday you have another morning lift, get your encore work in and then you know, off in the evening. Or maybe you have again a practice or whatever, whatever you might have in the evening. And then Friday, maybe another a.m. lift, encore work, pick up in the evening. Saturday, you know, maybe you do some encore work and maybe take Sunday off. There's just an example of, okay, encore work six days a week playing, pick up three of those days, getting in a lift four times, right? That's a, that, that's a sample of like what a, a good schedule could be. Again, depending on who you are, what your, what your life looks like. That could work for some players. So now your encore work might also vary in terms of how intense it is. So not every workout might be like all out crazy, you know, thrown up in a Trash can. Like, it doesn't have to be like that. Some days maybe are lighter than other days and maybe have a different focus than other days. And like I said, this doesn't have to be the exact schedule you follow, but it could be a schedule that would work for some players. Right? And again, take that, adjust it to, you know, what fits you best. And here's the big thing that you really need to understand. Quality of your workouts is so much more important than quantity, right? Players will, will talk and they'll leave comments or they'll DM me and they'll talk about how, oh, you know, I wake up at 4am and I work out for four hours and then, you know, I go back later in the day workout for four more hours. And you know, they'll, they'll like kind of hype that up. And while the work ethic and the dedication is awesome. Right? That's great. And the fact that you want to do that is awesome. That's not the smart way to go about doing it. And it's not the way that's going to get you the best results either. Again, you can, you can look at. There are plenty of NBA players who can, who, who have said similar things like, yeah, I used to work over eight hours a day. And that, that might work for somebody who has insane natural ability, right? You're going to get better. You're going to be able to succeed because again, a lot of times these guys are genetically just like you're born to be good at basketball. 99% of players are not in that category. So you want. Doing that is not going to be the most ideal thing when we look at what the game is. It's essentially an hour of max effort, right? So nobody is putting in max effort for four hours in a workout. It's just not going to happen. Right? You're not gonna be able to do that. So most of that time is wasted. And in fact, you could argue that almost all that time is probably wasted because there probably isn't a ton of time where you're actually going all out because you know you're gonna be there for four hours. So you, you might even be able to argue that that workout's just a complete waste of time as opposed to doing a workout that is shorter but more intense, more focused. And that is what's gonna translate way better into a game than just thinking time, right? The more time I'm on the court, the better I'm going to be. Not true. The better your workouts are the better you're going to be, the more quality your workouts are, the more quality of a player that you're going to be. So how do you make sure that your workouts are high quality? I think the first thing is you need to have a focus, right? So you need to. You need to know who you are. You need to be able to assess yourself and know what you need. So what are your strengths? What are you good at? Whether people tell you you're good at, your coaches tell you you're good at it, or, or you just feel confident doing it, what are you good at? And then what are you not good at? What do you not feel confident doing? What do people tell you that you need to get better at? What do you. You know, I think everybody kind of has a feeling for what their weaknesses are, what they don't like to do. So ideally, like, knowing like two or three of those two or three strengths, two or three weaknesses, like just understanding that and then focusing on making your strengths elite and then eliminating your weaknesses, that's really what your focus is, needs to be. When I say with. With strengths, in order to make it to really any sort of competitive level, right? This could be the varsity level, this could be the college level. Obviously, professional. There needs to be something that you do that gets you on the court or gets you on a roster. If you're just kind of okay at everything, that's not going to be enough to get you to that next level, right? If you're a varsity player and you're okay at everything, you're not going to be a college player. There has to be something that you do that's elite. If you're a college player and you're okay at everything, you're probably not going to be a professional player. So you have to. You have to take a strength that you have and make that elite. If you're a good shooter, you need to become elite as a shooter. If you're a good ball handler, you need to become elite as a ball handler. If you're a good passer, you need to come become elite as a passer. If you're a good defender, you need to become elite as a defender, right? So. So take those strengths and become like the best on the court at those things that should be your goal at the level that you're at. How do I become the best on the court at one of my strengths or two of my. Whatever the case may be. And then you need to get rid of anything that would hold you back from being on the court or being on the roster. If you're a terrible ball handler, you need to get to a point where you're at least an okay ball handler, where you're not a liability. If you're a terrible shooter, you need to get to a point where you're at least an okay shooter. So again, you're not a liability to it, to a team. And again, you get rid of things that can keep you off of a roster or keep you off of the court in general. So that's the first thing is understand your strengths and weaknesses and have a focus and in terms of what you want to get better at. The second thing is you need to challenge yourself. There's something called the Goldilocks principle, which, you know, essentially means, you know, when you think about, like the story of Goldilocks, she goes into the, you know, the cabin in the woods and, you know, she tastes the porridge. And one was too hot, one was too cold, one was just right. And then there was the chair. One was too tall, one was too short, one was just right. She goes to lay in the beds. One was too firm, one was too soft, and one was just right. You want to be in a position in your workouts where it's just right. So we don't want it to be too difficult where you're failing 80, 90, 100 of the time. But we also don't want it to be too easy where you're succeeding 90, 100 of the time. Because if you're in either of those categories, you're not going to be getting better. You need to be somewhere in the 30 to 70% success rate in your workouts. Meaning for a workout like you, you might only have 60% of your reps where that you might consider good right, or successful reps, and 40% might be not great, or you might lose the ball or miss the shot. Whatever the case may be with what you're doing, you need to. There needs to be failure present in your workouts because there needs to be challenge present. The only way that you get better at something is if you force yourself to get better. Because all that improvement is, is essentially making these different neural connections and increasing that skill, right? Your ability to complete that skill and your brain is only going to make those improvements if it feels it's necessary. It's very similar to lifting weights. If you go and lift a super light weight, that's not challenging for you, you're not going to get stronger because your muscles aren't going to need to adapt to Anything, you're already there, you're already enough. So you're not going to get any bigger, any stronger, any faster. But if you challenge yourself with the weight that you're using, you're going to have like, your body is going to have to build muscle because it's going to need to be able to handle it the next time it sees that stressor. So same thing when it comes to getting better at any sort of skill in basketball. If you're not challenging yourself, you're not failing. There's no reason to to improve because you're already there. So you know your brain's not going to take up any sort of energy to put into getting better at that skill. Because why would it, why would it do that? Right? There's no reason to if there's not, if you don't give it a reason. So you need to be in that Goldilocks zone where again, you're only succeeding 30 to 70% of the time other than that, you're losing the ball, you know, you're missing some shots, you're, you know, just in general struggling a little bit. And that struggle is what's going to lead to you getting better. Right? So we don't want to be succeeding every time like a. The sign of a good workout is not, oh, I made every single shot. That's actually the sign of a workout that probably wasn't very effective at helping you get any better. Right? And unless you're shooting 100% in games, which you probably aren't, you need to be getting better. You need to be finding ways to improve and become a better player. So that's the second thing, is that Goldilocks principle. The third thing is that you need to do drills and workouts that actually translate to you seeing results in games. If you spend all your time doing stationary pounds and then you wonder why you can't handle the ball against pressure, you have to look back at your training. Is it actually preparing you for real game situations? And if you spend all your time, you know, shooting spot up shots at the same spot over and over again, right. You shoot right? Your, your entire training when it comes to shooting is getting up reps at the same spot. When in a game you're going to shoot a shot from the corner and then you're going to go play defense, then you might not shoot another shot for three possessions and your next shot might be a pull up at the elbow, and then you might not shoot for two more possessions and then you're going to be on the left wing on the next shot, every shot's gonna be different. And you wonder why you get to a game you can't. You aren't successful as a shooter, but your training didn't prepare you to be successful as a shooter. So you have to make sure that what you're doing is actually stuff that translates to what the game requires of you. Right. I'm going to link a video above that's going to go through this in more depth in terms of how do I make sure that my drills are preparing me? Because this is an area where a lot of players struggle and a lot of players miss the mark. And it's a big reason why players don't get better. They don't see success because they aren't doing stuff that's actually going to help prepare them for what the game demands of them. Okay. So that's the third thing is you want to make sure that the drills and workers that you're doing are actually helpful in preparing you for what the game is going to demand of you. And then the fourth thing is that there needs to be a few qualities in your training if you wanted to translate into those games. So the first thing, and I really will actually combine the first two is decision making and reaction. Right. So if everything in your workouts is pre planned and you know exactly what you're going to do, I'm going to do it between the legs, behind the back, ten times. That's great. But again, you're going to get to a game and you're gonna have to react to what's going on in front of you. You're gonna have to make a decision, what's the best solution in this situation? And if you don't ever train that you're gonna get to a game, you have to make a decision every single, every single time you touch the ball. How do you expect to be successful? So we need to find ways to train those things. You can develop decision making through. You know, if you have a partner or a group playing different 1 on 1, 2 on 2, 3 on 3, small sided games where maybe you work out of a closeout situation or you work out of a ball screen situation and now all of a sudden you have to make these decisions. Okay, I've got to read a close out coming to me. Do I have no space to shoot it? Do I need to attack? Which way should I attack? Should I use a shot fake or a jab first? Right. And then once I get by them, what should my finish be? So there's all these different things that go into a situation like that, that if you don't put yourself in that, you're going to get to a game and be expected to perform when those things are happening, and you're not going to have that practice at making those decisions. So it's important to, to work on decision making in those workouts because again, we want this to, to translate and apply to the games that we actually play, right where it actually matters. And then when we talk about the other quality that's important is variability. Right. And I think that this is an area that a lot of players are mixing as well. Going back to that shooting example, if you, if you're shooting training is entirely shooting the same shot over and over and over again, and you do that for 20 minutes and that that's all you do for your shooting well, how are you going to shoot well in a game when again, the, the shots can be different every time? Shoot one in the corner, next one's a pull up on the wing, next one's the top of the key. And then also the, the type of shot is different every time. Sometimes it's off the dribble or it's off the catch. You're going left, going right, you're leaning a little bit, your feet are a little bit off, the pass is a little bit high, a little bit to the left. Like, how do you expect to make shots and games if you don't? If you don't, you don't work on handling that variability in your workouts. Again, I'm going to link a video above that goes through how you can add that into your workouts right there. But really important that you do that. And again, that's going to help you to stay into that Goldilocks zone, right? Where you're not going to succeed every single time, but it's going to actually translate to better results. And in games, because you're challenging yourself, you're forcing yourself to get better and be prepared for what's actually going to be happening in those games. So when it comes to your workouts, again, the most important thing is the quality of it. Forget how much time you need to spend on the court. Are your workouts actually getting you better? Right. Are you focused on making your strengths elite and eliminating those weaknesses? Do you stay in that Goldilocks zone where you're not succeeding every single time, you're not failing every single time, but you're somewhere in the middle of that right there? If you focus on these things, you're going to have great workouts that help you improve. And while we're here, make sure you guys click the top link in my description down below. Get my free elite perimeter score program. And that's going to help you with, again, a lot of drills that touch on these exact things right here and just give you an idea of what it's going to take when it comes to your workouts. And obviously, like, program's going to help you take a big step forward as a player. So check that out. Completely free top link in the description below. The last thing I'll say when it comes to workouts is that you have to kind of get over your own ego when it comes to workouts. Nobody cares about how you look in a workout. It doesn't matter, right? It doesn't matter if you go into a gym and you struggle. Like, there's players who will go in and they'll be so frustrated because they don't make every single shot. But again, your goal shouldn't be to make every single shot and workout. If you're making every shot in a workout, you should be making it harder so that you miss more so that you're forced to improve. Because if there's no struggle, there's no improvement, right? So kind of get over the idea that you need to look good in workouts. The goal is to look good in games, and you look good in games by looking bad in workouts. That's. That's the important thing that a lot of players are missing. A lot of. A lot of coaches and trainers missing that too. But it's really important that you understand that concept. And just to simplify things even more, here's a couple things that you can think about. So when you're in open gyms or you're in pickup, wherever you meet you are that you're playing. Be willing to work on things that you aren't great at yet or that you aren't comfortable doing. Right. We talk about making, you know, eliminating those weaknesses. Can you find times when you're playing in those games that don't really matter, to work on those things, right? So if you know that, like, hey, you know, I don't. I'm not super comfortable shooting catch and shoot threes. Like, I'm working on it, but I need to get more comfortable, build confidence in games, do those things. When you play pickup and you do, like, come in with a, with a purpose, don't just go out and play. Don't just go and be like, I'm just going to open pickup for an hour, two hours, and that's it. Like, go in there with a purpose. Like, what are you trying to get better at? What are you trying to focus on? If you're trying to become elite at something, you're saying, okay, I want to become, I'm a good shooter. My goal is to become elite as a shooter. So find opportunities to work on that. Like, how can you focus on just doing that thing and becoming better at it? And okay, I missed a shot in this situation. Why did I miss that? What can I do to better it next time? Like, be purposeful when you're playing in those games that don't matter. And then you want to also make sure that you're, you know, again, kind of like what I mentioned before, not judging your workouts based on makes and misses. Right. You should base your workouts and how successful it is on how, how much of the time was spent in that Goldilocks zone. So if you were like, yeah, I was in that 50 to 60% success rate the entire time, that's a great workout and you, you should be happy with that. If you weren't there, if you were in like that 90% success rate for most of it, then not a good workout. Like, view it, view things that way. The second thing that I think goes along with this and kind of shifting away from the workouts and that side of things is you need to develop the right mentality if your goal is to play basketball at the highest level. So becoming a player who's good enough to, to get to that point and be successful at that point requires not just the physical ability, though. That's the first thing you need to have that. That's the prerequisite. But it's not just that. You also need a certain level of mental toughness to be able to even get there. Right. I think it starts with getting rid of the fear of failure. Right. So important to, in order to have, order to be the best player possible, you need to have an incredibly high level of confidence and self belief. And confidence comes from having the belief that you have what it takes to be successful in a certain situation. So if you've driven to the gas station down the street 200 times, you're probably going to be pretty confident on the 201st time that you're going to be able to make that drive down there, because you've already done it 200 times, you've been successful 200 times. So the 201st time you're probably going to be pretty confident in yourself. You're probably going to have a lot of belief that you have what it takes to be able to complete that. So the same concept applies to basketball. Do you have the belief that you have what it takes to be successful? And if you don't, how do you gain this? Well, obviously it starts with the work that we just talked about, right? Making sure that you're doing the right things. Your workouts are high quality so that you're being challenged and being prepared for games. But there's another, there's actually another step you need to take past this. And I think it becomes honestly, crucially important to this because if you don't do this, you're not going to. Like the work doesn't matter. You can do all the work in the world. It does not matter if you don't do this. And that is by forcing yourself to do these things, right? There's a difference between doing something in a workout, as good as a workout might be, and then doing it in a game where you have a coach, you have teammates, there's reps, there's a clock, there's fans, all this pressure is involved. That's way different than doing it in a workout where really the, the stakes aren't close to as high, right? Forget the fact that at a game you might have scouts watching, you might have coaches, Whatever the case, like, there's way more at stake in a game than there is in practice. So a lot of players will get better and they'll put in the time, but then they get stuck because they get to games and they're like, well, I, I'm not doing the things that I worked on, right? And maybe you felt that way. This is, this is the uncomfortable aspect of this. You have to, when you improve, right, you've become a new player, right? You've added something to your game, you've improved something with your game. You might physically have the ability to do that way better, but mentally you have to go and prove to yourself that you can do it, right? So you might have the physical ability, but until you go and actually do it, you're not going to have the confidence that goes with that because you haven't seen yourself be successful in a game yet. So you don't know, like, you don't. You're not going to have that, that belief that you have what it takes to be successful because you haven't been successful at it yet. So what that means is that let's say you've improved your three point shot and maybe you went from being like a bad shooter to being a good shooter. Well, you spent your entire career up to this point being a bad shooter, meaning you thought your thought process was that of a bad shooter. Now maybe you're not that, but mentally it's going to take a little bit of work for you to flip that switch and go from oh I'm not a very good shooter to oh, I'm a good shooter, I need to hunt my shots. So what that means you're going to go into games and be conscious of the fact that hey, I might to force myself to like take some risk here because this is going to be new, this is going to be familiar. It's not second nature for me yet to just go out and make these plays because it's new to me. If you've become a better ball handler, you might have to force yourself to take a little bit more risk with the ball because now you have the physical ability, but you might not have the self belief to match it yet because you haven't done it in a game. So all that to say you have to be willing to take risks in games, take risks and put yourself out there so that you can actually prove to yourself that you have what it takes. And with all this, with confidence, with self belief, the rich get richer. Meaning when you go out and you force yourself to do something right and eventually you maybe, maybe you fail at first, whatever, but you keep on working through that and eventually you're successful, then eventually you're successful again. Now you build a little bit of confidence because you've seen yourself being successful and that confidence leads to you doing that thing more. And being more successful, the more success leads to more confidence and then more success more and, and it's just a, a great cycle to be in when it comes to building that confidence. Right. The same can happen the other direction where you lose confidence. But again, this is why the mental toughness aspect of this is so important. You have to put yourself out there until you succeed and then once you do that, it's going to be easier for you and eventually it becomes second nature because you have this high level of self belief. But to get to that point you have to take risk, be willing to fail, understand the fact that when you first do something, you're probably going to fail, you're probably going to fail multiple times, but then as you do it more, you're going to find ways to be successful and that's where that confidence is, is going to stem from. So you know, that's why I mentioned playing pickup against good Competition as much as possible. That's a big part of doing this, is going there and being willing to fail. Look bad, try new things until you become successful at it, and eventually, as you do that enough, it becomes second nature for you. So when you go into those games that don't matter with that focus, that's really, really important to developing those things, and it's going to require you to put yourself in a position where you might fail, right? And here's what it comes down to, right? That's a choice you have to make. Are you willing to put yourself in those positions or not? Because the game favors the strong, and I don't just mean physically strong, though it does favor the physically strong as well. It favors mentally strong players, meaning if you aren't strong enough to risk failure, if you aren't strong enough to fail by whether that means missing a shot, turn the ball over, and despite that happening, be able to go back and try that again or make an adjustment and try again. If you're not strong enough to do that, you're not going to make it. You're just not going to. You can be as talented as, as, as anybody, but if you don't have the mental toughness to deal with failure and be willing to take risk over and over and over and over again until you succeed, you're not going to. You're not going to make it to where you want to get to. So becoming mentally strong is much like becoming physically strong by doing difficult things over and over again. Putting yourself in a position of potential failure is hard to do, especially if you failed there before. It's really, really hard to do. But that's how you build that mental strength that the best players have, and that is crucial and necessary if you want to make it to that next level again. We talked about, you know, you have to be elite at something. If you don't have the mental strength to make it at the next level, then you're not even going to get there. So it's really important, and especially we talk about the fact that as you continue to progress, there's more and more pressure, more and more expectations placed on you. It's really hard to still play with that same confidence when you just had a bad game or a bad week. But the strong players, the mentally strong players, are unfazed by that sort of stuff. So your focus needs to be to become a mentally strong player. You do that by taking risk, being willing and okay with the fact that you're going to fail sometimes. And despite that Failure, you. You're able to go back and try again until you. You succeed. And if you can do that, you're going to come on the other side a completely different player, playing with a ton of confidence. To wrap this up here, I want to make a disclaimer. Doing these things does not guarantee that you're going to make it to the NBA. It doesn't guarantee you're even going to make it to the college level. It doesn't even guarantee that you're going to make your JV team. Doesn't mean any of that sort of stuff, but it does guarantee that you're going to become the best player that you can possibly, possibly be. And at the end of the day, that's really all that you should care about. Because there's so many other factors that go into being a great basketball player, aside from how hard you work. How hard you work is like probably a top three factor. But there's way more that goes into it than just hard work, right? If, if this is all about hard work, then I would have, I would scratch everything I said. And I said, hey, you know what? Go live on a basketball court, go work out for 16 hours a day, and you'll be the best player possible. But that's not how it works, right? So there's way more that goes into it. There's genetics, natural ability, size, athleticism, luck and opportunity. A ton of things that are outside of your control that also play a big part in not only how successful you're going to be, but what your ceiling is where you can actually make it to. But those being out of your control, you shouldn't pay it much attention, right? You shouldn't pay it any mind, you shouldn't pay it any sort of your attention because there's nothing you're going to do about it, right? You, you kind of are what you are. So focusing on the quality of your training, making your strengths elite and eliminating your weaknesses, developing yourself athletically off the court with your strength and athleticism, workouts, becoming mentally strong by taking risks and being okay with the fact that you're going to fail, being able to try again in spite of failure, and being able to forget and move on to the next play regardless of what happens, those are where your focus should lie because that's how you maximize what you're capable of doing. And I'll say this, I'm 100% sure that somebody watching this video is gonna make it to that highest level. But you're not gonna know that until you make sure that you're focusing on what you can control and you do those things at an elite level. So if you enjoy this video, drop a like, subscribe if you're new, make sure you guys check out all the videos that I linked throughout this video because they're going to help you understand these things even more and be able to apply them even better to what you're doing right now. I appreciate you for watching. Like I said, drop a like subscribe if you're new. I'll talk to you soon. Peace.