Stop Shooting 1000 Shots A Day

So I got a question from Maxwell and it's kind of a long question, but I'm going to read it because I'm. This is, this is a topic that is, is super important and honestly I haven't really talked about it in depth yet, but he asked, so he said, hey. So I've been taking basketball seriously for about a year now. Turning 15 going into my freshman year. Just so, just to get the basketball story. I played basketball nearly eight hours a day in the summer, one break day, so six days a week. And during the season my back started to hurt. Eventually got limited minutes and only played about six minutes a game. By the end of the season I started not being able to participate in practice and playing games. I don't know that I did anything to my back because I haven't been able to go to doctors because the months obviously, but I feel like when my back's still hurting occasionally will cause me to not be able to lift and train, only focus on the actual skill of basketball. And I feel like my chances of getting attention from scouts across the country would be very difficult when they know about the injury history. If I was a scout and there was a six foot point guard with the injury problems, why would I choose to focus on him over a taller, more lengthy player? I always felt like I could make it pro. I spent a lot of time obviously practicing. I take the time to study film and at least I used to lift and condition frequently. But most of all I was consistent. I also had the mindset of not caring about what others think and only focus on my goals and dreams. Love that. So I've been expanding my passions over the few months, seeing what I can really do to be successful. So I'm just asking, is it worth spending the 1,000 shots six days a week if my chances are looking slim with injuries? So it's a lot of stuff in this, this DM I want to break down. But you know, first of all the, the thing to understand is like I actually went through a similar thing in going into my freshman year of high school where I missed my first. I missed the first half of the season because of knee pain that I didn't like we just, the doctors didn't know what it was. Ended up just being like growing pains basically. So but it was bad enough that I missed half the season because of it. So, you know, understand that like you're still growing and like for me that was a big thing between that, you know, when I was like going, you know, 14 to 15, basically that was when I was like, I had a lot of doing a lot of growing, so my knees were kind of just adjusting to that. So that's one thing to understand, but that's. Obviously I'm not, I'm not a doctor, so I don't, like, I don't. I'm just giving you my personal, my personal experience with that. And. But the real thing I want to get to is the way you're working. So here's the thing, and this is a myth that we need to stop. It's a problem, especially in America. It's a problem everywhere with basketball, but specifically in America with literally everything is a problem where people think if I do more work, if I do more, I'm going to get better, better results. The more I do, the more time I put in, the more I do this, the better results are going to be. That is not always true. And it makes sense. Like it would make sense, right? Like the more time that you spend working on your skills, the better you're going to be, right? The more time you spend shooting the basketball, the better you're going to be. The thing is that there is diminishing returns. At one point, the mistake players make is that they look at a guy like Kobe, right? Where Kobe might be able to go into the gym three hours before a game and shoot 800 shots and then go out that night and play great. Okay? He might be, and then he might be able to go to the gym for two hours after the game and shoot 800 more shots. He might be able to do that. Okay? Not none of you out there, Kobe Bryant, okay? Nobody's Kobe Bryant. There's a lot of NBA guys who can't do that, okay? Kobe Bryant conditioned himself over years and years to be able to get to a level where he could put in that amount of time and still get results from it. Players, when they, when they see that, they read about Kobe and the work he put in and they think, oh, I got to do that too. That's where you're messing up because you're not Kobe. You can't handle that, that level of work and that, that, that's, that becomes the, the, the, the. It's a double edged sword in terms of you need to put in a lot of work, but you need to not overdo it because overdoing it can be just as bad in the situation. Look, a big problem for you might be you're doing so much, you're spending eight. He said he spent eight hours a day training. I have a video that I made on this before, but I'll go through it again. Don't. Like, if you're spending eight hours a day on a basketball court, you're not, you're probably not getting as, as, as much better as you could. Like, you're probably not maximizing your time on the court. This whole entire podcast has been about you actually getting results. If you are, if you are spending eight hours on a basketball court, then there is not a chance you can go for 100% game speed the whole time. Not a chance. You might be able to do it for a maximum of two hours, maximum, okay? Before, you're just going to not be able to physically do it anymore. Again, you're not Kobe Bryant. Kobe might be able to do it for four hours straight, okay? He's Kobe. You're not. So stop trying to train like Kobe. Train the way that's actually going to be effective for you, okay, As a player who's not at that level right now. So what that means is you need to approach your workouts like, I'm going to go hard for an hour. I'm going to go hard for an hour and a half. And listen, if you want to, if you want to do it for. If you want to do multiple sessions where you go in the morning and night, go for an hour and a half in the morning, hour, half at night, that way you can go 100% the whole time. Okay? What the issue becomes is when you spend that much time on a basketball court, first of all, like I just said, you're not going to be getting, you're not going to be getting better the way that you could be if you were actually maximizing your skills. Because I'm guessing out of that eight hours, you probably are not spending that much time working on game like situations. You're not spending a lot of time working on game speed, shots, game speed, ball handling. You just aren't, because you just can't, like, physically, it's not possible. It's not feasible that you actually are doing that. So what you need to understand is that it's about more than just putting in a ton of work, okay? There's diminishing returns. At some point. There's. Think of it as like, you know, there's a. If you have a graph, right, where you know you're going up, the amount of work and the results that you get are going to go, and then eventually the results are going to taper off and eventually to go downhill because of this situation. So we talked about, you're working out eight hours a day, and then the injuries come along. Well, I'm not saying they're directly related, but it's a good chance that you're spending eight hours into basketball court. That. That's not great. That's not great for your knees at all. You'd be better off spending an hour playing basketball than going to lift later, than going to play another hour of basketball. You give your body more time to recover. You probably have more time to eat better. You probably be able to have more time to stretch and do all these things. Now, he said he does do stretching, which is important, but also stretching is not going to just correct your overtraining. That's probably what this is. In my opinion, from my perspective, it's just over training. So look at how you're approaching it and understand that maybe the approach isn't right. Okay, A thousand shots a day. Here's the thing about that, and this is a huge thing. I see people, oh, I shoot 800 shots a day. A thousand a day. If you're shooting a thousand shots a day, chances are all you're doing is block training. Okay? So, like we talked about that, if all you do is block training, you're not going to be very good. And you might be a great shooter in practice because you shoot a thousand shots a day. When games come around, you're not going to be a great shooter because you don't have to make any reads in practice. And now you actually have to make reads and adjust and do all these different things you'd have to do before. Okay? So you cannot just be the guy who's going to shoot a thousand shots a day. Instead, why not shoot 200 shots, but have all those shots be game situation shots? To me, that makes a lot more sense. If I'm working out with somebody, if I'm working on myself. That's what we're doing. We're gonna get 100. We're gonna make. We're getting 200 game situation shots where we're making reads, where we're shooting from different areas, different, different zones on the floor. Like, we're working on a whole bunch of different things. Okay? As opposed to just being like, okay, gonna shoot 200 shots from the corner, 200 shots from the wing, 200 from the. And then that's my workout for the day. That. That. That shouldn't be. That shouldn't be the case. Okay? So let's just talk about that. In general, we see the downsides to it. Number one, diminishing returns you said you were playing what, six, six minutes a game. So obviously a thousand shots for you weren't doing too much, right? And number two, you're getting hurt. So we need to stop with this whole, if I work eight hours a day on basketball, I'm going to become great at it. That's not how it works. And anybody who tells you that is misleading you. Okay? The best way to get better at basketball is to, is to take a dedicated amount of time and go at game speed the entire time to get those game results. Go for an hour and a half, go for 90 minutes, because you can go at full speed the whole time. You can actually get better in that hour and a half than you would that, that, that eight hours. Chances are out of those eight hours, you're probably wasting seven of those by not going game speed or by doing whatever you. You're probably wasting seven hours. Okay? Now you're just on a basketball court for what? For nothing. And that's leading to this, to the injuries and all the other things that we don't want, okay? So adjust your mindset with that. And instead of thinking that you have to be a person who's going to do that, approach it like that, approach it like, listen, it's all about maximizing my skills, not about, I put in eight hours a day. Doesn't matter. Doesn't matter how many time you put in, doesn't matter how much how many shots you put up. It matters what you can do in games. That's all that matters. Okay? So that, that's the first thing. So adjust that. Stop doing the thousand a day. That's a bad thing. But I get questions like this. I'm not trying to single out this guy because he, I mean, he's the only one who only wants. One of the few is being honest. And I appreciate that because a lot of people aren't honest about that. But the thing I'll say is a lot of people will try and promote them. Working up for eight hours a day is like, oh, like that's, oh, like that's why I'm, you know, I work for eight hours a day. Like, you know, I really am dedicated to it. You might be. Your focus is in the wrong area, though. And this is a trap players fall into is they think that the more time they put in, the better they're going to get. That's just not how it works. Okay? So you need to understand that when we talk about the importance of actually, of actually getting results in games, okay, so adjust the way that you think on that. You know, the other thing is, is, you know, you have to. Again, you're talking about it now. You said, you know, when I, I don't, I make sure that I, I don't care about what people think. I have the mindset of not caring what others think and only focus on my goals and dreams. But you also said before, like, if I was a scout, this is what the scout might think. And I think, but so you gotta stop that. First of all, like, you're worrying about what scouts are thinking. And, and I mean, again, you're what, 15? Like that doesn't. What matters right now is you getting, first of all, getting healthy. Second of all, maximizing your abilities. Okay? That's where everything is gonna start from. So you need to approach it in that manner. So kind of, again, to recap, a thousand shots a day, that's just not gonna be effective for you. Now if you're able to split up your workouts, maybe you, maybe you work out three times a day. You work out once in the morning, once in the afternoon, and once at night. And Maybe you make 300 shots at each workout. Maybe you get 900 makes in a day. That's cool, as long as you're not going for three hours every time. Because it's just not going to. Eventually you're going to get diminishing returns from that. Okay, you need to be able to go at full speed the whole time. Push yourself, be fatigued, make it game like, so that it translates over the game. Okay? Don't like, don't fall in the trap of thinking, I got to work over eight hours a day. This is not how basketball works. You don't play basketball for eight hours. You play it for an hour. So you gotta be able to produce results within that hour. Your training should mimic games and make it harder. That's what the whole, this whole episode's been about. So understand that it's not always about working harder. It's about working smart and working hard. Because right now you're working hard, but you're not working very smart. And that's gonna lead to all these problems down the line. So that's an important thing for you to understand. I want you guys to right now go to the top link in my description and, and get my free elite perimeter score workout. We're going to work on a bunch of different skills that you need to have if you want to be an elite player in the perimeter. Make sure you guys check it out completely free. Click the link. I'll send it right to you.