Players lose confidence in games because they practice alone, not against real defenders. Ethan Khoza and his guest say the fix is simple: play live, train with teammates, and simulate pressure. Trust your reps instead of overthinking.
If you have a player, for example, this is kind of a broad question, but you can kind of take it wherever. When you have players who maybe struggle connecting what they do in practice to games, maybe they feel really confident in workouts or practices, but when it comes to the actual game, like, they freeze up or they're not confident or whatever. Like, what's your kind of message to them? Maybe you've had situations that you can speak to on that. And what. What overall is like, what's your process for players who might lack that confidence?
Yes. I mean, overall, I would say a lot of that comes from players just working out by themselves all day. And then they step into a game, there's real defense. Like, they're not prepared for it. Like, so, for example, just to give you a quick example, so like, when I was preparing for the conference, right, speaking in front 120 people, that's like me just standing in the mirror and practicing to myself all day long in front of the mirror. But the second I step out in front of everyone, I'm going to be super fucking nervous. So those two environments are totally different. So if I wanted to practice my speech in the best way, which is kind of what I did, was I was trying to present it to real people. So, like, I would have three or four of my buddies sitting in here and I'd present it to them. And that gave me a little bit of, like, nerves, just because it was awkward. So I was practicing in, like, a more specific environment to what I would be seeing during the conference. So players can take that same exact mindset and thought process and okay, you want to get better in games, you got to play more games. You got to play against real defense. Like, and some players are just, like, overthinkers in general. So do things where you don't overthink, AKA playing in a game. So it's like depending on who you are, that answer could be different. But I think a lot of it stems from players practicing by themselves. Six, seven days a week. They go to a trainer, the trainer's doing them, making them do reps on air all day long. You haven't seen a defender in seven days, and then you step into a game. What do you expect, right? So it's like, I think for most players, just play and work out with people as often as you possibly can.
Yeah, yeah, no, definitely. And it's funny because, like, I. So a couple players that I coach, like, on my team, they are massive overthinkers. And you can see it, like, they'll come off the floor and they'll want to start like talking about like, oh, like, I don't know, like I just shot the ball and I'm like, it just, you got like, shut up. Like, you can't talk. Like, you just gotta, you just gotta forget about it. Because that to me is like, that's like the worst that you could possibly do is like start thinking about, hey, is, you know, is my elbow right? Like, is like that's what they start doing. Like, if you, if that happens, like, I've seen it so many times. Like you're, that's where things start to really, that's where you're in trouble because now you don't trust any of the work that you've done. You're starting to really think about everything that you do. And it almost turns you from being in a state where basketball, like you can't be thinking about it. You have to be playing. And it puts you in that thinking state where things are just become robotic and that's where you start to mess up was when you actually try a little bit harder. I think that's the, that's the, the disconnect for players sometimes. So going with that, you have anything else that you would add to important things that players should know when it comes to their own development? Maybe they, maybe they don't always have a trainer. Maybe they don't have a trainer at all. What are some things for them to think about, some things that they can take to improve their, their development?
Going off that same thing we're just talking about. I'd say read Inner Game of Tennis. That's a great book for them to read to understand that concept we just talked about. But I would just like be a student. Like, I know a lot of people say that shit, but it's like basketball is not just play basketball and then you're done, right? It's play basketball. Focus on your sleep, focus on your diet, focus on your mentality. Are you confident? Are you not confident? Maybe you got to meditate, maybe you got a journal. Like, it's a, it's a very holistic approach. Don't just think about playing basketball and then going home or playing basketball and lifting. Like there's a lot more that goes into it. So if you want to be the best player, dive into all those different things and just try to be really self aware about what you need as a player. There's so much access to information out there. If they're listening to this, I'm sure that they can go and find any answer to any question that they have somewhere on the Internet. So if you don't know something, if you want advice on something, you can go and find that answer if you really want to. So take advantage of the time that you're living in with the crazy access to information, and go figure out what you need to figure out.
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