Kelsey HigginsonSports Nutrition Coach and Founder at Clutch Day Coaching

I wish I would have known this before I played college basketball

25 Mar 2025 · 1 min

Watch on YouTube

1:17

In this reflective YouTube monologue, a former Division II basketball player recounts the four key actions he wishes he had taken as a teenager to improve his college recruitment and athletic development. First, he emphasizes locking in proper nutrition and hydration to maximize physical gains. Second, he advocates for strict sleep hygiene by removing the phone from the bedroom to ensure restorative rest. Third, he highlights the importance of developing a strong mindset through sports‑psychology podcasts and books. Fourth, he advises training in a gym populated by athletes who are bigger, stronger, and more talented, so that constant competition forces continual improvement. He concludes that implementing these four strategies would have dramatically altered his recruitment trajectory.

Chapters

I always had the biggest dream of going to play at the biggest Division I school possible, but I didn't make that dream. I played Division II, which was really fun and I enjoyed, but here's what I would do different if I could get a chance to redo it again and go back to like my 14-year-old self. The first thing I would do is lock in on my nutrition and my hydration. I was leaving so many gains and so much potential on the table by not doing that. That's the first thing I would do. The second thing I would do is put my phone away when it came to bedtime. I'd leave it in the kitchen so it wouldn't even tempt me. That way I could get the sleep that I needed to recover, to recuperate, to be able to get up the next morning and show up to my workouts super high energy and super ready to go. The third thing I would do is start listening to sports psychology podcasts or reading the books. That's one big hole in my development, I believe, is— was my mindset. So that's something I would definitely focus on. And then the fourth thing I would do is go find a gym full of athletes who are better, bigger, more talented than you, where like when you walk in, you almost feel embarrassed for being there because you are going to rise to the level of their competition. You don't want to be the best one in the gym. You want to be the worst one in the gym because that means you're going to be getting better and better and better, and it's going to help you rise to the level of that competition. If I did all these 4 things, I really believe that my recruitment process would have been a whole lot different.