SECTION 3 THE MENTAL SIDE

SECTION 3 THE MENTAL SIDE In all my years of training, I have come to the very valuable conclusion that effective training, and, for lack of better terms, why we have been so successful, sometimes has NOTHING to do with basketball, lifting weights, technique, balance, etc. As a trainer and coach, the most critical thing you can do is create an environment for your players and develop a relationship with them that makes them WANT to get better, and inspires them to push themselves every day. As trainers and coaches, we all know we are delivering knowledge and wisdom to players that will go way beyond the basketball court. People as me all the time, How do you get so many NBA players, international players and teams, and young players from all over the world to come to Impact? My answer is very simple: They WANT to train here. Think of any great academic class you have ever had, or any of your great experiences in sports. What makes it so great and so memorable is the teacher, or coach, or trainer. Some how, some way, they made you WANT to be there and WANT to give your best. You could have all the basketball knowledge in the world and, if you fail in this area, you will not be very successful. Your players have to FEEL your passion to get them better. It is true that it is also the player s responsibility to put in the work and to be fully committed. On thing you will hear in our facilities and also when I am asked why a player is so good, or has improved so much, is He loves the grind. The Grind is that daily routine that many great players learn to love - actually great players in ANY sport love it: the sweating, the running, repetitions, the weights, the stretching, the soreness, and ALL ELSE that they encounter during the course of a training day. We ask young players all the time Do you love the grind? And, if they do not, how to they expect to get better? I was sitting with Kevin Garnett after a workout one day and he was talking about the day he decides to retire. He said, I will know when it is time to stop playing when I stop loving the grind... so simple, but so true! I have a 12 year old son who I challenge all the time to see whether or not he really loves it. Of course his grind is at a different level than KG s, but the concept is the same. The biggest thing we must realize as coaches and trainers is that it is OUR job to get EVERY player to love the grind. How to do that takes many different shapes. So what this does this mean?? How is this accomplished? It is not about hollering and screaming, or cheering and clapping. It is a very delicate mix of your own personality with the understanding of all the elements we will discuss below. In terms of incorporating your own personality, how many times have assistant coaches gone on to take head coaching jobs and failed because they tried to coach like their former boss? Happens all the time--and the reason why it happens is that the best coaches and trainers coach and train in the way they live their lives. This is not intended to put so much focus on the outside lives of trainers, but in a sense, it matters. Someone who is able to be himself and create an ideal training environment, then who adds the skills and knowledge of the game and how to develop players, will achieve tremendous success. His or her players will see amazing results. We will discuss a combination of things that I feel are truly critical to developing players. I have observed trainers all over the world trying to get results from players without demanding consistency, not creating a great training environment, not being efficient in the workout, not making the players work at game speed, and failing to educate their players on the need to love the grind. As a trainer or coach, it cannot just be a booked hour. If that is all it is, then you are in the wrong business. Sure it gets tough training hour after hour, believe me, I know having spent 17 years on the court and in the weight room. In our facilities, people say, training is contagious. Many times, we get parents of players or friends of our NBA guys asking to workout 1

as well - the environment is just that positive. We create it to be this way and although most of you do not have the luxury we have of controlling your own building, you are definitely responsible for finding a way to make your atmosphere equally as contagious. Consistency of Training One of the most important factors in whether or not a development program is successful is the CONSISTENCY of the training. No player can achieve great success working out for a week or 2, taking a week or 2 off, then coming back. NBA players are really not the model here, as they have much more time to train than any normal player we will train, or you will train at various levels. But, no matter what level the player is, his or her training must be consistent. With as busy as many young players are these days with school teams, AAU, travel ball, etc, it is not easy to set a consistent schedule. But, as a trainer or coach wanting your players to improve, you must push as hard as you can to make the schedule consistent. In our yearly planning section we will offer ideas on WHEN to train the hardest based on the players other commitments. Again, as I said above, it is up to you to make sure that player WANTS to work on his or her game as much as possible. With so many factors here, there is really not a set model. To be creative and to assure consistency, coaches can set aside a certain amount of practice time each day for individual skill work. Every year we see certain NBA players make a special commitment and begin training earlier than most. And, every year, we see these same players having great seasons. As I mentioned, I also coach and train young players from 10-14 years old. I tell them these stories about certain guys and how hard they worked and the young players begin to believe in the training process. They don t train as much as the NBA players in the offseason, but what I tell them is to commit themselves for 20-30 minutes, 4x per week to developing their skills. As a trainer and coach, scheduling these workouts within your team structure, or scheduling your clients for training sessions, is really critical. As you stress about your limited time with the team, always remember that as their skills improve, your team will improve. It is well worth the investment. Environment and Efficiency of Training Sessions I really believe that this is an overlooked area of training and player development. Energy is everything. Workouts without energy are tough: tough for the coaches and tough for the players. But we can control this, and not only with our own energy. How the gym is set up is important. How the drills are structured is critical. Is the player warmed up? Is the training area clear and ready for training? In our facilities, we use rebounders for every drill, and usually 2 basketballs. Our rebounders have energy, they get the ball back quickly to the player. If you don t have any other rebounders, then you need to get the ball back to the player as quickly as possible. I have seen many workouts where the trainer or coach is always checking his phone, reading texts, or distracted. These things take away from the environment of training and lessen the effectiveness of everything you are trying to accomplish. When it is time to train, create an intense environment of business. Lock down all cell phones and make the court or area around the hoop where they player is working out, look like an official training ground. Take pride in all areas of the workout. Make the passes sharp to the player, speak loudly and create energy. Make him or her feel that the session is of extreme importance. While we believe that what we do at Impact, by combining all aspects of the game to deliver a complete training program, is as good as it gets in quality, we always know that the environment of our workouts are at a PRO level at all times. As we tell our young players, We will train you like a PRO, and we have to stand behind this at all times. I have seen members of my staff run workouts for 8-9 year old girls and deliver the same passion and atmosphere as they do when the work out a group of NBA guys. They prepare the court the same 2

CREATING THE RIGHT TRAINING way and they coach and train with the same passion and energy - and detail. Is it easy to do so? No way. But to maximize all the basketball training knowledge we will give you, it is a necessary piece. Efficiency The other key piece is being efficient, especially when you are training your whole team or a larger group of kids. By efficiency we mean making sure your players are using their workout time well. This is a big problem with training all over the world. Players are often spending a lot of time on the court, but getting little done. We joke all the time, that we can figure out a way to give 100 kids a great workout on 2 baskets! This might be stretching it a bit, but we have really mastered running drills for multiple players and for entire teams, but still managing to create an individual improvement environment. In most cases, this will be your challenge, and in our Drill-Sequencing section, we will talk in detail about how to do this. What can t happen is 10 kids standing in a line with 1 ball, waiting for the first person to finish his or her drill. 1 working with 9 standing will not work in our system. Planning is critical. Know how many people you will be training and how many baskets you will have. How many rebounders you may have. How many extra people who can maybe set screens or play some defense. Keep the pace of the workout rapid. You may be the only coach or trainer with the group, but it is still possible to structure the workouts to keep things rolling and keep the efficiency high. To improve, players need repetitions and it is up to us as coaches and trainers to structure the workouts to allow them to get the necessary reps. One of the other critical aspects to keeping the workouts efficient, is resisting the urge to over-coach. I have watched workouts for years where the players cannot get a rhythm going because the coach or trainer stops the workout after every few reps to talk and make coaching points. It is 100% necessary to correct your layers when their footwork is off, or their follow-through is short, or they are taking the wrong angles on a move. But, the reality is that on nearly every rep, something could be said. If coaches continue to stop and talk, 2 things happen. 1. The players use up an entire hour or more listening to the coach talk and not getting nearly enough work in. 2. The player hears SO much chatter that he learns to block it out and the boy who cried wolf affect comes into play. We train players 365 days a year. We know that players need to be corrected often. But we also know that chattering in their ear every time they shoot the ball becomes counter-productive and really runs the workout. This is especially tough when an entire team is working our or a larger group. The other players end up standing around too much also. Remember, we want our workouts to go between 45 and 60 minutes, but HARD. Spending 2 hours on the court is too much and really it is impossible if the workout is structured properly and at game speed. When young players tell me I worked out for 3 hours yesterday, my first thought is that the workout must not have been very good for them to be out there that long. Efficient and effective is how we work. Players have limited time. So how do we manage to correct and teach while resisting the urge to stop the workout every 2 minutes?... very carefully and in a few different ways. Certain verbal cues can be made during the course of an intense drill to correct WHILE the player is drilling. Things like widen your base, or stop leaning back, or get lower, are easily inserted as guys are repeating. In these cases, you learn to speak quickly and forcefully to get your point in without disrupting the rhythm of the workout. In cases where the flaw is something more complicated, like a mechanical problem in the release of the shot, or the players base and balance are far from correct, you address those issues during free throw breaks and in other breaks during the workout. Then, and maybe most importantly, you make a note for that particular 3

player that he or she needs to spend extra time after the workout or in another session. That additional session is where you can slow the player down and really teach to correct the flaw. Now, this player is inserted back into the main workout flow, and he or she has corrected errors and is not performing at a high level with proper technique. One other thing we use (and we will discuss when we talk about drill sequencing) is that if you as a coach or trainer notice that a particular player is not getting low on his rip-through and dribble pull up, or has a bad angle on that same move, you can create a 3-4 drill sequence that may take no more than 10-15 minutes to address this issue. You can have that player come a bit early for practice or stay a bit later to get this done. What this does is not only corrects their technique, but forces them to mentally focus on that particular skill the next time they play. Every day in our facilities, our players, NBA down to youth, play - either 5 on 5 or 3 on 3. As coaches and trainers, we take notes during the games of things players are not doing well or need improvement on. We then create short sessions for these players to work on the areas we identified. Not only does this WORK and lead to creating better players, but it adds a tremendous amount or organization and structure to our program. As we say all the time, we don t just train players as a general population, we train individuals to make them better. This process allows us to stay efficient and focused on each individual. Over 17 years of developing players, I have had many experienced that have contributed to this philosophy. Maybe the most glaring is my 16 years with Al Harrington. When Al was in the early part of his career with Indiana, entering the NBA when he was 18, we talked after every practice, every day. We even obtained the practice film and viewed it together. From every practice we selected 2 things that Al could have done better - hit mid-range shots, handled the ball better, hit more 3 s - anything or any part of his game. We then had him dedicate 15 minutes before the next practice to the drills we created to address these areas. What it produced was a player who got better EVERY YEAR and has had a tremendous career. We then began doing the same for Billups, Garnett, and all the new young guys we train. We recently viewed film with Serge Ibaka to determine our goals for the off-season and structure his plan and areas of focus. This is NOT reserved for NBA guys. It can be easily done for high schools, AAU teams, middle schools, and any team. Think of how much better your team can get if you take the time to formalize this with your players. Think of how much better of a trainer you can be if you take the time to identify these areas with your clients. This is a huge tool to master. We will discuss it more when we discuss how to build the workouts and how to assess your player s strengths and weaknesses. Intensity Level Establishing the right intensity level in the workout is critical to improvement. We don t go so far as saying everything has to be done at game speed, because there is a time a place for some slowing down and teaching in order that players get their technique correct. However, when it comes time to execute our drill sections and create a workout, we will discuss the importance of doing the drills and all the sequences at game speed. Though it sounds overly simple, to be able to execute a move or a shot or any part of the game during the game, it must be drilled at game speed. I often see players come out on the court and shoot around for a certain period of time, moving around the court and repeating different shots from different spots, but it is noticeable that it is at 50% effort. As we say, and as you should say to your players, our workouts at Impact are about business. We push our players to give their best and go through EVERY repetition at game speed - during certain sections of our workouts. Jab steps, 1-dribble pull-ups, combo-moves, curl cuts, and all other drilling sets must be done as the player WANTS to do them in the game. Cuts must be real cuts, and dribbles must be strong, game-like dribbles. Or the player s ability to improve is limited. As we will see in the drill-sequencing and workout planning sections, we often insert a defender, even to play token defense, to create game-like action in the drills. Remember, as a coach or trainer you are doing your best to create a game atmosphere in the training session. However 4

it is accomplished, as coaches and trainers, we must constantly push our players to understand the importance of drilling hard in the workouts. It is truly what can set your workouts apart from all others and also produce the ultimate level of improvement. One thing to note here: intensity levels will also be controlled in our workouts as well as the duration of the maximum intensity levels. In our world, when Serge Ibaka shows up in June to begin training to get ready for the season, that begins in November, we cannot just begin going at maximum intensity for 2 hours each day. We must control the amount of time he spends at the high level. But, we do not want him going through his moves and working on his weaknesses at 80%, so we go at 100%, but cut the total duration down. At the same time, when Serge is in season and playing a large amount of minutes, he still cannot work for 90-120 minutes during his workouts. So these workouts address certain areas of improvement and may be cut even shorter. This is an important part of a successful program. If you are a high school coach and doing skill development with your team in May, after the season and before the summer, you should structure the workouts differently than if it were September. And when you are trying to continue to improve your players during the season, but many of the players are playing big minutes, you should structure the workouts in a similar way. We will discuss all these points in more detail later in terms of how to coordinate it all for different times of the year. But, the most critical point to understand in terms of workout intensity is, that to get better, the players have to go hard. They have to work at game speed. Don t let your players come out on the court and go through the motions for 90 minutes. Plan the workout and get them to believe and understand that they need to sharp and focused. I have learned a lot from my NBA guys on this topic over the years. Garnett, Billups, Fisher, and any of the other guys that have established themselves as great, hall-of-fame players, all demonstrate this concept to the fullest. Their reps are extremely hard and at game speed. In fact, I spend more time backing them down from going too hard than I do getting them to go harder! Demand that your players do the same. Defining The Grind After so many years of working with different players, different personalities, and also different ages, I really do believe that some players inherently LOVE the grind and others do not. However, what I also know, and what we as coaches and trainers MUST know, is that there is an even bigger group of players who will learn to love the grind if we teach them well. If we can create the right environment, keep them motivated, be organized and TRACK their progress rather than just going through the motions of each workout, players will learn to love the day-to-day grind required to improve. Remember, we do not only coach and train skills and movements, we also coach and train the mind. As I said above, the grind is a term we use, and most of our great NBA players use, to refer to the never-ending effort to become a better player, take care of their bodies, and keep their mind strong and focused. We understand that a high school player we train from New York is in a much different situation than an NBA player, or even a college player, so our expectations are adjusted accordingly with each different player. It is up to you to consider what a realistic training and work schedule is for your players and therefore define their grind. Why the term grind? Well, because as we tell any player who comes through our system, improving as a player and striving to be great is an every-day, difficult thing. It will require an amazing amount of focus and direction. I think back to my days in college basketball: 8 years from 1989-1997. I think back to the days when practices got long, days all seemed so long, the players bodies were tired and they still needed to function and produce in the classroom as students. At Indiana, that particular team became, at that time, the winningest team in Big Ten history, winning 2 Championships and reaching the Final Four in 1992. What I remember about that team is that it was a group of guys who bought into, and learned 5

to love, the grind. They didn t complain about the long practices, they brought their best energy every day. They also came early to practice to work on skills, and stayed late. They never missed weight-lifting sessions and they made every effort to take care of their bodies and their business off the court. A team of players with this approach will equate to a team who maximizes his or her potential - as a team, and also as individual players. From this team, 6 players went on to the NBA - solidifying their love of the grind, as well as their high levels of talent. When we as coaches or trainers work with players of any age, we cannot forget that getting them to understand and love the grind is equally as important as how we are teaching the jump shot or ball handling necessary to be a good player. For a 5th grade player looking to train hard, this may mean getting him to spend 30 minutes at home, 3 times per week, working on his off hand. Or getting a high school player to stop eating foods that are not good for him and commit to eating higher quality foods. make money from the game compared to all the youth in the world who love to play, is very, very small. So for the masses, it becomes a valuable vehicle to help people learn to understand, and execute, being successful in life. How many times as coaches and trainers has a player who we worked with 10-15 years ago come back to say hello and shared stories about how some of the things we did in our training, or coaching, helped them to achieve their success? For us at Impact, it happens all the time, and it is a testament to our commitment to training, and our personal love of the grind. At our Academies in Las Vegas and Florida, where we have the luxury of having high school and post-graduate kids stay with us for 7-9 months, we constantly see players improve tremendously once they buy into the total program. In fact, we receive numerous comments from parents every year around the time their sons go home for the Holiday Break referring to how they cannot believe ho focused and committed their son is to the grind. They eat better. They go to sleep earlier to make sure they are well rested. They spend 15-20 minutes when they have it working on their games and especially their deficiencies. What they also comment and one of things I really love about our jobs, and our program, is that this focus has also carried over to the other areas of the players lives. They are more organized off the court. More committed to being on time and responsible in everything they do... and overall, just better. We all coach and train because we love the game. But how good we are always comes down to the question of how much we truly love making players, and making people better. Basketball is a tremendous game and one that has been a major part of my life for over 25 years. But as we all know, the percentage of players who will 6