Make The Choice

Two full weeks of practice and two important league tests…

I am grateful to finally be 100% again, and able to ramp up my extra workouts outside of my team practices.

Personally, I am the type of player that needs these extra hours to iron out the kinks in my game and really fine tune my skill set.

Not all players are like this, but for me it makes a huge difference.

Elite performance is such a fragile thing to hold and harness.

It takes constant evaluation of systems, thoughts, and preparation.

These two weeks I was deep in the my evaluation bag…

Let me run you through my processing a bit

Why I Do This:

This message stood out to me because it reassured me that my content is doing what I meant for it to do. I never wanted to share my journey or make content to simply create better basketball players (there are already tons of basketball trainers that are really good at their job). I made Atypical to help athletes become better people. I made Atypical to share how I use my sport to better equip me for life outside of sport.

Here at Atypical, we believe that the greater the human, the greater the athlete, so any time spent developing who you are as a person is beneficial to who you are in your sport.

Let’s keep getting better!

Thoughts From This Week

A Foundation of Confidence

As I said above, these past two weeks I checked all my preparation boxes. I put in the extra work outside of my team requirements that I believe is necessary for me to perform.

I got in my skill work after practice and my additional 1 on 1 trainings with Tiago (assistant coach). I went to Pilates on my off day for active recovery. I took all my supplements and wrote my intentions out every morning.

I was consistent as hell both in my actions and my focus (big key to have both).

Now this will not always be the case, but I performed well in both my games. My consistency in my preparation had a lot to do with it.

It did not guarantee strong performances, but it definitely maximized my chances of them.

I felt a bit different in these two games compared to prior weeks.

Did my actual skill set change in 2 weeks? Of course not.

But what did change was the robustness of my confidence.

When I use the term “robustness of my confidence”, I mean the strength of my belief, the sureness of my actions, and the aggressiveness of my approach.

We all have an amount of preparation that we deem necessary for our success.

This changes person to person, challenge to challenge, and even sometimes day to day.

When we meet that amount or “quota” of preparation, something gets strengthened in our mindset.

We are more sure, more aggressive, more direct, more…

Confident.

So when someone asks, how can I become more confident they must do three things:

1. Determine the challenge they are facing

2. Calculate the necessary preparation needed to feel ready for this challenge

3. Do the damn preparation.

This is the blueprint to a foundation of confidence.

The good news: every time you complete the above blueprint, the strength of your confidence compounds.

The bad news: every time you understand the blueprint and willingly don’t do it, the strength of your confidence erodes at the same exponential rate it would have compounded.

So when you hear the phrase, “the separation is in the preparation”, what is really being said is that the difference between success and failure is robustness of your confidence.

Did you do the work necessary to have the privilege of being confident?

If yes, the hard work is done.

Now it’s just a matter of going out and being the greatness that you have set yourself up to be.

Go be great.

Commit to your foundation.

The Art of Competing

If we want to be elite performers, then at bare minimum we have to be elite competitors.

Competition does not have to be what social media paints it to be, the trash talking, the “too small” gestures, the 3-point gun to the opponents head, all that bullshit.

Sadly still that is a form of competition.

Healthy? Ehhh, maybe for a select few.

How I would suggest an aspiring pro to compete? Not even a bit.

Competition in its rawest and I believe healthiest form is closer to the above quote by Phil Knight.

It is sole focus on a singular goal, complete dismissal of all else, and done so with unrelenting commitment and effort.

The key? The goal must be to beat the person in the mirror.

This is where competition becomes an art form.

It’s not when Kyrie Irving starts chirping with a fan in the front row, but rather when he has a 40-point night on near perfect shooting and it looks like he is on the court all by himself.

It is when the defenders are irrelevant.

It is when his body moves effortlessly in perfect synchronization with his mind.

Decision and action become one.

All he sees is the path to winning, everything else has faded out of focus.

There are many different terms for this phenomenon or experience, some call it the zone, a flow state, or even the “runner’s high”.

As performers we crave this flow state, all of our training is for as a many of these moments as we can find.

Competition with an opponent sets the stage; competition with yourself propels you into it.

All this being said, my point is this.

Be an absolute dawg, the absolute fiercest competitor you can be, and understand that the highest level of competing forgets your opponent and puts you face to face with yourself.

So if you find yourself getting caught up in the “rah-rah”, egotistical trash talking, know you are more often than not hurting your chances to enter the flow state you crave.

Tune out the noise.

Narrow in on your goal.

And go win the battle against your previous best.

Atypical Principle #3

Build Your Life

In this episode, Carlie and I showed how different our days look and how we navigate both of us working and trying to pursue our professional goals.

It is our choice on how we build our life together.

We make the decIsions.

We take the action.

You too have the power to make decisions and action over your life.

It may not look as drastic as moving 6,000 miles away from home, but maybe it’s going to the gym before school because you want to improve your basketball skills.

Something you want to do because it will lead to the life you want to live.

You have the power to shape your life.

Do some people have worse starting spots? No doubt, and its unfair.

But, life is not fair, and you still have your chance right in front of you.

Take it.

Build the life you dream of.

I’ll Leave You With This:

Life is full of choices.

A lot of the time we relatively know the outcome beforehand of these choices, especially the smaller ones.

Even so, our natural tendency is to make these choices based on how we feel in that moment.

We want easy, convenient and comfortable.

What if we said, f*ck that natural tendency, and made our choices based on the outcome we want to happen…

You want to be a pro basketball player?

Make the choice.

You want to get that d1 scholarship?

Make the choice.

You want to start living Atypical?

Make the choice.

Love you guys and always thankful for y’all,

Trey