A Plant With Responsibilities?

3 weeks of preseason in the books.

A lot of newness and a lot of familiarity.

I am not going to lie… I’ve been tired all the time due to my body and mind readjusting to the grind of the basketball season.

It’s all a part of it.

Oh yeah I almost forgot, we played our first game.

We were expected to lose because last year when we played this team we got destroyed by 40.

This year…

W.

I like the direction we are headed.

Anyways, enough updating… now let me give you some things I’ve been thinking about lately.

Why I Do This:

Since the conception of the Atypical brand, a main vision has been to inspire others to higher levels of excellence.

True excellence is achieved in the constant pursuit of excellence and not just in the final results.

But…

There is no denying that a championship is excellence.

So, big ups to my lil man for bringing home a championship, I am inspired by your excellence.

Keep building, you are on the path.

Thoughts From This Week

Responsibilities Over Routines

I am a big big fan of hybrid athlete, CEO, and YouTube personality, Nick Bare. For me, he provides a good example of the type of life I want to live after basketball. In the future, not sure the timeline, I hope to be training, running a business, and growing my family in a similar way.

As I was watching one of his vlogs (I’ll link it here),

he said this phrase (scroll to around 5:05) that was very straightforward but stuck with me:

Responsibilities over routines.

He talks about how things had to change immediately when his second child was born. Life happened and he immediately adjusted his routines to fit his life, not the other way around.

When our responsibilities grow or shrink, our systems must adjust.

There is a clear hierarchy of importance (must-do responsibilities then want-do dreams), but even with this hierarchy, we can still accomplish everything that matters to us, if we are willing to adapt.

Let us apply the understanding of this phrase to life as a basketball player. Now each player’s life responsibilities are different, but no matter what they are, if our basketball goals truly matter to us, then we can workshop our routines to ensure that we can still accomplish them.

Whether it is waking up earlier, going on our phones less, being willing to train outside, (these were random things that I know almost every hooper has the option to do), or something else, there are routines available that will take you to your basketball dreams.

The hard truth is that most basketball dreams are possible. Whether they actually come to fruition is more a matter of how far we are willing to inconvenience ourself and how much we are willing to sacrifice. Our dreams can be accomplished alongside our responsibilities.

Acknowledging this truth puts the power back into our hands. It removes the victim mindset that overwhelming circumstance can bring.

Fight it.

Choose to search for the solution instead of focusing on how big our “problems” and responsibilities are.

Like A Plant

I get asked all the time about the ideal “number of shots” to shoot a day or the “number of hours” to train a day.

The mindset it takes to ask these questions is in itself flawed.

There is not a number for either of these answers.

Development does not work like that.

Development is like a plant. It has some required things to grow, sunlight, water, soil, ect., but the actual amount of each is very dynamic and unique to each individual plant.

You water a plant too much, it drowns. You don’t water it enough, it dies. You plant it where it gets too much sunlight, it dies. You plant it where it doesn’t get enough sunlight, it dies.

There are sweet spots for each of the plants needs that only the plant truly knows.

The same goes for our development as a basketball player.

The categories of needs are open for discussion, but for me, I split my basketball development needs into 5 categories:

1. Basic Foundation

   These are general skills that need to be fined tuned daily. Examples of these are simple form shots, ball handling, and finishing. This is the very bottom of the basketball performance pyramid. If you are a beginner this category should be the top priority. In order to make a left hand layup in a game with defense, you have to be able to make a left hand layup alone in practice.

2. Movement

   The best players in the world are the best movers. They move the most efficient thus making the game look effortless. We need to train how we move. There are a lot of interesting drills that can train this, my guys Coach Ross and Bobby Whyte with Good Drills have the best database for these. I’m not even affiliated with them, but I need to give flowers where flowers are due.

3. Weight Room

   This a rather broad category, but it encompasses everything with your body. The weight room is where you get stronger, faster, more explosive, more powerful, more durable, and more.

4. “Invisible”

   The “invisible” category is everything that we don’t normally see in the highlights. Examples are nutrition, sleep, mental health, relationships, emotional intelligence, supplementation, ect. Again, another broad category, but this stuff tends to be the needle mover for more advanced athletes when most their peers have comparable foundational development levels.

5. Live Action

   We need to play. We need to have experience in situations that we will face in the game. This category is the best teacher. It is where we test all of our other training methods. How we feel and play in live competition is our evaluation for our current training methods.

I do not have the answer for how much of each of these categories you need for your training.

The truth is that it changes daily, weekly and monthly because we as athletes are changing daily, weekly and monthly.

Development is fluid and not a “one-size fits all” process.

My advice is this (5+1 Things):

1. Touch all 5 categories multiple times throughout your training weeks.

2. Have a “why” behind every training you do.

3. Prioritize intentions over results.

4. Listen to your body and game.

5. Seek knowledge, information, and growth all the time.

Bonus: Enjoy the journey, its not that serious.

YouTube Drop(s)

I am back with the team, and had some tests to pass to officially start Year 6.

I thought they were interesting and a unique behind the scenes perspective of the pro basketball season.

Check it out:

I have another video that is taking a bit longer to edit than expected, but thats because its a super fun one of the first game of the season against Spanish ACB powerhouse, Unicaja Malaga.

It should be dropped tomorrow.

It will be a good watch for sure.

Atypical Merch Update

The US orders are shipped out, you should have been sent a tracking number and everything if you ordered.

We are officially done with the first ever Atypical merch drop.

A lot of lessons learned.

The second one is about to blow this one out of the water:

• Re-Released First Drop T-Shirt

• Exclusive New T-Shirt Design

• 3-Pack Atypical Shorts (2 Paisley and 1 Solid)

• Dialed in Shipping and Order Fulfillment

It’s going to be better and bigger without the ridiculous fulfillment time.

I promise.

I’ll Leave You With This:

Learning and growing daily.

This is what the atypical mindset is all about.

That is how we maintain over a full season.

Step by step, day by day.

Oh, and toughest opponent of my career on Saturday.

We got Real Madrid…

Trey