Rooted in Habit

This week was another week of preparation for the important games coming up, but with a bit of a taper in terms of actual workload.

No real games this week besides a friendly on Saturday, so there wasn’t an external motivator for the week.

No short term motivation made the trainings boil down to each players’ intrinsic motivation.

What makes you get up in the morning?

What makes you try to get better each day?

Why do you want more?

I pondered a lot of good questions this week…

Why I Do This:

Normally, I do not get emotional when I read comments. I mean I do have a reaction, but it’s rarely as intense as it was to reading this one.

This made me tear up as I read it with my business partner.

This Atypical community and this Atypical brand was not built for notoriety or for money or anything like that.

It was built for one reason and one reason only:

Impact.

My dream is to inspire people to approach their journey and struggles with their own Atypical mindset.

I want more people to maneuver through life not through the lense of ‘wow, this is difficult’ or ‘why is this happening to me?’ but rather through the lense of ‘wow, this is pushing me’ and ‘how can I grow from this?'.

This comment gave me hope that I can have lasting impact through this Atypical brand.

I’m fired up haha

Thoughts From This Week

A Tree With Roots

Playing a sport is often all-consuming. It becomes everything we think about, everything we talk about with our friends, and everything we aspire to in our lives. This nature of sports especially at a young age is why I see so many athletes get caught in the nasty mindset of performance identity.

What is performance identity?

Simply put, its this self-deprecating mindset in which who you are is determined by what you do and how you perform.

The reason it is all too common in athletes is because we are constantly being evaluated. Someone is always telling us who we are based on their observations. This performance identity mindset always fails us because we always fail as athletes. We are never good enough to someone else’s standard.

It is inevitable and a essential part of our growth as athletes.

When failure happens with this mindset, it is crushing and can derail our development, but with the Atypical mindset, failure is valued and respected as opportunity.

This is where we stand our ground and draw our line in the sand.

Athletes with a performance identity mindset fear failure because it threatens who they believe they are.

Athletes with a healthy Atypical mindset welcome failure because it only gives them feedback on how they can improve.

This mindset difference begins at our belief of who we are.

An Atypical mindset pre determines who you want to be and reverse engineers the daily habits that reinforces your understanding of self.

For example, if I want to be a decisive and confident basketball player, then the criteria for my daily habits and actions boils down to the question:

“Is this what a decisive and confident basketball player would do?”

“How would a decisive and confident basketball player do “___X___”?

Every time you ask this question and respond in accordance through your daily habits, you are strengthening that belief in who you are.

Your daily actions and intentions over a long period of time determine who you are and not isolated performances or games or whatever it may be.

This African proverb embodies how an Atypical mindset views failure and challenges:

You determine whether the dexterity of your roots by what you place your identity in.

Daily action and intention make strong and robust roots because you have the decision power on what they are.

Performance and results make weak and brittle roots because they are inconsistent and outside of your control.

Predetermine who you are by making a simple choice each morning.

“I am ___X___.”

Then, act accordingly, and do it every single day.

Now, it is who you are.

Your roots are strong.

You fear nothing.

Everything is opportunity for more.

Now, you are Atypical.

Creativity Must Be Cultivated

Each year I have ebbs and flows throughout the season in which some weeks I feel like I have an absolute bag and others I have zero moves.

Sometimes basketball feels fresh and colorful and others times its stale and bland. When basketball is feeling bland that is usually when my performance plummets and my joy for the game dims.

If you have played any level of organized basketball, then I know this resonates with you.

Are there ways to combat this?

It can be difficult when the coach or program you play for is strict and military-like.

I get it.

I have played for plenty of ‘tyrant’ coaches throughout my career.

Even when your team trainings are structured this way, it is your job to find time and energy to train “free”.

What I mean by “free” is without overly-restrictive bounds. The bounds should only be restrictive in terms of game-translation, but other than that the idea is to train with decision freedom.

For example, at team practice, we don’t work on any 1-on-1 situations, but are expected when we do have an advantageous 1-on-1 situation that we are prepared to exploit it.

If I don’t get some reps simulating these scenarios then I feel like I have no moves and can’t think creatively. It’s more a lack of being in that situation rather than “not having the moves”.

So my solution this week was to play 1-on-1 for most of my two individual skill workouts. I had my man Tiago grab the defender sticks and we just played. I didn’t have a strict dribble count or spacing limitation, but I stayed within reason for both. The goal was for me to simply put the ball in the bucket and find as many solutions to that problem as possible.

As the workout progressed, I felt my game “unlocking” again. My brain was remembering the solutions and options that I always have had.

These predominantly 1-on-1, little structure, skill workouts are my solution to when basketball feels stagnant and rigid.

They work for me because I created an environment where creativity was expected. There was not expected outcomes or narrowed options.

Simply a matter of finding your solutions and going for it.

Free your game by freeing your environment.

Then go back into the stricter environment but with an unlocked game.

The structure will begin to feel more like guidelines then rigid commands.

YouTube Drop

Two drops, but very different:

The first is a Realistic Day in the Life that dives into the minute details and rationales of my days as a pro basketball player. This vlog is much more educational and insightful into what my life is really like.

The second is the story of playing against the best team in all of Europe, Real Madrid. I explain the huge challenge in front of me and then take you with me as I navigate it. Make sure to watch the whole thing to see the highly requested game breakdown of our performance.

Enjoy guys!

I’ll Leave You With This:

I know I promised more X’s and O’s at the end of the last newsletter, but I’ve been finding these newsletters to be more valuable for insights into my mindset and thoughts rather than in-depth basketball breakdowns.

Feel free to comment anything you guys would want me to hit on in future newsletters and I’ll do my best to get to it.

This community has been really exploding these last few weeks, so if you are new here, welcome.

Welcome to a place where growth is prioritized and excellence is strived for.

It will be a pleasure to develop alongside you.

Cheers,

Trey