NBA Life Behind the Scenes, Balancing Nutrition, Vertical Jump Training, and Much More! (Feat.mrdoitmoving)

Join Bobby Whyte, Coach Ross, and Combo as they dive into a dynamic conversation with special guest Mike Guevara (Mike G), a top-tier performance coach. Discover the truth about:

➡️ Common myths in training young athletes

➡️ The surprising reality of NBA life behind the scenes

➡️ Balancing nutrition, recovery, and performance

➡️ Why jumping higher might not be the key to success

 

Get exclusive insights into coaching philosophies, the challenges of working with pros, and how Mike G’s innovative GBG Hoops app is shaping the next generation of players. 🎯

 

🔥 Whether you’re a player, coach, or basketball fanatic, this episode is packed with knowledge, humor, and inspiration. Don’t miss it! 🚀 Get Good Drills to really improve your game ⬇️ 👇 www.good-drills.com/?el=podcast-episode8 Follow Mike G. Instagram: @mrdoitmoving @gbg.hoops

Episode Transcript

(01:00:00):
We are back with another good drill podcast.
Ross is here. Bobby's back.
I'm back.
He's back from the woods.
The mountains.
The mountains.
There are some woods too.
There are some woods too.
All right. We got to learn about that another day
because we have Mike G in the building.
Congrats on the baby. How are things?
Yeah. Yeah. Things are, you know,

(01:00:22):
first thing that people ask me or, you know,
inquire about is how are you sleeping?
Oh yeah.
I'm not sleeping too bad.
You know, everything has been as predicted.
You know, he's waking up every two, two to three hours,
but you know, I'm enjoying this process.
I'm, I'm embracing it.
I'm in a space where my wife works from home.

(01:00:44):
So we have a little bit of, of
a resource of times, you know,
no one's going to work or anything like that.
So yeah, everything has been good.
And I'd say to sum up fatherhood to this point,
one word would be heavenly.
It's been, it's been amazing.
Yeah. I love it.
Heavenly. I love that.

(01:01:04):
And you actually use the word the process.
So I wanted to get into your process.
You know, you seem to love to learn from working out
on your own, right?
Working on your own self.
Now, knowing what you know now,
would you have done anything different
because you have a football background?
Would you have done anything different
throughout your athletic career,

(01:01:26):
knowing what you know now?
Absolutely everything.
I was in the philosophy early in high school.
We did BFS, bigger, faster, stronger.
Classic.
Get very classic traditional football standard program.

(01:01:48):
Three main lifts, power, clean bench, squat.
That's it. That's all we did.
And we got really good at those three lifts.
And we were a running team in high school.
So it seemed as though it worked out well,
because I think we led the entire county in rushing.
So, and our running back was unbelievably strong

(01:02:09):
in the weight room and it showed in the game.
So not to dumb that down or throw shade
towards that program because, you know,
it's a great intro program,
but we definitely, I definitely would change a lot
based off of the fact that, you know,
it's more than just those three lifts performance training.

(01:02:31):
And I think that especially as a high school kid,
you know, the early developmental stages
of gaining my training age
and learning how to work out with external load,
I think there are better ways
to produce better movement shapes,

(01:02:51):
if you will, just better positions.
And that actually applied to football, to sport versus,
and then there wasn't too much coaching going on.
It was just literally moved the bar from point A to point B
and back to point A again.
And, you know, whether my back was extremely flexed
or hyper extended lumbar wise or whatever the case may be,

(01:03:12):
as long as we got the bar up and down,
that's all that mattered.
So, you know, I just think that there's a better way
to do that from a coaching standpoint.
And of course, I would do a few things differently.
Anything specifically from a training standpoint
that you really look back like, man,
I wish I would have knew that.
I wish I would have done that differently.

(01:03:32):
I think sprinting, number one,
I think I would have sprinted more.
I just think that, you know,
if you wanna be fast on the football field,
you gotta train fast.
And we didn't really sprint that much at all, actually.
We thought that moving weights quickly,
i.e. power clean was the key to explosiveness
when only it's a part of the equation.

(01:03:53):
It's not the entire equation.
But within the weight room itself,
just isometrics, getting into specific conditions
and doing long duration isos,
it would prove a great deal of benefit to anyone
within the ages of 12 to 18.
And that's just simply because it's easy to teach

(01:04:15):
and it's relatively easy to do
as long as the load is proper for that individual.
And we, you know, I didn't do any isometric training
until I was a coach, not even in college.
So isometric training definitely has come back
to the forefront of our space and for a good reason,

(01:04:36):
because it just simply works.
You said you didn't sprint,
but I guarantee you ran a lot of gassers.
Yeah, we conditioned.
That's another thing is that
when you are doing speed training
but you're not getting the proper recovery,
what does it start to become?

(01:04:56):
Glorified conditioning,
because in order to push the envelope of top end speed,
you have to sprint close to those velocities.
But when you don't have quality recovery,
you will never be able to get close
to those end range velocities.
So, you know, yes, we did a lot of conditioning.

(01:05:18):
We ran 100 repeats and things of that nature,
but am I really getting quality speed work?
Probably not.
I see that as one of the biggest problems
across the board in all sports right now
in terms of team practice is everything
that is supposed to be power or speed or explosiveness,
whatever you want to call it,
a lot of time it becomes burning calories and conditioning,

(01:05:40):
right, hill sprints, great.
But the way they're doing hill sprints,
it's straight up conditioning.
Run to the top of the hill, run to the bottom,
run to the top of the hill,
rather than max effort speed up the hill,
rest, take your time and repeat a bout of max effort speed.
It's just like everything,
it's so easy to just make everything become conditioning.
Why do you think that happens?

(01:06:02):
I think it's a part of the mental aspect
of trying to build, you know, a tough,
a mentally tough team or the approach, right,
the framework of, okay, I want to build, you know,
this mentally tough team through conditioning,
whether I got to, you know,
teeter on the level of breaking them a little bit,
but without trying to hurt them.

(01:06:24):
But even if they do get hurt, at least I'm still trying,
I'm still gaining something with a mental perspective.
I think education is a big part of it.
Like a lot of these coaches are just coaches.
They never have, you know,
have done any education, extensive educational work
in this space of speed training

(01:06:45):
or just good sound training in general.
And then also, I think thoughtfully,
the process of like resting for two minutes
doesn't make sense.
Like, number one, how do I get my kids
or my athletes to go full speed?
And then if they're not going full speed,
now I got to sit around for one, 90 seconds

(01:07:05):
or two minutes or however, you know, long, you know,
based off of how fast you're going
and how much rest you need,
how can I be productive in that rest window?
And then you fall into the cycle of like,
well, they're not going hard,
so they don't really need this rest.
So let's just get on the line and go again.

(01:07:25):
But, you know, I think there's thoughtful ways to do it.
Obviously, competition is one of the best ways
to get people to run fast and push hard.
And then being able to implement
some sort of active recovery
that's still allowing the athletes to recover,
but we're still doing something.
I don't know, it could be something more mental
or psychological, but I think it could be done.

(01:07:49):
I do think that there's,
on the other side of the spectrum,
there are people that will say,
we have to wait the two to five or three to five minutes
if I'm doing high quality work.
We have to wait that amount of time,
regardless of what we're doing.
There's things that we do in the gym, it's whatever.
The basketball court is small.

(01:08:10):
So if you're doing something that's speed,
that's high quality, and it takes you,
the rep is five seconds.
It's like, you don't have to wait five minutes.
You could do it and then just wait to chill and go again.
Like go to the end, all right, go again.
Like we'll do dunks.
Like if we're just like straight up dunk attempts
and there's eight people on the court,

(01:08:30):
it's you dunk, you get to the other side,
you're gonna wait like, I don't know,
30 to 45 seconds and you're dunking again.
That's good dunking work, like that's good.
Like dunking takes two seconds, you go and you go back.
So there's also that like play of what does,
what is like research and like what is also making sense.
What practical, right?

(01:08:52):
Absolutely.
Yeah, I think, especially when
you're constrained to a court
and there's only two baskets
or four baskets or what have you
and then you have a group of eight to 12,
naturally the wait your turn time is your rest time.
And that makes sense to me, but again,
like what energy systems are we attacking, right?
I mean, if you go back to exercise physiology,

(01:09:14):
you'll remember like, okay, if I'm doing
two to 10 second bursts, you know,
usually that requires a little bit more rest time,
but like, how do I define that within the basketball realm?
You know what I mean?
A dunk attempt is technically
a two second max effort burst,
but do I necessarily need two minutes of recovery?

(01:09:35):
Probably not.
But I think as long as we understand as coaches that
if the goal is maximum effort explosiveness
or sprint effort or whatever the case is,
it's high velocity, high deceleration, acceleration,
there it does deserve a little bit of rest time.
You know, however much rest time you give your athletes,

(01:09:56):
read their body language, right?
Are they poppy still?
Are they still getting up off the ground?
Are they, you know, they should never be like
kneeled over, tired before their next attempt, right?
Obviously a dunk attempt probably won't do that,
but just to bring it up like into context,
I used to have a drill that I would do
with some of the athletes when I had groups is

(01:10:17):
we would do 60 seconds of dunking.
And basically you would just go corner to corner
on the baseline.
And then I feed you a pass, no dribble, one, two, dunk.
Go to the opposite corner, feed you a pass, one, two, dunk.
And hopefully they're taking off
or changing their takeoff foot.
But 60 seconds of that,

(01:10:38):
that deserves probably three minutes of rest.
Yeah.
Because at around 40 seconds,
we're almost not dunking anymore.
Like we're starting to lay up the ball,
but it's just gives you context of like, you know,
if I'm dunking every 40 seconds,
maybe that's enough time for me to recover.

(01:11:00):
But if I'm doing 30 seconds of straight dunking
with a little bit of running between,
that might deserve a little bit more rest time.
So just thinking about it like that.
Yeah, it's the same.
When we do our tag games, whatever the tag games are,
and they're going hard, it's five minutes of work,
change of direction, acceleration, deceleration,
then it's like, okay, get a water break,
take your three to five minutes.
My kind of all encompassing thought here is

(01:11:21):
we should understand the science,
but at the same time, don't be a dork, right?
It's like, you've got to be able to read the room.
That artistic side of coaching is really looking
at your athletes, understanding where they are.
Are they breaking down?
Is it getting sloppy, right?
And sometimes we want to push them into that, right?
So there is wiggle room.
So understand the science, but at the same time,
don't be a fricking dork.
For you, it's that autistic side.

(01:11:43):
Autistic, yeah.
I also think like, know your athletes, right?
Cause you're going to know your kids
that push the envelope without any motivation.
They're wired that way.
And then you're going to know your kids that'll, you know,
take every moment of rest that they can

(01:12:03):
and not really give you what you're looking for.
So just understanding who's in front of you.
And then also building the practice strategy
or the training strategy around like that also.
You know what I mean?
I think it helps a lot.
It actually is a super,
it seems like it could be a not so important,
but it's actually a super relevant thing about rest time.

(01:12:26):
Because there's a lot of people
that shouldn't be overthinking anything
cause they're literally just not working at all
and it like whatever.
But then there were some people where it's like,
all right, you want to go make the best thing possible.
You want to go set yourself up like programming wise
and you want to set yourself up to be the best possible.
This is something that I haven't heard a lot lately
on like social media, how people talk and from trainers.

(01:12:49):
Like people don't talk about
this side of like just physiology.
Like people talk about look at somebody
and they'll say they'll make a claim about skill
or whatever, which is based on how they look.
But then what about, okay,
when we're trying to make a change,
what are the things you have to do
to elicit the best change possible?
I haven't heard a lot of talk about it.

(01:13:11):
Honestly, maybe just how I'm my feed
and what I'm talking to.
When I started training,
I was heavier on the S and C side than the skill side.
So when I started to come into the skill side
and get on the court, I was counting every ref.
I had to stopwatch counting rest times
and you know, it's I need that 18 to 22 jumps, right?
And I'm counting refs and do it.
And now it's like, I have a good sense of when to push

(01:13:34):
and when to pull back.
And that's just from thousands of hours
on the court with the athletes.
What do you think about the conditioning culture of teams
like preseason conditioning, in season conditioning,
what's your take on it?

(01:13:54):
My take is a lot of times, most of the time,
kids, athletes need to be conditioned for conditioning.
They're not even ready to do the conditioning
from a physical standpoint, because it's too much
and the chronic to acute ratio is too high

(01:14:15):
because they haven't been doing something
that's leading up to that.
So I think, I don't know.
What do you think happens if they're not ready?
Like what happens?
Like do they just, yep, go ahead.
Yes, traditionally, usually conditioning
is some sort of running or sprinting on a basketball court

(01:14:36):
with jumping and deceleration.
And those are high impact loads on the system.
And if it's too much, that's when you start to see
your soft tissue injuries,
or their body is very sore,
which lends itself into a soft tissue injury the next day

(01:14:56):
because their body wasn't ready
for those types of impacts and loads.
I speak from a scope of how do I prepare my athletes
for camp, right, for training camp?
The NBA guys for training camp.
Well, I know that they're gonna be playing a lot
or, and if they do condition,
it's gonna be some sort of basketball tradition,

(01:15:20):
traditional conditioning.
Give me some traditional conditioning basketball drills.
Like, suicide or the call of monsters now.
Seven teams, yeah, those types of drills, right?
But when I think about that, okay,
so what have we been doing all summer?
Have I sprinted him at all?
Have I done any agility at all?
Have I done anything that looks like that?

(01:15:42):
And if the answer is no, then they go do that,
their body's not gonna respond well to that at all.
So that's gonna have a huge impact.
And now I'm putting my athlete
or the athlete is now at a deficit.
And now if you think about camp,
all we're gonna do is just keep adding more and more
and more to the system.
So now I just drive them deeper into a deficit

(01:16:04):
if I don't prepare them for the on-court work.
So that's kind of how I think about this question is,
is all right, let me get this athlete ready
for this type of conditioning,
for this type of impact load on a basketball court.
Because if you think about a traditional off season,
we're lifting obviously, they're gonna be playing,

(01:16:27):
but how intense is the pickup?
How intense are these training sessions on the court?
My athletes aren't going to good drills.
So they're not getting those high impact loads.
Oh yeah, the high impact loads, yeah.
(laughing)
When you think about like a, it's funny,
cause you think about like a classical,

(01:16:49):
like a classical periodization model would be,
all right, you're coming out of season,
you do some post season,
most of it like in real life, it's garbage,
like nothing's really happening.
But like once you start like four to six weeks
out of the season and you're
ready to get back into training,
it's GPP, it's aerobic, it's then it's like,

(01:17:10):
all right, we're gonna ramp up the intensity,
but keep the conditioning part of it.
And then it's all about quality the entire time
in a classical, your textbook periodization,
triphasic, anything that's like classic,
we'll go right into that.
And then I don't, there's not a
lot of talk about conditioning
from an SNC side before like training camp.

(01:17:31):
And that's something I agree with.
I don't think a lot of people agree with the fact
that we need to focus on conditioning
where like good players are more conditioned.
I think even beyond injury, which I do agree with,
I think from a longevity of the season

(01:17:52):
of keeping your quality high during the season,
I think that there's something there.
I don't know how much researcher is around it,
but I think, and like,
how would you, what are the things you would measure?
But I think that there's something there
of maintaining your volume.
How can you maintain volume, especially not even before,

(01:18:12):
but throughout a season,
because that's the thing that makes seasons hard
is the amount of volume that there is,
the amount of time, especially the NBA.
Correct, correct.
And, you know,
my community might not like this,
but I don't believe that you need research to say,
okay, you guys are gonna be playing basketball,

(01:18:35):
which requires high velocity change of direction.
You probably might wanna maintain that
throughout the summer and not just through pickup,
because again, you watch pickup,
it doesn't look like the game at all.
It's not even, it's a different game.
It's not even close to me.
So if you say to me, yeah, yeah, no,
I've been doing my condition.
I've been playing pickup all summer.
That's not enough because we're not getting

(01:18:58):
those high impact, A-cell, D-cell lows.
We're not, the game,
you guys been watching the NBA this year,
it's super physical.
They're letting them play a lot more
through physical contact.
They're blowing D-H-O's up.
Like it's way more physical this year.
So being able to maintain some sort of impact,

(01:19:22):
quality, volume, systematic periodization
within your weight training,
within your court stuff throughout the summer
and then into the training camp and then season
is the way we should all approach it.
Obviously for high school,
it's gonna be different in college
because you have different types of seasons.
But speaking from my perspective,

(01:19:45):
I think sprinting is something that we should be doing
one to two times a week throughout the summer
so that we continue to get that volume
that you just speak of
so that when we go play and we hit that top end velocity,
your body doesn't trip out and it's like,
"Whoa, what's going on?"
Especially in the fourth quarter
when you're sprinting after a loose ball or something.

(01:20:06):
Ross mentioned measuring.
Have you messed around with any HRV measuring devices?
And if not, how thorough is the NBA with your guys
in measuring HRV?
Or anything else.
Or anything.
Yeah, I personally have.
Through WOOP, through Aura,
all the devices that do it now.

(01:20:27):
We even have a MAC.
You guys heard of the Sleep 8 mattress
or the 8 Sleep mattress?
Yeah.
It's basically temperature climate control,
temperature control.
That also measures HRV, which is crazy.
So I have some good amount of experience.
I was with WOOP early, 17, 18.
I brought it to the Pelicans.

(01:20:48):
And I see the value of it
because it gives you data that can be put to action
and it tells you a story about your lifestyle
and how you can improve it or make it better.
As far as the athletes go, whenever you have it,
whenever you have data, athletes already make it
in their mind that it's gonna be weaponized against them.

(01:21:09):
So they're very reluctant to do that.
HRV is gonna see whether or not you slept well,
whether or not you had a good meal or not,
or a bad meal if you drank alcohol, et cetera.
So it's difficult to get that type of data
from athletes consistently.
And then also it's just very granular.
You have to be disciplined to a sense,

(01:21:32):
to a certain degree, to wear the watch or to wear the ring,
to put it back on, to charge it.
Like it's, you know, we're dealing with children
at the end of the day, 18 to 22 year olds.
So building those habits is not easy,
as you guys would know.
And then, you know, some teams do it really well.
They built a culture that is very welcoming and trusting,

(01:21:55):
and some teams don't do it at all.
So I think it depends on like who's at the top
and what type of culture they develop
to get that type of system in place.
What are decisions that would be made off of it?
Like what, like would you--
Contract, contract, if they say you're not sleeping,
you're not eating, you'll lose money.
Well, so--
Because they could hold that against you.
I really like the Morpheus by Joel Jamison.

(01:22:17):
Are you familiar with the Morpheus device?
I know Joel's work, but I never used the Morpheus device.
So I tried to use it
with my 10 best high school athletes, right?
So you're taking your two and a half minutes stress test,
HRV every morning, and then I was gonna,
I had the whole screen, I got the flat screen,
everything set up in my gym
where they were gonna be wearing heart straps, right?
And I was gonna be able to monitor that,

(01:22:37):
and if they were high stress, they'd keep them down
and do the whole thing, and it was gonna pop up,
and it was gonna be awesome.
I couldn't get one of them
to take the freaking stress test consistently
in the morning for two and a half minutes.
So I spent a good amount of money.
I bought everything they have, all the chest straps,
all the monitors, and I could not get them
to take a two and a half minute stress test
where they just have to wake up, open their eyes,

(01:22:58):
put the thing on their forearm,
and sit there for two and a half minutes.
I couldn't get them to do it.
So I wasted thousands of dollars.
The baller's like, "Violet T."
Yeah, no, I mean, you know,
now imagine a NBA basketball
player worth millions of dollars.
It's like, "What do you mean my score's red?"
You know what I mean?
I slept great last night.
All right. From F this.
I'm not putting this thing on no more.

(01:23:19):
Like, that would've been cool to me,
because I wanted to do a little study in-house
and have my 10 best athletes,
and I wanted to get consistent scores on their HRV
and then be able to actually bring up their heart,
like, because it gives you where to stay.
You get a lot of data,
but it's just, it's impossible to do it with these kids.
(laughing)
And then as far as like decision making,
what happens is, for me, well, I'll give you a story,

(01:23:41):
anecdotal evidence.
I had an athlete, a high school kid,
maybe a senior in high school, gave him a whoop strap,
and wore the device for about a week,
but I wasn't getting any scores,
and you could share your data

(01:24:01):
with someone on their device if they have a whoop.
So I'm looking at his data, and I don't have any data,
and I'm like, "Bro, are you not wearing it?"
Like, tell me what's, and he's like,
"Nah, coach, I'm wearing it, I promise."
I'm doing everything you're asking me to,
and I believe this kid,
because he's just one of those special kids
that are very compliant.
So I'm like, "Okay, let's think about this.

(01:24:23):
"Let's send it in and get a new one."
Same shit's happening.
Okay, so it's not the device.
So now you just start digging deep, okay?
So tell me about your sleep environment.
Is it dark?
Yes, I need it pitch black, cool.
How do you eat before you go to bed?
Like, are you eating sugar?
Like, the diet questions.

(01:24:43):
I mean, I have dinner at seven,
but that's pretty much about it.
All right, cool, it's not that.
What about your phone?
Are you on your phone before you go to bed?
I mean, yeah, but not really.
Oh, okay, cool.
And then the temperature question comes up,
because it's supposed to be 68 degrees Fahrenheit,
supposedly, is the ideal ombiotic temperature.
For when you sleep, and he's like,

(01:25:05):
"My mom keeps the thermostat at 78.
"I don't know why, but it's always hot in my house."
And I'm like, "78?"
And this is in Santa Clarita, California,
Los Angeles, California, where it's always hot.
So, okay, cool.
You know what?
Let me talk to your mom real quick.
Boom.
Can we at least meet halfway and go like to 73?

(01:25:27):
And she's like, "Okay, cool.
"I understand why I explained it to her."
Boom.
And then after that small little tweak,
the whoop started measuring.
So his body temperature was so high,
or something within the physiology of his system
was not registering as sleep,

(01:25:49):
because whoop looks at your HRV,
your resting heart rate, your body temperature,
your breathing rate, all these things.
And it says, "Oh, this individual's sleeping
"because of these baselines are this low,"
or what have you.
Something was so high that whoop
wasn't even registering sleep.
As soon as we brought the room temperature down,

(01:26:10):
we started to see the scores.
And from that point on,
understanding how physiology can impact decisions
was a no-brainer for me.
And we probably impacted that kid's life forever.
Now that he knows that he needs to sleep in a cooler room

(01:26:31):
for his body to self-regulate
and come down to a specific level
so that sleep is truly sleep
is definitely a difference maker, in my opinion, for sure.
Everything comes down to asking the right questions.
And I went through the same process as you
with this kid that we have in our online community.

(01:26:51):
I'm not sleeping well.
What's going on before bed?
Asked the same exact questions you asked.
And then it came to the last one.
I'm like, "Well, what else do you do before bed?"
And he's like, "I take a cold shower."
Like, "I shower before bed."
Like, "What are you doing?"
Right, you're gonna excite your nervous system
20 minutes before bed, of course you're not sleeping.
Stop taking the cold showers.

(01:27:12):
But if I just gave him the information on what to do,
no cell phone, no this, no this, no this,
I would have never uncovered that he's taking cold showers
15 minutes before he goes to sleep.
That's why he's not sleeping.
Stop taking the cold showers before you go to bed.
Take a warm shower, cold shower in the morning
or before your workouts, whatever.
But we do that and now he's sleeping great.
Cold showers in the morning is probably better.

(01:27:32):
Yes. Than at night.
Yeah. For sure.
Yeah. Yeah.
I don't do cold showers. Yeah.
What I do every day.
A hormetic stress for sure.
I, you know, data is just data.
Data is just numbers right at the end of the day
unless it's actionable.
You put action to a plan and, you know,
it's staggering when you do drink.
You know, I don't know if you guys drink or not,
but I do from time to time.

(01:27:53):
And when I enjoy alcoholic beverage,
it is clear as day that my body does not like that at all.
And it weighs on you too now.
Now there's just like little thing over my head
every time I wanna go hang out or have a drink.
I'm like thinking about my HRV score.
I'm like, damn, do I want, but you know,
you can't obsess over, but it
does give you that perspective

(01:28:15):
of how powerful, you know,
these types of influences can have on your system, right?
And then also like, what about the end of the spectrum of,
if I'm an athlete and I wake up with a bad score,
how is that mentally gonna affect me going into my game?
Right.
Right, like that could be damaging as well.

(01:28:36):
I feel great, I slept great, I did everything right.
Why is my whoop score, you
know, 22 or red or whatever, 22%.
So now I'm bringing that into my environment,
which is going to affect me.
Some people, maybe not everyone, some people like whatever,
you know, and that's also something
that you have to consider.

(01:28:57):
Yeah, if you think you get bad sleep,
it probably hurts you as well,
even more than just having bad sleep, right?
Right, exactly, yup.
How would you define basketball strength
and how would one go about improving it?
Basketball strength, I think, you know,
how do the demands of my sport in my position, basketball,

(01:29:20):
how do the demands of basketball and the position I play
or the thing, the tasks that I'm asked to do,
how does that impact how I'm able to organize myself
and get the job done, is to me, basketball strength,
because usually within those tasks,
some sort of a degree of strength is required.

(01:29:43):
Now, when you talk about strength to a strength coach,
it traditionally means how much weight you can lift.
Right.
However, in my opinion,
sometimes that does not necessarily dictate
how strong you are on the court.
I've seen many, many of times athletes
that are very strong in the weight room,

(01:30:04):
but for some reason don't know how to be strong
like that on the court.
I think there's a gap that isn't addressed,
which has to do with coordination
and how to use your strength in the skill set
that you need based off of the demands
that you're being asked to do, to perform.
And obviously that changes based off

(01:30:25):
of what type of player you are.
Are you like a Derrick Rose that's a slasher
and that's super explosive,
or let's use John Marant for instance,
or are you somebody like Alpe, Alperin Shungun,
the big for the Rockets, who's back to basket, down low.

(01:30:45):
Baby Oakitch, basically.
Baby Oakitch, very good.
You know what I mean?
My understanding who's in front of you
is how I dictate what strength means to them.
And then what are the skill sets that they need
to coexist with the strength that's required
to be good at that skill is also how I define the strength.

(01:31:08):
So it just kind of depends on like who's in front of you,
but also how do they need to produce strength
in their environment?
What's the low hanging fruit in the weight room
that develops basketball strength
that you see a lot of athletes not doing
as much as they should have?
I think that basketball athletes for the most part

(01:31:28):
are longer levered individuals, generally speaking tall,
which means they don't necessarily like to play low.
And I think the lowest hanging fruit is understanding
how to get your body into precarious positions,
being comfortable there, being pain-free there,
and being strong there.
Strength, again, is defined by numbers in our world,

(01:31:51):
strength and conditioning, but not necessarily
if you're a yokage, which he's an anomaly
because I don't know if he probably can do this or not,
but if you're a yokage and you're able to do
a one minute body weight split squat ISO,
I think that's pretty good.
Maybe he can, maybe he can't,
but that to me is like low hanging fruit.

(01:32:13):
Case in point, trained Anthony Davis prior to the year
that they won the championship.
And our program was very simple, N-Range ISOs.
I just got him really, he's very mobile, believe it or not.
And I got him really strong in the positions
that he couldn't control.
That was it.

(01:32:34):
And he had a pretty good year that year.
I believe isometrics are off in the missing link
because growing up, nobody really focuses on them.
And that's the low hanging fruit for many athletes
because everybody thinks about the eccentric
and the concentric, but there's not enough focus
on the isometric.
Well, it's a really safe way to get players
in those end ranges that he's talking about, right?
You can get in an ISO and there's not much danger there

(01:32:57):
and you can still get a stimulus
that is gonna create the adaptation that you're after,
which is creating safety in these ranges
that they're gonna experience in a game
without putting 800 pounds on their back.
Right, 100%.
That far.
And shout out to the Marcus Cousins
because I know him personally
and he's a good friend of mine,
not a good friend of mine, but we're cordial.

(01:33:18):
If you study his injuries,
you can see that those positions that he hurt himself at
were those precarious lower end range positions.
I'm not gonna comment on his program
because I wasn't the guy that was responsible for that.
But if you use the ideology and logic

(01:33:39):
that we just talked about, maybe perhaps,
we'd look at putting athletes in those types of positions
and have them get really strong there.
And I think a lot of these injuries
are going to clean up for sure.
Speaking of injuries, you worked with Spencer
and you actually got him,
I know you give credit to everybody, I know that Mike G,
but you worked with him specifically

(01:34:00):
and he actually got cleared in five and a half months.
As somebody who's been through two ACL surgeries,
how does one expedite the process?
Now we always tell athletes to be patient
and they should be patient,
but everybody wants to get back to the core quicker.
So what did you work on with Spencer specifically
to get him recovered that quickly?

(01:34:22):
I think the difference maker was,
yes, we trained our ass off
and we did a lot of the things that we just talked about,
which was novel to him, right?
Put him in a space in a world of extreme isometric holds
and it's not fun, it's awful actually.
And it takes a specific type of mentally wired individual

(01:34:44):
to go through that day in and day out.
But in conjunction with that, I mean,
the work is the work,
but the body only adapts to stressors
based off of the other stuff, if it's good or not,
if it's present or not.
And that's the nutrition and the sleep.
And I think if our audience is kids,

(01:35:06):
ages 14 to 25,
this is the message that we need to be driving home.
Yes, the work is the work, do the work, work hard at it,
but also work just as hard at your nutrition
as well as your sleep.
Because I don't know if a lot of these kids are sleeping
because of the fact that we have all these devices around

(01:35:27):
in social media and just wanting to be cool and fit in.
But, and then also the resource of good nutrition
may not be available,
but just understanding that we can only maximize
our training, our work based
off of those other two factors.
And I think Spencer did a phenomenal job
at hiring a nutritionist, getting a chef

(01:35:51):
and taking a really deep dive into sleep science
and like preparing the sleep environment
and understanding why sleep is so important,
taking naps and trying to get eight to 10 hours
of sleep every night.
Because he was training two to three hours
and two to three times a day,
he'd do a training session with me
and then he'd do two rehab sessions,

(01:36:11):
one in the morning, one at night.
That's training, rehab is training to me,
that's still stress, it's still stimulus.
So how do I recover from all that?
How do I bounce back from all that?
It's through the sleep and it's through the nutrition.
So that's what I give a lot of credit to.
For that 14 to 25 year old kid,
what's two or three things that they could do

(01:36:32):
from a nutrition standpoint to improve where they're at?
It could be a very broad thing, very specific things.
Go for it.
For sure, number one, eat.
I feel like a lot of kids don't eat.
They probably eat twice a day, maybe at lunch
and then at dinner time.
But then if you think about your guys as athletes,

(01:36:54):
what have they already done?
What have they done throughout the course of that day?
They train with y'all, they may go to practice.
They're in school thinking all day,
like calorie expenditure is crazy
and they're only eating twice a day.
So maybe I'm not accurate with that presumption,
but you guys would know,

(01:37:16):
like a lot of these kids just simply don't eat, right?
They got to eat more calories to support all this training
and work that they're doing.
Aside of like what we're eating
because resource is a thing, right?
Like having access to healthy food
is not easy for a lot of kids.
So I get that.

(01:37:37):
I just think that if we can, I don't know,
simplify what good versus bad is.
Bad, high sugar, processed, fast food, cool.
I think most kids, 14 to 25 could get that.
Good, you know, peanut butter and jelly.
Sandwich, you know, things

(01:37:59):
that we can easily gain access to,
but aren't, you know, extremely expensive
or something that doesn't just make sense, right?
I'd rather you have two peanut butter and jellies,
not the best thing,
but high calories because of the peanut butter.
You know, you got a little bit of fiber in the bread.
You got a little pro, whatever, versus McDonald's, right?

(01:38:24):
Like trying to create this dichotomy of like,
what's a little bit more better than this?
And then I think that hydration, you know,
just being able to get a lot of water into the system.
You know, now we have element and we have liquid IV
and we have all these electrolyte packets

(01:38:46):
that we can add to enhance our water.
Is it necessary?
No, it's ideal.
It's a luxury,
but if not, can we be cool with, you know,
walking around with a gallon jug
that we used to back in the day?
Can we be cool with that?
Understanding, you know, our hydration is super important.

(01:39:07):
When we don't get hydration, our tissues dry up.
When our tissues dry up,
they're more susceptible to shear or not shear,
but tearing muscle pulls, muscle strains, et cetera.
So we got to keep the body hydrated.
And I don't know if that was
low hanging fruit or simplified,
but that's kind of where I go with,
if it were me teaching.

(01:39:28):
Eat more real food, drink more water.
Yeah, yeah.
Good drill.
Good drill.
(laughing)
That's what we say.
People, the problem isn't a lack of knowledge
when it comes to nutrition, right?
The problem is implementation.
Everybody on this planet knows how to eat healthy.
They know McDonald's is probably not the best thing.

(01:39:50):
They know salads are better, chicken is better,
things closer to the earth are
better than processed garbage.
It's implementation.
You know how to eat healthy.
I was talking about, we got more dieticians, nutritionists,
experts in nutrition than ever,
and we have more fat people than ever.
The problem isn't more information.
The problem is, guys,

(01:40:12):
is that these kids are superhuman
and they can eat nothing or garbage
and still be freaking the most athletic person
you ever see in your life.
So the natural--
Motivation.
Yeah, exactly.
Why do I need to eat this peanut butter and jelly
for when I can eat, have this, and still be me?

(01:40:35):
Yeah, yeah.
That's the problem.
I deal with it now with NBA guys that are 22, 23.
Mike G, what are you talking about?
Look at me.
And if they don't tell you,
they're thinking that anyway.
Exactly.
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, and one thing out the other,
but then I look at people like Chad Ocho Cinco,

(01:40:55):
who is famous for McDonald's diet.
He was doing karaoke while eating a Big Mac, right?
Like, yeah, yeah.
Ocho Cinco, you're not in the Hall of Fame yet.
Longevity, you know what I'm saying?
And again, this probably won't get to him,
but I think that you can always make an argument

(01:41:16):
for the other side of the discussion.
Well, what if you had eaten healthy?
Maybe you had a freaking 17-year career
with 11,000 yard seasons and 150 touched.
You can, the argument is the same to me.
Like, one or the other, okay, yeah.
Yeah, you ate that way,

(01:41:36):
and you still had an amazing career,
and you're dope for it,
but what if you would have stayed eaten clean?
What would have happened?
So, you know, I don't know.
I feel like those athletes usually start focusing
on their nutrition later in their career.
Well, you know, they've been in the league
for five, eight seasons,
and they want to extend it to 12 to 15.
That's when they make the shift.

(01:41:56):
I had a quote a couple podcasts ago that went viral.
I said, "The kids that usually care about nutrition
end up being D3 athletes.
My savages, my monsters I train,
the kids all over the country
playing Division I basketball,
they never asked me about nutrition.
They're out getting buckets."
Yeah, which is, you know,
the discussion of what your birth with,

(01:42:17):
you know, who are your parents?
You can't pick your parents, right?
And unfortunately, I'm five, eight,
I'm 165 pounds, and I ran four, six, five.
You know, the nutrition matters to people like me.
But when you're first person that comes to mind,
Jalen Green, not that he eats bad,
but he was dunking the basketball in seventh grade.

(01:42:40):
You know what I mean?
Like, it didn't matter what he ate.
Although he probably ate pretty good
because he's half Filipino.
And I don't know if you guys know about Filipino food,
but it's amazing.
You know what I'm saying?
So like, yeah, like I get what you're saying with that.
And it's unfortunate, but it is a reality.
All we can do as coaches is just keep pushing it.
Just keep pushing the envelope.

(01:43:01):
And if one person listens out of a hundred, we did our job.
I also think though that there are good players
who won't eat something if they ate something
and then they go to practice, train or play,
and they feel like shit.
They're not gonna do it again.
But on the flip side though, you can have that dork

(01:43:22):
that's like trying to do all the right things,
eat the right way for the sake of doing the right things
and say, "Oh look, I'm doing all the right things.
Why do I still suck?"
But they're having like a chicken salad before
and they haven't had a carb in 24 hours
and they go on the court.
What's going on?
There's also that piece to it.
So you have somebody that maybe has low resources,
but if they're locked in, they're like,

(01:43:44):
"No, no, I'm good.
I know it's not whole wheat pasta,
but I'm gonna have my white rice or my pasta,
whatever I have access to, I'm gonna go eat it
and I'm a dog when I do that."
And there's a piece of that there
of they actually pay attention to the signal
of what makes me perform on the court, which is also valid.
The best player on my college team, Doug, all right?

(01:44:06):
Our entire team, the entire team before games
would go to a pasta place.
We'd all get pasta, have the big community pasta
in the beginning and water.
Doug got to eat chicken fingers in a Sprite.
He's the only one on the team.
He ate chicken fingers in a Sprite.
He's still overseas playing professionally.
The entire team, the 11 other guys, pasta, water, salad.

(01:44:29):
Doug, chicken fingers, Sprite.
He was the All-American on our team, still overseas.
And I was like, "Why'd you get to eat that?"
Well, he's better than me.
That's what it comes out to at this point.
He's better than me.
Be better.
He was better than me.
My athlete that I'm full-time with, Fred Van Vliet.

(01:44:49):
Bro, hot Cheetos and nacho cheese sauce.
Hot Cheetos.
Lunch.
Hot Cheetos and nacho cheese sauce, high school lunch.
$40 million later.
Some conversations you just can't have with people.
Bro, I'm not gonna ever talk to you about nutrition

(01:45:10):
unless you wanna talk to me, period.
I don't need to.
You know what I mean?
That's just what it is.
I think the feel of that as a coach,
as someone that's leading, is extremely important
and just a skill that a lot of people don't have.
Some people just try to force
all this information on people

(01:45:32):
and it's just like, "Bro, you gotta understand
the situation and who you're talking to."
Because sometimes that shit don't matter.
It's also something that you can't point to on the court
and say, "Oh, look, you missed this shot
because you ate wrong."
But it is like shooting.
It's like somebody that's
shooting 40 plus percent from three,
I don't care if they shoot with their freaking mouth.
If it goes in and they could get it off,

(01:45:54):
like don't say anything.
If somebody's shooting like terribly though,
then there's like, "Okay, you're shooting this way.
I have a hypothesis."
And you could point to something at least.
For sure, for sure.
Yep, exactly.
And I agree.
I agree that we should be eating a specific way

(01:46:16):
and I think that it does help,
but I also know that production is production
and wherever you're doing, but you're still producing
and you feel fine, we're gonna just ride that wave
until you ask otherwise.
You talked about drinking before.
I ate half a pizza with Ross last night.
I have a headache and I'm hungover from pizza.
And that's a whole different thing.
Ross feels fine.
That's that soft shit.

(01:46:38):
Yeah, that's a different conversation.
I had that Dr. Pepper, four slices of pizza.
Drinking, I can't even eat pizza.
Good drill.
This part of me that I like to have like that root beer
or Dr. Pepper or Coke right before I play
and it makes me feel like I am allowed to do that
because I'm good enough.
Like good enough people do that.

(01:46:59):
People that can do whatever they want,
oh I'm good enough.
This is a psychological piece to it.
I don't need to worry about it.
I'm gonna have what I want.
It's like when you play with your shoelaces untied.
Yeah, it's a different conversation for a different day.
Yeah.
Yeah, I do before.
So here's-
That depot shit, Damar does that.
The reason why I like to do it is that if I'm aware

(01:47:19):
that my shoes are untied and I'm a grown ass man,
I'm not gonna trip over my shoelaces.
I'm not gonna roll my ankle.
I'm not gonna go at a speed that I can't handle, right?
I've never hurt myself.
Yeah, we'll knock on wood real quick.
I've never hurt myself with my shoelaces untied.
This is not something that I'd recommend other people do
but what it does force me to do
as a like almost like a

(01:47:40):
differential learning thing going on
or almost like a warmup is that it forces me to act
in a more like I have to be stable internally.
And it's different than not having shoes on at all.
When you don't have shoes on until it's even, it's safer.
If I have shoes on that are untied
and they're getting in my way
and it gets easier to roll your ankle.
It's easier to do something stupid.
You have to be paying attention.
You have to go slower.

(01:48:00):
It's a little bit more dangerous.
But like as a warmup, it's
something that it's a little weird.
I feel the same way when I don't wear my knee brace.
Yeah. Feel the same way as you.
Everything feels easier sometimes when you do that.
Yeah. Yeah, definitely.
So everybody wants to jump higher.
Everybody wants to dunk on people.
Not everybody could be like combo and do it

(01:48:20):
but my question to you is
what's the biggest misconception
when it comes to vertical jump training
and should your vertical jump
even be something we focus on?
Should we more focus on general fitness
and general strength and general explosiveness?
Number one, I've never had an NBA basketball player

(01:48:43):
or caliber basketball player ask me to get more vertical
to improve their vertical jump.
Never, I've never had that
and I've worked with a lot of dudes.
Right.
And what that speaks to me is that
I think verticality in the game, in the sport
is obviously helpful and beneficial

(01:49:06):
but it depends on how you play the game.
If that's not a part of your game,
then why would I ever seek that output?
If I'm trying to implement that as a part of my game,
that's different but usually when you get to that level,
you kind of know who you are
and you kind of play into those strengths.
Right.
So to answer the question,

(01:49:33):
for some reason,
young athletes, basketball players put a high premium
on the ability to jump high.
I don't know if that's right or wrong, whatever.
Maybe that does help them be a better basketball player
but I think it depends.
What resources are we spending on that attribute

(01:49:56):
at the cost or at the loss rather
into what they also need is the way I look at it.
Time management, time management
at the end of the day, right?
And it costs a lot to jump high.
It costs a lot.
100%.
From an energy standpoint, from a time standpoint,
from whatever, and if you're really good

(01:50:17):
as a performance coach,
you know how to hit it at the same time.
Like, okay, yeah, I know you need this, this and this
but you wanna learn how to jump higher
so I'm gonna blend it.
A really good performance coach can do that
and I think you guys do a great job at that.
However, the ability to just say to somebody,

(01:50:37):
I got a VRT program and I guarantee it's gonna put
this many inches on your verge.
This is not a school of a train of thought
that I'm willing to subscribe to
because when I think about athleticism,
it's not just jumping high.
It's not just running fast.
There's so many qualities that go into athleticism
and for me to be a better athlete on the court

(01:50:57):
is more important than just being able to jump high.
This is my take and then as far as how to train that,
just get the good drills program
and you're good to go.
No, GBG, GBG.
I do think it's something we do very well
and it's almost, so with players that come in the gym,

(01:51:19):
it's everything, a lot of what we do is on the court
with the ball on your hands.
If you're jumping, it's like, and you're on the court,
it's like we're doing finishing things.
We're doing things around the rim.
We're challenging your ability to coordinate in the air,
all these different things that are happening.
I do think that dunking as a goal for a younger player,
as a motivator of like, I wanna be able to dunk
because I see other people dunking.

(01:51:40):
It's a cool thing to have.
Getting your first dunk as a motivation to train,
I think is good, but there are so many players.
You look at Bronny, he has the most bounce in the world.
There's a lot of players like that.
There's a lot of players that have a lot of bounce.
They put in a lot of work to jumping high.
They practice jumping high all the time,
but then the athleticism on the rest of the side
of their game is lacking.
The movement piece of it, even the speed piece of it

(01:52:03):
is lacking, and I think why players maybe don't ask you
about jumping high is because it's not a problem.
It's not a problem for them to be better in the game
because races are happening
for the most part on the ground.
And when you're trying, like jumping higher
than somebody else, what, to win a jump ball?
Like why do I need to jump higher?

(01:52:24):
A lot of times though, like the speed of jumping high,
the speed of it, getting into a certain spot
before somebody else is more of what I would imagine
to be the focus for a majority.
The players you're working
with are solidified in their role,
which is what you've kind of said before.
You work with Fred Van Vliet.
He is who he is at this point.
How can we make him a little bit better?
How can we keep him on the court?

(01:52:44):
That's way more important than,
well, what if he put eight inches on his vert?
Well, he's still Fred Van Vliet,
and he's gonna run the point, move the ball, distribute,
do all the things that he does.
Hit that freaking drink.
Right, right, he's gonna do what he does.
It's not gonna really change his DNA or who he is.
He's solidified in his role.
Our app, we target 14 to 21-year-old young men,

(01:53:07):
and we sell the hell out of,
we're gonna put inches on your vert.
It's an easy sell.
It's an easy sell.
And I subscribe to sell them what they want,
give them what they need.
I have no problem selling people on higher vertical jump,
knowing on the back end, I have a system, right,
that's gonna help with literally everything.
And that's okay.
It's an easier way to communicate
to who we're trying to communicate is,

(01:53:29):
you get our program, we're gonna help you jump higher.
And then they're gonna get all this other stuff
that they actually need as well.
But that's exactly what I was saying,
is really good coaches, that's what they do.
Yeah.
And I think if you give me a different demographic,
and I'm in a business where I need to sell,

(01:53:51):
maybe the marketing and the way I communicate
is different, right?
Like that's understandable and that makes sense to me.
But I also do know that when you think about skills,
and when you think about coordination and athleticism
as it applies to the sport,

(01:54:11):
it's just so much more than just jumping high.
And that's the philosophy and mindset that I have
in my approach to how I train.
And also I will self disclose that,
I haven't actually said to anyone or trained anyone,
we're gonna get you to jump higher.
That's never been a goal for me

(01:54:31):
in my 17 years of coaching.
It's a secondary goal because the program
is just the program and you test what you test,
but no one has ever come up to me and said,
"Mike, I wanna jump higher."
It's just never happened, which means I'm not
in that business of trying to help people jump higher.
So that's also a piece of it too for me.

(01:54:52):
Yeah, people walk in our gym
and that's why they walk in our gym.
You're the bounce guy.
You get it, yeah.
My son, he's literally, they come up.
I'm like, "All right, cool, let's go."
All right, cool, let's go.
Some people, that's all they wanna do.
I just want you guys to know that
I still have a bucket list goal
of being able to dunk a ball.
I've never dunked a ball.
I've been able to grab the rim at 5'8 and a half,

(01:55:14):
but I've never been able to dunk a ball.
And I want to still achieve that goal.
So one of these days, I'm gonna come to Jersey
and I'm gonna come work with y'all
and we're gonna document it
and I'm gonna dunk a basketball.
Dude, six to eight inches in three days.
Three days. We got it.
I'm coming.
Or money back.
How would you go about achieving?

(01:55:34):
How do you plan on going about achieving that goal?
Well, a lot of it has to do with, again,
like I said, it cost.
Yeah.
At 40 years old, I just turned 40 in November.
Things hurt a little bit more and a little bit longer
when you train like that.
So my shit has to be set up, right?

(01:55:55):
Like I got a really schedule.
All right, I got good drills training on Monday.
That means Tuesday and Wednesday,
what type of recovery am I doing?
So that Thursday I can go hard again.
Like it just changes my approach,
which means life has to be stable
and life just isn't stable right now.
I mean, it's stable from a quality perspective,

(01:56:16):
but just like there's a lot of stuff happening right now.
And I don't know if I can afford myself to do that,
but one day I will.
Go ahead.
The hardest thing for me now
in terms of doing anything
training related is I don't care.
Like I really just don't care.
Like I used to be training for something.
There used to be something I was training for.

(01:56:38):
I was trying to play, I was trying to compete.
I had some type of end goal that I was working towards
and now my life, I'm a father, right?
I'm a husband.
I got two businesses, I'm training so many kids
and it's like, I don't really need to jump higher anymore.
I don't need to be in shape anymore.
There's no need.
So I'm trying to like trick my mind.
I'm trying to trick my mind

(01:56:59):
to give me something to work to.
I'm just gonna commit to it to do it
because I know doing things I don't wanna do
is good at some level.
It feels good.
I'm fatter than I've ever been.
I got on a scale yesterday.
I spent a month in the mountains.
I got on a scale yesterday.
I'm 248 pounds.
Yeah, I'm in like mountain shape.
I could hike for-- Damn, damn is right.
I was hiking, I was hiking, you know,

(01:57:20):
20, 25,000, 30,000 steps a day
hunting in the freaking mountains.
With a deer on your back.
With a deer bleeding down my back.
Yeah, and now I'm back in the, that's not true.
But it was dead bird.
But now-- Sounded good.
Dude, I filmed a workout yesterday.
I didn't even do a workout.
I just filmed a workout,
which is like a couple reps of each thing.
I'm destroyed today.

(01:57:41):
Content's a great motivator to work out.
Yeah.
Listen, us, our community, we have to push each other.
We gotta GBG each other.
Let's go.
And you know, you know what I'm saying?
Like when I'm athletic, you're athletic.
Okay.
(laughing)
But-- I need somebody to talk
some junk to me.

(01:58:01):
I need somebody to challenge me.
I need somebody to tell me I'm fat, you can't jump high.
You probably gotta go to a rosh.
And I need that person to follow me around every day.
Scale already did that.
I'm motivated by shame.
I need somebody to shame me.
Scale did that.
That's not enough.
Ross, you gotta get him on the court.
He doesn't care either.
I already talked, all I do is talk.
Everybody gets mad at me though.

(01:58:22):
He's still being one on one though,
fat and out of shape.
So-- No.
Oh, here we go.
See?
I'm trying to get it going.
I'm trying to get him going.
I'm not going.
The thing is when there's not true competition,
I don't get going.
All right, Kamba, where do you go?
No, but I'm definitely gonna come out to Jersey
and work with y'all, and learn some.

(01:58:42):
Yeah, let's do some.
Yeah, yeah, come out here.
Before we get out of here,
before we get out of here, you know,
you've worked in the private sector, the corporate sector,
back to the private sector.
Working in the NBA, everybody wants to work in the NBA,
but when I talk to people who work in the NBA,
it doesn't seem that fun.
So what advice would you give to somebody

(01:59:04):
who wants to work in the NBA,
and what are some of the misconceptions
about working in that league?
The advice that would be for someone
who wants to get there is,
first, why?

(01:59:27):
Like truly define your why behind why
you want to work in the NBA.
Because if it's to make a lot of money,
I don't know, I don't know if that's gonna get you there.
If it's to potentially go full time with a single player,
that's like not a really good why reason,

(01:59:48):
because the odds of that happening is very low.
Is it a resume builder?
Of course it is.
Just making sure that you understand the why,
because, and then talking to someone who's done it
or is in it to get those questions asked,
because it's obviously not what everyone believes it to be.

(02:00:11):
Let's go over the positives.
Being in the NBA does have a lot of beautiful perks.
You get to travel to five star hotels,
which in itself is phenomenal.
You get to eat five star restaurant food.
You get to watch NBA
basketball every other night in person,
which is already like, sign me up, right?

(02:00:34):
Like what?
I get to watch NBA basketball on the court.
Those are all amazing things, right?
But then when you look on the other end,
because everything's a spectrum,
your creative freedom is dumbed down
because it's a corporate structure.
You have to get everything signed off.

(02:00:57):
There's usually two to three levels of signing off
that you have to get through
to have an independent thought as a strength coach,
especially initial strength coach.
It's a slow grind.
It takes people three to four years to level up
and exist.
Not to mention you're judged off of wins and losses,

(02:01:17):
which has nothing to do with your job.
Politically, it's difficult to manage
that environment socially
because people are really content with where they are
and they don't want that symbiosis to be disturbed.
So they'll protect that,
which means if that means undermine you, they will,

(02:01:38):
which is very unfortunate.
And sometimes that isn't the best things for the player,
if truly we're in this business of service to help players,
that's not everyone's goal in the NBA.
Or the culture of the whole,
that's terrible for culture for the whole organization
in itself.
Yeah, and the losing teams are losers
for a reason, traditionally.

(02:02:01):
The travel thing, it's cool,
but imagine stumbling home at three to four a.m.
at least seven times a month
as strength and conditioning coaches,
you're responsible for packing the bags
and unloading the bags off the plane.
It don't matter if it's negative 10 degrees in Milwaukee

(02:02:21):
or 97 degrees in freaking Miami,
you have to do that.
So that sucks a lot.
Imagine having to do that at two a.m.
when you just traveled to a back to back
from Milwaukee to Philly
and it's freaking negative 10 degrees
and you gotta unload the bags from the plane to the bus
or the truck.

(02:02:44):
So there's a lot of positives and negatives
to the NBA lifestyle,
but I'm happy I did it because I learned so much
about what the players go through
and now I'm able to use that to serve them better.
Would I go back to the NBA life?
Oh, not to mention if you have a family, wow.
You'll never see them on a regular basis.

(02:03:07):
You'll miss huge events.
You'll miss birthdays.
You'll miss ballet recitals.
You'll miss very pivotal, important moments
of this beautiful child's life and you'll miss that
because you're traveling for basketball.
But for me, the value there is definitely

(02:03:27):
not greater than the value that I have for my family.
So for me to go back,
everyone has a dollar amount, everyone has a price.
It'd have to be pretty handsome for me
to have to sacrifice those types of things.
But even then, it's still a conversation to have
with your significant others.
So I just ask that people that have that goal
and aspiration just know what you're getting into.

(02:03:49):
That's pretty much what that comes down to.
Mike, great stuff.
What are you working on?
Is there anything you'd like to plug, talk about,
where can we find you, all that good stuff?
So, first of all, shout out to you guys, a family,
someone that as an ambassador for how things
are supposed to be done from the performance,
strength and conditioning and training side

(02:04:10):
because I'm your competition.
And for you to have me on your podcast
is so untraditional and unorthodox
because we're just so used to having to fight each other
for sales or for customers or for views or for attention.
And you guys don't believe in that and neither do I.
And I just wanna say thank you for that

(02:04:32):
because you guys are doing it the freaking right way.
I love y'all.
I've loved y'all since day one,
since no one had any followers
and I still continue to push y'all
and enjoy your guys' platform.
But as far as my stuff and my project,
we launched an app, a 2.0 version in September.

(02:04:53):
It's live on Apple iOS only.
We're gonna go live Android in mid December.
So we'll have both platforms.
Yes, the GBG Hoops training app.
I would love for anyone and everyone to go check it out
in conjunction with Good Drills
because I think we do a lot of the same things
but also think we do some things different.

(02:05:15):
And yeah, you can have two training apps instead of one.
What's better than one training app, two?
Yeah, two is better than one.
Or is better.
Yeah.
(laughing)
Two is better than one.
And we're gonna see the dunking videos soon, right?
Mike G Dunking videos.
Yeah, okay.
Yeah, we need some proof.
We need some before.
We need some before videos.
Going to that, I think people,

(02:05:36):
when I was, I would try this guy's thing out.
Then I would try this thing.
Yeah, me too.
Then I would try, that's what people should be doing.
And it doesn't have to be that competition.
Like go get Mike's app, do it, go.
Get better, keep doing it.
I'll tell you what, most people talking to the kids
that are on our app, they're the type of people
that are on everybody's app.
And they're talking with everybody.

(02:05:57):
So that's usually how it goes.
If I found something that I thought was way better
than I currently have now,
it's like I would just put it in my app.
I would go learn from that person, talk to it,
and then apply it.
It's not like I've got some secret sauce
that I don't wanna share with anybody.
And this is the only way.
I'm constantly trying to find new things
to improve what I have.
And you're the same way.

(02:06:18):
So that's why we take a happy hour here.
Which is why I freaking love you guys, man.
And you guys are definitely setting the standard
for how it's supposed to be done.
So I salute you guys for sure.
Appreciate it.
So we appreciate it.
So we do my talk soon.
You know you're always welcome back on the show
and have a good one.
Thank you guys.
Appreciate y'all so much, man.
Shout out to everybody in the Good Drills community.

(02:06:39):
Go check out GBG Hoops.
Yeah.
Peace.