I’m in my defensive stance driving the shooting guard to the left as it’s his weak side. My eye is on his waist so that I don’t lose focus of where his body is really going.  I take a step back in anticipation of his drive but none the less the guard hesitates and blows by me.

One of the most frustrating feelings you can have as a basketball player.

Or how about the one where you get shut down by a defender because you’re always getting beat to the spot?

When I had those things happen to me, my frustrations would drive me to train harder and stay after practice to play defense on the best scorers on the pro team (I was on the junior team at the time). It made me better on defense because I got better at reading the offensive players. But I didn’t get quicker and still couldn’t beat some of the players to the spot.

Still frustrated, it led me to reading and studying speed, agility and quickness training (and anything else that would improve it) from every resource I could get including going to Olympic track and field coaches and training with them. I believe that’s when my passion for training really begun (I had a purpose!), the first step to becoming a strength coach,  even though it would still be a long time before my basketball career ended. (more…)