The Week That Was: July 1st-7th…

I thought I’d take this time to go over some of the highlights of the past week in my life.  So, let’s get right to it…

I) For the 4th of July we had some friends invite us over to their lake for some fun.  I needed to be near water as this heat wave has been brutal!  Here are some pictures…

Great time had by all!  The water was perfect, and the brats, brownies, and EVERYTHING tasted great.  I DID make sure to get in plenty of fruit and some veggies, however.  ”Damage control,” I guess you could call it.  Which leads to my next point…

II) I continued performing my training program which is geared towards “fat loss,” “get lean,” “get ripped,” or whatever you want to call it.  I’ve been working my ass off and it hasn’t been easy (the training program hasn’t been easy, that is).  That’s where the damage control comment came from up above as it wouldn’t make sense to go kill it in the weight room only to go out and eat like crap.  I’m still going to detail what my “fat loss” program has looked like over the last couple of weeks, so stay tuned (should have it up next week sometime).

III) I went to watch a bunch of my basketball clients play in a tournament yesterday.  It’s always fun to see them play 5-on-5 against live competition.  I usually only see them working on their skills with no one else around (as in a 1-on-1 session), or with a couple of partners (as in 2-on-1 or a 3-on-1 session).  Therefore, it’s hard to evaluate if some of the moves that we work on are “game-ready” yet.

Overall I was happy with the progress that they have been making.  Still a lot of work to do, but they’re heading in the right direction!

One of the players (Jake Ryan – 7th-grader) that I’ve been working with played especially well.  He had 23 points and they came in a variety of ways… pull-up jumpers; getting all the way to basketball; 9-10 at the FT line; and he had a couple 3’s.  More important to me, is the fact that he is taking what he learns in our lessons and “transferring” it over to the game.  For example, his head was always up and he did a great job of finding the open man; he changed speed (i.e. hesitation dribble); he “smoothly” changed directions (i.e. crossover dribble/between the legs dribble); AND, I was very happy to see that he combined both the change of direction and change of speed together at the same time (i.e. in the open court he hesitated, and went right in to the crossover). Great job Jake, your hard work is showing!

For a little more advanced version of what I’m talking about, check out how many of these change of direction moves are combined with a change of speed…

Nasty!  BTW, the Deron Williams play is my favorite in the video (#2).  He’s underrated for his ability to make defenders look like fools!

That’ll wrap things up for now.  I hope you all had a great 4th of July week, and that you continue to work hard through the rest of the summer!