The By Any Means Coaches Podcast

Martin is a player development and sports performance coach in Uruguay, South America. He's a mad genius when it comes to player development, he's able to apply the science of skill acquisition to his sessions at an extremely high clip. I think he's also one of the best in the business at creating one of the best environments for his athletes.We talk about international hoops, using constraints to develop skill, can we build a player like Kyrie, creativity and much more! EnjoyCheck Martin out on social:IG - https://www.instagram.com/onlyaboutbball/Website - https://www.onlyaboutbball.com/ 

Lee Taft is renowned as "The Speed Guy", he's one of the most influential figures in the industry when it comes to speed work, change of direction and specifically basketball change of direction. He could easily be considered one of the GOATS in the industry. He and I talk about the state of youth basketball right now and how some AAU programs and the system as a whole are failing some of these athletes, Lee also adds some of the things he's actively doing within his community to combat the AAU system and it's great stuff.We talk about building speed, change of direction as well as how to training power athlete to be more elastic and the opposite. Lastly, we talk about some myths about defensive stances and what a "good" stance should actually look like

Joel Smith is one of the great minds in the performance industry, he has one of if not the best performance & strength and conditioning podcast with over 300 great episodes with great guests that bring a unique set of knowledge and a different perspective on how to train!I really like Joel because he's an extremely progressive thinker, he doesn't settle for the traditional strength & conditioning philosophy and is constantly pulling from different practices, different sports, different coaches and making them work in his own way. Joel has done phenomenal work for the performance work with his podcast but also has also contributed plenty of articles, e-books, books and even courses. I'm very thankful to have gotten him on the show and hopefully I'll get him on again in the future!Check out Joel on all platforms!IG: https://www.instagram.com/justflysports/Link Tree: https://linktr.ee/justflysportsWebsite: https://www.just-fly-sports.com/Podcast: https://www.just-fly-sports.com/podcast-home/

Drew is one of, if not the best basketball skills trainers in the world. His resume speaks for itself, Jayson Tatum, Brad Beal, Joel Embiid, Tyrese Haliburton, Tyler Herro, the list goes on and on. It's safe to say he's really good at what he does, and he provides a little insight into how he trains this week!Drew talks about his off-season model (add-develop-compete) he uses with his clients, he talks about the tools and approaches he has when utilizing that model and expands on some other great points.Another thing he touches on a little bit is his ability to build the relationships he has with his clients, the relationship he creates allows him to be so affective. The relationship builds trust and that trust then bleeds into everything, the way he talks to them, challenges them, then of course the way that he trains them.Super thankful to Drew for his time!!Make sure to follow Drew on socials:IG: https://www.instagram.com/drewhanlen/IG: https://www.instagram.com/puresweat/YT: https://www.youtube.com/@PureSweat

As much as I advocate for working out with someone else, that's just not always realistic for some people. This can be due to circumstances like not having access to a trainer or others, being away with your team or you simply just like to work out alone - which we see constantly in this sport. With that being said, if you're training alone I talked about 3 ways you can drastically improve these sessions.Preface: A question I ask players when they ask what they can do to improve their workouts is "do you write your workouts down?", a lot of times the answer is no. Taking a quick 5 minutes to write down what you're doing in your workout later that day will immediately make it way more productive1. Visualization - this is something that separates good players and great players, players like Kobe and MJ are on record talking about how they utilize visualization. It's such a powerful tool that can help merge the gap of having physical context, if we can be detailed and deliberate with what we visualize we can create the context needed to transfer skill 2. Train based off of feel - don't just arbitrarily go into your workouts saying "I need 500 makes a day" because that specific day maybe you only need 100 makes, or you might need 1000 makes. If you go into your workouts judging them and basing them off of feel you can get more of what you actually need3. Use constraints - constraints can be a phenomenal tool if you're working out yourself, target skills you need to work on and apply them within that session. Challenge the skills identified with these constraints, you can get very creative and really get better when using them*Bonus tip* - Watch film, watch and analyze as much film as you can, it'll help you understand what you need to work on and exactly what constraints to apply or exactly what to visualize in your workouts

Super excited to get Tyler on for a second time, any time I get to chop it up with him is a good day! This week he and I talk about how to get the most out of 1v1 sessions, as well as how small group work is actually the most specific skill work you can get. 1v1 is an opportunity to improve general skills whereas group work is a lot more specific, interesting topic!We also talk about the difference between training pro's or higher level athletes versus younger athletes, also how maybe our skill work should look very similar across positions up until about senior year of high school - too often we box players in to a specific role too early.We talk business in-season as a trainer, how to keep money coming in and Tyler gives insight on both what he's doing currently while owning a gym as well as when he didn't own a gym and what he did during this time of year.Lastly we talk content, how he comes up with his ideas, his relationship and communication with his Alex (his videographer) and a lot of other great things regarding content.Make sure to check Tyler out on social if you haven't:IG - https://www.instagram.com/tjltraining/YT - https://www.youtube.com/c/TylerLeclerc

Like everything - context matters. If you're just trying to condition then go ahead and condition and push your fatigue levels, but if you're trying to learn a new skill then we probably shouldn't be fatigued. When learning a new skill we want to be as fresh as possible and if you're fatigued the skill you "learn" might end up being an entirely different one all togetherIf we're only at 40% trying to learn a new skill, when we try said skill when were at 100% we won't be able to replicate it. We were a totally different person when learned it at 40%, we need to keep that in mind.Here's 3 ways we can use fatigue as a tool:1. Conditioning 2. Use fatigue as a constraint to challenge skills you already have 3. Performance/Strength & Conditioning - we need to perform under a fatigued state, implementing some fatigue in your resistance training in the right way can be extremely beneficial

We need to understand the impact our words have on our athletes, recognize it affects so much than we realize. It can affect how we play on the court, our decision making, confidence levels both on and off the court, if we box our players in on the court it'll affect them off the court too. Whether you mean to or not it will."Mental Toughness" is a phrase thrown around a lot in team sport, I think we get carried away with it. We categorize players as not mentally tough so much on the court that it translates to their lives, when in reality what even is mental toughness?The last point regarding our words is how we say it and who we say it to, emotional intelligence plays a huge role in coaching. Some players can handle being screamed at in front of their entire team, others can't. If they can't that doesn't make them soft, or weak that makes them a person with their own feelings. Understand people perceive things differently.Stress management - our bodies can't compartmentalize stress, whether it's stress from the weight room or because you're fighting with your gf or bf. Take those things into account especially with the season here now, on game days keep that day high - lift post game. Low days aren't the time to get extra reps or lift because you'll be overflowing that metaphorical stress bucket and ultimately get hurt 

Max Schmarzo is one of the most intelligent individuals I know of, he has been a massive resource in my education. Between other podcasts he's been on, his own podcast, his instagram, his educational platform EdgeU and every other platform he's on. He's one of if not the goat within the performance world (IMO).Max is a machine, he brings so much knowledge to every conversation and the best part is that he can talk about some of the most complicated concepts and make it so easy to understand. That's a testament to his knowledge.In this episode we talk about the Bayesian Brain, and how our experiences (output) affect how we are as people and athletes (input). He gives great examples and makes it extremely consumableWe then talk about skill acquisition, blocked versus random practice and why using Kobe or MJ may not be the best examples to look at when talking about skill development Lastly we talk a little about performance, I will be getting Max on for a part 2 discussing more performance based stuff.Check out Max:IG - https://www.instagram.com/strong_by_science/EdgeU - https://edgeu.passion.io/learn/productsUEN (Nutritional Products) - https://uenutrition.com/ 

Building off of part 1 (early phase off-season), I talk about how middle stage off-season could look and then finally how late stage can look. There are so many different ways to program and periodize, what I mention in this episode isn't the end all be all. It's just a way to go about things, do your own research and make sure to apply it to your own setting to make sure it works for you.Middle off-season is pretty simple, you want to progress off of the early phase and continue to build the base. I mention a 3-day full body split but like I said it doesn't have to be that, I think that split is good for a lot of athletes and it's worked for me in the past especially for this phase of the off-season. We want to continue progressing things like our plyos, strength work and build movement proficiency.Late off-season will become more specific to the sport, you want to overload specific joint angles and get the athlete prepare for the demands on the sport. This phase or stage will be more power based, contrast training can be utilized, MB work, speed-strength and so on.