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 productive
1. 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 need
3. 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
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 productive
1. 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 need
3. 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