35 Skill Work vs. AAU: Why Your Summer Strategy is Failing

"Don't be a practice player. Don't be the kid who hasn't gotten better since sophomore year."

As we transition into the spring and summer months, Coach Rodo breaks down the "Summer Trap" that many young athletes fall into. While AAU tournaments and 7-on-7 camps are great for exposure, Rodo argues that the real gains are made in the quiet hours of individual skill work—the time when you aren't banging bodies with nine other people on the floor.

In this episode, we discuss the "East Lansing mindset," why Kalamazoo Central needs to find its "Giant" pride again, and the specific formula for improving your game one week at a time. Whether you’re a basketball player needing to hit the shooting machine or a football player working on read-and-reaction time, this episode is your blueprint for a dominant off-season. 

I want to see the parks packed again. No more lollygagging. It’s time to get to work.

#CoachRodo #WinningRegardless #SummerGrind #SkillWork #AAUBasketball #KalamazooCentral #Trojans #FootballTraining #OffSeasonWork #PlayerDevelopment #YouthSports #basketballdrills 

(00:00) - The Summer Vision: Packing LeCrone, Westfield, and Oakland Parks.
(01:45) - The AAU Dilemma: Exposure vs. the wear and tear on a young body.
(03:30) - Rest is a Weapon: A story about a cousin from East Lansing who refreshed her game.
(06:15) - YouTube University: Using technology to find drills instead of just scrolling.
(08:45) - The Skill Work Difference: Why focused workouts beat 5-on-5 every time.
(12:00) - Kalamazoo Central’s Next Year: Addressing the "talent disparity" and shooting issues.
(15:30) - What is a "Giant"? Reclaiming the world-class pride of the Mike Thomas era.
(18:00) - Two Hours of Sacrifice: What are you willing to give up to be a starter?
(21:15) - Freshman at College: Why "learning the system" is a bogus excuse to sit.
(24:00) - Success Story: The Freshman girl who wouldn't be denied on the varsity stage.
(27:30) - Meeting the Action: Improving reading and reaction time (USC/Jadyn Walker update).
(30:15) - The Formula: How to add one new move every week and stack your skills.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

I want to see LaCrone Park packed. I want to see Westfield Park packed. I want to see Oakland Park packed. You don't want to be a practice player, do you? Or perhaps some of y'all do. Some of the kids that we know who hasn't who hadn't gotten any better from the time they were sophomores to the senior years. But it's all upon your effort. Put in that work over the summer. Today let's talk about what should transpire with this summer coming as far as these young athletes. You know, some of them are transitioning in the track, some are transitioning into baseball and other spring summer sports before next year's school athletics start. You know, also too, you have AAU basketball going on, you have um football 707 camps coming up and going on, things of that sort. I always like to find out what kids are doing in the summer to get better. Because you know, a lot of that stuff is team stuff. Um AAU, I'm a I'm a fan of it, but um kind of mixed emotions about it because it's fun going to the tournaments, it's fun seeing your kid play against other competition, against um people that they wouldn't otherwise see, but it takes away from the time that they could be at home in the gym getting skill work, you know, because they're playing um, you know, three games a day, three days, sometimes three days in a row. And, you know, that can be tough. I got a little cousin who plays for East Lansing, she's pretty tough. Um, you know, uh last year I uh I thought my cousin did a tremendous thing. Um they were moved, they moved her up to play for this other team, and um, you know, she didn't know the girls, girls didn't know her. A lot of girls went to school together and they played with each other, so it was kind of icing her out. And, you know, my cuzz was getting kind of frustrated. And so I said, you know, why don't you just um, you know, pull her out and, you know, you got three more weeks, put her in the gym for skill work. And that's what he did. And it paid off because it allowed her body also to heal from Knicks and Knacks. Um, it also allowed her to rest. Um, it allowed her to um refresh and get a ref refocus on the game. And man, I tell you, she had a great year again this year. She was a junior. I think she averaged like 17, 18 a game, played for East Lansing. She's she's a talent. Um, you know, and with that being said, I I think that, you know, as a parent with this AAU stuff, sometimes, you know, it's we get carried away because we we love to do it and we we we do it for us, you know, more than the kid per se. Not all of the parents, not all the parents, of course not, but a lot of them do. And, you know, you know those ones we do. Um, you know, it's okay for our kids to rest. It's okay for the kids to want to have a break, because the thing about resting is, you know, your body needs to recover. It's a long season. Um, and then you know, you throw in 30 games in the summertime, maybe even more. You know, that there's really no off time in between there, which why, which is why I'm a big, big proponent of uh kids getting skill work. Um, you know, you don't have to uh like take them out of basketball completely, take them out of AE completely, you know. Hey, he's not gonna play this weekend, but he will go to the gym, you know, for two, three hours those days of those games, and you know, put in work, you know, and and and work with someone. Um my cousin works with this guy up there in Lansing name, Edwin, and Edwin's been working with kids for shoot ever. I mean, we I remember when we were real, real little kids. He was he was working with kids. He's uh wasn't that much older than us, but you know, um skill work is big, big all summer. I mean, the thing that I always tell kids, I tell the young kids, you know, you guys got technology we didn't have. You guys got cell phones. All you gotta do is go to YouTube. And, you know, I would tell my kids when I coast them, man, just type in what you want to work on. And a whole list of drills will come up. And just get you behind. Hey, you don't have to even and you don't even have to go to a gym. You can go to the park. You know, we we all we we basketball can be played outside as well. You know, get you some games outside of um your AAU and all that stuff. Get you some five-on-fives, go to the park, get some, you know, go there, say today I'm working on nothing but passing, we're gonna win every game, you know. Um the thing that I see a lot of kids around here not doing is they don't put in individual work. They go straight to team basketball and they come home after that, for that, after that weekend or whatever, and they're chilling out, you know, hanging out with each other. Um, maybe have one practice during the week, which, you know, most teams do. They have one or two practices during the week. But, you know, the thing that the kids that I like are the ones that are still trying to get better, you know. I know you're saying that I'm crying, rest at the same time, but skill work and playing are two different things. Because, you know, when you're playing, you're banging into other bodies. You, you know, you might trip over somebody, you know, you might die for a loose ball or something like that. But when you're in the gym, you're doing specific work, you're doing specific skill work. So the the wear and tear on the body is not as much. It's because you're focused, it's focused workout versus, you know, having nine other bodies on the floor that you have to maneuver around. Um I I mean, it's it's it's it's paramount that you take advantage of your summer if you're trying to get better and you're trying to improve your position on perhaps your upcoming team for the next year. You know, um I always try to tell kids also, you can even work out why you're playing AAU basketball. I know that makes you tired. You know, I don't know. My I mean, my kid was a freaking anomaly because he would work out anyway. He didn't care. I'd be like, man, you got to rest this weekend, or you got to curve this weekend. I'll be straight, dad. I'll be straight. You know, you got you just have some kids are like that. You just have those type of kids. And those are the kids that are gonna be, excuse me, those are the ones that's gonna be fine because they don't know how to stop playing. You know, that's how he was. He did not know how to stop playing. Even after the AAU date, he would still go up to the Y and continuously play. He would go across town and play with his friends. He would go up to the friggin' to the athletic Bronson Athletic Club here in town and play up there. You know, I see a lot of these kids when they're done with their AAU and they rest and don't put any skill work in. How do you expect to get any better? How do you expect to um elevate yourself to a different position on the team as far as getting in the game or even being in the game, starting the game? You know, watching the kids this this uh basketball season, um Camus Essential's gonna have a hard time next year. Um because the talent is so to me, anyways, it was so despairing from your first six to your next six. The talent was leaps and bounds different, you know. Um I saw guys who are gonna be expected to handle the ball not very good at handling the ball. They either over-dribble or they get seized up on their weak side of the ball, and um, you know, um they don't make crisp passes. I mean, these are guys that are gonna be point guards, these are guys that are gonna have your ball, these are guys gonna make passes um and and run the offense. I I I I saw in uh a few kids on the JV team that I thought were better than the kids, some of the kids that weren't in the rotation on the varsity team. Um they were energetic, played hard, played well, but again, shooting is gonna be an issue for Kamazoo Central. So I urge these kids to get in the gym and just shoot, man. Get on a shooting machine. The thing about it is none of these kids don't ask to go to the gym in the summer. And I know I get this from the coaches, you know, like they coaches be aching to take these kids into the gym and get on a shooting machine. You know, you talk about us getting better and us making that leap, you know. To make that leap, you got to have the kids buy into it. The thing is, down in Lansing, most of the kids buy into it because Lansing is so big that you never want your boy who lives across town who play for, let's say, if you play at average, your boy who play at sex, then you don't want him to be better than you. So, what's up, what you doing? Then I'm about to go to the gym and hit this workout. What you doing? I'm about to go hit the workout too. I'll see y'all. We'll hook up after we get done working out. We don't have that here. Even though the coaches are willing to do it, you don't have the kids that want to do it. There used to be a time when Kalamazoo Central was winning state championships or at least going where, man, that Coach Thomas couldn't keep the kids out the gym. But again, those were different kids. But no, those were the kids who understood um they were Kalamazoo Central giants, world class. And they took that to heart. And I don't think today's generation of Kalamazoo Central kids are in in, they understand what that means to be a giant. And even if you don't, you know, you're still supposed to take pride in it. You're supposed to understand why it's important that you're a giant and why it's important to put in the work and put in the extra work. But then I go over to Lloyd North's, where, you know, my buddy is over there. And, you know, Rodney this summer is gonna have a lot of new faces, a lot of things that he's gotta do to take care of to prepare his team to get better, prepare his kids to get better, and I really hope that the kids buy in. I really, really hope that these kids understand that they're gonna have to put in the work too. The thing about what we do with our kids, we don't teach our kids that um you gotta work twice as hard as the coach. Because the coach is dependent on you to help him be better, help the team be better. And in order to do that, you you you have to put in your extra work, you know. Over the summer, I want to see, I want to see kids walking down the street dribbling the ball. You know, I want to see LaCrone Park packed. I want to see Westfield Park packed. I want to see Oakland Park packed, you know, I want to see kids, you know, wanting to go into the gym. You know, I I want to get calls saying, hey, you know, they're over there at the gym, go over to go over there and check out the local talent. You know, I would love to do that because I love doing those things. The thing about it is we got to have our kids wanting to do that. We got to have our kids wanting to get better. We got to have our kids understand that there's parts of your summer, there's parts of your spring that you got to sacrifice what's two hours. You know, what's two hours in a day to sacrifice to get better? I mean, you know, some of these kids might not even play AAU. You know, like my kids that are going to college, you know, they're not gonna play summer AAU. They've already committed and things of that sort. So what are you gonna do in the summer? Are you gonna just accept that I'm going to college and I'm a freshman, so I ain't gonna freaking play? I don't, because I mean, you you're f plenty of freshmen play. I mean, and and and that's really the the the the telltale of how much you really care about the game or how much you care about getting better as a player. You know, what are my kids that are going to college gonna do? Are you going to just, like I said, you're just gonna settle. You know, are you gonna, I'm I'm I'm I'm going to school, I'm going to college, I'm a freshman, I got three more years to play. I'll just learn the system this year. That's bogus to me. You know, that's that's a waste of a whole year. That's a whole year. You could have gone JUCO and played. You know, that's a whole year. Because the one thing that these kids don't understand, there's no substitution for playing time. You know, you don't want to be a practice player, do you? Or perhaps some of y'all do. And those that don't want to be practice players, you know, this summer, get your ass in the gym, get your ass in the park. Rain don't hurt nobody, so what it's raining, and the ball don't bounce, but you can still shoot that bad boy, run over there, pick it up, and shoot it again. You know, go get that work. If you if you're a football player, get out there, run you some routes, you know, run you some heels, do you some bends and thrusts, you know, get your behind, do a bunch of push-ups, get out there and run around your city, you know, throw you a weight vest on, you know, do you thousand jumping jacks a day. You know, I mean, there's all kinds of things you can do to get better this summer. And I want to see that because I want to see kids get better. I want to, I want to be there to cheer you on. I I want to be there to say, man, who is that kid? I love finding out who the new kids are when I see them, and I and there's something about them, and there's an effort that they put in because that's something that that's a part of them. That ain't nothing that you can coach or you can teach, you know, the to see how hard a kid works or see how far along a kid works. There was a young lady who's a freshman on the Kamazoo Central uh varsity basketball team. Love this girl to death, come to all of our workouts, and then I watched her this year. She became one of the main staples as a freshman on the varsity basketball team. And he ain't have nothing but one senior. And she was one senior, and the one senior was a starter. The rest of them was sophomores, juniors, and freshmen, and they freaking went to the regional. Nobody expected that from that team. And that girl was a big part of it. But the thing about her was when she came to our workouts, we saw just how hard she worked, and we knew. You just you just knew that she was gonna be that girl because she wouldn't be denied. Even when she couldn't do the exercises, she still tried. And that's all we asked to do. And then eventually, again, she got him. I mean, my hats off to that girl's season. I wish I remember her name. And I'm going to find it and I'm going to remember it, and I'm going to talk about her again. I want to have her on because I know her people. But anyway, I digress. That girl there took a lot of time and got better, worked over the summer. Hopefully this summer, she's doing the same thing. It's things like that. It's stories like that that, you know, we like to tell as coaches. It's stories like that that we like to talk about to other athletes, you know, your peers to let you know your things that your peers are doing to get better, to better themselves. So maybe that'll hype you up. So again, with your seasons being over and with, you know, you're moving on to different sports. Um, and if basketball or football is your main sport, I hope you take the time this summer to put in a whole lot of skill work. Skill work, skill work, skill work, and get get some five on five run. And and out the ordinary five-on-five run, you know, you know, get get get some get some run with some cash you don't even know. Or, you know, even if it's with your boys, play against your boys. You know, get some run like that. And for my football guys, hey, just get bigger, just get stronger, just get faster, just get meaner, you know, uh uh work on your read and reaction time. Uh that's what I tell my nephew out there at USC, you know, I was watching some of his games and he would tell me, like, uh, I was there. I was there, and I would be like, you know what? You is there. You just got to trust your anticipation, trust your instincts, you know, which is your read and reaction time, and which he started to do. And he was towards the end of the year, it was he was there. And I don't know, it might not have had nothing to do with what I said. It might have just been time or whatever, but the fact of the matter is it made me feel like it was. It made me feel good because I started seeing him making tackles. I started seeing him reading and reacting a lot quicker than he used to. Instead of the action coming to him, he would read where the action is going and he'd go meet the action, you know, as like you're supposed to do. So, you know, if you if you, you know, whatever your sport is, and then you're coming up on this summer and you out of it, take that time to get better, stronger mentally, physically, you know, you get your stamina up, you know. Do the things that'll make you um formidable when it comes to that sport. You know, do the things that'll make people look at you as if you have gotten as if you have improved. Don't be like some of the kids that we know who hasn't who hadn't gotten any better from the time they were sophomores to the senior years. You know, you you we got a lot of that around here. We got to get away from that. You can't don't listen to people who tell. Anybody who tells you how good you are, just know that you aren't that good. You know, that's the problem. We lie to people, we lie to the kids all the time. Not we, because I'm gonna tell you the truth. Again, that's why they don't, why kids come to me, but parents don't like to hear what I gotta say, because I will tell the kid. Because I'm gonna be honest with you from being a coach, don't, don't, don't believe what they tell you. You are never, ever as good as they told you. If the GOAT, who to me is Michael Jordan, says, everybody told me how great I was, but not to me. I wasn't even the best in my own family because of his brother, he said, was better than him, you know. Shannon Sharp, the same thing. Why am I gonna listen to you? Why are you gonna listen to somebody else? You don't be satisfied with somebody else telling you how good you are. Until you read your name in the paper, and not just once or twice, until you constantly in the paper, until them notes is showing up at your front door, until showing up in your mailbox, until them boxes of of college gear. We want you to come here. Show up on your door, you can always get better, you can always work harder. Not saying that you can't get there because you can get there, but it's all upon your effort to put in that work over the summer. Basketball, every day of the week you should be working out, and every week you should work on a new move. Work on something that you didn't know. And that's four weeks. And so for that four weeks, so for the first week you work on something you couldn't do. Second week you work on something you couldn't do, but you combine that thing that you did from the first week. Third week, you combine those combine those two with the third week. Fourth week, you combine those three with four, so on and so forth. That's how you get better. That's how you improve your game. It's just a simple formula. You just gotta be willing to do it and you gotta be willing to put in the work. Thank you for tuning in and taking the time to listen to me. Um, for all of my athletes, I hope y'all pay attention and go put in that work this summer and get better because again, I would love to be able to ask who you are and watch you and cheer for you all year long next year. Coach Roddow's winning regardless signing off.