00:00
As terrible as the situation is,
00:01
there is opportunity within the situation.
00:03
You know, these guys, they’re gonna have
00:04
a bigger off-season than they’ve ever had.
00:06
They’ve never had an opportunity like this
00:09
to really slow down and take a long,
00:11
hard look at how they play, how they move,
00:13
and what the things they really need to improve on are.
00:15
[slow hip hop music]
00:19
Hi, I’m Brandon Payne,
00:20
I’m the founder and owner of Accelerate Basketball
00:23
in Charlotte, North Carolina,
00:24
and I am Stephen Curry’s personal trainer,
00:27
personal skills coach, and performance coach.
00:30
I’ve been training Stephen now for 10 years,
00:32
and each year it’s just gotten bigger and bigger.
00:34
As of today, April 10th, you know the league is still
00:37
non-committal on whether it’s gonna come back this year
00:41
or just close up operations and move on to next year.
00:44
For us, at the NBA level, especially for players
00:47
like Stephen, that have played deep into the playoffs
00:49
for so many consecutive years,
00:51
we kinda have a rhythmic defined
00:54
work calendar that we operate from.
00:56
Right now, not knowing whether we’re preparing
01:00
to play games in June and July,
01:03
or if we’re preparing to play games
01:05
starting in November and December,
01:07
it kinda puts us in this position where, all right,
01:10
we’re not sure if we should be resting,
01:12
and getting into our normal off-season
01:14
workout schedule after the rest period ends.
01:16
Because we typically would take off about four
01:18
to five weeks after the playoffs have concluded
01:21
to allow his body to rest, allow him to go
01:24
on vacation, spend family time.
01:25
Or, are we tryin’ to stay in shape?
01:27
Get him back on the court within the next eight weeks.
01:30
I’m treating it as a four to six period that we would
01:32
normally take off at the end of the season.
01:34
My mental calendar has kinda flipped forward
01:36
to thinking you know, November and December
01:39
is when we’re gonna start playin’ basketball again.
01:41
I’m startin’ to build out what would be our normal
01:44
off-season program, thinking that it would start
01:46
probably some time in the next three to four weeks.
01:49
[slow hip hop music]
01:51
Right now, I would say we’re about three weeks away
01:54
from really kinda gettin’ goin’ to where
01:56
I’m gonna wanna be involved daily in what he’s doin’.
01:59
He’s a very responsible player,
02:01
so he has a really nice set up at his house,
02:04
to where he’s able to get a lotta cardio and strength in.
02:07
So, I know he’s doin’ some things on his own.
02:10
But, in about three weeks, we’ll definitely have
02:11
a defined direction that we’re gonna go in
02:13
for this off-season that he’ll need to get started on.
02:16
In a normal off-season we would be together
02:19
pretty much five, six days a week,
02:20
and we would have one completely off day.
02:23
But, right now, I’m preparing him to be able
02:25
to do a lot of things at home on his own.
02:28
I’m having a Shoot-A-Way shooting machine sent to his house.
02:31
He just got a basket up, so at least
02:33
he’ll be able to get up a few shots.
02:35
I’m having our virtual reality,
02:37
our neuro trainer unit sent there so he can do all
02:40
of his mental skills training.
02:41
All of his neurocognitive work.
02:43
He’s very fortunate to have that type of space
02:45
to do this type of work in.
02:47
Even though he didn’t play the full
02:49
82 game schedule because of the hand injury,
02:51
he would still be taking about a four
02:53
to six week period off, and letting his body rest.
02:56
Even though he wasn’t playing in those games,
02:58
he was goin’ through two a day workouts.
02:59
He was goin’ through hand rehab.
03:01
He was still in the facility every day,
03:03
so he needs a mental break just as much
03:05
as he needs a physical break.
03:06
So, we would still take some time
03:07
to let him kind of mentally recuperate,
03:09
and get away from it before we come back
03:11
and really get started.
03:13
During this four to six week period,
03:14
this is typically the time that I would be using
03:17
to really go back and watch film of this season.
03:19
Look at some of the ways that teams
03:21
took things away from him,
03:22
or look at some of the things that he did new
03:24
that allowed him to have success,
03:25
and kind of build that into a skill program.
03:28
At the same time, I would be looking back
03:30
at not only the big injuries like the hand,
03:32
but there’s also little micro injuries and things
03:34
that happen throughout a basketball season.
03:36
Just bumps and bruises, or somethin’ small
03:39
that they were able to play through.
03:40
You still have to build out that rehab process
03:43
within your strength conditioning program
03:44
to make sure those micro injuries
03:46
don’t repeat themselves the following years.
03:48
This would be a period of time
03:49
where I’m really reflecting on the season.
03:51
Talking to the team trainers, talking to Stephen,
03:54
getting feedback, to make sure we’re putting together
03:57
a comprehensive off-season program that pushes us forward
03:59
from this season to next season.
04:02
[slow hip hop music]
04:05
Once we get out of this four to six week period,
04:07
that initial 10 days to two week period
04:09
is gonna be focused on making sure
04:11
he has fluid movement skills,
04:12
making sure that we don’t have any lingering
04:15
soft tissue issues from the season.
04:17
A lot of foam rolling, mobility at his shoulders,
04:20
mobility at his hips.
04:21
Stability at his knees and mobility at his ankles.
04:25
The way that I work with basketball players,
04:27
the most important thing is we need to do
04:28
from a movement standpoint, is starting at your feet.
04:31
Of course, we have to have some strength
04:32
and stability at the ankle, but we really have
04:35
to make sure we have the range of motion we need
04:37
to allow our knees and our hips to do their jobs.
04:40
If we have a joint disfunction at one place within our leg,
04:44
the issues are gonna show up at another joint.
04:46
So, if we have a lack of range of motion at our ankles,
04:50
we’re gonna start to have some discomfort at our knee.
04:52
Or, if we have something going on from
04:54
a stiffness standpoint in our hips,
04:57
typically we’re gonna have something goin’ on in our knees.
04:59
So, we have to make sure from a joint by joint standpoint,
05:02
that we are moving with fluidity,
05:04
and that our joints are allowing
05:05
themselves to play their role.
05:07
You know, we build shooters from the ground up.
05:09
Making sure that from a soft tissue standpoint,
05:12
we’re not having any knots of anything.
05:13
He gets really knotted up in his
05:15
quadriceps from time to time.
05:16
We’re gonna spend a lot of time working
05:18
on that in that first 10 day period.
05:20
So, you see, I’ve got it broken down.
05:21
Day one, day three, day five.
05:23
Day two, day four, day six.
05:25
We’re gonna get in the diaphragmatic activation first,
05:28
and that’s basically breathing drills.
05:29
These are just different protocols in terms
05:32
of how we have the arms lifted, where the knees are bent.
05:35
So, we’re gettin’ very detailed about
05:37
how we’re doing everything here,
05:38
because we’ve gotta make sure that
05:39
the diaphragm is the primary mover.
05:41
Then, we’re gonna get into our floss activation.
05:43
Now, floss is somethin’ that we’re using the rubber floss
05:47
that you wrap the muscle to kinda trap the blood
05:49
in place for about a 60 to 90 second period.
05:53
We go through a few small movements,
05:54
then we unwrap it, and then the new blood flushes out,
05:57
the oxygenated blood flushes in.
05:59
And you see, we’ve got myofascial mobility ball uppers.
06:02
He tends to get a little bit tight in his pecs,
06:04
and a little bit tight in his traps.
06:06
And then, we have a shoulder mobility series
06:08
that we go through, and this is laying on a foam roller.
06:11
This is all the different stuff
06:13
that he goes through on that,
06:14
just to make sure his shoulders are moving
06:15
with great fluidity and with great range of motion.
06:18
If we feel like after the seven day period
06:21
that he’s operating the way he needs to,
06:23
and that there’s no issue, we may get into
06:24
our strength and stuff a little bit earlier.
06:27
But really, this period of time is designed
06:29
to get him working on his balance,
06:30
to get him working on joint by joint possibility.
06:33
And, getting him to deal with uncommon loading.
06:36
We use a product called ViPR.
06:37
Which is, they look like logs.
06:39
They’re just designed for you to do flow movements with,
06:43
so not movements that are designed
06:45
to be point A to point B movements,
06:46
just movements that are designed
06:48
to load your body in an uncommon manner.
06:50
It translates directly to the court,
06:52
because all of our change of direction,
06:54
all of our step backs, and all of our quick stopping,
06:56
that’s all about dealing with your
06:59
body moving in different ways.
07:01
We can’t script anything on the court.
07:02
You can’t script how the defender is playing.
07:05
You can’t script what happens in front of you.
07:08
It’s all reactionary, so when you’re reactionary
07:10
with change of directions, your body’s gonna have
07:13
to load in a lot of different ways.
07:14
By using these ViPRs, and using different ways
07:17
to load them in different bands,
07:19
we’re allowing their bodies to remember
07:21
and improve at changing directions and reactionary times.
07:25
With Stephen, we’ve had such a long relationship,
07:27
and he’s such a professional,
07:28
and he knows his body inside and out,
07:30
we don’t ever wanna get into like an all out stretch.
07:33
We never wanna stretch as far as we can
07:34
to hold it for 30 seconds.
07:36
We get in to things like where we call it a 60% stretch,
07:38
like if it’s a hamstring stretch.
07:41
But, we’re gonna hold that slight stretch
07:42
for a long period of time.
07:44
The more difficult we get in the stretch,
07:46
so if we get into like a 70 or 75% stretch,
07:48
the less time we’re gonna hold that stretch.
07:50
You think about it like it’s one extended yoga session.
07:54
We’re progressively loading him,
07:55
but we’re not gonna get into these really,
07:57
really difficult positions in day one.
08:00
We’re gonna probably get some difficult stretches
08:02
and difficult things probably by day six or seven.
08:04
We don’t really want him working
08:06
much longer than 90 minutes.
08:07
You’re gonna his the point of diminishing returns
08:09
where you’re not getting the most out of every single rep.
08:11
We have to extract the most improvement
08:14
out of every single rep, because our body
08:16
can only go through so many.
08:17
That 90 minute marker is kinda your cut time.
08:20
[slow hip hop music]
08:23
Week three of our normal off-season program,
08:25
we would start introducing our basic movements,
08:28
our basic lifts in the weight room.
08:29
But, it would be done in conjunction
08:31
with the skill work that we are starting.
08:33
With Stephen, we’ll be able to do pretty much everything
08:35
we normally do in the weight room,
08:37
just I’ll be on the computer on the Zoom.
08:39
Whatever mode of communication we’re using.
08:41
So, we would start to get on the floor
08:43
for probably about 30 to 40 minutes in that third week,
08:46
just to get shots up, to get a ball in our hands.
08:49
Just to start goin’ back through a lot
08:51
of our mechanics maintenance, which is just basically
08:54
making sure that not only our movement mechanics are good
08:56
in terms of moving beneath our hips,
08:58
but also our shooting mechanics are solid.
09:00
So, hopefully that first 10 day period
09:02
have provided us the fluid movement that we need
09:05
at each joint to be able to shoot the ball smoothly.
09:08
We would pair up what we were doin’ from a skill standpoint
09:11
with what we do in the weight room.
09:12
So, if on day one, if we were just primarily working
09:16
on just jumping with shots, not moving side to side,
09:20
not getting downhill, not escaping,
09:22
but we’re just jumping and shooting,
09:24
then we would probably work on our
09:25
landing mechanics in the weight room that day.
09:27
We were doing vertical pressing,
09:29
so like a squat, or somethin’ along those lines,
09:31
where we had a big focus on landing mechanics.
09:34
When we first get back on the court,
09:36
it’s gonna be primarily really small mechanical stuff.
09:40
A lot more ball handling, tennis ball, two ball stuff
09:43
than we would have as the summer would go.
09:46
So, things like this right here.
09:48
The, like bounce catch, toss catch, or just toss and catch.
09:51
Again, I mean, we’re gonna be talkin’
09:53
about these same bullet points.
09:55
Posture, tempo, making sure we’re breathing.
09:57
So, the breathing that we talked about,
09:59
that diaphragmatic activation,
10:01
that carries through in drills like this as well.
10:04
So, we wanna take these drills,
10:06
like these stationary tennis ball drills,
10:07
and make them bigger in terms of their impact.
10:10
So, not only is there the ball handling element.
10:13
There’s the overload element of the tennis ball being there.
10:16
There’s the posture and strength element.
10:17
This is an example of vertical core strength as well.
10:21
But, there’s also the element of breathing.
10:23
When we go through these drills,
10:24
as he’s very detailed about how he goes through it,
10:27
he’s gonna get a greater amount of improvement,
10:29
because all the things we were hitting on
10:30
in our strength movements
10:31
will come out in these drills as well.
10:33
We would treat this drill, this bounce catch,
10:35
toss catch, like a base drill.
10:37
From the base drill, we can expand off of it.
10:40
So, it would go from a bounce catch, toss catch.
10:42
Then we would go bounce catch, toss catch,
10:44
cross the basketball over and catch it with the other hand.
10:46
Three, four weeks without a ball in our hand
10:47
is a long time for a guy that, you know,
10:49
has played basketball his entire life.
10:51
But, he needs that.
10:52
He needs that mental break.
10:53
Gotta have it in order to be able
10:55
to refocus and prepare for the next season.
10:57
So, those are short bursts.
10:59
The tennis balls, that stuff is where he’ll do two
11:02
or three drills for 30 seconds each,
11:04
and then we get away from it.
11:05
So, it’s just a real quick 90 second, hit it,
11:08
and we’ll put it down, and we’ll probably go
11:09
to somethin’ from a strength standpoint.
11:11
We’ll use the tennis ball stuff
11:12
to provide some rest in his strength workouts right now
11:17
while we have the current set up.
11:18
And then, we’ll use it to kind of break up
11:20
his shooting as well.
11:21
We’ll never have somebody doin’ that
11:23
for longer than about 90 seconds at a time, that’s it.
11:25
If you get to the point where you’re slowing down
11:27
or you get to the point where you’re gettin’ sloppy,
11:29
the benefit of the drill is lost.
11:31
So, you have to make sure you’re short, quick, and sharp.
11:34
If you think about things that are ground based
11:36
that could help with vertical core strength,
11:38
we do a lot of planking.
11:39
We don’t do many extension type core movements,
11:42
so whereas general population would do a lot of things
11:45
where they’re either crunching,
11:46
or they’re doin’ some sort of a,
11:48
you know a static hold in that kinda crunch position,
11:51
we’re doin’ more contralateral stuff.
11:53
We would have a cone in front of him,
11:55
so he would have to reach his right hand out to tap the cone
11:58
while he’s reaching his right hand out to tap the cone,
12:01
his left foot has to come off the ground.
12:03
So, we’re getting glute activation on the left side,
12:05
and we’re getting some shoulder activation
12:07
on the right side, but his core is havin’
12:09
to lock everything down so he’s not falling side to side.
12:12
If I’m driving to the basket,
12:13
and I’ve got the basketball in my right hand,
12:15
and I’m receiving contact on my left shoulder,
12:17
my right leg is gonna be loaded more than my left leg,
12:20
because my right leg is the one that’s gotta provide
12:22
the leverage for me to stay on the line that I’m drive.
12:24
So, you have to be able to be strong with your core
12:26
while your legs are producing different amounts of force,
12:29
and you have to be strong with your core
12:31
while your arms are completing different tasks.
12:33
Form for us is paramount, like we have to have perfect form.
12:37
His breathing has to be superior
12:39
while he’s going through all this,
12:41
so while you think about it, if you’re planking,
12:43
and you got one leg up and one hand up,
12:45
and you’re tryin’ to hold your body still,
12:46
the first thing your body does is it forgets to breathe.
12:49
‘Cause you wanna hold your breath to try
12:50
to hold everything together, so we actually have
12:52
somebody watching his breathing while he’s doin’ all that.
12:54
Typically, we monitor pretty closely heart rates.
12:57
That’s our biggest kind of tell on number one,
13:00
how well conditioned we are, and number two,
13:03
how hard we actually worked through that workout.
13:05
There’s several manufacturers
13:07
that make different heart rate monitors,
13:09
and there’s one or two that have some pretty good apps,
13:11
so he can actually screenshot his app
13:13
to show me what we call the peaks and valleys looks like,
13:15
and how close together they are, how far apart they are.
13:17
Our biggest focus when we’re lookin’ at heart rate
13:20
is how quickly the heart rate comes down.
13:22
The shorter that period of time is,
13:24
the better shape he’s in.
13:26
[slow hip hop music]
13:27
Week four is where the cardiovascular work
13:29
will start to ramp up and where that comes
13:32
in to play is on our skill work.
13:33
Whereas in week three, we’re probably only spending about
13:35
30 to 45 minutes on the court,
13:37
okay now we’re actually gonna extend
13:39
that out to about an hour.
13:41
And, instead of the entire period being spent
13:44
on stationary catch and shoot stuff,
13:46
for about 15 minutes of that period,
13:48
we’ll be actually moving.
13:49
We’re playing a lot of what we call shooting games,
13:51
where he’s gotta make a certain amount
13:53
of shots against a certain time limit,
13:54
but we’re givin’ him different spots he’s gotta got to.
13:57
If we’re doin’ that for about 15 minutes in week four,
14:00
you know, week five, we’ll kinda ramp that up
14:03
to about 30 minutes, so he’ll be moving
14:05
for about half the time we’re on the floor.
14:06
His cardiovascular challenges are getting greater
14:09
as we get deeper into the summer, but also his skill work
14:12
is getting better because we’re getting into
14:13
more game like skill work, that’s how.
14:15
We try to challenge him as much as we can through
14:18
the weeks ’til we kinda get to the peak.
14:20
We wanna peak about 10 days prior to training camp,
14:24
because what we wanna do is we wanna give him a few days
14:27
to go on vacation with his family,
14:30
which he typically does right before the season starts.
14:32
Then we’ll come back right before training camp
14:35
with two or three really rigorous days,
14:36
and then the two days, three days before training camp,
14:39
we’re simply just gettin’ up shots,
14:40
makin’ sure we’re sharp, and then he’s off to them.
14:43
Those rigorous days are what we call competition days.
14:46
Everything we do within the workout
14:47
is all competitive shooting.
14:49
We’re gonna be changin’ areas, changin’ ends.
14:51
Givin’ him different defensive assignments.
14:53
We do things that are called game simulations.
14:55
We call it four quarters.
14:57
He doesn’t really like the drill,
14:58
but it’s where we’re simulating things
15:00
that he would have to do in a game on defense on one end,
15:03
then he has to change ends the floor,
15:05
and he has to make a few shots.
15:06
Then he’s gotta go back and play defense again.
15:08
So, it’s extremely challenging, extremely tiring.
15:10
But, it gives us a really good gauge on where he is.
15:13
The heart rate data that we get
15:15
from that is really important.
15:16
We’re really looking closely at how quickly
15:19
that heart rate slope’s coming back down.
15:21
We also wanna look at time out.
15:23
We simulate time outs, where he’ll go for
15:25
a four, six, to eight possessions,
15:27
then we’ll simulate takin’ a time out,
15:28
where he actually goes and sits down.
15:30
Then again, we look at the heart rate.
15:31
What does it look like when it’s comin’ down.
15:33
How quickly is it comin’ down,
15:34
because that’s the information we need to know so we can,
15:37
you know, feel really good about
15:39
where he is from a cardio standpoint.
15:41
Very rarely do we shoot for just the sake of shooting.
15:43
Even on that 100 makes, we’re tracking it,
15:46
so we know how many it takes him to make 100 shots.
15:49
You know, we wanna make sure if we’re makin’ 100 shots,
15:50
we gotta make it less than 110.
15:52
Because we’re shooting against air.
15:53
Nobody’s in front of us, nobody’s around us.
15:55
The ball should go in.
15:57
We have tracking data that shows us how far left the ball
16:00
goes in the rim, how far right the ball goes in the rim.
16:02
We wanna make sure the ball’s hitting the middle
16:04
of the rim on every shot, because in a game,
16:06
he’s never gonna be standing still to catch and shoot.
16:09
So. if you woulda shot that same shot,
16:10
off the move, it would’ve been a miss.
16:12
If you’re not looking at this information,
16:14
it’s kinda like flyin’ blind.
16:16
You’re just kinda floating, you’re just kinda
16:18
working for the sake of working.
16:19
We can’t waste effort on the court.
16:22
We have to make sure that everything we’re doin’
16:23
on the court and the weight room
16:25
takes us towards improvement to create
16:27
the proper workout loading form moving into the season.
16:31
[slow electronic music]
16:34
We’re in obviously a tough situation as a country.
16:36
We’re in a tough situation globally.
16:38
At some point, this is gonna end.
16:40
At some point, kids are gonna be playin’ basketball again.
16:43
You know, I’m getting something called
16:44
Basketball Parent put together,
16:45
where it’s gonna give parents an opportunity
16:47
to speak with me on a monthly basis
16:49
about putting their program together for their kids,
16:52
and it’s gonna give parents an opportunity
16:54
to spend more time with their kids,
16:55
and help parents understand how their kid’s learning.
16:59
Right now, probably the biggest thing we have
17:01
is we have a lot of kids playin’ Xbox,
17:02
we have a lot of kids sitting on Zoom classrooms like this.
17:05
There’s a lot of sitting goin’ on.
17:07
So, their athletic skills will start to diminish
17:08
if they’re not using them.
17:10
To just get them out, have them moving,
17:12
to keep it stimulating, to keep it interesting,
17:15
you can’t stop getting better.
17:17
We have to get better,
17:18
and we have to approach every day as an opportunity.
17:21
Now, we have technology that allows us
17:23
to stay in touch with each other,
17:24
so coaches are able to still have coaches meetings.
17:26
Strength coaches are still able
17:28
to stay in contact with players.
17:30
Trainers like myself are still able
17:31
to stay in contact with players.
17:32
They can film themselves and send things back to us.
17:35
From the time all these guys have been playing,
17:38
from six, seven years old,
17:39
they’ve been playing basketball year round.
17:41
They’ve never had an opportunity like this
17:43
to really slow down and take a long,
17:45
hard look at how they play, at how they move,
17:47
and what the things they really need to improve on are.
17:50
All these guys now have an extended opportunity
17:53
to really examine, you know,
17:54
what do I need to do better to help my team?
17:57
And, they can sit down, they can put together a really
17:59
comprehensive player development program for themselves.
18:01
Where in the past, it’s just been,
18:02
I gotta work out to get ready for the next year.
18:04
We have a little bit more time now,
18:06
so we have to make the best of this bad situation,
18:08
and we have to seize the opportunity in front of us,
18:11
and we have to try to work to get better.