Training Body And Mind

Basketball today is about competition as is the world of sport. Everything is based on winning.

Today people practice and play sports or exercise in different ways, but not everyone develops perfect technique, and in their haste to get ahead, they brush aside the meaning of their training and pursue incorrect technique and continue to press ahead, faster, higher, stronger.

Many people who teach basketball, have not perfected their own techniques, but feel they can teach other people those same techniques they couldn’t master. It is like a martial artist who cannot defend himself.

In a sport like basketball which requires such a high level of skill, technique is paramount, and unless those skills are perfected, then the prospect of long term damage to the human body is increased. The human body consists of parts, like any machine, so these parts eventually wear out. Innovative Sports Concepts recognises this and provides a unique platform to perfect the required skills and technique based on a scaffolded teaching approach.

There are two aspects to coaching sports:

The sport itself: Rules, fundamentals, skills, strategies and tactics. It’s the lifestyle of the sport, (winning, creating champions, fashion etc).
The human side: Psychological and emotional. Different people have different emotions. People’s emotions change day-to-day.

People are not robotic, we are human, so you must know how deal with each individual (as an individual) in a team environment. Everyone has different needs and being able to identify each one’s need is paramount to individual and team success.

Before you choose to play a particular sport and before you kick, pass, dribble a ball, or swing bat, racket, etc, you must understand the internal mind.

Mind Control

The mind can be used to train the body to create strength, stamina, coordination, grace, composure, self-control and motivation. It involves the elimination of possibilities, and transforming a skill to a technique, to an art form.

The mind controls the body by controlling the oxygen that travels in and out of a person’s body and gives life to the soul. The body will respond to what the mind wants and needs. With anything you do or try, you have to convince yourself that it will make you better, as long as the work that is being applied has passion, intensity and meaning. Combine these with patience and you will reap the rewards.

Freedom of Thought

Philosophy is the love of wisdom, or the pursuit of knowledge.

To be free to educate yourself through practical learning, and actual experiences.
To be free to think for yourself.
To be able to make your own decisions.
To be free to use your own imagination, feelings and creativity (inner strengths).

Through observation and imagination you can create images inside your mind. By using your ability to feel (breathe) and combined with your imagination, you can visualise the skills you want to learn and develop those skills independently inside your own memory.

When you practice those skills with an actual ball and hoop, the techniques and knowledge of the game develop much faster and with meaning.

Ideal Coaching

The ‘coaching’ ideal takes away this ability for people to think for themselves.

We live in a world where we become reliant on external voices and we feel lost without them. When someone is constantly telling you what to do and how to do it, you are being deprived of learning those exact same things for yourself, making it a one-dimensional coaching style.

By thinking and learning for ourselves, we become our own teachers and masters. This is the three-dimensional approach. Coaches still have a role to play, but their job is to ‘lead the horse to water, but not to force it to drink!’ Initially it may take a little longer for the athlete to learn all that is required, but it will result in a lifetime of self-learning, growth and discovery.

Technology Versus Philosophy

Technology teaches us to look for what is outside of us.
Philosophy teaches us to look for what is inside of us.

Technology teaches us to rely on other peoples ideas.
Philosophy teaches us to create our own ideas.

Technology will always be limited because; we wait and hope someone will come up with ideas that are more efficient than the ideas before. Philosophy moves at the pace of the individual. Patience is formed.

Technology has its own pace. Some will keep up, the majority will fail. It is expensive because you are paying for someone else’s ideas. Philosophy uses your own passion, discipline, and imagination. You create your own theories based on your own experiences.

Technology creates egos.
Philosophy humbles egos.

We are what we think. All that we are arises with our thoughts. With our thoughts we make the world.
Buddha, Founder of Buddhism, 563-483 BC