Back To Reality

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ROCHESTER, NY. I am smiling because the title of this entry is so surreal. Back to reality! What reality? The reality of what was basketball training camp. Basketball in turbo drive! Two-a-day training camps and three hour one day training sessions, that's what I mean!

On December 10th, 2007, I took part in a minor league basketball training camp...no, not to make a come back at the minor league level, but to fulfill a personal challenge to see what kind of shape my vintage body was in.

When I played professionally I was always regarded as the best athlete on all the teams I played for, from Turkey to Taiwan. Even now during life after pro ball, conditioning remains a constant in my life.

The 2003-05 Toronto Nike Battleground Tournament, which was a one-on-one competition played in a cage, was also a personal challenge that took my body, mind and soul back to a reality of competitive basketball played in an intense ladened environment reserved only for a certain beast of a human being. I was younger then, only 41, so taking on that challenge was easier than the journey I was about to take.

As a personal basketball trainer to numerous NBA, NCAA, Minor League, and European players and the lead instructor at the International Big Man Academy and Tall Girls Basketball Academy, the "Power of Demonstration" plays a major role in the way I teach players certain skills and techniques. Conditioning is very important so as to endure the rigors of demonstration's teaching points, I must be in top shape. I can't afford to walk around with a pouch bulging through my shirt for all my clients to see or huffing and puffing after every drill I demonstrate. It just does not fit the image of a professional trainer whose strength is supposed to be the power of his demonstration and his ability to endure pain.

Mind you, before I embarked on the journey into minor league hell, I was already in good shape from working players out, demonstrating drills and playing pick up ball with the university players I work with at home in Toronto. But thats not what this personal challenge was about.

This was about being pushed to the breaking point and not breaking. Thats what training camp is all about. Only the fittest survived. Waking up at 5am to be on the basketball floor at 6am for three hours of hell, and the body not breaking down, that always have a special feel to it. Back in the day, my playing days, that was always a very normal thing to do on a daily basis. Training to the point of exhaustion was my reality! But now as a personal basketball trainer, I don't have to do that. I don't have to push myself to the point of breaking, to that extent anyway.

So I needed to experience that feeling again, I needed to experience a reality of intense training that was twenty-seven (27) years of my life.

Man did it feel good!!

The team was the Rochester Razorsharks, located in Rochester, NY. The head coach there is Rod Baker, a hard nose coach who knows what it takes to win championships. A forward thinking coach who coached the Globetrotters, UC Irvine, Cincinnati, and some, and took the Razorsharks to the ABA championships, which they won, in 2005.

Baker's style of coaching was reminiscent of my college coach, Smokey Gaines, at San Diego State when I played alongside Michael Cage. Everything was on the clock from the minute you walked into the gym to the end of practice suicides.

But this was not college, no, this was the minor league where players will eat you alive to get a step up on you. At this level players are trying to put food on the table and get to the next level weather it be the NBA or Europe. Guys wanna get paid.

The intensity at coach Baker's training camp was consistent throughout and you either broke down and quit (which happened to a few players), or you take the stuff that's being thrown your way and become a better player and a better person because coach Baker was gonna give it to you straight.

He cussed at everyone, and always had some smart remark about something you did. I loved it though because I felt like I still belonged in this intensity ladened environment.

Sure enough even though I was the elderly statesman of the group, I got cussed at too! I remember one situation I threw a bad entry pass to the post only to hear Baker yell, Mike, "bend your old ass over and make a good pass". I wanted to laugh so hard but was sorta momentarily stunned by the comment because really and truly no one had ever used that word to my face while I was playing basketball. But I guess I am vintage! Not that being vintage had anything to do with the soft entry pass I made.

So there I was, forty-three years young, running around with twenty something year olds. Man, I was having fun though! Loving every minute of it, especially those minutes I was laying in the hotel bed relaxing and watching TV, trying to recover from the days grind while Vidal Messiah, my roommate and the player who beat me twice (2004-05) in the Toronto Nike Battleground, was sitting at the desk checking his Facebook page and talking on the phone to his daughter.

Recovery was a big deal for me and was not something I took lithely at this stage of my life as compared to earlier years when I was able to recover much faster. Recovery was foremost on my mind when I went to training camp so, I took my Jack Lalane juicer with me - to juice fruits and vegetable- which I shared with my first roommate (not Vidal) before he got waived. I also traveled with my magnetic mattress which I laid atop my hotel bed's mattress.
With these two devices and a big tub of protein powder I was ready to recover from whatever training camp had to offer.

Getting tired was never the problem, cramps were. I had some serious cramping in the abdominals whenever we did our core workout at the end of each session. But I endured from persistent hydration and the juicing of potatoes , carrots and spinach. The cramps passed and the next day I was back to normal working every drill with the highest intensity in the camp. Yes there were a few times I would lay in the cut and let the younger players pass me up but hey, I considered that my "vet break" which coach Baker never offered. Especially during the transition drills where we had to make five consecutive trips down the floor and back at top speed. I would need an extra 30 seconds to recover before taking the floor again. This was often a difficult maneuver to pull off because other players were also trying to "lay in the cut" and avoid a turn. I would alway smile to myself when I saw other players avoiding turns because clearly, age had nothing to do with me skipping a turn. It was just an intense drill that needed more recovery time, time we did not have because this, was training camp and we better recover fast or pay the price.

I worked out with the Razorsharks from December 10-23, then returned home to my present reality. The experience was very rewarding as I dropped 5 pounds and reached a level of conditioning not experienced since my time as a pro baller!

This (training camp) is something I could definitely do more often to keep myself in top shape. It is a grind though but well worth the pain.

Peace