Paul Fabritz (Part 1): How He Went From An Injured & Overlooked Player To Doing Windmill Dunks, Becoming One Of The Premier NBA Player Trainers In The World

Paul Fabritz  00:06

Back in the day the kids weren't banged up. They weren't banged up until they went to college or pro. Right now 12 year olds are banged up.

Tim DiFrancesco  00:16

This episode is sponsored by Weartesters. If you've ever bought a pair of basketball shoes only to realize once you go hooping them that it's the wrong fit, then you know, where testers.com is a website that will help you to avoid getting the wrong pair because they provide real reviews from real Hooper's. Literally the co founders Chris and drew are out there hooping in shoes to write detailed reviews before you drop your time and money on your next pair, visit where testers.com That's w e a r t s t e r s.com. Or follow them on YouTube to make sure you're getting the right shoe for your foot. Hello, and welcome to today's episode of the basketball strong Podcast. I'm Tim DiFrancesco, former LA Lakers strength and conditioning coach and Doctor of Physical Therapy, and I'm here with my co host, Emmy nominated writer and author Phil white. This podcast is not just for basketball junkies, it's for anyone who loves to hear the human stories behind great people, while learning the science behind preparing your body for the court and high performance. Today's guest is one of the premier trainers and strength coaches for NBA players and basketball players of all levels. Paul for breaks was a self made player who took himself from often injured, overlooked and barely being able to dunk to doing windmill dunks and catching the eye of many coaches. He then took all that experience and knowledge of how to prepare himself for the game. And realize he may not make it to the pros himself. But he could help players who are in the pros and players who want to get to the pros get there. And that's what Paul does. Now, Paul gets into his journey, his path on developing himself into an Elite Trainer and strength coach for NBA level and all level basketball players. But he also gets into some of the issues that young players face today, including the AAU meat grinder of injuries that gets created because of the style of play and the amount of play that young athletes have to go through and how they can combat that. This is a great conversation. It's only part one. Let's get into it. I'll take us into where you in the game kind of collided first and were you remember kind of falling in love and realizing this has got to be part of what I do from here on out.

Paul Fabritz  02:32

Yeah, well, I fell in love with the game from day one. I mean, three years old, I was obsessed with it. I grew up in Flagstaff, Arizona. So I was a huge suns fan. And this was like Charles Barkley like prime Michael Jordan time. And so I just fell in love with the game, my dad got me into it. And I just remember always shooting on the little tyke hoops and working on my handles all day. And basketball was my whole life growing up, like I cared about nothing else. And that's kind of where I fell in love with it. And then I was lucky to have an older sister eight years older than me who played volleyball, very good volleyball player, she went off to play college at Hawaii. 

And she was always doing like this training, vertical jump training and stuff and I was so interested in it. And I was just like, why would we do this and not this and why does this work? And so that's where I started from maybe age eight, maybe nine I started falling in love with kind of like the training side of it as well. So my whole life I grew up obsessed with basketball and obsessed with training and the why behind things. And so I think a lot of people you know, they get done with their playing career and then they get into that of like, oh, let me study the science for me. It was like nine years old, I was already interested. And at that time, you know that you don't have that much information on the internet. Like I grew up reading tea nation, but yeah, it's like right, mostly bodybuilding stuff. 

Yeah, it's not like today where you can just go to any of these trainers pages and learn directly from them. And yeah, so I was just I was always obsessed with that side of things and then I became a pretty good high school player. Going into my junior year I started getting a bunch of offers and everything's looking good you know I'm on track I my plan at this point is go to one GoPro there's just nothing else I'm not gonna do anything else with my life. That's it. Then I then I started getting injuries. So junior year I got pushed in the back broken wrist didn't get to play that season. Senior year, this is my time to shine and really show out. I broke a hand and my shooting hand in November right before season. So didn't end up following through with any of those previous offers because they're like your 510 injury prone point guard like we don't need your services here. So I ended up going to community college and I played there racked up more injuries there broke toes broke risks, took a year off and I just focused on my body and I really started transforming my strength, my vertical, went from barely touching the rim to doing full windmill dunks, it was like that one year off is what I needed to get away from the grind of like three hours in the gym, and just let my body recover and get stronger and get more explosive. 

And I came back and I put out like this random YouTube video. It's totally normal for people now like go to a gym and film yourself dunking at that time, people didn't really do that. And so I filmed it on my Blackberry and I was doing like windmills. And the coach from Northern Arizona University, which is from my hometown. He saw the video, and he was like, this is the kid from high school with all the skill but no athleticism. And now he's doing windmill dunks. And so they brought me to Northern Arizona, and he said, I can't offer you a scholarship. But you can come walk on the team like preferred walk on. Wow. 

Went there and it's finally like, Okay, now it's all turning around. I'm back Division One, everything is going well. The starting point guard actually got injured. So it was like I was probably going to get really good minutes and finally be able to show out and I broke my toe. Wow. Yeah. broke my toe beginning of season. So it's like every November I broke a bone for like six years straight. Right? It was unreal. Later, I found out that it was more of a nutritional thing. Vitamin D deficiency. Oh, no kidding. Yeah. Yeah, well, yeah, you can absorb you can utilize that calcium, and build strong bones if you're not getting the vitamin D. And I wasn't out in the sun because I'm in a gym all day. Yep. And, and so in Flagstaff, Arizona is actually a cold place. And so I was never out in the sun. And so that's what it was, I found out years later. 

But this whole process all these like, you know, get up and then come right back down. And then it's looking good. And then I fail again, all of that just like built who I am today. And it pushed me in the right direction. Because I was never going to pivot. I was just going to keep going. Had I played at NAU I would have just gone overseas somewhere. And I would still be over there, you know, paycheck to paycheck, trying to live out my pro G, my pro dreams. But I pivoted it made me pivot. And I was like, Look, I'm passionate about this stuff. So why not go all in on training, and try to help people reduce the risk of injuries make the same transformation that I made in my body with my strength and athleticism, and like take 100% of the passion that I have with basketball and just put it into these kids. And so that's what I did. And I went back I finished out my degree at Arizona State University. And I rented space from this little gym. 

And I didn't get any clients of course, like why would somebody trusts you know, I, there's no marketing, there's nothing I'm walking around ASU campus handing out flyers is begging people to come train and couldn't pay my rent. So I went and worked as a trainer at LA Fitness. And I was making $6 for a 30 minute session there. And the cool thing though, is I would meet a lot of these clients, like they just throw clients at you. So I'm meeting you know, 50 new clients. And then from there is like a lot of them wanted to come train with me on my own. And so I would go into apartment gyms, train them at parks, whatever. 

And that kind of started to build up. And then I finally started working with some athletes and some basketball players got some really good results. I was doing free sessions. And they started getting good results. And then from there, it just started to spread. And eventually it kind of went viral like within Arizona. And there's people traveling from Tucson from Page, Arizona, people driving hours to come train with me. And this was when I was still in college. And so things are starting to look good for my business. I got one NBA player out of UCLA, he had torn his ACL. And he was going to play I think he was with the Timberwolves at the time. And he wasn't getting good results. He couldn't get his bounce back. And he came and trained with me in Arizona, and he gained like seven inches on his vertical came back made it back to the league. 

And then from there, it started kind of like spreading around the NBA circles. And then once that happened, you know the NBA like everybody talks inside the NBA. And so I just started getting crazy clients and Rob Pelinka found me through that and then brought me out to California and he's the one who like convinced me to come out here from Arizona, and so set up shop in Anaheim. And then from there, it just really started to accelerate and got some big clients and then from there, it's like, you know, took it online and now I'm just helping 1000s of people so that's kind of how I got to where I'm at take us inside

Phil White  09:29

the grind because you kind of humbly glossed over that you know those rough few early years and trying to build this thing and obviously off camera we talked about you know these days can both for you and TD can go long still but take us in inside that kind of grind phase where you are still thinking alright, how am I going to do this outside of just grit and hard work and then also just risk taking, you know, experimenting a little bit?

Paul Fabritz  09:58

Yeah, well at the time when I was Starting, and I'm not that old. But at that it's crazy how fast the industry is transformed. At the time I'm starting, like 12 years ago, there's not a lot of people making a really good living doing basketball strength and conditioning, right? You know, like, you got guys like you who are in the NBA, but like independent, there's not many guy, I can think of maybe two or three guys that were making a really good living. 

So when I'm telling my friends and my parents, like, Hey, this is what I'm going to do. They're like, You can't do that. And my mom fully supports everything I do. But she's like, I don't know, like, the stats don't add up. Yeah, that's a hobby, like, you go become an accountant. And then on the side, you do that, right. And so there was not a lot of optimism that I could make a full time living doing this. But I just felt like it was possible. And this was when Twitter was starting to become really popular. And like, with social media, I think it's all going to change. And I think there's going to be easier and easier. And I think eventually, there's gonna be hundreds of trainers who can make a really good living on the independent side.

Communication

 And so I just went all in, and I started applying my passion to not only the training, but the speaking, I early on, I got lucky, realizing that communication is number one. And so I went all in on my ability to communicate. And I'm like, if I can't get my message across, I'm never gonna get clients, I'm never gonna pay my rent. So I started, my whole thing is like, the same way I developed a spin move, like I watched somebody do it, and then I go do it. And I said, Well, what about speaking like, do I have to take a speaking class? Or could I just listen to a Will Smith interview, or Brock Obama interview, or somebody who's really captivating with their words, and just memorize that go in the mirror and do it exactly like them? And then from there, it's like, Okay, let me let me innovate and bring in my own style. But it was that bottle of imitate and then innovate. And that's what I did. I just every day I listened to interviews, I read the dictionary to expand my vocabulary. 

I came up with weird drills, I would scroll through Twitter, and I would stop and whatever the tweet is on it to talk about that subject for 10 minutes straight. Wow, even if I didn't know about it, I had to talk about for 10 minutes straight. And it just transformed my ability to speak. And that's when the business started taking its steps, because now I'm going on Twitter, I'm going on Facebook, I'm doing these videos, and I come off as somebody who kind of knows their stuff. And I would send that to players like I'd send that to the ASU players. And they're like, Well, this guy, you know, he's communicating well, he knows his stuff. And so they started giving me a shot. And so that's where the grind really started with my communication skills. At the same time I'm doing I'm sneaking into the ASU labs, and I'm using their ForcePlates, I'm using their EMG. Like, I'm just training myself on how to use this stuff. And I'm trying out different exercises, like, why would we do this single leg squat will let me get on a force plate and like figure out, like, what are the actual forces. And so I'm just like, you know, it's all trial and error and just figuring it out on the go. And, you know, it was just, it was a grind. And at the time I was writing fitness articles. There's this content mill, where they give you a topic, and they'll say like write about fat loss, and then you write about fat loss, and you get $30 for that article. And I'm not a good writer, like I barely pass English class. 

So I'm sending it in to the, to the editors, and they're like, this is terrible. And so to make $30, like, I would go back and forth and do like five revisions of these articles. But it got me so good at writing. And then and then this beautiful thing called Instagram came about. And this is where like the it was 15 second videos, and I can take my ability to like, okay, I can perform it, I can do it. Because I spent my whole life working on my game. 

I can talk about it, because I spent the last two years copying Barack Obama and Will Smith, right. And now I can write, because I've been doing this. And so it's like a perfect trifecta where all this came together and I can do it, I can talk about it, I can write a good caption. And then it just took off from there. It was the consistency every single day, I'm going to put up a post. And I'm not going to hold back. I'm not going to go with the model of like, these are my secrets, I'm going to do the exact opposite. Like I'm just going to put out value, and I'm going to help you and the more I helped people, the more I put out the more followers I gain. And then when I started putting out online products, it just kind of took off because people you know, they trusted me because I've already helped them change their life. Yeah, you gave them so much already. 

Exactly. So that was kind of the model that was the real grind is the behind the scenes stuff. But it's also a grind, just you know, going in and when you're making six to $12 an hour, the amount of sessions that you have to run in a day is you know, pretty incredible. So it's you know, to For 1012 hour days, and then getting home and working on speaking and studying, like it was just constant, but I was so obsessed with it that it didn't really feel like work. Yeah, you know, you got your days where we all say that and but we got our days where you wake up at 6am. And you're like, Okay, this is work like this sucks. But yeah, at the end of the day, it always felt rewarding, right? Um, yeah, it was your cup. Yeah, exactly. It was filling the cup.

 And then I the thing that I couldn't figure out even when the company started to do well, the thing I could never figure out was more of the organizational side of things. And the the behind the scenes stuff, the emails, I'm so bad at that stuff. But I was with my girlfriend, who's now my wife. And she's awesome at all that, and she ended up just taking over that role. And we just accelerated after that when I could really focus tag team, man. And now she handles the entire business so I can really just focus on the training. But yeah, we went through this whole grind process together. And both of us I mean, we've learned so much, but you know, and we're still learning every day. And it's just it's still a grind. People would think once you become more successful that it's like, automated No, it's not like it's still 1214 hour days. The cool thing now, is these 12 hour days are optional. I could put in one hour and be completely fine. Right now still put in the 12 hours.

Tim DiFrancesco  16:28

Yeah, exactly. And that's the thing is when you're doing that thing that gives you the goose bumps that you're you're we're all striving to find and do then it's it can be optional. And you'll still do that time, you'll still put that in. Talk to

Phil White  16:41

us a little bit about I guess what, Steve Magnus and Brad Stulberg have called in their recent writing kind of spending time on the plateau. And you know, where you don't necessarily see this massive increase, but just from a personal development standpoint, and maybe some setbacks along the way, as you were kind of hiding yourself away and learning the speaking side and learning the writing side.

Paul Fabritz  17:03

Yeah, it's funny, I was just thinking about this yesterday, it's crazy that you just asked me that. But I was thinking about how satisfaction like the satisfaction behind that early grind days, even though the reward is not that high, you're working, you're failing, you're working, you're failing, and then every now and then you have a success. And there's now studies that show that's how you optimize the dopamine. If you never succeed, ever, then dopamine is low. But if you succeed every time, then dopamine is also low. But the real key to optimizing dopamine is intermittent rewards. So it's like work, fail, work, fail, work succeed. 

And early on, I think I'd had just enough success to get addicted to it. That's what makes it feel like you're in Vegas on the slot machine. Yep, you fail so much. But you know that success is right around the corner. So I do feel like that was a big thing is I became completely addicted to the grind because of the amount of failure, and then the every now and then having that success. So I think that's one thing that just like kept me going and kept me pushing towards my goals. But you're right, there's a there's these plateaus, and you need a good support system. 

That's why like, I probably wouldn't be here without my wife. Like, she supported me through those plateaus. When I'm second guessing it like, Okay, I'm putting in all this work, and I'm still barely paying the rent, Should I go get a real job? Like, is it realistic to just follow my passion, you know. And so there was there's a lot of plateaus. And I was fortunate that social media came out. And with social media, it's very easy to get out of those plateaus. It's hard to get out of those plateaus when it's all in person training. And you're literally walking around handing out flyers, right? 

But with social media, once you get a following, it's like, hey, if I'm at a plateau, and our numbers aren't going up, like let me just come out with something new. Let me like pivot and just come out with a new product. And it'll always consistently spike. So like with a social media following it's all on you. If you want your numbers to go up, they will. Yeah, like they were it's really just a decision. It's different, though, back then when it was all in person, because I can't there's no amount of flyers that I can hand out that's going to get more more and more people in the gym.

Tim DiFrancesco  19:24

Yeah. And you mentioned the application of just one of the biggest secret tricks in the book that isn't secret or a trick at all. It's just consistency that everybody overlooks is like whether it was Instagram that you just decided no, I'm posting every day. And it's gonna be in I'm gonna get better with every post and every post is going to just build off itself. But that was a that was a tool that I have to imagine you took from back when you picked up a basketball and we're just saying, Hey, I've got to get better at this skill, that skill or the other thing and then it's just how you apply that I think a lot of people overlook that. We talked about it with Hannah, Hannah. Oh, Flynn, we talked about it on the podcast that I did about the eight lessons that I learned from Kobe. But that was just one of those things that he doubled down on because he knew a lot of people overlook that. And that is just a it's a secret weapon, because so many people overlook that yet. It's so controllable. It's so in our power.

Paul Fabritz  20:22

Yeah, 90% of people aren't going to do that. So already, just with consistency, you be 90%. So now it's like with that other 10% Now, okay, let's talk about details of getting smarter and the craft and all this other stuff. But, you know, if you win, you beat 90% of the people with consistency. Yeah, you're exactly. You're in the conversation already.

Tim DiFrancesco  20:43

Exactly. Paul, one of the things you brought up, and I want to kind of get into just go back a little bit, though, because it had to be a little bit dark and desperate, when you were putting so much into your playing. Elevate elevation, and you're playing rise of things. And yet every year was another broken bone. There had to be times where you're just saying to yourself, What am I doing and and how you sort of take that emotional mental toll of the injuries that it wasn't just one or two big ones that you had you kind of had one big one every year for it sounded like year after year.

Paul Fabritz  21:16

Yeah, no, I was like, seriously depressed, it would be like serious depression for like I said, Every November, I would break a bone. And I would be depressed through December, January. And then like creeping into February, I'd start to get myself back. And I'm like, you know, I let me get in the gym. And that's the number one thing for anybody who's like going through something, one quick, easy thing you can do is get back to the gym, right? And it just changes you, it changes you physically, but it changes you mentally, it changes your brain chemistry, it's really hard to be depressed when you're consistently in the gym and feeling good from eating healthy, like it's really hard to be depressed. 

And so I just stopped feeling bad for myself, like I would get in the gym, and I would start getting fit, I would start feeling good. And then, you know, it was like, well, maybe I don't quit, you know, maybe I try again. Like, why would I quit now? Like, let's just try again. You know, I was lucky to not have like career ending injuries. These are like little rights. And so I kept having that hope of like, I'm gonna get past this. And then that's going to make my documentary even better. Like all these setbacks, like, it's only going to make the documentary better. Just part of the legend. Exactly. And so, yeah, I mean, I just, I just kept picking myself back up and going. 

Never Give Up (Churchill Quote on Mom’s Fridge)

And one thing my mom always told me is, for some reason, this quote was always the thing she said, never ever, ever give up. Yeah, like that. Was it? The old way? The old Winston Churchill classic. Yeah, she had it on our refrigerator, never, ever, ever give up. And so part of it, I think it was a little bit in the DNA. And that's kind of who she is, like, she raised three kids raised us all on a nursing job, and made it happen and got me to go to the camps. And whatever I wanted, she figured out a way to do off a nursing job. And so I think that's where I get a little bit of that DNA of like, just figure it out. And don't feel too bad for yourself. You know. And so I think I think a lot of that I was just fortunate to have her to look up to,

Tim DiFrancesco  23:15

no doubt, no doubt, props to mom. One of the other parts of those injuries, though, you mentioned back to backhand injuries. And I've heard you talking about the fact that when you look at that timestamp that a lot of us that were paying attention to the NBA and following MJ and you talked about those sons bowl series that you were locked in on and I was a huge suns fan, even from the northeast, back in the day and thunder, Dan Marley and that, and Charles Barkley, obviously, KJ and the whole squad. Yeah, but um, we watched MJ be one of the first ones to really have the upper echelon guys to really sort of put it out there at least as his time in the weight room when he got with Grover.

 And that kind of became one of the ways that he just got so tired of getting beat up and battered and beaten by the pistons. And he said, Something's Got to Give here. But you talk about not only did he want to bulletproof himself, just to kind of get in there at the rim and take hits and and have people bounce off him instead of him hit the floor, but also the fact that where do you get in a sport like basketball loading of the upper body? You don't really but this upper body portion of lifting gives you that and lower body lifts to depending on your grip and what you're doing. But talk about that a little bit?

Paul Fabritz  24:33

Yeah, that's a great question. Um, I was fortunate to have all these hand finger wrist injuries. Yeah. And when I'm stuck, like that's kind of the the gift like in disguise is like you get these injuries and you have to figure out how to get past them. And so I had all these injuries, and then I'm starting to train people and I'm noticing that like, people don't really talk about finger injuries and wrist injuries and basketball, but it's so common. I had so many athletes that we're out with these little things, you know, missing a season because of a broken finger. And then I'm like, Well, okay, you know, Wolf's law, we know that we can get that bone to adapt, even if we load it appropriately. But the and then I'm looking at lower body, and it's like, okay, we get millions of pounds of force just running and jumping and cutting in the sport. So I like lower body loading, for sure, there's many benefits. 

But basketball players do get by like you, you know, as well as anybody, there's plenty of them that do get by and live and jump 40 inches and play a long time without doing any super heavy loading. And it's like a house. How is that possible? Well, because they get so much loading through their sport. But the upper body does not get that we get almost no loading in the upper body, yet, we're going to go, you know, help side defender is going to reach in and hit our finger. And I'm going to be falling and breaking my fall with my wrist. 

Loading in the Weight Room

And so where else are we going to get that loading, like, there's nowhere else that we can get it other than the weight room. And like you said, Get a trap bar deadlift, and you're loading the wrist and you're loading the fingers, hang from a bar and do your pull ups and you're getting all that. So it's not necessarily that, like, we need to do a bunch of isolated stuff. You could do some but just holding heavy weights, doing heavy rows, like you're strengthening all of these areas, and you're getting that loading that the sport just doesn't provide for you. And so I think that our industry gets really obsessed with noncontact injuries because they're more preventable. 

Yeah. But people forget about contact injuries, like what about when I get hit over and over and over again, you know, I feel like those are not preventable, but we can certainly reduce the risk of injury. And the weight room is probably the number one way to reduce contact injuries, non contact sheet sure week, like could lifting prevent some ACL tears, maybe. But for me, it's mostly about like movement quality. You know, brain like how fast we're reacting these neurological glitches when you just step wrong. So I look at the non contact injuries, it's kind of like outside of the weight room stuff. And I look at the contact injuries as weight room stuff.

Tim DiFrancesco  27:10

No, I love how you put that. And that's the thing, because whether you're talking about a dumbbell bench press or a dumbbell floor press where you're loading through a heavier dumbbell in your hand down through the long barn, long bones of your forearm, or you're talking about a push up even. I mean, you could, it's somebody who needs to work up their bodyweight push up capabilities into something like a band resisted push up or anything like that. Your ability, you could do bench, hands elevated incline on a bench and do plyometric push ups from that position before you work down to the floor. But you think about how useful that becomes when you get up in the air. And you have to come down and brace yourself with your hand and fall on an outstretched hand or arm and see what happens to those joints and bones that have never been loaded in that positions versus the ones that have been doing it year after year after year.

Paul Fabritz  28:03

Right 100%. And then you got to go do that for 82 plus games Exactly a year after, like, it's extremely people underestimate how difficult it is to stay healthy through an NBA season. You see people talking, you know better than anybody. But you see these people talking on like Twitter trainers saying, Oh, this guy got hurt. So he must have been training wrong. It's like, dude, the statistical odds of making it through a season healthy is so low, when you see what these guys go through, and not just the rigors of the game, but the travel. And now you got the social media and the the additional stress from outside the game, the lack of sleep, the poor nutrition that we have these days compared to what they had in the 90s Yep, the more dynamic play style because we're more athletic. Now. 

We change the game where now you have shooters, and when you have shooters, you have space. And when you have space, you can reach really high speeds, high velocities. Whereas like in the 90s, once you get going once you get going, you're running into somebody so you're kicking out and so they're taking bumps and bruises in the 90s. But now like we're we have John Moran coming full speed downhill, right, jumping 45 inches, and then figuring out how to land from there. And then doing that 15 times a game over 80 to see 82 games. So it's like what the modern player is up against is unreal. And so the training, the preparation has to go into it. Like you have to take that as your number one priority, because you're only gonna go as far as your body will let you really doesn't matter how skilled you're how skilled you are, how smart you are. If your body just can't hold up, you're not getting that that next contract.

Tim DiFrancesco  29:41

Well that's the thing and people don't realize you watch the Warriors play on a Thursday TNT game and then you see them on a Saturday night ABC ESPN game. Well, you don't know that they just crossed two timezones to get between those two times that you were just going from Well, I went to work in between but then I got back to the couch and it's like well with that that team and what those players just went through was a couple of timezones, they had practices, that lifts, they had all this stuff that they every player individually deals with at home and family and everything else. 

And that's all going into that. Mike D’Antoni used to say, look, by the time you get to the All Star break, it's hard. It's a, it's a struggle to put your jersey and tie your shoes on and get your shoes on. And, you know, you start to put all that into this 82 game thing. And it's it does really, really add up if you're not managing, if you're not topping off, like through nutrition, like through sleep, like through time in the weight room, and it doesn't have to be a lot. But those guys that last and the ones that you versus the ones and you have, you had a great statement of talking about I wanted you to talk about this is like, there's a difference. There's a reason a guy has a four year career and then drops off the face of the earth. And it's like what happened to so and so. And then the guy that has a 15 year NBA career or longer, and it's sort of like, yeah, man, he's been around forever. Yeah, you know, talk about that a little bit.

Paul Fabritz  31:03

Yeah, well, sometimes it's like, people don't realize that it's not necessarily always a career ending injury, all it takes is an injury that sets you back a little bit. Because the gap is so small. There's always somebody, you know, a couple of years younger than you that's coming in, and they're healthy, and they're ready. And you just came off an ankle sprain and you're you can't play at 100%. And your career is done. And now it's like, Okay, I gotta go overseas, because this guy just took my spot. So it's not always the career ending injuries. You know, that's the ones that people think about, it's these little injuries. It's the nagging pains. It's the tendinopathies. Like, yeah, if these things that set you back three to 5%, that might be enough for that next guy to actually perform better than you.

Tim DiFrancesco  31:45

salutely Absolutely. And that happens all the time. I just think it doesn't get realized a lot. But when you're when you are that fringe guy who's not making all star teams, or going straight to the Hall of Fame, by the time you put your body of work together, then you are always sort of under the gun. Like how do I keep this? How do I keep this?

Paul Fabritz  32:05

Yeah, absolutely. So I mean, that's the to me, that's the number one thing and I think that players are starting to realize that. Yeah, like, like when you were with the Lakers, I bet you guys were fighting hard to get players to realize like, Hey, your body matters, you're not going to go on track. I feel like players know that. Like, I get these kids coming to me. 1617 years old. And for when I started, I never heard this. But now I'll hear people say I just want to take care of my body. Yeah, like a UFC. I want to jump higher when it's just about the jump. Right? Exactly. Yeah, they are like, now they're like, I want to jump higher. I want to run faster. But mostly I want to stay healthy.

Tim DiFrancesco  32:43

Yeah. And from the parents to because you're I'm hearing a lot more parents say well, I used to be all I gotta get I want my baseball pitcher to put on 10 miles an hour, this this offseason on their fastball, or I want my basketball player, son or daughter to be able to have quicker footwork or jump higher. Now it's like, what are you gonna do? Tell me how the training that you apply helps to keep them out there keep them durable, and that kind of thing?

Paul Fabritz  33:07

Yeah, absolutely. I think guys like you have really like broke through that barrier so that guys like me can just step in. And I don't have to convince you why your body matters. Yeah, I don't have to convince you that injury reduction matters. I can just step in and do my job. Do you

Phil White  33:23

think that the intensity of AAU schedules travel ball younger and younger kids going outside their town, their city, even their state to play and the resulting injuries that we're starting to see younger and younger among some of these kids have that kind of is that started to change the parents perspective and the athletes perspective too.

Spiking Workload/Doing Too Much Too Soon

Paul Fabritz  33:43

Totally. Because the kids are banged up. Now, like, back in the day the kids weren't banged up. They weren't banged up until they went to college or pro right now 12 year olds are banged up. Like my nephew, my nephew played nine games last weekend. And after his ninth game, we're trying to walk in the restaurant and he couldn't physically walk. And that's like, in some It's unreal, like what these kids are going through. So there's doing too much. That's a problem. 

But the biggest issue is they do too much too soon. They spike their workload because they'll be off for two weeks. And they got these like little two practices per week, whatever. They don't play for like two weeks, and then they go play nine games. If you split up those nine games and you had a game like every other day, they would actually probably be fine. Because I like more frequency, like low volume but give it to us often. Like I think that's how humans are designed. I think that's how animals are designed. We look at like a kangaroo they jump a lot but they jump every day frequently. They don't take time off. They don't a week off and then all of a sudden go do a bunch. Then you would see kangaroos tearing their tendons but you don't see that. And so I'm a fan of like, I'm okay with them playing a lot of basketball but if they can just switch it to Like every other day, I have one game, I think that would be way better than take two weeks off and then do nine. And so that's one of my biggest problems with AAU. The other issue is, they're so skilled and so athletic at such a young age, it's not just how much they're doing. They're jumping higher, they're running faster. Their moves are at a whole nother level, like some of these kids 10 years old, have NBA level footwork. 

And that's because now you have social media, you got 1000 trainers breaking down every single move, and you can just go on and be like, Okay, I'll do that. And they master it. Whereas like, our generation didn't have that at all. No, but so they're, they're mastering these moves at such a young age, I did a study where I went in and I started watching, 60s, basketball, 70s, basketball, 80s basketball, and I'm looking at the different moves, and the shin angles and the body positions. And they used to play very upright. And the reason they played upright is because you couldn't carry the ball at all. So you had to keep your hand on top. And if you can't get your hand on side of the ball, you don't have time to get into like a really steep Shin angle, like look at like decelerating, like Kyrie Irving Kemba. Walker, like their shins are almost horizontal to the floor when decelerating, right. And these are more dangerous positions. These are higher stresses to the joints.

 But it's every play, they're doing this and it's because they can carry it a little bit. So that gives them time to get to those positions. Before that, and that rule got looser after Michael Jordan, he used to do his cuff overs. And then Allen Iverson came in with his loose cross. And that after that, now we could just carry the ball. Right. And once you can carry the ball that gives you entirely different body angles, which is great for performance, but puts way more stress on the body. So I say all that to say the older players the previous generations, they had a very safe game, it was upright, and it because it was upright, it was slow. 

And now you got these kids 10 years old, mimicking the carry moves. And then you do that nine times every weekend. Like at some point, something's got to go. And so it's very rare. Like we see these high school kids 16 years old, who already their knees are just shot. Yeah, like the rest of our training is like injury reduction. Like I can't even have you jump because your knees are so shot from all the AAU you've played. So it's that's, and I am a fan of AAU in terms of building your skill level. I think it's like, our generation always goes like, oh, well, the kids are not doing this. They're missing that like we're better than ever. We're way more skilled than we've ever been. So it is good. But it's just like where do we find that balance?

Tim DiFrancesco  37:39

Somewhere? There's a sweet spot, can you go 101 on us a little bit with an or sorry, not one on 1101 rather on real kind of elementary breakdown on the shin angle piece that you brought up, because as you talked about the shin angles in the 60s were a lot different than the shin angles of players now and the athletic that the athleticism has changed, and the speed of the game has changed. And there's a reason for that.

Paul Fabritz  38:06

Yeah, so think about deceleration like if you're going hard one way, and then you go to put on the brakes. If you have a steep Shin angle, like your shin is more horizontal to the floor, you put more horizontal braking force which allows you to stop on one. So I can plant my foot and stop really hard.

Tim DiFrancesco  38:26

Yeah, and one of the best images if you just to kind of for listeners is the image where MJ is hand is still resting on Byron Russell's hip and his shin angle, if you look at his shin, it is way tipped over down towards the ground there just as Paul's describing it perfectly, but I just wanted that image there that MJ still shot is you could take a look at a shin angle right there.

Paul Fabritz  38:51

Yeah. And so that's how we all stop now, like at that time, it was mostly like MJ, you got a dynamic players that would do that. But most players don't have those Shin angles, and therefore they don't stop on one, they stop on two or three. So it's like I'm going to slow down. And I'm 123, which disperses the force over three steps, which is less force on your knees, compared to the one which is just for shooting straight up. And so again, you're increasing performance, but you're putting your body at a little bit of higher risk for injury. 

And so yeah, at that time, most of the guys were not great decelerator because they would stop over two or three, and then MJ has come in through stopping on one with that's what we call a drag. And now everybody does that. Every guard. One of the guys that does it now really well as Bradley Beal, you'll know to do his step backs and his shins are like so horizontal to the floor. And like it's all knees in which isn't inherently bad. But when you do it that often with that much force, obviously you're increasing risk. Now, I say that and But I'm not a fan of training that out of people, like I would never say like, Hey, I would never tell the player like, hey, that's too dangerous, don't do it. Because the goal is to be good. At the end of the day, we're here to be good at the sport. 

If that wasn't the goal, if the goal were strictly stay healthy than stay home and sit on the couch, like don't play basketball, that's the goal. The goal is to be good. Now within that, how do we prepare them to also stay healthy. But if you just say, hey, go back to how they're playing in the 70s. You can't play basketball like that anymore. Because people are using these more effective strategies, and they're moving better. So you can't go backwards. And so we're stuck with this style of play forever steep Shin angles. But you know, now it's like, how do we get durable? Well, I can hook you up to some extra resistance in the offseason, and have you work on decelerating, right? Like I can put you in similar positions with a little bit of additional load and gradually get you used to these positions.

Tim DiFrancesco  41:00

Yeah. And it's also why it just immediately sort of takes the bottom out of the argument from the person that wants to say, well, we never lifted back in the day, we never did that we never had to spend time in the weight room, we were we were strong, and we did the sport, but the sport is different. And that's the that's the what you're talking about right there is where the durability side of being in the weight room. It's not even about the bigger, faster, stronger piece that's going to come as a byproduct of doing these things the right way. And building with that lens of durability, and you're doing your training with that I want to get into kind of how you personally went from 32 inches to 47 inches in that year, and got the the eye of your your former coach who was like get back here. And but it is about the fact of if you want to play at this new style of play at this amount of volume, this amount of force, we have to have different weapons to prepare for that.

Paul Fabritz  41:55

Absolutely different weapons. And then we have to become obsessed with load management. And we're just not like we're just not obsessed with looking at your chronic workload to your acute like what are you prepare to do versus what are you exactly? Like, why is this not the viral stuff on social media instead? It's like, oh, this secret exercise helps you do this. Yeah. Like that's great. But like that's the stuff that exercise individual exercise go viral. But these concepts of acute to chronic workload ratio, nobody cares about. And it's like, that's what we have to obsess over and get kids to just understand at the very least, like, Hey, don't spike your workload, like 80% of Achilles tendinopathies. You can link it back to a previous spike in workload. So like, we can eliminate so many tendinopathies by just simply not rapidly spiking that workload and just gradually getting there. You look at like, 

Okay, you look at the Maasai warriors who do like the pogo jumps if you guys have right yep, yep. Insane. Like they do this as a dance ritual. And they're doing this daily and they're doing like their RSI is just insane. And they're doing like, what an NBA player would be doing like an elite like what Joe really would do on a pogo. This is what they do with a spear. And that standard, that's a standard. Yeah, standard. And then you got people who run marathons very frequently, you got people who do Iron Man's, like the human body is capable of so much more than we can even understand. So it's not that it's not that everybody does too much. It's just the Maasai warrior didn't all of a sudden start yes, they gradually got to that position. The marathon runner didn't all of a sudden start doing it. They just gradually built up to that. And our society is too impatient to gradually build right now. And that's where we're going to see more and more increased risk of injury, I think.

Tim DiFrancesco  43:54

Thank you for joining us today. If you enjoyed today's show, and we hope you did. Please give us a good review on Apple podcasts or whichever platform you listen to podcasts on. And so you never miss a weekly episode, be sure to subscribe and follow. You can find previous episodes on our show website. That's www dot basketball strong podcast.com. For more basketball performance resources, and nagging injury solutions, follow me on Instagram at TD athletes edge and follow Phil at Phil white books. Until next week's episode, stay basketball strong

Paul Fabritz (Part 2)

Wed, Jun 28, 2023 3:24PM • 49:07

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

athletes, plyometrics, basketball, workout, good, training, injury, drills, basics, olympic lifts, throw, talk, strong, jump, weight, rob, put, grew, people, force

SPEAKERS

Tim DiFrancesco, Phil White, Paul Fabritz

Paul Fabritz  00:06

You can't say playing multiple sports is good for an athlete. Early specialization is bad for an athlete and then go on to say that you have to do everything game specific.

Tim DiFrancesco  00:20

Hello, and welcome to today's episode of the basketball strong Podcast. I'm Tim DeFrancesco, former LA Lakers strength and conditioning coach and Doctor of Physical Therapy, and I'm here with my co host, Emmy nominated writer and author Phil white. This podcast is not just for basketball junkies, it's for anyone who loves to hear the human stories behind great people, while learning the science behind preparing your body for the court and high performance. On today's episode, we welcome back one of the world's best basketball strength trainers Paul for breats. If you didn't have a chance to listen to part one, it is episode number 30 to get back there and listen, before I get into what Paul shares in this part two episode, I want to welcome any newcomers to the basketball strong podcast community, Phil and I love seeing this grow. We love seeing that we have new listeners all the time, and we want to hear from you. So shoot me an email Tim at basketball strong podcast.com. And also oh, by the way that enters you into our specialty prize giveaway contest, just by making sure you subscribe, drop a review, and leave me an email. And that's the other thing. The best way to help us grow and to build this community is to number one, share the link to the podcast with a friend or family member who you think would love it. And then number two, drop a review if you haven't already on Apple podcasts. That is huge for us. Now on episode number 32. Part one with Paul for breeds, we left off getting into and listening to Paul talk us through why he feels like we're getting into this zone of seeing young athletes or even pro athletes at an elite level see an increased risk of injury. And Paul picks up right where he left off here. He simplifies the idea of load management big buzzword. And also he helps us to understand why the acute to chronic workload ratio, even for recreational athletes is a huge advantage. You don't need any budget or fancy technology to use it. But it can be huge in reducing your injury risk and also just improving your overall performance avoiding things like overtraining. He gets into in this episode, and I love this why he thinks that Olympic Lifts are dicey territory with basketball athletes specifically. And he really lays out some nuances to that topic, not just sort of blindly saying he doesn't like them and and not giving a reason why He also shares why he teaches his bounciness athletes not only how to land, but this is key how to fall, how to hit the ground and fall properly. It's a really great part of the conversation. The piece that I loved was hearing him really boiled down to three strategies that he used to boost his own vertical leap from 32 inches to 47 inches. I took notes, as he talked us through it and have reviewed those notes. It's such a great three prong strategy to vertical jump development. And lastly, I loved on this episode, the funny story about the first training session he ever did with James Harden. Let's get into the conversation. Break it down a little bit in terms of so if we have a listener out there where Okay, I understand Paul, not to spike it. But what do you even mean by chronic workload versus acute?

Rate of Perceived Exertion and Workload Management

Paul Fabritz  03:42

Yeah, so the most basic way without technology and getting to advance is I would just say, monitor your RPE rating of perceived exertion scale of one to 10. Okay, every day, you got to monitor that. So you did a strength workout. Let's say that's a seven out of 10, you did a skill workout. Let's say that was an eight out of 10. Now, multiply that seven by the amount of minutes that you did. So let's say seven times it was 60 minutes, okay? And then you do that for your skill that gives you your, let's say your points for the day, right? And so let's simplify it and just say that we're just looking at our strength. And let's say that we ended up at like 100 points for that day. Now, every day monitor that. And then at the end of the week, average that out, so what is your average for that week? Okay, now I need to go back and I need to look at the previous four weeks. And what is my average across those four weeks. So those four weeks that is my that is my chronic? 

This is what I'm actually prepared to do. So what is that average? Now? Look at what I'm going to do this week, that is my acute. And now you're just going to divide them and you come up with a ratio. Typically, we want that acute to be between point eight and 1.3. So basically, point eight that means 80%. So this week, I'm doing 80% of what I've built up to, or 1.3 is 130%. So I'm not going to go 30 Over 30% above what I'm prepared to do. And so you can just do that. And I know it's tough to listen to that and do the math, but just Google acute to chronic workload ratio. And in the studies, they have these formulas. But that's typically where we want to go now that that below point eight people forget about that side, that means we're under training you Yeah, we get you in at point five, well, shoot, I'm doing 50% of what you should be doing 50% of what you're prepared to do. Now we have a detraining effect.

Tim DiFrancesco  05:50

And now you get tossed into that game and you are ripe for the injury.

Paul Fabritz  05:54

Yes. And so under training is just as bad as overtraining. So don't go below 80% of what you're capable of, don't go above 130. Now, you don't even need to be a wizard with this math. But just keeping this stuff in mind and going on. Maybe I shouldn't double my workload. Like most people are just right, or workload by 250%. Like we're I'm not worried about okay, you went up to 140. Like you might get by, if you're at 250 300% of what you're prepared to do, you're gonna get injured. It's just a matter of when,

Tim DiFrancesco  06:30

right? Yeah, absolutely. And I think the other nice way to look at it too, is just, if you can understand that the most sort of basic level of if you're taking your own RPS, or you're reporting your RPS, and you're multiplying by those durations of the workout, you can get these units of workload and then you can understand, okay, if I exist is another place where this comes into in real value is where in the return to play, so that return to play phase, if you know kind of where you're at. And then you're only adding 10% layer week, after a week versus one week to a net, another you you brought up is like if you go by adding 50% You're doing 50% more than what you were doing last week, it's only a matter of time, when it's not if but if you just know that baseline if you know that chronic load of wherever you're at, or wherever you were out before injury, and then wherever you're at now, you can just layer in 10%. And you could apply this to any person going back to any activity to

Paul Fabritz  07:32

I love that. Yeah, 10% That's a good way to think about it.

Tim DiFrancesco  07:36

You know, and it just gives that nice, easy layers, and the body has time to adapt the body has time to, you know, really accommodate and kind of keep keep building in a way that isn't ripe for injury. Yeah.

Paul Fabritz  07:50

As humans, our greatest gift is adaptability. Like that's one thing that we have over every other animal is like high high, high levels of adaptability. But you need patience and persistence to take full advantage of your greatest gift adaptability. And so if you rush things, you'll never end the people who say like, okay, running is bad for your knees. Jumping is bad for your knees. It's the people who spike their workload and doing it. And so they think that it was the task. It was not the task, and it was the donation. It was the dose.

Tim DiFrancesco  08:21

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So talk to us a little bit, though, about what was what changed in some of your training strategies that were tools that you started to hone in on that you said, Okay, I need to put this in and then all sudden, you start to see your vertical jump, go up 30 to 3436, and then all the way up to 47 in that summer, or that offseason, or that injury and recovery period.

Paul Fabritz  08:46

One thing is getting back to basics with plyometric progressions. Yeah, I think when I was in high school, I would just go work with you know, whoever, whatever teammate or whatever other trainer and they would just throw random plyometrics at you. And I might not be like fully prepared for like a high box depth drop, you know, and I'm doing it, and I'm getting by but like, eventually, I picked up super training by Yuri verkhoshansky. And it was way beyond my reading comprehension. Like that stuff is so insane, man, man, it's so deep. And then there's that like, the English isn't perfect. And it's still it's like kind of in Russian kind of, kind of in English. And so it was it was beyond my level of comprehension. 

But I got the high level takeaways of it of like how they progress plyometrics how they use what they call shock training. And just getting back to basics. Like I think a lot of kids and myself included, I was trying to find the fanciest looking plyometric exercise. And then it's once you realize what the body adapts to, it's like, Well, hey, a depth jump works better than all of these things, but you just got to start on a low box and grow gradually progressed, and you know, maybe you start with just the landing, and then you work on just springing out. And then you work on a small jump, and then eventually you're working on bigger jumps. And so it's like getting really learning the fundamentals of plyometrics was huge for me.

Bilateral Training

 Another big thing was in the weight room, I switched from only doing super heavy bilateral deep squats to a lot of unilateral stuff. And, and I kept in some of that bilateral stuff, but I was doing like rear foot elevated that was like my go to, and this is, you know, coaches don't like this, but I did on the Smith Machine. Yep, went to LA Fitness, I did them on a Smith machine. Because when I was loading rear foot elevated, I was always like a little bit off balance. And I'm like, Look, if I'm off balance, I can't actually produce force. So what's the point of this, this is only really a stability exercise. And I'm getting my balance and stability from other areas. Like I get that from athletic training from plyometrics. And I do it much better anyways. So like, why am I you know, why am I limiting my force producing capabilities by trying to do this with a barbell or just with dumbbells. 

And so once I passed the dumbbell stage where I'm holding like, 80s, I just went to a smith machine, and I can produce maximal force on that Smith machine, I would do half ranges, and then I would do full ranges. And I would just alternate those, every workout. And that that took me to the next level, like my glutes, because people think rear foot elevated is all quads, but their glutes and hamstrings and adductors are the most sore the next day. So like, my post chain got so strong, my quads got strong, my knee pain went away, like patellar tendinopathy went away from getting that true heavy loading. Yeah. And then I balance things out. Because we all I think a lot of us have big imbalances, naturally, which you know, 15%, totally normal. 

But we're imbalanced as humans already with, like how our organs are set up, but then you throw in just a ton of heavy bilateral squatting, and I'm taking over with that right side more and more, and I'm exacerbating that imbalance. And then when I went to the rear foot elevated as my go to, I think I really brought up that left leg, which really helped me take off. It helped me take off in two leg jumps, but then it got me way better at my one leg jumps as well. So those were like the two main things. 

And then I think the other thing is I started adding in one day a week of pool training. And that was huge for me because I can sneak in some like plyometric volume without the impact on the joints. Yeah, that helped me a lot. But it wasn't just that, like, the water has a therapeutic effect, like it's that stress thing, I think it's the best thing you can do for recovery. So I got in and I would do my high knees and my legs swing through the airs, and through there and then I would do like single leg Plyometrics, double leg plyometrics all kinds of stuff like good little 45 minute session. I did that every Wednesday to break up my week.

 And I took that to this day, every Wednesday we're doing a pool workout with our guys. Just because that mid week. First of all, mentally they need a break. And getting them in the pool gives them that the the freshness that they need. But yeah, it's so good for recovery. And then there's also real training effects that we get from it. So I'd say that was my pride big my three biggest things is switching to primarily unilateral, throwing away the idea that machines are bad, like, yeah, quantum machine and produce some real force. And then the pool workouts and just getting back to the basics of plyometrics.

Tim DiFrancesco  13:30

Yeah, no, that's, that's incredible. I want to sort of recap some of those ingredients as I'm taping track, because ultimately, if I really hear it, and there's these other pieces of the sort of secret weapon of that pool workout, I want to tag into that in a second. But you have you lifted heavy stuff repeatedly the right way. And in some cases, very isolated ways. You jumped in and did jumps and landings in a properly dosed way back to the basics type of thing. And you kind of rinse and repeat that aspect of it, you sprinkle in stuff, like the nutrition, like the recovery, like the pool workouts, and that that's really cool with the Whirlpool workouts, what you bring up because I think that the you alluded to the training effects that happened there about you essentially take out the set eccentric sort of intensity of what's going on there. 

You take that part of it out as you're doing some you can do some really explosive stuff actually in a more recovery based pool workout because it's not going to include that really high stress eccentric portion which is necessary you've got to do that in a in a land base portion of what you're doing. But then you get the resistance of the water is almost isokinetic almost flywheel like in some ways, the faster you move through that water, the more drag you create, and so you get this really cool concentric load without the eccentric and it is such a great point by you to have that as a once a week type of a modality but I have that right that kind of you know, it's a it's a more it's not as complicated as people want to make it.

Going Back to Basics and Why You Should Dunk on Low Rims

Paul Fabritz  14:59

Exactly. Yeah, it's back to basics. And it's getting rid of a lot of the extra fluff. Like there's a lot of fluff in my strength training and in my metrics, and it's like, let's, let's cut that out and like, let's get crazy efficient with it, so that I can get in and out of the gym and I can be efficient and I can recover. And then the one other thing that I forgot to say that I think was a huge key for me, is I was going to a gym that had a rim that was like nine foot seven. And so I started being able to like really dunk, and mentally it took me to a whole nother level. And the low rim dunking consistently. When I trained I work with a lot of pro dunkers 50 antiparticles. They all grew up different, they all did different stuff. Some of them lift weights, some of them don't at all, but all of them grew up low rim dunking, like wow, that's the one ingredient that every great jumper has in common. 

They all grew up low rim, because it just takes you it takes your nervous system to a whole different level, the ability to see that don't go in. And then it's like, Okay, let me raise it up a little bit of small victories, and they add up. Yep. And like, there's a lot of motor learning science behind that, like the idea of self organization, instead of like being taught jump mechanics, like go put down a dunk and your body goes, Oh, wait, I made it. And that was the feedback that it needed to then go, those are the mechanics that you need. And if you miss dunks, you miss some dunks and your body's like, Oh, that's not the way. Yeah, so you're training your mechanics by dunking on low rims.

Phil White  16:30

And even what you tie back into what you said earlier, like that dopamine system and then the self efficacy on top of it. And if we look at you know, before mando came along, and you know his different body type and was able to break so guidebook, because record, you know, Bubka would take it up like a centimeter at a time for the whose world record of things and, and in training those guys, you know, pole vault, if anyone knows anything about that listening, you'll be nodding and saying yeah, like they go in with very low reps in that it's kind of like bobsled, but without the crashing, because there's so much into it. So they can't do that many, so they want to make that make to mess ratio, or even in Olympic lifting. If you talk to someone like Sean Waxman, you know, that really high level, they want to have their athletes basically rarely mess. Because otherwise, you're just grooving it and you do not want if you're going to be putting 400 pounds plus above your head or whatever it is in a different weight class. For there to be that memory of Oh crap. Remember when I missed this 17 times in training yesterday?

Paul Fabritz  17:37

Absolutely. I think that reminds me of a story. I forgot what shooter it was. I want to say it was Kyle Korver, but he's one of the great legendary shooters. And he would say like, most people, when they're missing shots and workouts, they try harder, and they're like, No, I'm gonna stay here until I make he's like, not when I'm missing shots, like get out of the gym. Like I'm not, I know I can shoot. And right now I'm not shooting well, and I'm only patterning this. You start making these tweaks. And the more reps you get, the more you pattern that and so a lot of people go into these huge shooting slumps by like that push through mentality. We're actually just burying themselves in that slump. Yeah, just failure, grooving failure. That's what it is. And then relating that to that low rim is like before when I'm going out and trying to dunk on 10 feet, and it's fail, fail, fail fail, I don't get that opportunity to self organize and rep the right patterns, the right jump mechanics.

Tim DiFrancesco  18:32

Wow, that's powerful. Talk a little bit about Olympic lifting, though, because you've talked about it recently on some of your channels. You had personally some of these wrist and hand injuries that tend to be problematic for anybody that's had those in their history, and they've been able to get into the positions of the Olympic lifts and, and the hang or the overhead positions and that kind of thing. Where do you stand on them in terms of obviously, nobody's arguing that they wouldn't be good for creating power, but how do they fit with a basketball athlete or a taller athlete, for instance?

Paul Fabritz  19:05

Yeah, like you said, they are effective. Like we have the studies showing that they are effective. It's just like most people who have also implemented something like a trap bar jump a loaded jump different types of plyometrics. Like, it's not more effective than these things, right. So it's hard. Like, it's hard to say that we can't just get the same power output from an exercise. It's just way more simple. So a they are effective, but I just think there's other things that are just as effective, if not more, but be like there's, for me, I actually grew up Olympic lifting, I was an Olympic lifting from age 12. 

And so I'm kind of a rare case where I did get really good at it. Because most most people say, Well, you don't like the Olympic lifts because you're not good at them. You can't teach them. I'm like yeah, okay, watch me do it. Like I'm actually very good at them, but still even being technically proficient. You You're going to miss a lift every now and then. And you're not going to get your elbows up. And when you miss a lift, you're going to have it coming down on your wrist. And just like for a basketball player, I'm not willing to make your wrists or all for this extra 1% of power that we're getting here. Because then you got guys out there trying to get up there 300 shots and like you're taking away from the sport, totally, we can never bang them up in the weight room, under any circumstances, we can't bring them up in the weight room. And so that's kind of my main thing is guys just get too banged up and coaches go, Yeah, but if you teach it the right way, they don't get banged up. 

And I just don't think that's possible long term. Because I just think that you're going to miss lifts, you're going to come in and you're going to use a weight that's too heavy every now and then or you didn't get a good night's sleep before. And you're just going to your your technique is going to break down and an injury will probably occur. Now, if if there was like, if we had studies saying, Hey, you're getting 20% better power, and this compared to a trap bar? Well, now let's have a conversation. But if if we don't have those studies, and everybody who is doing this, like with their athletes are like, hey, our results are just as good from then like, why would we take that risk,

Tim DiFrancesco  21:13

right, the risk reward is just not big enough, the reward portion is not big enough to justify that risk that is going to be there, especially with the physics of the longer levered athletes who, by the way, basketball athletes don't tend to come in with a big, huge giant training age, and have all this experience with either Olympic lifts or even in the weight room period. 

So when you have these longer levers, and you're asking them to do these complex things, and you're talking about fine motor athletes who have to do something with touch with their wrist with their elbow with their hands, and you're putting those areas at jeopardy, like you said, when we're talking about it's six and one half a dozen another in terms of results, results of the Olympic lifts versus something like a trap bar, job or something like that to or band resisted jump or whatever the variation that you're using to develop power, even a kettlebell swing or other things like that, then it just why would you fall into doing that, other than the fact that that's just what I did? And that's what we'll do. And we just are doing it? Because we always did it?

Paul Fabritz  22:17

Yeah, that's the main thing. And I get the one argument where, where, if you love the Olympic lifts, the argument that you should use is it's more fun. Like, it's exciting to get under the bar. And there's that feeling of fake fear. Or maybe it's kind of real fear, but it's like, hey, if I miss this lift, I'm gonna get injured, right? That drives intent, because you're like, I gotta pull this bar fast.

Tim DiFrancesco  22:43

There's a good point.

Paul Fabritz  22:45

There's an element of that, like, now, is that worth it for a basketball player, absolutely not like a crazy guy who's just like, hey, I'm okay to get banged up, I just want to jump high. Okay, I'm fine with you using that argument, whatever. But a basketball player, we just can't take that risk, no doubt. And then the other argument that I hear is that the studies show that it's like the second poll is like, just this ungodly amount of power output, which is true, but people don't account that you're pulling on it with your arms. So like, I can hit like, 25, I forgot what it was, I think it's like 2500 Newton's of force not even bending my knees and just like yanking on the bar with my arm. So you're using the legs, and then you're using the arms. And that's why it's so much power output on the force plate. Whereas the trap bar jumped, like that's true lower body power output, because you're not using your arm. Yes. So I would argue that the trap bar jump is probably going to end up being more power output from the lower body perspective. 

And then when you do like med ball throws, that's when you're incorporating the full body, now you're getting the transfer of energy that a lot of people think they're getting with the Olympic lifts. So I just think that there's other ways to to get everything that we could potentially be getting from an Olympic lift. utils. Great point.

Phil White  24:02

It really is. You talk a little bit about your work in the lab and kind of alluded to that. And I know you've done quite a bit at Cal State Fullerton, have you ever teamed up with my co author Andy Galpin at all and his team? And if so, what are some of the things that you've done when Andy puts on his mad scientist hat?

Paul Fabritz  24:19

Yeah. And he's, which is always there. Right, right. Very smart guy. I haven't done any like studies with him. We have talked about doing some stuff. I had him on my podcast a couple years ago, and it was awesome. He's just such a smart guy, especially when it comes to like muscle fiber types and that kind of stuff. Yeah. But yeah, we I learned a lot from him. We talked about getting some of our athletes in for research. We don't know anything about fast athletes, and that's a huge issue. And then something that he said on the podcast. When it comes to like fast twitch fibers we I'll just throw it out like oh yeah, fast guys are fast twitch. And he's like, Well, we don't know anything about fast twitch, or like actual fast athletes. 

There's only been one Olympic level sprinter ever tested for fiber types. And he had like 20 something percent type 2x, which is like the super fast fibers. A cheetah has like 100%. But your, your normal humans have like 1% of those. And so we don't know that much about fast athletes at all, because we've only had like this one guy studied. And the reason that we don't know is because the guys who are like legit fast jumping, they don't want to go in and get it like a needle jammed into their leg. Like there's this big, like thick needle that you need to take fight for fiber type research. And so they just don't do that. But I had a couple of like really explosive football players who are crazy. 

And I was like, let's let's let's get a study going on these guys, because they'll totally do it. Right. So we had talked about doing we need some athletes who are like crazy fast and bouncy and they're willing to go do this research. And Dr. Galpin jokes about it because all these like young intense athletes are afraid of it. But like 80 year old grandmas do it and like it's no problem. He said that when he said that one of the grandmas went in and she didn't even flinch and she's like I gave birth five times.

Tim DiFrancesco  26:22

was nothing. Yeah. What Well, speaking of freaky athletes, so who's who's one of the freakier ones that from a jumping standpoint that you've worked with?

Learning how to Land and Fall 

Paul Fabritz  26:32

Just general jumping or like basketball, basketball, basketball. I got this kid right now, from Sierra Canyon, Amari Bailey, who's one of the best all around jumpers I've ever seen. And he's only Really 17 He's going to UCLA next year. Wow. Yeah, he's like, number two player in the nation. He's, he's skilled. But he's like, really the closest thing I've seen to like a prime like Russell Westbrook in terms of pure athleticism. Man. He's unreal. And he's six, five. So hello. That helps to look out. Oh, yeah. So for him, I'm not really trying to get him bounce here. I'm trying to work on his ability to land. Yes, he's so athletic and acrobatic in the air. He just jumps in and like figures it out from there. But I'm like, what happens when we land. And some of its like parkour stuff, like, sometimes it's not sticking the landing like when to bail, like getting athletes comfortable with falling is a huge thing. In basketball players, The taller you are, the more fear fearful you are of the ground, because it's a bigger fall. But some of these guys stay healthy. You look at John Moran, who's just jumping every single time. 

He's falling, like he's stumble landings, and he's bailing out. And it's like a parkour athlete, when they jump off a 20 foot building, like they're not trying to stick that landing. And a lot of these guys who are just like, afraid of the floor, they're going to try to stick everything. And that's where you get like the big meniscus injuries and all these other injuries. So it's like, Can I do like Brazilian jujitsu type stuff with like, just fall, learn how to fall, learn how to roll, and even ground based stuff. Different things that we can do on the ground, to get them comfortable with it, and give their nervous system more options.

 So when they're landing, they're like, Hey, I don't have to stick it. I can just fall and roll. So like that's kind of what I'm doing with him because he's so bouncy. To answer the original question of who's the best jumper I just had this guy in, named Chris spell. And he's like a pro Dunker ex football player, but he had a true 50 inch vertical. A standing 46 Which I think that's an all time record, I think. And then a running 50 And my, any other 50 off one foot to know get a two foot 50 and a one foot one foot 50 just unreal.

Tim DiFrancesco  28:56

Bouncy. Oh my gosh. Paul, talk a little bit about a post you recently did after doing the great pocket podcast episode you did with Andy Barr. And he talked about the fact that you actually said on the post this these exercises are not a scam and just dissected the fact of what Andy does often in terms of how he gets neuromuscular impact on the athletes through his his challenges and his adaptations of what he uses in in his strategies. But you look at Kevin Durant, you look at if you go way back, you look at what Nash was doing Nash checks actually handed a lot of those off to Durant and I saw him do some of that in terms of what he did with the Warriors consulting but also even before that he would work with Durant a lot in the offseason when when he was still with the thunder. Nash got a lot of that from Alex McKechnie, Rick Sal Abrini, who's now with the Warriors but that style and how you describe it and why you say it's not a scam and I couldn't agree more.

Paul Fabritz  29:54

Yeah, no, that's awesome insight. I never really put that together that he got it from Steve Nash, but that makes total sense. I I used to watch Steve Nash's warm ups in Phoenix, and he just be doing all this weird stuff. Yeah. And I was always interested in that. And then you see Steph Curry doing all kinds of crazy. Exactly. Yeah. And I love that stuff like I it's, it's easy to go well, it's not game realistic. So it's bad. And like, even like, I love LeBron, I think he's maybe the goat. But at the beginning of season, he had that tweet where he's like, if you're not doing something that's game realistic, like it's a scam. And everybody, like everybody got behind that statement so hard. 

And so I would post these like, movement, rich drills, proprioception drills, and I started getting people commenting, like, that's a scam. Why are you? And so that's where that headline comes from is like, yeah, yeah, this is not a scam. But look, you can't say, playing multiple sports is good for an athlete. Early specialization is bad for an athlete, and then go on to say that you have to do everything game specific. Because what we're doing is we're filling the gaps that they're not getting from other sports. Yeah, they are specializing early. And I'm saying well, okay, that's the new culture fine, well, then I'm not going to do everything basketball specific in the weight room. 

And with performance training, I'm gonna go sometimes the exact opposite. And I'm going to expose you to the footwork you are missing out with in soccer, and the flexibility and strength that you're missing out with, but by not doing gymnastics, and the general reaction that you're not getting from being a cornerback in football, and it's like, how do I microdose all of these things into our sessions to make you a well rounded athlete? Because what players do is they build their specific skills, right? If you go game specific, you are going to build these specific skills show your your systems gradually go down, and our general systems, vestibular proprioception, all this stuff. It's very high as a young kid, because we're at recess, and we're always out playing and hopscotch or whatever. And then it just, it's on a gradual decline. Yeah, so the skills go up. And this general systems go down and down and down. 

And guys like KD and and Steph, you see them doing this in their warm up their microdosing, these movements that they're missing out on by not doing this other stuff. And so I always found that a weird contradiction, because everybody will go, Yeah, you got to play multiple sports, it develops you blah, blah, blah. And then they go on to say, oh, yeah, but when it comes to basketball, like no, there, you acknowledge that there's such thing as like, general systems that we have to enhance. And if you acknowledge that, which I think we all agree on, then you acknowledge that some of these drills are super beneficial for athletes.

Tim DiFrancesco  32:41

No question.

Phil White  32:43

Yeah. Sure. Earlier on, you mentioned, just to go go back to your own story for a minute this, this move of Rob out to California from Arizona, where did that fit into your story? So you kind of caught us up with those tricky years of trying to, you know, work on your soft skills behind the scenes, and then, you know, go from kind of this Globo gym environment to eventually, you know, doing what you do now, but catch us up with with the years with Rob and kind of what what you've learned from him both, you know, in in the weight room, and just about the business of life as well, when you made that switch to California.

Paul Fabritz  33:21

Yeah. So I mean, I'm a, I'm a young kid, like, I'm just finishing college, and my business is going well in Arizona, but he found me somehow online, like his agency found a video somewhere online. And they kind of needed somebody to work with their guys. And they're like, We want this guy. And so a member of his agency, one of the agents under him, came to Arizona took me out to dinner. And I wasn't expecting this at all. Like, I'm just breaking on the scene, and he takes me to dinner. And he's like, these are the athletes we have from Kobe to James Harden. And I never got to work with Kobe. I want to get a lot of stories from you eventually, when we have you on my podcast, but no, I that one of the first guys I met when I got to anime was Kobe, but it was like Kobe and James Harden. And all these guys like he's got this long list. 

And I'm like, wait, you want me to train them? That's, that's pretty crazy. And I'm always a competent person. But he's really like, he kind of believed in me, and he kind of threw me into the fire with it. And it accelerated my growth a lot. But anyways, he they make this offer and they go, Hey, like, we need you in California. I was talking to my other players who were like going to the NBA are kind of around that level. And they're like, We love you. But once were playing pro, we're not coming back to Phoenix for the summer 122 We're gonna be spending it in LA. And it all just kind of added up and I'm like, Look, if I want to take this to the next level, I got to be in LA or New York or Miami. 

And so I was like, let's let's make the move. I literally threw my stuff in a trash bag. I threw my clothes in a trash bag and I was gone. I didn't even find a place to stay. I just stayed at Airbnb. Bees, and stayed with this family I was sleeping in today had like the side room and I was basically just living with this random family who Oh, and we set up shop at, there's this huge facility, American American sports center 25 courts, like just as gigantic biggest facility on the west coast. And in the corner, this tiny little space 1000 square feet, it's a storage area where they just throw their trash. And I'm like, That's my jam right there. And so we cleared everything out, we put in the rubber flooring, built it out, built the fences, and all that. And it was a serviceable spot, and it was private. 

Training James Harden

So these guys would, could train without people bothering them. And he sent me one guy he sent me. I think the first guy was TYUS JONES, his pre draft. And I worked with him and he loved it. And he got good results. And then he went back to rob and he's like, Yeah, I liked this. I want to stick with this guy. And then Rob's like, okay, let's, let's try one more, because he's not going to just send me like his top guys. He's gonna, like, make sure that you know that, that you're legit. And so a couple more guys come in, and they get good results report back to him.

 And then one day, I got a call. And he said, Hey, James Harden needs a strength coach. And he'll give you one free trial session. Like you got to do good. You only get one trial session. So I drove out to Calabasas to our drive. And I just brought my med balls and bands. I don't know where we're training at. And, you know, I show up and I meet him. And luckily, we had the Arizona State connection. I had no right. Right. Never met him there. But we're there at the same time. Yep. Um, so you know, I had some common ground with him. And I go, okay, like, let's start, we're gonna do this agility drill. And he's like, Well, because I'm coming off season, like, I don't want to do a lot of agility. And I was like, okay, so no agility. Okay, fine. Well, we'll head down to this weight room. The high school had a weight room. I was like, yeah, we'll do like some trap bar, deadlifts, we'll keep it low rep. And he's like, I don't really do that. And I was like, all right. And then I'm like, Well, you should we do some conditions. I don't want to do too much conditioning.

 So I'm like, What should we do? Like, this is my trial session where I'm trying to show what I know. And he's like, Yeah, I don't want to do any of that. And so luckily, I found like some some areas where he needed to work on mobility. And I pointed it out, and I gave him some drills, and he loosened up. And he's like, oh, shoot, like, this is specific to what I need, right? I just gradually built it in and we started doing like med ball stuff, and the energy got high. And eventually he realized, like, Okay, this isn't like cookie cutter, like he's really tailoring this to my body. Yeah, I think he liked that. I could adjust on the fly. And then from there, he was like, what's the schedule for the summer? 

And I was in there. And then yeah, locked in. This is right when he first was getting to Houston. So this is right. And he's like, starting to take off. And we're where people went from like, okay, he's a role player to like, this dude's like, top 10? For sure. And yeah, I stayed with him, like, the entire summer traveled with him to like China and Barcelona and all that. And I did that for maybe five years straight for five years. And these were like his best years, like top two every year and BP. That lifestyle got a little bit too much for me. So I stopped the traveling. Like it was my whole life is like whenever he wanted me to be in China. It's like, boom, I'm gone. So and so it got really tough, especially when I got a family. We adopted our nephews and like, I can't live that life.

 Right. I stopped traveling with him. But he's still when he's in LA, we work together. He'll be here for a couple of weeks out of the offseason. So that helped me a lot. That connection and more people when he was doing really well, I started getting more clients. But yeah, so Rob gave me that love. That was the big love that Rob gave me. And, yeah, I learned a lot from being around Rob. Just how he carries himself, calm, under control, but confident and like he'll make the decision. He's not going to get walked over. But he's also not like aggressive and I feel like that's the number one thing is like, his swag and mentality is something that I picked up from Rob. And that's why he was I feel like he was so successful as an agent is because he related to players so well, because he had that like basketball player type, like swag. Like, yes. Rob was just like, he's the coolest guy in the room just like you know, as soon as he walks in.

Tim DiFrancesco  39:27

But he was on that Fab Five team. I mean, he has, you know, he had that there because he was there.

Paul Fabritz  39:34

Exactly. That's where swag was invented was like, exactly, those Michigan teams. So yeah, like that's one thing that I really got from Rob was like that swag but still being able to like make the big decisions. Yeah,

Tim DiFrancesco  39:47

yeah, no, that's so good. And I also love how you describe like, I've been in many a situation where you just, you come in and it's kind of like a trial workout. You're on audition, basically and a guy or a player is sort of going to see how they like you or what you come up with for them. And the tricky part is look, if you just start making shit up, because it's to try to have it be entertainment for them as their workout, that's dicey, because then you're going down past that you're getting away from your objectives or what they really might need. 

The other side, though, is it does have to be engaging for them. And some of the things they do need are the basics, what you did was so perfect, because you could, in the moment, that ability, and sometimes really experience is the only way to get this, but you just have to have this ability to breach laterally, vertically or horizontally around your back or wherever you can in your toolbox to find something that resonates with the person in front of you. And then you find that thing, and then you use that as Okay, let me use this of what they feel like they need to get to where I feel like they need over time.

Paul Fabritz  40:55

Yes, early on. It was like, How do I impress them? Well, I gotta give them drills that they've never seen, right? Yeah, yeah. Otherwise, I'm replaceable. Like, if I just do the basics, and I'm replaceable. What I found out though, is you don't have to impress people with the drills, you give them exactly what they need, but you win them over with your communication. No, the relationship is what wins them over. And then you don't got to do the bells and whistles and throw all these random stuff. But like some novelty is good. Like, let's get you some new stuff, just from a stimulus standpoint. Like, let's get you to adapt to something that you haven't been doing, for sure. But I agree. Like that's the real art is like in these early trial sessions, like how do I win them over, while also just given them the basics of what they need?

Phil White  41:38

So yeah, I've heard you talk on other shows about that, you know, telling me he gives that as authenticity, right? How important has it been just to be while still having the growth mindset as you share with us and wanting to add new things, you're asking whether it's technically or the soft skills and your leadership, but how important is it been to be authentic and just be uniquely yourself, particularly in those situations where, you know, folks like harden are used to meeting a lot of people every single day, and people want to try to project to them, you know, that they're, they're so they're that. So talk to us a little bit about just just being your true self as well.

Paul Fabritz  42:16

Yeah, no, it's so important. Like, that's the number one thing is they have to feel like their trainer is authentic, and somebody that they feel like they can vibe with, and they’ve got the right type of energy. I think people forget that a high level basketball player is a genius. It's a different form of genius. It's not like the Albert Einstein genius, it's different. But if you're James Harden, you're one of the highest level geniuses on Earth. It's just in this different area of like movement, being a genius with movement, being a genius with your IQ and seeing things and x's and o's and all that stuff. 

But a genius is always going to see through a phony, right? Like, you can't have this high level thinker who's like, you can you can't fake them. Like they're firing on a level that like even we probably aren't firing. And so they can see right through the Faker and they know who's being genuine. And so that's one thing I realized early on that I think a lot of people don't realize is that the athletes you're working with are geniuses. And so like, you can't you can't fake them. You could maybe fake them for a session or for a week, but at some point, they catch on to you. And then you can fake you can fake it on social media. But at some point in person session after session conversation after conversation they catch on you.

Tim DiFrancesco  43:36

Yeah, it's like a dog. It's like a dog smells fear, man. You they can they can see that stuff a mile away.

Paul Fabritz  43:42

Yes, Dog Dog. Feel they feel energy on a different level. And I feel like these high level athletes are in that same category. Oh, totally. They just feel energies. You know?

Tim DiFrancesco  43:54

Totally. Paul, this has been incredible. We want we want to get you back on and go over just a couple of just kind of rundown some of the common basketball injury areas and how you and I start to look at and tackle those together from a durability standpoint, because we're just so overlapped in how we think so I'm really excited for that. And that but in the meantime, I want to respect your time today. We do have one famous last question. This is the basketball strong podcast. So the last question is, what does it mean to you to be basketball strong, you can go spiritual, emotional, technical, all the above. Just go from your gut go from your heart.

Understanding Leverage and the Skill Side of Strength

Paul Fabritz  44:33

Yeah, well, I'm in a technical mindset right now. So I gotta go technical. Basketball is strong. I think it is how you can move somebody or you get hit and not moved. And so the weight room is an early step and it's a part of it. But we hear from these guys who are just wired really strong. Here guys like a Mari Stottlemyre who weren't big but guys have played against them or like this guy's just freakishly strong. right on against these point guards, I've gone against guards that are smaller than me and I'm stronger than in the weight room. But when they give you a hit, you move. 

And it's the skill side of strength. It is understanding leverage. It's understanding, oh, when I produce force at that angle, I put more force into them. And so there's this whole technical side that I think people, it's somewhat unexplored, because we just want to focus on like, just the weight room. And the weight room is a huge step, for sure. But you can start to build some of that by standing things, standing core standing presses, because like a standing press, like if I'm in a jammer, or a standing cable press, I gotta get into a split stance, and I got to produce force horizontally to move this way. So that's where it can kind of start is like, 

Oh, now you start to understand leverage. If you get somebody to stand up, they're getting pulled back. So they get low. And so you're starting to understand like the the skill side of using your body to be stronger. Like you see these these Brazilian Jujitsu, guys. It's not the biggest guy. It's the guy who can get under them, and use the martial arts. Yeah, yeah. And so that's a big thing. And I actually think that it's beneficial for some of these kids to grow up undersized. Because every time they go play basketball against these bigger, stronger, guys, they have to figure that out. Otherwise, they're on their back. And so you're figuring out the leverage, how do I produce force? 

When do I hit somebody? Because it's one thing to deliver a blow but like the great guards in the league watch Kyrie Irving, when he has a big coming with them, he times it right when they're getting off the ground, he gives them a bump. And if you've ever went to jump and you get a bump, right, as you're jumping, you fly, shoot, so he's not that strong, but he's super basketball strong because of the timing of that hit. And that's kind of the unexplored side of basketball strong, I think, where do we develop that standing stuff in the weight room wrestling, having an older brother like the kid who got beat normally has a little bit of that, that wiry strength in them, you know, working with a trainer doing different drills, where you're trying to move them or the classic box out drills.

 Somebody was mentioning that in New York, they have this drill, when that when they're growing up, they have like, it's like one on one, but it's all in the paint. So it's just so physical, that that's where you really learn that basketball, strengthen that technical, the skill side of being basketball strong. But like I said, when you're growing up under size, and you have to figure that out, otherwise, you're ending up on your butt every single play. You develop that and then later on you develop the weight, room strength. And now though you marry those two things together, and you're just a freak of nature on the court.

Tim DiFrancesco  47:44

Incredible. Paul. Where can people follow learn more work with you?

Paul Fabritz  47:48

Yeah. Instagram PJF, performance YouTube, same thing PJ performance, and then we have some online training programs and stuff at PJF performance.net. Love it.

Tim DiFrancesco  47:59

Get there guys. So good. Paul, this was just incredible. Thank you so much.

Paul Fabritz  48:03

I appreciate it, guys.

Tim DiFrancesco  48:05

Sounds good. All right. Thank you for joining us today. If you enjoyed today's show, and we hope you did. Please give us a good review on Apple podcasts or whichever platform you listen to podcasts on. And so you never miss a weekly episode, be sure to subscribe and follow. You can find previous episodes on our show website. That's www dot basketball strong podcast.com. For more basketball performance resources, and nagging injury solutions, follow me on Instagram at TD athletes edge and follow Phil at Phil white books. Until next week's episode, stay basketball strong