“THE TRIPLE DOUBLE” #10 WITH ROB BROST, BOLINGBROOK (IL) HIGH SCHOOL BOYS’ BASKETBALL HEAD COACH – EPISODE 953
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The 10th episode of “The Triple Double” with Rob Brost, Bolingbrook (IL) High School Boys’ Basketball Head Coach. Rob, Mike, & Jason hit on three basketball topics in each episode of “The Triple Double”.
- Coaching Cliches we believe in…and ones we don’t
- Staying connected with graduating seniors that don’t go on to play college basketball
- Off-season conditioning for high school programs
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What We Discuss with Rob Brost
- Coaching Cliches we believe in…and ones we don’t
- Staying connected with graduating seniors that don’t go on to play college basketball
- Off-season conditioning for high school programs
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THANKS, ROB BROST
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TRANSCRIPT FOR “THE TRIPLE DOUBLE” #10 WITH ROB BROST, BOLINGBROOK (IL) HIGH SCHOOL BOYS’ BASKETBALL HEAD COACH – EPISODE 953
[00:00:00] Mike Klinzing: Hello and welcome to the Hoop Heads Podcast. It’s Mike Klinzing here with my co-host Jason Sunkle tonight and it is time for triple double number 10 with Rob Brost, head boys basketball coach at Bolingbrook High School in Bolingbrook, Illinois. Rob, welcome back. Jason, welcome back to the triple double, buddy.
[00:00:18] Jason Sunkle: Hey, listen, I had to take a little hiatus. I was getting a little too big for my britches so I needed to take a break. I needed to let you guys carry the, the weight of the episode and I just kind of took the last two off. So I’m here.
[00:00:31] Mike Klinzing: All right. Well, we’re glad to have you back. What do you think Rob? Welcome in man.
[00:00:34] Rob Brost: Yeah. Always great to be on with you guys. Great to be full again and have everybody here. Can’t believe we’re in double digits. I love it. Crazy. We’re in double digits.
[00:00:44] Jason Sunkle: It’s crazy. It’ll be almost a year of doing this, huh? Yeah. Yeah.
[00:00:50] Mike Klinzing: We’re about a year removed from connecting in Louisville at some point here.
[00:00:52] Rob Brost: Yeah, that’s exactly right.
[00:00:56] Jason Sunkle: That’s where I’ll be this weekend. That’s where I’ll be next weekend. I’m going to watch the PGA in Louisville this weekend with my dad. So, there you go.
[00:01:06] Mike Klinzing: All right. It’s good. That’s a positive. That’s a positive for you, Jay. Rob and I’ll be slaving away at our houses doing whatever, doing whatever it is we do.
[00:01:16] Rob Brost: You know, that is exactly true. That is exactly true.
[00:01:20] Mike Klinzing: This will be my first, I think this will be my first non AAU weekend in a while. So I’m sure there’ll be some projects that need to, that need to get done.
[00:01:28] Jason Sunkle: A honey do list.
[00:01:30] Mike Klinzing: I got a graduation party coming up in two weeks. So there’s going to be a lot of things that need to get taken care of around the house that way. So we’ll get on that. All right. Our, our three topics tonight. We’re going to start with topic number one, and I’m going to interested to see which direction you go with this, Rob. So the question that I sent to Rob tonight was one coaching cliche that you believe in and one that you don’t. So I’m curious to see what direction you take this, Rob.
[00:01:59] Rob Brost: Yeah, well, let me just start by saying there’s a lot of cliches that I, that I believe in and I go with. I don’t know if this is a cliche as much as one that I say a lot and I totally believe in this. And I’m 1000% behind this, and it, it is this, and I’ll, I’ll say it two or three times just so the listeners can get it, but.
It’s you know, how we all strive to get our kids to go really, really hard. And we all want them to play hard. We all want them to do the things that we want them to do. And we want them to do it at a high level and all of those. I think every coach wants that, but I think the, the phrase that encapsulates all of that for me, Is this, it is unrealistic to expect extraordinary effort and performance without creating an environment where people feel extraordinarily valued.
And that is the basis of what we believe, or I believe, is the most important thing in coaching. And so, obviously there’s a lot of factors that play into that. And to make people feel extraordinarily valued. But if you expect that from your players and your kids and the students under your charge, you need to create, as best you can, create an environment where they feel extraordinarily valued.
And so, That’s kind of a, I don’t know if it’s a cliche, but that’s one that I use when I start off almost every clinic where I talk no matter what the topic is. And, and it’s just really kind of the baseline of where everything starts for us, at least where I’m at.
[00:03:50] Mike Klinzing: Okay. So what does that look like? I mean, I know anybody who’s listened over the course of the previous nine or listened to any of your other episodes has an idea of how you go about valuing.
The kids that are part of your program, but with somebody who’s jumping in new that hasn’t heard you talk before, just share with us a couple of things that you do to make sure that every kid on your team knows that they have value.
[00:04:15] Rob Brost: Well, I think it’s an ongoing process that is constant, right?
And it’s not just one thing that we do or one positive thing that we say or anything like that. It’s a holistic approach to how we do. All of it, right? And so some of it looks like, for example when we start our practice, we have this active stretching time and this pre practice time, we call it.
And during that time, I don’t talk to my assistants at all. I go around to each player and we either fist bump or we handshake or we dap it up, whatever you want to call it, depending on which kid it is. I talk to them about a myriad of different things. How was your science project? What’s up today? I saw your third period whatever.
During those 10 minutes of stretching slash pre practice time, I don’t talk to my assistants at all. That’s just my time to connect with every single player before practice officially starts. Of course, we’re starting practice, but that’s just one thing we do. And then obviously we do things like You know, team dinners at my place I’ll have the team over several times during the summer here after camp and you know, after shootouts and those types of things.
So those are just a few examples, but I think everybody expects. They’re players to go hard all the time and to do the right thing all the time. But a lot of times we don’t create an environment where they feel valued. And if they feel valued, they’re going to play really, really hard. And that’s one of the questions I get from people a lot.
Like, how do you get your kids to play so hard? There’s not one answer to that, but the cliche I gave earlier about making them feel valued. I think that’s where it starts, right? And that takes time and it takes buy in and it takes. effort to get there because a lot of kids and almost every kid isn’t going to trust you right away and you’re going to need some sweat equity with them and all of those things.
So I think it’s a holistic approach but it’s the most important thing that we can create in our programs to get our kids to buy into what we’re doing.
[00:06:32] Mike Klinzing: I think what I hear when you’re talking there is that it’s a two-way street. And so often I feel like you have coaches, and I guess I could say that probably at various times that I’ve been guilty of this or I’ve worked with coaches that have been guilty of this, where you have that demand that you want from your kids, that you want them to compete and you want them to play hard and you want them to do that.
And oftentimes when they don’t, you Right. We’ll turn towards each other and say, come on, what’s wrong with these guys? How come they won’t play? And I think the right approach is you got to turn and you got to look in the mirror and say, Hey, how can I give more to them? And I got to do that first so that then they’ll give that back to me.
And I think that’s, that’s the two-way street part that it’s sometimes I think easy to forget that or overlook it. But to your point, if that’s something that you kind of base. your entire program on something that you’re thinking about. It’s always there lingering in the back of your mind when you make a decision or you think about what you’re going to do or how you’re going to design practice or just how you’re going to interact with your players.
To me, that two-way street piece that everybody’s going to feel valued. And when you feel valued, you’re much more likely to give of yourself to the cause and the cause being the success of the team.
[00:07:53] Rob Brost: And it’s really hard, right? And it’s not only hard for 15, 16, 17 year olds, but it’s hard for adults to even do that.
To pour yourself into something and to really care about other people more than you care about what’s in it for yourself, that’s really, really hard. And so it’s a constant give and take, I would say. And there’s little things that we do throughout the season. You know, I’ve gone into timeouts and I do this a lot, like, and I’ll just say, Hey, what are you guys seeing?
What do you want to do? What, what, what do you think? And I think that plays a part into it. Just little things like I allow my assistants to run timeouts depending on the exact situations and what’s happening. And, and that gives them a feeling of validity as well that they’re contributing and then it makes the players trust them even more as well.
And so just little things like that. And I heard it put this way once like. When you plant a seed and it doesn’t grow, you don’t blame the seed. You till it, you water it, you move the dirt around, you replant it, but you don’t yell at the seed, or you don’t blame the seed. You do everything else that it takes to get the seed to grow.
And so you know, that’s easy to say when you’re on a podcast and really hard to execute. But that’s really important. And that kind of is kind of what it comes down to.
[00:09:14] Jason Sunkle: I yell at my wife’s plants all the time, right? I mean, how
[00:09:19] Rob Brost: How effective is that?
[00:09:22] Mike Klinzing: It does not work. Stay alive. So I don’t get blamed. Is that what you’re yelling? So it’s not my fault.
[00:09:30] Jason Sunkle: I do yell at that in the middle of the summer. My parents go on vacation and I have to go water their plants. Cause I don’t want to get yelled at when they come home, but completely understand.
[00:09:41] Mike Klinzing: All right. Cliche that you’ve heard that you don’t.
[00:09:46] Rob Brost: This one’s going to ruffle some feathers. I know, especially with some old school folks and people are going to think I’m crazy, but you hear people say this all the time and I see it on Twitter or X or whatever it’s called all the time. And that’s this. How you do anything is how you do everything.
Completely disagree with that. There will be times when you come into our practice when you would be like What are they, what are they doing? This is a top five team in the state. What, what is happening? So it, to me, you just need to get a feel for what your team needs and do what your team needs.
And sometimes the team needs to, for lack of a better term, goof around or play knockout or have some fun or just shoot for a practice and then get out of there. And so I don’t subscribe to that. I understand what people are, I think, meaning by. When they say how you do something is how you do everything or how you do anything is how you do everything.
But I, I don’t think that’s right. I’ll give you an example. I don’t worry about warmups anymore at all. I don’t worry about that because I don’t think it matters. What matters is how we play. How we warm up does not matter to me. And now that’s just what I’ve come to believe now, 10 years ago, 15 years ago, I didn’t believe that.
And I thought warmups were super important and I would get ticked off before the game even started. Now. I don’t even watch warm ups. I don’t even care. I want them to be loose. I want them to be ready. And that’s what I tell them. And so, however they get there is up to them. Now, obviously, we have a warm up routine and all of that stuff.
I think about that phrase a lot, like when I see Steph Curry, like doing underhand shots from the three point line, right? Like, and then I’m like, where are all the, how you do anything is how you do everything people now, when Steph Curry’s playing like drop back passer and then throwing across the gym to Draymond running an out route during warmups.
So I just think it’s convenient. I think people use it when they want. And there’s two sides of the whole thing. That’s just my opinion.
[00:12:14] Jason Sunkle: Mike, do you have one? Mike, do you have one that you don’t believe in?
[00:12:16] Mike Klinzing: Man, that’s a good question. I want to piggyback on Rob’s and then I’ll share one in a second. I just wanted, I just want to say something about the warmup piece of it. I think it’s funny because as a player and as a coach, I think there’s two different mindsets on what warmups are for. So, when I was playing, warm ups to me were about me doing what I needed to do to get ready to play and what I wanted to do versus what The quote warmup routine was that my coaches maybe wanted me to do was less valuable to me than what I would have wanted to do if I was just trying to prepare myself.
If I was stepping out, whatever, to play a pickup game, I would be doing a lot different things than like four corner precision passing and doing and closing out on shooters. And that had nothing to do with warming me up. Like I wanted my shot to feel right when the game started. That was what warming up was important to me.
And so I think about it now from a coaching perspective and so often you’ll see, and again, there’s not that there’s anything necessarily wrong with it, but you think about how scripted the warmup routine is. No question. A lot of coach, a lot of coaches spend a lot of time practicing. Their warmup routine and making sure it looks crisp. And it is crazy.
[00:13:36] Rob Brost: I’m at all these AAU tournaments with Trey now, and I watch some of these teams warm up and it is like precision down to the T and then the game comes and Trey’s team just runs them out of the gym. So I want them to be like, why don’t you spend the time that you spent on warmups? On like, practicing the stuff that actually happens in the games.
[00:13:56] Jason Sunkle: That kind of goes with my cliché I don’t like. I hate hearing the words, practice makes perfect. Because of exactly what you just said. Because, you have to be practicing the right things, first of all. Second of all, you can’t even expect, you could practice five million, the same thing five million times, and then the first time you run it in a game, Your team completely doesn’t do it right.
And then it’s like, well, I can’t stand someone say, well, practice makes perfect. Well, that’s not true because no one’s perfect. Bottom line, it’s done. And you can’t like
[00:14:28] Rob Brost: Basketball is so random. Like Mike, if I’m playing your team and we play five times, the game’s going to go five different directions.
And so the game is so random and there is very little precision to it. And I get this is not the same as hitting a golf ball or hitting a baseball or something like that. I think those things have a lot of precision and I get it. Some guys are probably listening like, well, your shot has a lot of precision.
And I agree with all of that. The game itself is total randomness. And obviously there’s things and habits that we do and you know what teams do. But if we play each other five times, it’s going to be five different, different things. So, and so. To piggyback on, on what Jason said, I think the game is just really random and unpredictable.
[00:15:24] Mike Klinzing: All right. So my cliche that I don’t believe in is let the game come to you. And I feel like as a player and also as a coach, I don’t want my opponent dictating to me what it is that I can and cannot do out on the floor. I would much rather bring the game to my opponent than not let the game and let the game come to me.
Let the game come to me always felt like a very passive approach to both playing and coaching. And so often you hear that thrown around with somebody who is the best player, right? Like, Hey, let the game don’t, don’t force it. Let the game come to you. And we all know, I don’t care what level of basketball you’re talking about, whether it’s high school basketball, college basketball, the NBA, the best player has to make things happen in order for their team to be able to win. Regardless of what type of defense is being played against that player, regardless of what other strategy the opposing team brings to that player, I just feel like if I’m the best player or I’m coaching a team, that what I have to do is I have to bring that game to my opponent.
And that’s not to say I don’t react to what. the defense is doing and maybe look for alternative ways of attacking it, but I cannot sit back and just take what the defense gives me. I have to go and take what it is that I want. So I’m playing from a position of strength instead of a position of weakness.
I always feel like let the game come to you as playing from a position of weakness.
[00:16:59] Rob Brost: Yeah, I can see that for sure. I can see that for sure. I can also see like everybody at home thinking these guys are nuts. These are like tried and true basketball things that I’ve believed for 35 years and gal darn, I’m going to go with it.
So I don’t know. I’m a little bit of a contrarian to a lot of these things. Defense wins championships. I’m not a huge believer in that. And I know that all the people are rolling over when I say that. So again, that’s just another one that I just thought of off the top of my head.
[00:17:30] Mike Klinzing: So you better have both. Let’s put it that way. You can have as good of a, you can, you can have as good of a defense as you want. And if your offense stinks, you’re not going anywhere. So there’s a sliding scale there for sure, where you could maybe be slightly better on defense than you are on offense.
But if you don’t have an offense, you’re not winning any championships, especially not in the modern game, the way it’s being played today. There’s no, there’s no question about that. All right. Topic number two, this one kind of piggybacks off your first cliche. that you believe in. And Jason, you came up with the question, so I’m going to let you put it into words and actually ask Rob the question.
I’m going to let you, because I want you to be able to really summon exactly what you were asking so that the flavor of the question comes through.
[00:18:20] Jason Sunkle: Okay. Well, so my question, Rob, is it’s easy for a high school coach to be connected and invested in a player that they had in high school who goes on and plays college and follows their college career and stay connected with them?
How do you stay connected with that senior who’s graduated, who no longer is going to continue their athletic career in basketball? How do you continue to stay connected to them? How do you continue to have them connected to the program? Because maybe they weren’t that star player, but maybe they were really integral in the, in the fabric of the program, the team, the culture, et cetera.
[00:19:03] Rob Brost: Yeah. I think that’s a difficult one. I think it’s even difficult with kids that actually play college basketball because kids have a tendency to just move on to the next thing and just go and do whatever’s in front of them, right? And so I think that’s a hard one, even with the players that play college basketball, but it’s even harder with the ones that don’t because I don’t know how they, if they feel some sort of way or whatever, or they think I’m disappointed that they didn’t play, which I’m not, because that’s not what it’s about.
I tell them all the time. And when I say them, our whole locker room, our whole team, that this is a lifetime commitment. And so you’re going to kind of be stuck with me on some level for the rest of your life. If you want to welcome me into that. And so I think just simple things like in the middle of the year, the school year, after they’re gone, just a simple, Hey, text, how’s it going?
What’s happening? How’s your first semester going? Little things like that, that help you stay connected. And then what we’ve been able to cultivate here is. Not every single one of our guys, but a lot of them, even the ones that don’t play basketball, in the summer, when they’re home, they come to camp, and they just check in, and they just stop by.
And so, that’s been a good way of bridging the gap for our guys as well. And then little things like I’ll take a picture with them and put it on Twitter. And then another kid will be like, Hey coach, I’m home. Mind if I stopped by camp? Of course. Come on in. And so then it just breeds other kids doing it as well.
And then it helps you stay connected. If that makes sense.
[00:21:00] Jason Sunkle: Do you have guys come back and do open gyms with you or not? I don’t know what the rule is. I don’t know what the rules are in your state either.
[00:21:07] Rob Brost: Not really. We don’t. Cause most of those guys would be college players. And then that would be.
Of course, breaking some sort of rule IHSA rule on open gym and who can play. It’s technically supposed to be only kids that are current attendees of your school. And so we don’t, but almost all of our college guys come back and work out at our place in the summer and just do their workouts at our place.
And so our kids see this, our kids are around this. So I think that helps our. And during summer camp, it’s not daily, but it’s almost every day. Then an alum will be back and then come and talk to our campers. And the first thing they’ll say was two years ago, I was sitting right here or five years ago, I was sitting right where you’re sitting and now I’m doing X, Y, Z, and that could be basketball related.
That could be academics, all of those things. So that part has been really, really refreshing for me as a coach, when those guys come back.
[00:22:11] Mike Klinzing: You have a favorite. And I don’t want you to even use a name, but do you have a favorite phone call, pop in email that you got from somebody?
Just one that sticks out that, you just loved hearing from a guy in a particular setting.
[00:22:28] Rob Brost: Well, I just got one about a month ago from one of our former players. And this particular player was pretty valley hood player and had a nice career going, then he got hurt and he was hurt for almost his entire senior campaign and we, we still had a good season without him and he was a part of it, but he would have been a major, major, major part of it had he been healthy. And he just texted me and said, coach, I was just thinking about this the other day, thank you for your patience with me. Thank you for putting up with me when I was frustrated, when I couldn’t perform like I wanted to, and everything was getting to me. And then he went into a little more detail.
Then that, which I’ll leave out, but it was, it was just refreshing, especially for him who I really felt bad for during the whole senior season. And then after he got done and then he had to rehab for most of his freshman season of college. And so. But he’s finally now been a year or two healthy and he’s starting to really get under his skis a little bit and now starting to perform because he’s healthy, finally.
And so it’s refreshing when you get those, especially out of the blue. And so that’s one that happened just recently and, and just little things like, Some of our guys that were in the portal the last month and a half they find a spot and just thank you so much for believing in me. Thank you so much for always saying that you’re proud of me.
Just little stuff like that after it’s all happened. I think it’s easier for kids to realize what actually occurred and how they felt when it was all happening. When you’re in it, sometimes it’s hard to realize it. Sometimes kids aren’t mature enough or you know, ready to realize kind of what’s happened.
And so I think it, it just all comes with maturity. And then that helps when those guys come back and tell. Stories like, Hey, once you get to college, coaches really don’t care about you. They care about the next job and winning games. Coach Brost really cares about you because he loves you no matter what you do.
And so when they hear that from guys that have done it before and that are now playing at the college level or professionally, it just adds to the belief and to the culture, I guess, of what you have going.
[00:25:08] Mike Klinzing: I think what I love about just those kinds of stories is when you look at it from both perspectives.
In other words, when you look at it from a coach’s perspective and you look at it from a player’s perspective, there’s always things on both sides that you might not remember as the coach saying to a player that 10 years down the road, the coach, the player remembers coach. You remember when you said. To, to, to, to me, whatever that may be.
And the honest truth is you probably have no recollection of saying that specific thing or in that specific moment. And then conversely, I think the same, sometimes players don’t always understand how meaningful those phone calls and those pop ins at your house and those stopped in at camp, like the players have no idea, like how much a coach appreciates those things.
And so I guess what the lesson would be for anybody who’s listening out You know, if you’re a coach, keep in mind that oftentimes the things that you say disappear two seconds after you say them. Oftentimes the things that you say get carried on for eternity in a kid. Yeah. And they may still be remembering those things when they’re 75 years old.
And so I just feel like as a coach, you got to really, really make sure that when you’re talking to a kid, that You’re doing it in such a way. And again, that’s not to say that you’re not telling the kid the truth about where they are and all those things and whatever, but you have to make sure that the things that you’re saying should be things that are designed to help that kid move in a positive direction.
And when you’re doing that. That’s when, again, there may be things that you don’t remember saying that those kids carry with them for the rest of their lives. And then if you’re a player out there and you’re listening, man, if you ever get a chance to pick up the phone and call up your coach and say, Hey, coach, thanks for this.
Or I remember when you told me that, or you get a chance to stop by a practice or a camp or head over to your coach’s house. There’s not a coach in America that would be disappointed in hearing from a former player in any way, shape or form. And I’ll just give you a quick example from my life here recently.
My college coach, Jim McDonald, passed away within the last two weeks. And he was the guy who was, man, he was a tough coach. And that was, I went to his, And people got up and shared stories and all the stories were about just, man, this was one tough guy and he was a tough coach and he, a lot of high expectations of people of himself and whatever.
And the honest truth is that I didn’t talk to him. It’s been whenever I graduated in 1992. So it’s been what, 30 years since I since I first, since I first met the guy and 35 years since I first met him and I hadn’t talked to him until about two or three years ago and called him up on the phone and had a two hour conversation with him.
And he remembered things about me and my family that I would have had no idea when I was playing for him, that he would have ever known about those things, cared about those things, been interested in those things at all. And I was so glad that I was able to have that conversation with him and kind of learn that human side of him.
And then in the course of having conversations with other people who worked with him, so other coaches that either coach me or later coach with him or whatever, so many of them said that there was this human side to him. You just never saw it as a player. And even sometimes as a colleague.
He just never showed that side of him, even though it was in there. And so when he passed away a couple of weeks ago and I went to the services last week on Thursday and just, again, I was so glad that I didn’t, we didn’t, so all of us that played for him during the era when, when I was there, we didn’t find out that he was in hospice until I found out the day before and then he passed away and I was going to try to get up there and see him one more time before he before he died and it didn’t work out.
There was a couple of my teammates that had never reconnected with him at all. And I was just super thankful that I was able to do that. And I know that it meant a lot to me. And I’m guessing, hoping that it meant a lot to him that he took an hour and a half or two hours or what it was to take that phone call.
But I just, it speaks to, again, the power of the relationship between a player and a coach where here’s a guy that I hadn’t talked to in 30 years and I talked to him on the phone for, for two hours. And it made me sad in a way, again, that one, I didn’t reach out sooner. And two, that he didn’t reach out to me sooner because obviously I would have picked up the phone immediately.
Yeah. And he called me. So it’s just an interesting dynamic. So I guess, again, my advice to any coach player, if you’re thinking about picking up the phone and saying something to somebody, do it. It’s going to be do it. Even if the relationship between you and your coach or you and your player wasn’t perfect, I guarantee there were good things that each side could pick out about the other that you can reminisce and talk about and just, there’s no way you can go through something as intense as a basketball season, especially when you’re talking about whether it’s a high school player playing a couple years of varsity for a coach or you’re talking about college where you’re with somebody for four years.
The intensity of what you go through, it just bonds you in a way that I don’t think there are very many other things in life other than just your, your family that, that you get bonded the way that sports allows you to do that. So again, I just think that being connected is always something that’s appreciated going both directions.
[00:31:06] Rob Brost: It’s crazy, especially now I thought about this the other day, moving forward, the time that is spent with your high school coach might be the longest time that you have any coach now. Because of the portal and how everybody’s moving around and how coaches are moving around, players are moving around and guys are at three or four colleges at a time.
And so, your relationship with your high school coach might be the last thing here that kind of binds people together. And so the fabric of high school basketball coaching, I think is becoming more important as the portal and all of that stuff goes as well. Cause there’s not going to be a lot of three or four year guys anymore at any school really at all.
And it doesn’t matter if you’re at D3, D2, NAIA doesn’t make any difference. Everybody’s moving around. And so I was just thinking about this the other day, these guys that I have, they might not have another coach ever for longer than they had me. And so I don’t know if that’s a good thing or a bad thing for them or me or what, but I was just thinking about that the other day.
[00:32:26] Jason Sunkle: You can even say that about NBA players, Rob. I mean, how many NBA coaches make it three, four years? It’s kind of amazing.
[00:32:34] Mike Klinzing: And again, it’s and you think about, like I said, the bond that sports, if nothing else, almost forces you to create. Obviously, we as coaches try to facilitate and develop that connection, but sports in and of itself, just by the fact of we’re a team and we’re trying to figure out how to get to our goal, that in and of itself is something that brings people together and you hope that it brings all 15 players and four coaches together.
Sometimes it doesn’t. Sometimes it just brings 15 players versus four coaches or sometimes it brings this four dudes together and these six dudes over here and then your team maybe isn’t as successful, but it doesn’t mean that the connection that’s forged Is any weaker if that makes sense? I mean, it’s just, there’s, there’s a lot of different ways to look at that, but the bonds are indisputable.
[00:33:26] Rob Brost: No question. And the longer, a little bit older, I get now, like I’m starting to think like, how much longer do I want to do this? And then I think, well, I’m not really good at anything else. I’m not really capable of doing anything else. And then what I really think about is the kids coming back for summer camp.
That’s what I’ll really miss. Obviously, I’ll miss the games and the bond, but it’s the bonds that you have with the kids that’s what you’re really going to miss because you’re not going to form any more of those. Right. And like we’ve built this thing at Bolingbrook. This is my 16th, so it’ll be the start of my 17th year.
This is kind of what we’ve just done. Have somebody else do it. Like I don’t, it gives me feelings that I didn’t think I would have even talking about it right now. And so obviously as you get older and as Trey gets older and then he decides what he’s going to do or gets opportunities to do, there’s going to be some decisions to be made, but it’s the bonds that you make with the kids is what’s going to really be the toughest thing to let go of, I guess.
[00:34:36] Mike Klinzing: Jason, good question, man.
[00:34:36] Rob Brost: Very good.
[00:34:38] Jason Sunkle: Hey, listen, I don’t even know where, where I summoned that one from, if I’m being honest with you. I just kind of came, you said, think of a question and then I just randomly came out of my mouth. Didn’t it Mike? I mean, it was immediate.
[00:34:51] Mike Klinzing: That was good. Both of us. Yeah. Both of us. Both of us had good things to say about that one. So, so kudos to you. All right. Question number three.
[00:34:59] Jason Sunkle: Maybe I need to take two months off again and then I’ll come up with another question. Maybe come back fresh. Hey, two months.
[00:35:00] Mike Klinzing: Yes. Come up with one question. Good work. Nice. I like it. All right. Question topic number three. Off season conditioning, for lack of a better way of saying it. And again, I think high school coaches today have different ways of approaching it. The old school, quote, conditioning, I’m not sure that it looks anything like what conditioning at the high school level might have looked like 15 or 20 years ago, but just how do you guys approach your off season in terms of not necessarily basketball skill work, but how do you make sure that your guys are coming back when the season gets rolling in the best shape that they can be? What does that look like?
[00:35:43] Rob Brost: This is kind of how we do it. And again, I’m not proposing that this is how everybody should do it or that really anybody should do it like this. We have the 25 contact day rule here in Illinois, where we get 25 days in the summer where we can do whatever we want, really. And then that’s it.
That’s what you have. And then you can do open gyms at any time. But we don’t do anything from the end of the season until our summer camp starts. Nothing that’s organized or together, unless a college coach wants to come and see our guys in the spring. And so we did a couple of them this spring because we have a couple of college prospects that a couple of colleges wanted to see.
And so we did it twice and that was it. And so we don’t do anything as a whole group. From the time our season ends until the start of summer camp, which in this case is going to be May 28th. That’s our first day of summer camp. So, I know there’s a lot of coaches out there like, what? Really? You’re not doing anything?
So, I wouldn’t say our guys aren’t doing anything, but we aren’t doing it together. So, most of our guys, at least our top guys, play on travel teams, AU teams, some of them on the national shoe circuits. And there are, there’s everybody’s schedule is different. So for me to be able to even get our guys together is really, really difficult in the spring.
Trey’s on a different schedule than Davion’s on, who’s on a different schedule that JT is on. And so getting them all together would be very difficult, but I would say that all of our guys are working and doing what they need to do. We lift during the school day as part of our P. E. weights classes. And so the lifting part is happening during the school day for all of our guys. So that’s a huge help. And then, obviously, I’m pretty connected with our guys where their AAU teams are playing, what their workout situations are looking like. And so they’re all getting in the gym.
It’s just nothing organized at our place, if that makes sense. So that’s what that looks like. And then June is our camp. So we’ll practice just like a normal practice. Two hours a day, two and a half hours a day. And then we’ll play in shootouts. And then the two live periods in June the Scholastic live periods, we’ll play in both of those.
Then July, I don’t see any of our guys really, except for my own son, who’s just happens to live in the same house as me. So July, I don’t see our guys at all. Cause they’re with their AU teams going all over the place, doing their own thing. And then once school starts, we’ll take the first week or two.
And we won’t do anything. And then we’ll start open gyms once the school starts again. So that’s kind of the cycle of it. And then we start practice roughly November 5th, 6th, 7th.
[00:38:47] Jason Sunkle: How many of your guys are in football and do about and basketball? Do you have a lot?
[00:38:51] Rob Brost: This is going to shock you. We have a school of about 3,500 kids right now. I have zero football players. None. None. It’s now I’ve had football players in the past and that have been very effective for us. And so we share those guys and I have a great relationship with our football coach. And if there’s any overlap, we just go half and half. And then sometimes I’ll just give our football kids off they don’t have to come to camp because football has been doing this, this, this.
And then some days they won’t go to football because basketball is doing this, this, this. So that’s been a great piece of what we have going too, if we have to share athletes. The football coach and I are, have a really great relationship and neither one of us are over the top. Like, if a kid misses summer basketball, really, I mean, it’s fine. If you need to go to football and I don’t have a problem with it.
[00:39:49] Mike Klinzing: Post season meetings, Rob, with kids. Are you talking at all about, hey, conditioning, something that, like, if you got a kid that needs to be able to get up and down the floor a little bit more, you got a kid that’s got to improve their strength.
Are you helping them to say, Hey, let’s get together. Here’s a, here’s a program for you that we want you to work on on your own. Okay.
[00:40:09] Rob Brost: I guess I kind of made it sound like I, they’re just floating in the wind. That’s not the case, so, well, I knew they
[00:40:14] Mike Klinzing: I knew they weren’t.
[00:40:15] Jason Sunkle: But in the postseason meeting that was Mike back in D one basketball in college. He was floating in the wind, right, Mike? Well, that’s right.
[00:40:22] Mike Klinzing: Here’s your two page ditto workouts, man. We’ll see you back here in August.
[00:40:27] Jason Sunkle: That’s literally what Mike used to get as a D one player Rob.
[00:40:29] Rob Brost: That’s crazy. It’s crazy. It’s, yeah, it’s nuts. And so in the postseason meetings. We talk about all of this, right? And what they need to do, what they think they need to do, what I think they need to do. And then we come to some sort of consensus. Usually kids are a lot smarter than you give them credit for.
They know what they need to do. They know what they need to get better at, and they know really where they fit in, in the program a lot better than you would think. And so first we talk about that and then we get into, Hey, what do you need to do? Some of our guys, for example, we had a practice player this year that I told him you just need to play basketball. You don’t need to do individual skill work by yourself. You don’t know how to play with other people. You don’t understand like concepts of spacing and all that. So his off season stuff was a lot different than some of my other guys who need skill work and that I’m not saying this kid didn’t need skill work, but he’s in the gym all the time by himself doing all these individual workouts and skills and stuff.
But as soon as you put a human out there, he doesn’t know what to do. And so everybody’s individual meeting is different depending on your situation, your family dynamic, your resources, all of those things play a part into what kids can and can’t do. Right. And so it goes back to what we talked about in question number one.
Until they feel valued, they’re not going to want to do any of the work. And so and playing here is really hard. I know it’s hard to play everywhere, but I just know what it’s like to play here. Like, you can be a really good player and not play at all here. I mean, that’s very possible. And so you have to do it and you got to keep doing it and keep doing it and keep doing it.
That’s just how we handle it. I don’t know if it’s the right thing to do, but it’s just kind of how we do it.
[00:42:30] Mike Klinzing: I think more and more at the high school level, I think that’s what you see of. It’s more of a guidance of here’s what you need to do rather than, Hey, let’s all gather in the weight room and work out together, which I don’t know about you, but I find that when those sessions are going on, that.
Oftentimes there’s maybe one or two of your hardest working guys that are getting a lot out of that. And there’s 15 dudes standing around doing a lot of talking and not getting a lot of work done. And it feels like if you’re having a frank conversation with your coach during the off season about, Hey, this is what you need to do to get your body ready to be at its best or what you need to do in order to be able to develop the skills that you need to get out on the floor to reach your goals.
then that is a much better system than just trying to gather everybody and get everybody in, especially when you talk about the time demands on. kids with, again, I know you don’t have any football guys, but a lot of people do and play multiple sports and it’s, it’s hard. There’s so much going on. And then just forget about it.
Just basketball wise and the amount of basketball that kids are playing.
[00:43:47] Rob Brost: I think our guys are playing too much. Like they do too much. Like two weeks ago, I just told Trey, you’re taking three days, you’re not doing anything. No basketball, no travel team practice, nothing.
You’re just going to go to school and then come home. And then if you want to do a cold tub with the trainers, that’s fine. You’re not working out. You’re not, you’re not doing anything. And you could just get the feel that he just needed the rest. And then he comes back kind of refreshed and ready to go.
And so I think there’s a lot of overkill with this whole basketball thing and I’m a little bit of a part of it too, especially now that my son’s we’re going to Cincinnati this weekend and then we’re going to Atlanta the next weekend. And so I, I get both sides of it, but a lot of times less is more for a lot of that.
And he always gives me the, well, if I don’t get my shots up today, somebody else is. Yeah, I get that. I get that. But I also get, if you get hurt or if you get an overuse injury, like that all matters too. So, I think there’s just a fine line to the whole thing and you have to there’s working really, really hard and I get that piece.
There’s also resting when you need to rest piece.
[00:45:06] Mike Klinzing: The system is the system. You have to figure out how to navigate within the system and that’s the challenge, right? I mean, I think if we could design. And maybe this will be a topic that we’ve, I mean, we’ve already talked, we’ve already talked about it and touched on it in many different ways in terms of a use.
You can go back and listen to some of the past episodes, but the system is set up the way it is. And you can have to, you have to, as a parent, as a player, as a coach, you have to figure out how do you navigate that to make sure that you take advantage of the best parts of it and minimize the worst parts of it.
And when you do that, then you’re in a lot better position to be able to maximize. what you’re getting out of it, no matter what your role is in basketball. So, all right, three topics. We did it. Triple double number 10. We’re in, we’re in double figures. So it’s, maybe this was the quadruple double triple something or other.
I don’t know what you call. I don’t know what we call it. So. Wait till we get to episode 100
[00:46:04] Mike Klinzing: Well, we got a ways to go, but we can get there. We’re on round table. What’s my, what’s round table? This one? 80 something. The next one will be 80. 60. We’re in the sixties.
I think 66 will be the next one. So that’s, and those started, maybe those started maybe a year or so into, I think the, into the pod maybe in 2019. So we’ve been going at that for a while. So I have no plans to stop and hopefully Rob, you have no plans to stop. And I know Jason has no plans to stop, so we’re here.
[00:46:37] Mike Klinzing: All right, Rob, again, thanks for your time tonight. Really appreciate it. Thanks to everyone in our audience for checking out triple double number 10 and we will be back with Rob again next month, so we’ll catch you on our next episode. Thanks.