PARIS DAVIS – BREAKTHROUGH BASKETBALL SKILLS TRAINER & CAMP INSTRUCTOR – EPISODE 616

Website – https://oneupbasketball.com/ https://www.breakthroughbasketball.com/

Email – paris@bmanageservices.com

Twitter – @1UpBasketball @BreakthruBball

Paris Davis is a Skills Trainer and Lead Camp Coach for Breakthrough Basketball.  He is also the Founder of 1Up Basketball which helps young basketball athletes improve their skills and athleticism by providing online training videos, tools and solutions! 

Davis is the author of the High Five Basketball Training Guide.

Paris played his college basketball at St. Xavier University where he helped lead his team to the NAIA National Tournament.

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Get ready to take some notes as you listen to this episode with Paris Davis from Breakthrough Basketball.

What We Discuss with Paris Davis

• His uncles that showed him the connection between hard work and results
• Playing his high school basketball at St. Joe’s in Chicago and his college basketball at St. Xavier University
• Starting with individual training after college and connecting with Breakthrough Basketball to run camps
• Giving back in the community through coaching while he was in college
• “The game of basketball is fun, but you have to lock in and get focused if you want to win.”
• The need for flexibility as a coach
• Keeping track of stats/wins in practice
• Why players and coaches should do 360 degree reviews
• “Awareness starts the momentum for change”
• “When I was training I always wanted to build trust because I was going to throw things at them that they were uncomfortable with.”
• Building his training business and eventually realizing he wanted to impact more players than he could work with in person
• His number priority as a camp director is to bring high energy
• “Everything that I teach in basketball, you can apply those same skills, same principles, same philosophies to anything.”
• Making connections with players to have a deeper impact
• 3 keys to shooting – Legs/balance, follow through, and alignment
• Starting 1Up Basketball to deliver online training content
• “Time plays a key role in achieving your goals”

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ros with the all new FastDraw and FastScout. FastDraw has been the number one play diagramming software for coaches for years, and now with it’s integrated web platform, coaches have the ability to add video to plays and share them directly to their players Android and iPhones via their mobile app. Coaches can also create customized scouting reports,  upload and send game and practice film straight to the mobile app. Your players and staff have never been as prepared for games as they will after using FastDraw & FastScout. You’ll see quickly why FastModel Sports has the most compelling and intuitive basketball software out there! In addition to a great product, they also provide basketball coaching content and resources through their blog and playbank, which features over 8,000 free plays and drills from their online coaching community. For access to these plays and more information, visit fastmodelsports.com or follow them on Twitter @FastModel. 

THANKS, PARIS DAVIS

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Click here to thank Paris Davis on Twitter!

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TRANSCRIPT FOR PARIS DAVIS – BREAKTHROUGH BASKETBALL SKILLS TRAINER & CAMP INSTRUCTOR – EPISODE 616

[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 we are pleased to be joined this evening by Paris Davis from Breakthrough Basketball, Paris. Welcome to the Hoop Heads Pod.

[00:00:11] Paris Davis: Thank you. Thank you for having me. I appreciate you guys.

[00:00:13] Mike Klinzing: Absolutely excited to be able to have you on and looking forward to diving into your story.

Let’s go back in time to when you were a kid. Tell us a little bit about how you got in the game of basketball when you were younger.

[00:00:25] Paris Davis: All right. We’ll do give me some time here. I try to recall as much as I can, but just to start off baseball was my first sport. I was very good at it, but it was a sport that was kind of slow was more of a fast paced type of guy.

And I remember my parents bought me a Fisher-Price. Basketball rim. I live with my cousins, so I have older cousins showing me how to hold a basketball, how to dribble a basketball. And it was just a commonplace within our house where we would have a basketball hoop and different people will come in and out of the house and sometimes they’ll take a shot.

So it was kind of like a connection of not only that, but me learning about basketball for the first time. Just having fun through the Fisher-Price way. Right. During my younger years also, I had young uncles that showed me the connection between hard work and results. They would take me to the gym, allow me to play with older people.

Definitely put me in a zone of seeing what it looks like early, and then also getting the opportunity to play with people that was way better than me weighed indefinitely. Definitely to me fast forward sixth grade had my first tryout. I got cut. I decided to play Park district basketball after that.

And I was about five-two, I just had hit a growth spurt. Next year came back at, it, made the team a long story short from elementary. I ended up averaging double digits on my grade school team and we actually won the first championship in elementary. So that was definitely a confidence builder to be able to start basketball at 12 make some progress, definitely see some wins, be around the right people.

After elementary, I got recruited to play basketball at St. Joe’s high school. I would always be at the boys and girls clubs. So some of the coaches would be there also played in a tournament where Gene Pingatore legendary coach St. Joe’s. He would always be out looking for different guys or just viewing the tournament and seeing how everything goes.

I ended up getting MVP. You also stresses. Is his concern or his a favor of want me to go to St. Joe’s. So that was something that led me to go to St. Joe’s high school, which is in Westchester, Illinois played three years varsity one, some key takeaways that I would say that I learned from there was improving on defense.

Definitely that defense wins games. So if you ever hear me say that that’s where it comes from. I learn how to score with a team within an offense. That’s that was very key for me, just because before it was more individual, okay, you get the ball, you do what you need to do, but when you get to high school, you, you understand how can you connect with your teammates?

Not only just on a player skill level, but as a personality level, right? And then also figuring out where you belong on a floor, what position you’d like to play, what was your strengths? And then understanding your coaches and just that whole experience is what St. Joe’s room reminds me of that.

We were 13th in the country, number one in the state, which was, which was very, very, very good at the time. After high school, I got recruited to play Saint Xavier University, which is on the south side of Chicago. Play for years there as well. Throughout school, I would help the local communities.

I will go back and connect with the police department, the fire department, and they will host these basketball tournaments. And that’s when I got the opportunity to not only just coach, but be involved with the community train and just get experienced with, of what it feels like to give back. During my college years, as well as I was doing that I would support and help out with the Michael Finley basketball camp, Shannon Brown camp throughout those years, which was great experience, learned a lot from, from NBA players, just by having, they would have different speakers come in and learn it from their talks, their speaking.

And then during all of this one, summer’s not going on and I’m not doing that. I was the second leading score from our team. My sophomore year definitely had a good run, but definitely experienced something that hit my career very, very, very hurtful or very, very, very bad. I experienced a growing injury and it haunted me for about a year and a half.

And this is where I had to really think mentally and had to get my mind mentally in a stable situation where you’re out, you’re going back and forth. You’re getting injured. You’re going on a court you’re coming back off. Not only that you’re not getting the hours or the, or the time on a floor that you, you, you usually use to, but then it also put me in a mind state to understand that, okay, this opportunity for me to focus on my academics and what’s next and other things around basketball.

So I started out, I started focusing on school, but I kept training with my teammates. I always loved training with my teammates and some of them would actually come work out with me right after they’ve worked out with their actual workouts. So I would be in in the gym, working out, watching the football players, work out, seeing what they’re doing right down, making mental notes.

And I would apply that same thing to my training. And in combination with my undergrad, which was a biological science, studied a lot about the body, understanding the physiology part, the chemistry part, just how it moves, how it behaves. So that was a good thing that I was able to apply to not only just the gym, which is my overall knowledge going into my senior year.

After I graduated from college or after I graduated undergrad, the biological science degree, I started training and conducting camps right away. Going to park districts. I coached at an elementary school. I started coaching at the high school level, coach coached girls basketball, and then I started to travel throughout the United States, teaching basketball camps, clinics, and one-on-one training.

And that’s how I got into the connection with Breakthrough Basketball, where they gave me the platform and an opportunity to not only teach what I know, but also teach it in a way to where it’s quality. Right. That was something I was big on. So also I became the number one train on coach.com for most.

I don’t know if you guys know, but for the most part, it was sponsored by Steph Curry. When it first launched, I expanded to about five locations and had five coaches working with me throughout my whole time of doing individual training. 2018 are resigned from individual training, decided that. I just give it a pause for right now.

I also had a family. I have kids coming in, so I wanted to also train my son and do other things. I started focusing on just team training and groups and really make an impact that way. And then, because I wasn’t training as much as I was. I had so many inquiries, so many people come into me saying, Hey, you trained my son.

Can you do this? Can you do that? And I always felt like when I said, no, I was letting someone down. Cause I was used to saying yes. So what I did was I created a high five training guide which was launched proceeds of that high five training guide was donated to my old high school of Jane pingo tour, which is now closed, but I did go to a fundraising effort.

And then I started working with. Online training courses started creating online tools for athletes that can go to a place and they can feel like this is quality work. They can feel like they have the support. They can feel like they have what they need. They don’t feel like they need actual trainer all the time, but they have something that they can get better with.

So I launched an online scoring course called the sequential scoring system. And then now, currently I’m working on a launching a shooting course, which will be out soon. So I don’t know if it was a mouthful, but

[00:08:23] Mike Klinzing: that’s right. You’re just trying to save my voice. You’re just trying to save my voice Paris.

[00:08:27] Paris Davis: No, I, I tried, I tried to go from top to bottom

[00:08:31] Mike Klinzing: Now you’re making it easy on me. All right. So we’re going to circle back to a lot of those pieces that you just shared. I want to go back first to your college decision. What do you remember about. Going through the recruiting process. And what made you ultimately choose to go to St. Xavier?

[00:08:50] Paris Davis: That was a great question. So my sophomore year I was getting recruited by big time schools, Notre Dame, Western decent schools. But then as I became a junior, became a senior as everyone know those options kind of trimmed down. And you may have some that you can just settle for and some that you really want.

So I was in a position where I wanted something better and I could have took other offers, but I did it. So I was in a position where I had an opportunity to go to settings, Xavier and receive a scholarship just through a tryout, one tryout. I get there. The coach knew of me before, but I get there at the.

And I literally got a scholarship going the same day. And just because I came, I showed up and I showed him what I can do. And he knew the history and everything that where I came from and he seen me before. So I got the scholarship to sending Xavier university that way. In regards to the transition between high school and college, you have to think about where are you going to fit in that, that was one thing that I was so concerned about wanting to be able to have the same freedom, the same structure, which is not always possible going from high school to college.

But I wanted to also connect with a coach that would be able to understand my talent and utilize it. And, and also feel like I feel like a family and I feel at home. So that was one of the reasons why I chose Xavier at the time.

[00:10:36] Mike Klinzing: When you first went to school, was coaching on your radar. Were you thinking something different?

What were you, what was your mindset there in terms of future career at that point?

[00:10:47] Paris Davis: Well, when I connected with the communities and I was even in high school I had a good relationship, our cultures that raised us and took us to tournaments and work mentors to us are the same people that gave us opportunities during high school and college to come back and do the same thing.

So I was 17, 18 years old and our community coaching for teams and tournaments. So I was already exposed at an earlier age and it was something that I felt great doing and giving back, especially if it was an area where not only I played basketball as well, but that means something to this whole community.

So, and that community is something that I definitely share.

[00:11:31] Mike Klinzing: At that age, when you’re thinking about coming back to your community, you give them back and work with kids who just a few years ago, you were sitting in that same spot that they were in. What were some of the things that you would talk to those kids about when they were playing on your team?

Obviously outside the basketball court, but just maybe some life lessons or some things that you tried to impart to them that you would learn growing up in the same way that they did.

[00:11:56] Paris Davis: Yeah. Good question. I would say the game of basketball is fun, but you have to lock in and get focused if you want to win.

And I was double was the biggest thing, because at a young age, you got to think about I’m 17, I’m 18, I’m young myself and I’m teaching second grade, third grade, whatever grade it is, these kids just want to have fun. And that’s what the game is about. But at the same time, the game can become no longer fun.

If you’re losing all the time. So now you got to say, how can you keep the game fun? So when I’m out there, I’m saying, Hey, we go have fun. We go clap it up and go smile. But at the same time, let’s, let’s do it in a structure way so we can still get to win. I think that was the challenge in part for kids younger, a younger kid, should I say at that age is keeping it fun, but to a point where you’re using things that allow them to learn it and understand that this is what we need to do to win.

[00:12:56] Mike Klinzing: So if there’s other coaches out there listening that are in that similar position, or we have a lot of youth coaches that are part of our audience, if you were going to give a youth coach some advice about how do you balance that desire for kids to have fun and to make the game fun and yet be able to.

Dial in and get those kids to make sure that they’re focused on, Hey, this is what we need to do in order to have success in the wind games on the scoreboard, because I think you’re a hundred percent right in that winning is fun. I always say that. Look, it’s fun to be good. The games a lot more fun when you’re better at it, you get to do a lot more and chances are you’re going to win more.

And yet there’s also that fine line that you walk between. It’s gotta be fun yet. We still want to win and you don’t want to become one of those coaches that is just, everything’s about win now. And it’s not about development. So how did you walk that fine line? Or how do you, how do you walk that fine line when you’re working with kids now and in your previous experiences?

[00:13:58] Paris Davis: Yeah, most definitely one thing you got to definitely have to respect upfront. So I think if you had the respect upfront everything else just follows. Most times respect come from what you’ve done, your credibility, what people said about you, or just how you behave and how you present yourself.

On a first time you meet an athlete, or even when you’re just working with your kids on a data day to day basis has to be a mutual respect now to be able to make it a fun environment and allow them to excel and achieve and get some and getting to where you want them to go or where they need to be.

You have to be creative. You have to be in a mindset to create competitiveness around games. And then you gotta have some type of flexibility. So we can start with the flexibility. Flexibility means yes, you may be working on one player or working on this one thing that you may have in mind, but you may have a new player or someone that you haven’t played, or somebody that that should be playing.

You have to have a flexible mindset to change some things up. Situational to be able to say, Hey, this is the change we may need to make to allow this person to get to this level. It may, it may require the guy that doesn’t know how to shoot free throws. Come shoot the free throws at the end of the practice before you go home.

Right. Instead of having a guy that knows how to shoot the free throws, make the free throw. So that builds confidence. Not only in that player, it switches things up and make you more competitive. Which is the next thing. Competition. When you make, when you place competition and make the environment competitive, you are already allowing the opportunity to win within your own house before you even play a team.

So once you get into that competitive, that winning spirit in your practices, in your natural environment without playing a game that’s, that’s going to heighten it even more. So now when it’s game time, they’re used, they’re used to, they’re used to. They used to know that I need to get five. I mean, I went down to, we need two minutes left.

We need to do X, Y, and Z. So those are, those are just a couple of things that you can do to make sure that you’re keeping it fun and allowing them to still learn at the same time.

[00:16:15] Mike Klinzing: Do you think from a competitive standpoint, in terms of designing your practices, we’ve had lots of coaches on that have talked about different ways that they try to increase the competitiveness within their practice setting, which is basically what you just described, that you want to make your practices competitive so that when you get to the games, it’s not a surprise to the kids, how competitive things are.

So can you give us one or two things that maybe you could do, or you do as a coach that can help to make practices. More competitive could be a specific drill, could be a system that you use. This could be an approach, kind of take that direct question, whatever direction you want, but just how do you make your practices more competitive?

[00:16:59] Paris Davis: I’ll just give you a few, couple simple ones. One is you have to make a certain amount of layups in a certain period of time. Two, you can have a three on three groups, right? Some, some, some teams already have like 300, two or two on three. Your coaches are already out there implementing this.

So like now make actual teams where it doesn’t split up, right? You have their set amount of teams and then you’ll keep track of how many wins and how many stops you have, especially if you want to improve on defense, you just put the entire focus on defense. You only can win by adding up points on defense.

So even though you have all the teams making points and that’s great, but you only use the game to focus on defense. So now you have the competitiveness and in defense may be an area that you need to improve in. Always say like, let’s look at what the weaknesses are and then we can put some things around that, right?

It may be a shooting area that we’re, that we’re lacking in. So having a shooting game to where now you have one team down on other end, another team down here, and they’re going back and forth, making shots at the elbow and see how, what teams wins going back and forth, making shots at the elbow, and you can get even more specific and just do it on a one-on-one level.

But those are the things that I would say is the focus on the weaknesses. See what you lack and put some creative strategy around. So that it can make it a competitive environment and they keep track of it so we can see who’s getting better and then who’s not. And then once that’s not, we can adjust from there and evaluate, and it’ll start to see as well.

Sometimes we don’t know if we’re losing or not. Sometimes we don’t know what we’re really winning or not, but when you start keeping track of things, we start seeing like, whoa, I was down five.

[00:18:50] Mike Klinzing: Yeah. That’s, that’s so true. I think that keeping score and keeping track, and that’s one of the things we’ve talked about on the pod before Paris.

I think for me personally, that’s always been something that I’ve tried to do. And a lot of times, because I’ve been coaching, whether it’s a new coach, my kids, youth teams, which is what I’ve done mostly over the last 10 years, we’re oftentimes it’s just me as one person. Like I’ve oftentimes found it difficult to coach keeps the keep score, keep track of all these different things.

And it’s, that’s always, that’s always been a challenge just for me personally. And I think when you can do that, it adds so much to it where you can, Hey, I know I’m winning this. Like my son right now is playing and he’s a sophomore and his team’s playing some open gym here in the spring. And they’re keeping track of who wins, how many, every time you win a pick-up game, you get credit for a win.

And so they’re just going to keep track of that all spring. And by the end of the spring, you’re going to have some pretty meaningful data about like, look, who’s winning, who’s on the winning teams the most. And I think when you can do that, and it’s a great point that you bring up when you can really keep track of that, then you can go back one as a coach, you can look at it and say, okay, we’re Mike, most competitive kids where my kids who were winning all the time, there’s, there’s a pattern here.

And then for. Point of view, you’d look at it from the kid’s perspective and now they can go and say, it’s not just, oh yeah, I think I’m winning a lot. Or, Hey, I’m playing really well now there’s actual data behind it. I think that, I think that record keeping is really important.

[00:20:27] Paris Davis: Yeah. Most definitely. Data analysis is needed.

And even if it’s not data always, always say at the very least coaches and just athletes in general, they should do a 360 degree review. I’m not sure if you’ve heard of it, but it’s just basically asking people around you either three to five people or just saying, Hey, what do you think of me? What do you think of my game?

What do you think of my performance? You know, you can do that every so often. Or you can just do that just after every game or whatever it is. So there’s, there’s ways to keep track and give feedback so you can continuously improve  from that feedback.

[00:20:59] Mike Klinzing: That’s a great point. I love the idea of feedback. Mark Hendrickson.

This is probably about maybe a month or two ago. We had him on Paris and he was a guy that played both major league baseball and played in the NBA. One of like one of like 12 people who have done that. And one of the most interesting things that he said to me, which has gotten me thinking a lot about myself as an athlete, myself, as a coach, just myself as a person.

And then thinking about how kids that I come in contact with how they think about the game, how they think about improving, what he said was the biggest difference between pro athletes and non pro athletes is their ability to self evaluate and then make small adjustments. And so he was he would say, well, I’m a pro athlete and I don’t look for pro athletes.

Don’t look for excuses. They don’t look for ways to blame somebody else. They look and they say, okay, here’s a situation where I didn’t perform as well as I could. What did I do wrong? What adjustments can I make? And I just thought that was super interesting because when you think about the majority of players and they think about a coach, I’m going to use the word, criticizing them, but you think of a coach coaching them, which oftentimes includes criticism of what they’re doing in that moment.

So many of us get defensive, right? Coach comes out and says the coaches know what he’s talking about, or you know, that wasn’t yeah, yeah. I could have got that rebound, but it was because Billy didn’t box out. It’s not because I didn’t go get the ball. And he said, pro athletes don’t do that. Like, they look at themselves and they say, what could I have done better in this situation so that I can improve my performance.

I think that’s, it was super interesting to me.

[00:22:47] Paris Davis: Yeah. No. And I was just, so I’m doing a camp now, a six week camp. And I want to just keep this camp, but I talk about it at every camp. So I’ve trained so many athletes. And then of course, after you do something so many times you start to realize things. Or even if you’re tracking certain things, you start to see.

And one of the things that I realized is exactly what you, you pointed at. There was some kids that came in that were they were good, but then there were some that were great. And I wanted to say, how are these, this group of people getting to a certain level versus this group? And of course you tailor their workouts towards their weaknesses, their strengths and their goals and where they want to go, but you will notice that there’s two types of athletes.

One is good and one is great. And you can say to some poor fair or whatever, but I’m only going to stick with the good and the gray and the differences, the. I can tell him something, I can show him something. Or even if they, if, if they don’t have those cues, they can come back and adjust a little bit quicker or faster than the other kids that are, that are good.

And that has so much to do with the self-awareness because the ones that are good and that takes them longer to get it. They didn’t know that they traveled or that they didn’t move their foot a certain way, or they didn’t do the other grades like, oh yeah, I did it. I did it with the wrong one. And then they’re able to come right back and adjust.

It may not be on the second time, but they are aware of it. And then they awareness starts the momentum for change. And that’s very few,

[00:24:29] Mike Klinzing: I love that phrase awareness starts the momentum of change. I think that’s a, a great coaching point. When you start thinking about first, I have to understand what it is that I’m doing, whether I’m doing it right, or I’m doing it wrong.

And then from there, I can say, do I need to do more of this because I’m doing it right? Or do I need to do less of it and do something else because I’m doing it incorrectly. And when you can help, I think that’s right. The key role of a coach is to help to point out those things that a player may not be able to always see for themselves or feel for themselves.

And that’s where a coach can accelerate that process. If the player has the right mindset, when it comes to accepting coaching and looking at criticism in a way that it’s designed to help you get better, instead of looking at it as being a personal attack, which is unfortunately the way I think too many players sometimes look at it as our coaches down on me, coaches criticize me when in reality, What the coach is doing is trying to help you get better.

[00:25:30] Paris Davis: Yeah. I do want to say this and it just because I’ve had so many coaches and I’ve had some with the same traits, but a different approach. So what I mean by that is I’ve had a coach that literally everyone around them, or just people that are respect them and say, Hey, he’s a great coach. You know, he may yell at you, but he means well, and then when you actually talk to a coach and you actually hear him say, Hey, they give you the layout.

It’s not they tell you up front how it’s going to be how their style is, how it’s going to be, what they expect of me or what they expect of the athlete. And then once they get into the show, they get everything that they, they expect it. It is a little bit alarming and I’m on the athlete side for this, just this point.

It is a little bit alarming when you go into something that you didn’t expect of. Right. So whether, if they said they were going to do something that they didn’t, or their whole style of plate changed, or you got into it quickly and not asked all the right questions or did your research, then that’s what some players get into that mindset.

But I feel like as long as coaches, if we can not only just be up front with our players, but build a connection and an understanding of great approach, a great introductory for that respect for that first impression. And I think that a help for anything else that you would do after that whether if, as you’re yelling at them, whether that you’re saying things that are not the typical, because there’ll be more receptive to it.

[00:27:09] Mike Klinzing: I agree that respect piece of it is obviously huge. I think it’s probably even more important today in coaching than it’s ever been, because. If you go back 20 or 30 years ago, there was much more of the you’re going to respect the coach because it’s the coach. And that’s just what you do far as today.

That respect oftentimes has to be earned a lot more than it had to be earned in the past. And so you’re talking about then being able to build a relationship as a coach with a player and be able to build trust with the players, that when you do come to them with something that they need to work on, or they need to improve, they’re much more likely to be receptive of that.

And I think one of the things that always jumps out at me, when I think about this is making sure that the player knows that they can trust you. And that goes from little small, simple things. Just like you said, you were going to bring the player, a notebook to practice and you forget, and that you don’t bring it.

Like, those are little things that just break trust. Something that we’ve heard over and over again from coaches on the podcast is look, you have to, you have to be trustable in and trustworthy in every single moment with players, because the moment they think that you’re not telling the truth, you can lose them really, really fast.

[00:28:35] Paris Davis: Most definitely. And I always kept that in mind, even when I was training always wanted to build trust because I was going to throw things at them that they were uncomfortable with. I was going to say certain things. So I had to show up and build that trust. Not only just with them, with the parents, just by allowing them to see progression.

Right. Most people say, yeah, yeah, I’ve had a trainer before, or you know, I’ve seen him before, but to be able to have a trainer that gives you a different approach and then you start to see progression that you’ve probably never seen before. That builds trust itself, even if it’s just small progressions.

So we have to deliver on what we on what we say as trainers and coaches as well, by finding creative ways to help them to see progression and that builds trust for them and us more.

[00:29:20] Mike Klinzing: Let’s go back to the beginning of your training business. Tell us a little bit about how you got it started and how it went from.

Okay. I’m training a few of my teammates after they’re done with their, after I’m done with my workout to all of a sudden. Now you’re starting to get, clients are starting to be some word of mouth. Just talk about how you took it from, Hey, I really liked this training piece to now. It’s going to kind of be a full fledged business nominees.

Try to do this for a living.

[00:29:50] Paris Davis: Yeah. First out of college, I got an email through my coach for opportunity to work for a company to do basketball camps and a local area. Tried it out. Literally threw me into the fire. I was the only one there. I had about 15 crazy kids, but the parents love me. Everything was, was great.

I left the camp feeling great. I felt a sense of accomplishment. I felt like I had found myself. And it was something that I could see myself doing right out of college. After that, I was always in a good relationship with the janitor at my elementary school. Cool story. He’s also a good friend of the family, but he was also the one letting us into the gym in the morning to shoot around so that we can work on our game before class.

So that was always something that he did. So after I graduated college, he also gave me the opportunity to come back in and started training. And I started trading this son and that was just a one of many, and. I also had the opportunity to start training other people. And it just was a trickle effect and trickle effect.

Referrals started coming after that after one or another. And then I just signed up for coach.com one day. It wasn’t as big as it was. I think it was like 2011. It was just an online application. And I was doing very well, but I, as a company grew, I also grew with it. Had a fair partnership and a lot of trainers, a lot of coach clinics, a lot of trials, not a beta test and forum became the number one train on coach.com, Illinois can’t remember what it was in a country that gave me an opportunity to start expanding more locations.

I had to get more coaches and it was, it was a beautiful. But as it kept growing, I had to ask myself, what is, what is this about? What do I really want to do? I want it to capture and do more. I felt like me doing a lot of training trainees day and day in, day in and day out. Wasn’t just enough. I wanted to capture more and help more people.

So that’s where I started working on not only just services, but products that I can offer someone in China or someone in Los Angeles. If I’m not there, I feel like I can still support and help you whether if it’s do a zoom or whether, if it’s a online course or it’s just a training guide that you bought as you can still walk yourself through.

So my heart opened up a little bit more and wanting to help more people. So that’s where I’m at now and trained in business. I do not do one-on-one training as of right now, but I do a lot of educational teaching and camps throughout the United States.

[00:32:32] Mike Klinzing: All right. So let’s talk about some of the online stuff that you went through and put together.

Tell us a little bit about the process of putting together a video, because I think somebody who has never done it, I don’t think has any idea how much work goes into producing something that looks professional and at the same time is something that’s valuable. So just tell us a little bit about who you hooked up with to do that and what the process was like for actually putting that together

[00:33:02] Paris Davis: So teamed up with breakthrough basketball, which I do camps through as of now they’ve done a phenomenal job as far as supporting from the backend side. And not only that, just being a creative thinkers and allowing us to put pieces together, to educate athletes, the process to do that varies across the board.

I’ve noticed that there are certain people that have their process for how to do things. I have mine and I’m still working on building on top of, of how I do things. You know, you can get in front of a camera, you can just do your normal teaching. You can write everything out and have everything scripted out if you want.

But as you know, when you do stuff on a fly and it’s this natural, it just, it seems, it seems more better, but at the same time, you want to make sure that you capture and provide the best teaching best education as possible. Because even when we do it natural, sometimes we may miss some things that we need to add in there.

So just making sure that you put out good content that they can understand and be receptive to and feel like they want to come back and do it over and over again and get better.

[00:34:12] Mike Klinzing: Once you have that in place and you’re marketing and distributing that out to breakthrough baskets. What kind of feedback have you gotten on some of the things that you’ve put out and then how satisfying is it when you hear from somebody who said, Hey, I bought your online course, or I saw this video and man, it’s really helping me out, put it to use what’s that feel like?

And just talk a little bit about the experiences that you’ve had after the fact, once that stuff’s out there in the world and people start using it,

[00:34:40] Paris Davis: The feeling is amazing. I can definitely say I’ve had people call me and say, actually I had one kid tell me that they were watching my videos in gym class.

So they were like, literally that was their gym class watching my videos. So I was like, I thought that was, that was cool. I’ve had people come up to me at camps and say, Hey, I’ve seen you on YouTube. And it’s just it’d be to random as like the random time where people just come out and say, Hey, I’ve seen you.

I’m like, it feels good because you know that what you were giving out with something great. And they were receptive to it. If it was something that they would be concerned about, then I’ll be like, okay, but I’ve had nothing but great feedback so far. So everything’s good. It feels good.

[00:35:28] Mike Klinzing: Tell us exactly about your role right now with breakthrough basketball.

Just give us the breakdown of exactly what it is that you’re doing day to day. And then I want to dive into some of the camp stuff and get into more basketball, specific questions, but first, just give us an idea of exactly what your role is. Day-to-day what you’re doing.

[00:35:50] Paris Davis: Yeah. No worries. I’ve been a elite skills trainer for breaking basketball for about seven years.

Have done camp story. The United States all over, probably can’t even tell you how many I’ve done, but I’ve, I’ve done a fair amount. So currently working on building a lot of content working on more camps throughout United States and just educating as many athletes as possible. So that’s, that’s my main thing as of right now is just working on building content, creating courses expanding throughout the United States to tap into more kids as well, to help them, and then just offering more tools and resources to allow them to get better.

Whether if it’s talking about nutrition, whether if it’s talking about holding them accountable, doing our accountability program well, if it’s just not about just ball handling, it’s about shooting. If it’s not about shooting his defense, and even if it’s not about that, what can we do to just help you mentally?

Right. Cause a lot of this, the game is 80%. 20% of physical. So I want to be able to capture a lot of things and help them become one up in the competition, which is their self

[00:37:01] Mike Klinzing: With your camps. What age groups are you working with primarily?

[00:37:05] Paris Davis: Camps. It can range anywhere between a fifth and 12th grade.

[00:37:11] Mike Klinzing: Do you have a preference younger or older?

[00:37:14] Paris Davis: No, I don’t have any preference.

[00:37:16] Mike Klinzing: So when you put that together, what do you think in your mind when you’re trying to put together the best possible camp for a player? What does that look like in your mind? What’s what makes a camp special? What makes a camp? Why have it be out of heavily where a kid wants to come back to it?

[00:37:36] Paris Davis: Yeah.  You’re hitting it on the head. Okay. What I like to put on for camps number one, high energy. Not only that set the tone and the. A separator. So I want to set the tone and say, Hey, this is not your typical camp. This is not your typical program that you’re used to, which is what most athletes go to.

And the reason why there are so many parents and athletes out there looking for the best program. So I want to be able to set that tone upfront high energy, and then not only that make them feel comfortable. So my first hour or so, it’s about me making them feel comfortable and as do talking that’s through me giving information about myself.

That’s not only that that’s, to me adding some little jokes here and there just a little bit. I joke a lot, not a lot, but just a little bit, just a little bit when we, when we’re trying to warm up, because we do want to have fun. I let them see the inside the real meat. And then after I do that, Hey, they showed me them.

I showed them. We have an understanding and then we can get to work. Another thing I like to do is less breaks. I have had to have had some kids come up and say, Hey, you didn’t give us a break. And I am guilty of that just because I, not, because I don’t want to give them a break just because I’m so locked in.

And always believe in high reps and effectiveness and efficiency. So that means less time talking as far as unnecessary talking, less time working on things that we don’t need to work on more and moving to your next station, more people prepare. So the next person can go less lies or adequate lies to allow enough repetition and great coaches that can pass along the information that I’m passing to anyone else.

Cause you talking about a camp of 50, 60 people. So you need great coaches to pass that along. Those are the key things I like to do set the tone up front high reps, high intensity, and then throughout the camp, always add competitiveness, which, which we talked about and the competitiveness is, is definitely something that keeps the camp at a high level.

[00:39:56] Mike Klinzing: Since you’re doing the camps all over the country.

And I’m assuming that it’s not always, you’re not traveling with the same staff of coaches that comes with you. You’re getting some local coaches. So what’s the process for getting coaches on board to be a part of the camp. And what’s the, what’s the training process or what’s the process that you go through.

To hire a, make sure you have the staff in place that you want to have. Yeah.

[00:40:23] Paris Davis: Breakthrough has a great process of finding local coaches. What they typically do is go out and try to find college coaches, high school coaches, coaches that are really in place in the community that has not only just a say so with with the gym, the facility, but just the people around there to accommodate any coach or just myself that comes in.

So that process of finding that is definitely research reaching out, connecting and networking in the community. I would say Dustin does a great job at that or breakthrough does. It does a great job at that. When I land and I get on the floor it’s definitely some great coaches that I can connect with to help me out with the camps.

[00:41:02] Mike Klinzing:  How long typically, how long are the camps that you run? What is it? Three days, one day. How did you guys do it depends.

[00:41:10] Paris Davis: So it can be a two day. Six hours each, you can be a three-day camp, six hours each. It can be a six week camp, which is an hour and a half one day a week for six weeks, which I’m doing now.

And it can be a five day camp where it’s more of a more long, eight hour or six hours a day type of thing. So it can vary, but for the most part, it can range anywhere between two and three days per week.

[00:41:39] Mike Klinzing: What’s your favorite part of being a camp director? What piece of it do you like the best?

[00:41:45] Paris Davis: Being able to choose basketball with the understanding of principles that will help you become great, no matter what you do. So everything that I teach in basketball, you can apply those same skills, same principles, same philosophies to anything. So if you want to Excel in basketball, great, it’s going to help you.

If you want to go try this in a different area, At school. Great. It’s going to help you. I think building that mentality and understanding the wheel that you have to win and to be able to get great every day can be applied anywhere. As long as you have that mindset.

[00:42:22] Mike Klinzing: Is that something you’re sharing with the kids in a one-off talk where you’re sitting down and you’re talking for 10 minutes, or is that something that you try to weave into everything that you’re doing through your drills and the activities and games and stuff that you’re doing as part of the camp?

[00:42:38] Paris Davis: Both. So depending on what type of camp it is, we have classroom sessions for some camps, this elite guard, and I’m actually going through film. We talking about film and I made throw it in there. Throughout the camp, I’ll always like to work on things together, then we’ll break down and work on it, separate.

And then as I’m seeing everything workouts. And I’m talking with the cultures. We may find common things that we need to work on or find, find things that we need to talk about. So I’ll bring it in and say, Hey, as a group, this is what we’re good at. This is what we need to work on. And just point out those things.

And as I’m pointing out those things, sometimes it, it, when I want to say sometime most of the time is deal. It deals with effort. It deals with mentality and aggressiveness. So that that’s something that I’m always just put in there as well. So during and after, and before, whenever I can

[00:43:33] Mike Klinzing: Do you have a favorite camp drill or a set of drills that you’d like to use?

[00:43:37] Paris Davis: Mm, I wouldn’t say I have a favorite set of drills, but I do like a certain structural organization of the camp of how I run it. So that means how I do rotations of, of, of coaches, rotations of baskets how I may choose to stop and do competition before we go to one drill versus. How I may have dual shooting or on both sides versus just only on one side.

And it all depends on the level of the athletes that are working with it allow me to be creative or utilize certain things to make the camp fun. So I just like, I like the whole camp set up because when you can have the setup, right, the kids get the best experience. And I know if, I don’t know if parents are watching or even coaches, you’ve probably been at a camp and you see a, a lead or someone and they have 50, 60 kids, but they’re not utilizing the right or making the most use of their time.

So some are sitting in the back, some not focused, some only getting five reps before or two reps before you blow the whistle to go to the next year or so. I’m real cognizant of those.

[00:44:43] Mike Klinzing: Those things are so important in a camp setting to be able to make sure that you keep all the kids. Engaged in. You mentioned earlier just about talking about having, okay.

We’re not just having one line here. We’ve got the, we do the same drill. We can have three lines instead of one. And so now you’re getting those kids more reps and there’s just, there’s little things. I think I’ve always said this, that you kind of take for granted, and I’m sure you feel the same way that as somebody who works with kids works with players all the time, you have a knack for just kind of being able to get kids organized and get them into lines, get them into groups and do all those things quickly.

And it becomes second nature. You don’t even think about it. And I know this first came out to me when I went to my kid’s school. This was years ago when my oldest daughter was in elementary school. She’s 18 now. So we’ll talk. And this is probably, I don’t know, 10, 12 years ago, maybe. And the parents were trying to organize field day and I walked up and there was like three parents there.

And they were just trying to split the kids up into two teams. And it was painful. It was painful for me to watch because just like, how do you not, how can you not figure out how to do this? And I just walked up and my God you’re over here. You’re over here. Boom. And within like within like eight seconds we had, we had the two teams that we needed and things were off and running, but you forget as somebody who deals with kids all day and all the time.

Well, for me as a school teacher, but also as a basketball coach, you kind of forget that ordinary, everyday walk of life, people don’t often, they’re not often standing in front of a group of 25, 8 year olds and trying to figure out how do you organize yourself? I think it’s easy sometimes. I think sometimes we take that for granted, but it’s a tremendous skill and I’m sure it serves you really, really well when you’re at camp.

Cause that organizational piece to me is. A huge part of what makes a camp successful. Cause as you said, if you’re a parent, you come in and you look and you’re like, okay, here’s a kid. They’re supposed to be at a shooting station and they’re in a line of 15 kids and they’re there for 10 minutes in that 10 minutes, they get up to shots.

Well, they’re not really getting a whole lot out of that. And there’s so many ways that you can organize things and activities, drills, just the way you set things up that can allow you, as you said to maximize those reps. Yeah.

[00:47:09] Paris Davis: Most definitely. I try to touch every kid. I try to touch every kid and not just touch them, like literally like touching wrong, but I try to leave something, try to identify something to make that connection and leave them at least one thing from the start and then to the finish, we can say, Hey, that one thing we’ve been talking about, did you get better at it or didn’t you you gotta also think about throughout a camp cultural or lead train is going to be throwing a thousand things at. Definitely is for educational purpose, but you got to remember that, find those things that you can work on and get it right, right.

And be focused on the fundamentals. Even if it’s footwork. That’s the first thing you need to work on. Even though they’re progressing through the camp, keep working on the footwork, go home and work on the foot work. After the first day of camp, while you’re in line work on the foot work, you have to be aware.

Like we just talked about earlier, the campers have to be aware of their struggles within that camp and identified and work on it.

[00:48:12] Mike Klinzing: Once the kids have, once they’ve been exposed to good coaching, especially on the camp front, I think it’s really important. Like you said, to be able to reinforce them that, Hey, you’ve been here at camp.

We’ve been able to teach some things and you’ve had an opportunity to work on your skills, but now if you really want to become a good player, you got to take those things home and you got to keep working out. It goes back to what we talked about before. Yeah. Be able to accept and take coaching and then put it to use.

And obviously how that gets put to use varies tremendously, depending upon the level it’s different for, if you’re working with a fifth grader versus you’re working with all high school junior, there’s a different level of what they can take with them and what they can’t. But at the same time, I think what I hear you saying is that you’re trying to make that messaging clear to kids that here’s what you’re learning, but the learning is just the start of the process.

Then you’ve got to go and you’ve got to work at it. And by getting that out to the kids, I’m sure I’m sure that what you’re end at what you end up doing is inspiring. Some of those kids go out and play basketball, which is what I always say. One of the goals of the camps and I run is I want the kids to be done with their week of camp or whatever it is.

And want to play more basketball as a result of participating in what we do.

[00:49:25] Paris Davis: Yeah. Most definitely. You have to leave them with something and leave them excited. I had a parent that came up to me and she said, my daughter has went to several camps and she’s never loved it. She’s always not had a good attitude.

She’s in a great attitude at your camp. And automatically, only thing that I can think of is I found the connection. I made her comfortable up front and that’s, that’s the difference. Sometimes you have to get that done to make that, that connection. And then when you make the connection, now, when you go tell them to work on something or what they need to do, even if you don’t tell them to do something, if you made a connection after that camp, if you made a good enough connection, they were listening to you and something is going to pull.

And even if it doesn’t pull through, after another coach is going to say the same thing or their parent is going to say the same thing and it’s going to click in even more than so it’s a process, right? But us as coaches, as trainers, focus on making the connection so we can get through and we’re basically helping each other.

I’m the trainer that’s going to help your high school coach. I’m going to train. That’s going to help your elementary coach. So they’re yelling at you now because you’re always going right and not going to left. But as you start working with me, I feel the connection. I help you go to your left.

You go back to your coach, you go to your left, you start scoring more. You play more. The coach loves you now. And that’s how it keeps going. So we help each other.

[00:51:01] Mike Klinzing: That’s one of those things, right? Where as a coach, you’re planting those seeds as a teacher, as a trainer, you plant those seeds. And even though the kid may have.

Take it right in the moment, as you said, they’re going to hear it from somebody else going forward, or maybe it’s just two years later where they realize, oh, I remember what coach Paris told me, X, Y, or Z. And now I’m starting to see what he was talking about. And sometimes we’re, we’re long sense removed from that kid’s life or that having a direct influence on that kid.

But it still can be something that has that long-term impact. And to me, that’s always been one of the most satisfying things about being a coach or being a teacher is you realize that. And a lot of those things you never even, you never even find out about cause there’s kids that you’ve impacted that they may carry that with them, but maybe they don’t ever reach back out to you even though, obviously it’s really great when someone does reach back to you and say, Hey, I remember five years ago or 10 years ago when you told me X, Y, or Z, but a lot of times they don’t.

And so sometimes your knowledge, your wisdom that you’ve passed along, you never get to see that tree grow up from that little seed that you planted. But at the same time, that’s such a valuable, valuable piece to me of being a coach, being a trainer. I think that’s what I hear you talking about.

[00:52:23] Paris Davis: Yeah. You got to think about that phrase. We talk about do you give to receive with the expectation to receive, right? Or do you just give, because it’s from your heart and you just give, so if we’re just giving, even if that player doesn’t, you know show it or whatever it is just like you said, we w we feel good just doing it.

So when you’re a great giver great teacher, you just give out education, you give off certain things, even if you don’t receive it or know it, you just know that it was, it was a quick thing to do, and it was helpful. No matter if it was seen at basketball or not, I was something that definitely benefited and contribute to someone’s life.

[00:53:06] Mike Klinzing: I don’t want to go behind the scenes, kind of look at how you at breakthrough basketball, how do you guys put together a camp when you’re going all over the country and how do you get the word out to the local community to be able to get players, to sign up? What does that process look like and how are you involved in that process if you are at all?

[00:53:27] Paris Davis: Yeah, I’m not too involved in the process. Just a high level. Breakthrough does a great job at building with the community. As I said, at working with the local high school coaches now for profits and just teaming up with them to allow great coaches like myself to come in and do great work with the, with the kids.

In addition to that, of course, there’s so, so many other outlets as far as for marketing through online or whatever that may be. But I believe the biggest thing is breakthrough as built a big following on putting out great. When you put out great content, people want to read it. People want to watch it.

People want, they want it is great content. That’s this is this thing. This is the stuff you should look at that or, or having in front of you. So after years of doing that and just bring it out. Great quality. It’s just always just grown.

[00:54:18] Mike Klinzing: You mentioned that you were working on some shooting videos right now.

Is that right? Yes. So tell us a little bit about that. Maybe give us a breakdown of what those videos are going to be all about. And maybe some teaching points that if a coach is out here listening, Some of the teaching points that they want to think about. If they’re trying to help their players to become better shooters.

[00:54:38] Paris Davis: Yeah, I’ll give you a little bit. It’s not, it’s not released yet, but I’ll definitely give you as much as I can. I want to give out the tips. So when we’re talking about shooting, shooting was my forte. It was something that I was strong at. And I feel like this course that we’re about to release. So it’d be something that I can show.

Not only just for me, you’ll see me in a video, but you also see other athletes working on the jurors as well. That’s right to team up with some of the top athletes young athletes in the area to know discourse. So I’m excited about that. In regards to the teaching points, one thing we have to keep in mind is alignment follow through empower.

Those are the three things that most athletes struggle with. Either their ball is to all the way across your face. Or either they don’t have the follow through to just throwing it up with a prayer or snagging her hands back there, corn left and right. Or to not utilizing their legs at all. And it just chucking up shots from the upper body because now they want to shoot Theresa.

I haven’t mastered the ability to shoot close shots already. Okay. So those are the three things that I would say focus on legs fall through. And what was the other one

[00:55:59] Mike Klinzing: You had legs you had fall through and you also had making sure that you’re able to align with,

[00:56:07] Paris Davis: No worries. You’re good. Those are the three things.

[00:56:11] Mike Klinzing: All right. So when you’re going through the process of creating the video, let’s say you’re going to put out a 30 minute. You’re gonna put out a 30 minute video. How long, how long are you spending in the quote in the lab? In the studio, in the gym to put together that 30 minutes of content?

How long, how long does that take? I know it’s a long process.

[00:56:35] Paris Davis: 30 minute video probably spent about four hours for 30 minutes, right? About four years, four to six hours in the gym for 30 minute video. And it all depends, right. It may be a couple of sessions. It depends on, on what we’re trying to shoot or what we’re trying to do.

But I would say about four hours.

[00:56:54] Mike Klinzing: How many people are working on it, what’s the crew look like?

[00:56:57] Paris Davis: It depends. I’ve been a one man show before. So when you have your process set up efficiently and you understand what it takes to. Record and make things happen. You don’t, you don’t need much, but it does look great if you, if you have a big team and you have certain things, you can focus on more things than others, but you can set it up by yourself if you really were ambitious.

So either one works.

[00:57:23] Mike Klinzing: How good are you on the technology side?

[00:57:26] Paris Davis: Well, in college I was the lead technician for the Mac app computer. So I was, I started my career early with troubleshooting technology, but

[00:57:37] Mike Klinzing: I know it’s a lot of work, man. Just the learning curve, even doing the podcast with Jason, I started going back and trying to figure that out and it started out just he and I sit in the same room talking to the same microphone and what man, wouldn’t it be great someday if he could do some interviews and what would that look like and how would we do it?

And so the idea that we would ever be able to do it with me, one place him another place and our guests in another place that would have seemed completely foreign to us back when we first started. Sure. So there’s definitely a learning process as you go through and try to figure out that technology side of it.

And as you said, the great thing about technology is it allows you to reach so many more people than you can reach just as you said, in person where yeah, there’s a lot of value in being a trainer and doing that individual lessons and those kinds of things. But there’s also something to be said for being able to pass on your knowledge to a whole lot of people at the same time, through, through a bigger platform than you could have of just you with your ball and a gym, for sure.

Yeah.

[00:58:39] Paris Davis: Correct. And then the platform that we created was 1Up basketball. The idea of it is you stay one up on your competition, which is yourself. Always think of you have no competition, even in camps, always ask people. I say, are you boy, you’ll always get some people that will say yes. And I always feel like no one in here or no one is guarded.

Will you make yourself comfortable? Because if you do the right things at the right time for the right reason, I think that you can make yourself non garble. So even in life, you are your own competition. You are continuously going against yourself, you’re trying to improve. And then they’re always trying to do one up, meaning that you did 10 reps on this set exit.

Let’s go 12, then you’re always trying to go one up on yourself each time. And that’s ultimately how you feel. Not only just shrift, you build a momentum and then you build a, a confidence level to where I can do more. And then ultimately you build a process and a habit of just doing it, and then you’re just gonna keep exponentially growing.

[00:59:50] Mike Klinzing: That’s that concept, right. Of beating you yesterday, right? You always try to compete against the you from yesterday and you try to do better. Whether it’s a shooting drill, you had to make more than you did the day before it’s weightlifting. You got to try to push yourself to do one more rep or whatever it might be.

I think there’s tremendous value in that. It goes back to what we talked about earlier, Paris, which is in order for you to do that, you have to be able to track and. Keep keep score and do those kinds of things with yourself. I always laugh because when I was a kid, I still have these little notebooks that I used to write every single day, how many hours I would practice and I’d write down what I did and I’d have stuff in there, like played one-on-one in the driveway against John one, one a hundred and ninety nine, or shot free throws with dad.

You know what I made, I made 72 and dad made 71 or whatever. It was just I still have two or three of those that are cover years of my life, probably from what I was like nine to maybe like 13. And it’s hilarious to go back and look at it, but I didn’t really know what I was doing. I certainly wasn’t doing it based on any scientific studies or anything.

It was just, I just wanted to write down and keep track of what I was doing. And yet I really was doing what you and I have described to. I was just competing with myself. I was trying to see, okay, can I practice a little bit more today? Can I make one more free throw that I made yesterday? What’s my progress look like, and I certainly wasn’t approaching it in any type of methodical way.

It was just a fun way for me to kind of keep track of things, but it certainly I’m sure helped me to be a better player when I was growing up.

[01:01:33] Paris Davis:  How old were you when you did that? When you were around?

[01:01:36] Mike Klinzing: I was probably, I would guess I was probably from like around age nine or 10 probably to like 13 or 14 is when I ended up doing a lot of that.

[01:01:46] Paris Davis: So, so funny story. So I wasn’t writing it down, but I definitely was keeping a mental track. I was about eight or nine and I just got this basketball room. I can’t believe, I can’t remember what it. And I will be out there every day. And I remember it was raining and I, and I had to do all swish. I was trying to think I was trying to do like five all swish.

And my grandma was telling me to come in as Ryan and I and literally I’m telling like, I’m coming in, I’m coming in and I’m trying to just get these swishes. And it was just an obsession from that day on to say, when I come out, I gotta try to get at least five switches. And I was keeping track of how many switches I had.

So that alone aided into my mentality of even when I shoot to this day, I’m like, this has to go in. So I think started on earlier. Would that type of mentality that we’re talking about as athletes, younger athletes. It can definitely be beneficial to prepare enough for what’s next. Because that’s how your coach is going to treat the situation.

That’s how the game is played. And that’s how ultimately you get better by holding yourself to a certain standard or setting goals for yourself.

[01:02:59] Mike Klinzing: There’s no doubt that I think that that can be helpful and that’s a great message for kids to be able to hear. And I think the best players do some sort of version of that, and everybody kind of approaches it differently.

I was writing it down. You were doing in your head, you had one specific thing that you were trying to accomplish that became important to you in that moment, along with I’m sure. Lots of other things. And if you, as a player can kind of get into that where you’re not. We’ve all heard, right. The player who goes up to the court or goes up to the gym and Hey, what’d you do today?

I was shooting around. Right. I’m just, I was shooting around and I was in the gym for an hour. Okay. Well, what did you really, what did you really accomplish during that hour while you were there? And the answer is probably if you’re not keeping track of it, if you’re not intentional about what you do, the answer is you probably didn’t accomplish a whole lot.

And again, that goes back to right, depending on the age, if you’re seven years old, there’s a difference in what you’re doing while you’re playing basketball and practicing your game. Versus if you’re a high school player, there’s clearly a difference. But by the same token, I think what you want to do and what you want to encourage with players.

If you’re, especially when you think about youth coaches, you want to encourage those kids to, Hey, Why don’t you shoot 10 free throws every day. They keep track, keep track for the next month and see if you can eventually get up to where most days you’re making, maybe you start out, you’re only making four or five and see if by the end of the month, you can be consistently making nine or 10.

And now you’ve put a goal in front of a kid where instead of just going out mindlessly, just kind of throwing balls up at the basket. Now you actually have something that you can start to aim for. And if you set those expectations, initially, if you keep that relatively simple and you keep the goal relatively small, all right, now I get a small win and I can build on that and add to it the next time.

And again, as the kid gets older, they can continue to add that. But if you can build those good habits as you know, Paris, if you can build those good habits, when you’re young, man, it makes such a difference.

[01:05:04] Paris Davis: Yeah, most definitely. And you, and we talk about goals, but I don’t want to overlook the word time.

So time plays a great amount of partnership and the building of athletes. So you just talked about a kid may go to the gym and you say, have been in the gym for two hours. Okay. What did you do? Yeah, I put 500 shots. They probably could have put up a thousand, but in between they made a lot of troubles.

They went over there to talk to their friends. They came back or whatever that may be. So now when you give a goal, keep the time in mind. So, and you got to set a baseline. You going to say, Hey, we’re going to start off with just go to the gym. I’ll give you 30 minutes to make five free throws all that.

And I’m just giving an example right now, our five minutes or 30 minutes, whatever it is now. Okay. Now you increase that time because not only that that’s, you’re increasing again better. You’re keeping the athlete in this certain state of mind that I need to finish it within this, within this time period.

And if. That tells me that I’m doing something extra than what I should be doing. So I think time plays a key role in achieving your goals too.

[01:06:20] Mike Klinzing: yeah, that’s a great point. I think it’s really easy to get lost in just as you said, Hey, I was in the gym for X amount of time, as opposed to, I could be a lot more efficient and get probably more done in 45 minutes than somebody else is getting done in an hour and a half.

And that’s really important, I think from a coaching standpoint for coaches to be able to guide that because so many kids, they don’t really have an idea of what a good workout looks like and whether you’re a trainer, whether you’re a high school coach, whether you’re someone like yourself, who’s directed camps.

I think if you can provide kids with, Hey, a framework of this is what a good workout looks like. Here’s how it can be efficient. You don’t need to spend two and a half hours. Standing at the basket doing things that probably aren’t really going to translate to the game anyway, instead let’s get in and go hard for 45 minutes, get a lot of reps up at things that are actually going to take place in the game and you’re going to end up being a lot better off.

So I think the combination, as you said of, yeah, you got to have a goal, but there also should be some time constraints so that you understand that look, you there’s, there’s some urgency to it, right?

[01:07:35] Paris Davis: Exactly. It helps them become more effective and efficient. And that’s just time management. And like I said, we talked about that’s one of the principles that I love about teaching within camps and training, because you need to understand time management, not only on the court, but off the court as well.

So that’s key for me.

[01:07:53] Mike Klinzing: Yeah. I love the idea again, of just making sure that no matter what you’re doing, that you’re doing it with a purpose and that it’s intentional. I think that speaks to how you should conduct yourself as a player. And it also speaks to what you need to do when. Coach, you have to be able to, you have to be able to be focused.

You have to be able to be intentional. And when you come into a workout, a camp, a practice, a game as a coach, you have an understanding of what it is that you want to accomplish. You’re going to end up accomplishing way more. When you have a goal that you’ve set some time constraints as you look as you look at that Paris, before we wrap up here, I want to ask you one final question.

It’s a two-parter. So first, first part of the question is when you look ahead over the next year or two. What do you see as being your biggest challenge moving forward? And then number two, the second part of that is when you get out of bed in the morning, and you think about what you get to do everyday, what brings you the most joy about what you’re doing right now?

So your biggest challenge and your biggest joy.

[01:08:57] Paris Davis: Wow, great questions. The biggest challenge that I’m going to have. Coming up within the next couple of years, I would say as me, I’m very talented. I feel that I can do a lot, but the challenge, not only just for myself, but anyone, this is zero in or something, right.

You may have multiple things going on, but you have to be able to say, this is what I’m going to go with. This is what I need to focus on art. Once that momentum gets going on, once you complete that, then you can shift over. So for me, because I have a lot of great things going on and I’ve been very successful at doing it.

What I want to focus in more, and this is a level that not a lot of people around me can see, but I want to be able to focus more on. That’ll be a challenge for me. The second. Piece is when I get out of bed in the morning. What is one thing that keeps me motivated? Was that it, or …

[01:09:59] Mike Klinzing: Your greatest joy, what’s your biggest joy?

[01:10:01] Paris Davis: My biggest joy is being able to wake up and know that I have control over my next action. I think once I realized that that’s when life became fun, that’s when life became less stressful because at the end of the day, we were given free. And it’s up to us, whether if we going to do good with it, or we’ve got to do that with it, but if you’re strategic in your approach, you have a passion, you have goals that we talked about most of this meeting, and if you have principles and standards and a mission as long as you know that you control your next move, that’s a good thing.

Now you may make your next move and it may not pan out. And it, most, most people say, well, you didn’t have control over it. Well, some things you just, you can’t plan for, but you can plan to have the best outcome. So now you learn from that mistake or whatever that challenge was. And then you get right back on track and come back better than the last try.

And then over a period of time, you just keep learning. You keep learning, you keep reinvent innovating, getting better.

[01:11:15] Mike Klinzing: Yeah, I think that goes back to what we talked about earlier, right. That if you’re going to be a pro at whatever it is that you do, then you have to have that ability to self-evaluate and plan and things.

Don’t always go the way you expect, but when they don’t, you have to look at, okay, what happened and how can I improve get better for the next time? And I think that’s, that’s a great lesson if somebody takes nothing else from our episode, besides that, that the ability to self-evaluate is really the key to getting better and improving.

Then I think we’ve done a service with what you and I have talked about throughout the entire course of our podcasts and I Paris. All right. Before we wrap up, I want to give you a chance to share how people can connect with you. You could share social media, email website, whenever you feel comfortable sharing.

Put that out there for us. And then I’ll jump back in and wrap things up.

[01:12:09] Paris Davis: No worries. All you gotta do is go to oneupbasketball.com and you can spell that out as oneupbasketball.com. If you want to look up anything on social media, just type in Paris Davis, and I should pop up, you can type my name in the Google as well, but anything that you want to know as far as online training camps, training, or live tools or resources, one of basketball.com.

Thank you guys.

[01:12:37] Mike Klinzing: Absolutely Paris. We can’t thank you enough for taking the time out of your schedule tonight to jump on with us, spent a lot of fun talking, training, talking camps, talking mentality, talking goals, learning a little bit about you as a basketball player, as a coach, as a person. So we thank you for that and to everyone out there.

Thanks for listening. And we will catch you on our next episode.  Thanks.