The Power of a Quality Routine in Basketball and in Life

“You’ll never change your life until you change something you do daily. The secret of your success is found in your daily routine.” John C. Maxwell

Fall is almost here and with it comes the anticipation of school, and the upcoming basketball season. As nature prepares for the changes fall brings, now is a suitable time to reflect on our daily routines. The value of routine allows you respite from decision fatigue. For many students, the spontaneity of summer is one of the great benefits of this time of life. You can afford to watch the late-night movie, you don’t have to read this book right now, you can wake up in daylight. As fall and winter approach, life expectations become higher. You are expected to be on time for school, to read this book by this due date, to get up in the dark to work out. As obligations and time requirements increase, the quality of your routine becomes crucial for success. Routines help you to streamline your day, achieve more and maintain bandwidth for decisions that matter most.

Set aside sometime this before school starts to review your routines and make ones that will sustain you through the challenges of the upcoming school year and basketball season.

5 Keys to Creating Successful Routines

a. The routine must be yours – heart, mind, and soul. If the routine is implemented upon you without your buy-in, you will struggle with apathy and bitterness. Love, gratitude, and enthusiasm need to be the bedrock of your routine. Obligation and duty are the secondary, not primary motivators. When obligation becomes primary, the heart dies and all else dies with it.

b. Be wise on what the routine is working to protect or build. A “protective routine” is working to create space for silence, rest, discernment, prayer, and rejuvenation. If you are in a highly scheduled school and workout schedule, you must build a routine for rest and recuperation.

A “building routine” is created to increase your skill or ability in a certain direction daily. This “building routine” operates from the principle that small daily discipline that is intensive and consistent is better than longer more sporadic training times.

c. Know yourself. When is your most productive time of day? When is your least productive?

Where are the areas you struggle? What can you implement to help you through your challenges? Learn from what has not worked in the past and learn what has worked. Take the lessons you have learned and create new plans. Doing the same routine without discernment is folly. Find the flaw in the design and try again.

d. Get outside accountability to help you kick start your areas of weakness. If you struggle every year to be in shape for basketball season, get with an accountability group and stick to this plan.

The routine of going to a workout will help you more than trying to muster the willpower to work hard enough when you are by yourself.

e. Simplify. Less is more.

“Downtime replenishes the brain’s stores of attention and motivation, encourages productivity, and creativity, and is essential to both achieve our highest levels of performance and simply form stable memories in everyday life. A wandering mind unsticks us in time so that we can learn from the past and plan. Moments of respite may even be necessary to keep one’s moral compass in working order and maintain a sense of self.” -- Scientific American

Reasons why routines fail:

a. Burn out -- they are too difficult to maintain. The routine is too complex or too overscheduled and can’t be sustained. You only created a building routine, and you didn’t create a recuperation routine.

b. Injury or setback—something happens, and you must step out of your routine because of an injury or difficulty.

c. Decision fatigue—as you get more tired and head toward the end of your day, your decision-making loses its power. You will be more likely to eat fast food in the evening instead of eating something healthy, you will end up watching TV instead of finishing your project. This issue is fatigue. You don’t have enough margin and you must wait until you are tired to make your decision.

d. Unprepared for the cognitive overload—there are some tasks that leave you really exhausted and some that leave you energized. Each task is not the same and each person’s response to a task is not the same. For example, a student learning to drive must exert much more cognitive work driving than someone who has been driving for many years.

Many people never evaluate the cognitive pressure they will encounter. Prepping for a final exam is much more pressure than reading a book. People fail to account for how much cognitive overload their tasks are taking on them.

e. FOMO (Fear of Missing Out) or Ego Overload—we want to achieve more than others, so we set our routines based on the “Jones” instead of the mission and purpose of our life. If you are living in comparison instead of being generated from your own life call, your actions will be empty. An ego-driven life is a soulless life.

Basketball Routines

In basketball, the mind and heart are more powerful than the body. The body will obey your will. But too many athletes allow the mind to obey the body. A quality routine helps intersect this danger.

Build a great routine with the mind and heart and the body will follow.

To be a great basketball player:

A. Fitness routine—what will help you to be in the best possible condition as an athlete? Fatigue makes cowards of us all. Where your liabilities with fitness are and what can you do to rectify these liabilities?

B. Weightlifting routine—what will help you build the strength necessary to play your position well? Your goal should be to be able to assert your will no matter your size. You should not be taken out of position on offense or rendered ineffective on defense. Your strength routine should give you this power.

C. Ball handling routine—your most important skill is your ability to take care of the basketball.

Your skill with the ball is your responsibility to yourself and your team.

D. Shooting routine—shooting is a choice and requires many hours of disciplined work. Your daily routine will place you in a position for success.

E. Vertical jump routine—of all the factors which measure athletic ability, vertical is the greatest athletic predictor of success, plus any work done in improving vertical naturally elevates your ability in all other areas. It’s your biggest bang for your workout investment.

F. Mental routine—as you think so you become. Your mental tenacity and grit come from a daily habit.

G. Spiritual routine—your heart is the most important to protect. This is your spiritual center and begins with the discipline to seek God first—then all other things will be added to you.

Find good role models for your daily routines:

Steph Curry is famous for his routines. His pre-game routine is worth watching if you have never taken the time. Look at some of the most successful people and find out their routine. This will help you build your own.

Day off Schedule:

8:00 am Wake-up
8:15 Play with kids
8:30 Breakfast
9:30-12:00 Basketball training and practice
12:00 Neurocognitive training
2:00 lunch
3:00 Recovery work
5:00 Nap
6:30 Dinner
8:00 Family Time
9:30 Movies
10:30 No screen time
11:00 Bed

What is important to notice about this routine is that it is a very intentional “protective routine” that gets equal importance to his “building routine.” Are you as intentional about your restorative routine?

Sleep Routine: Many top athletes have found improved success with prioritizing sleep. They work to get at least 8 hours per day including consistent bedtimes and wake-up times. They also eliminate any screen time 1 hour before bed.

Coaching Routines

Success in coaching involves your ability to implement and maintain dynamic routines that build the unity and talent level of your team.

Prepare ahead of time the routines your team needs for greatness. The clearer you are in what you want the greater your success. Discipline in building your routine will reap great benefits all season long. If this is not a strength for you, get a mentor who can assist you.

Create a routine for unity and connection. Most coaches are heavily focused on fitness, weightlifting and implementation of plays and play-making routines. However, most overlook the importance of

creating a routine to build relational unity and team connection. They are not intentional enough. Time

together is different from purposeful “unity building” routines.

Routines should be the vehicle that supports your mission and creativity.

Before you create your routine be clear about your mission.

Who is your team? —what are the defining qualities of your team?

If your team were a person, what character qualities would define this person?

What is your mission? As you come together as a team, what is the purpose? Is it only to win games? Is it to build lifelong tools for success? Is it to win state? Why are you coming together as a team?

What is not your mission? Clarify what the team is not meant to be about. This is important to define.

For example, one high school team makes it clear that the purpose of the team is not to have a star player who goes D1—this might be an outcome, but it is not the driving goal.

Where is your team headed in the long term? Once your players have graduated and moved on, what significance does your team hold? What impact should your leadership and the team experience have in the long term? What is your vision for your upcoming players? What are your priorities in the short term? What needs daily repetition and what are your immediate needs for your team?

Once you have answered these questions, then you need to create a routine to help emphasize your mission and vision. The routine needs to be like the drywall of your house. It supports your mission. The photos and objects of art on your walls are the unique drills, creativity, and inspiration that make the routine alive, fresh, and challenging. A stale routine is a result of a stale life. If your routine is stale, you don’t have enough creative input.