Crooked Necks

Archive for January, 2010

Kansas State University, often abbreviated K-State or KSU, has a success basketball program that is often nationally ranked.

The Division I program located in Manhattan, Kansas (lightheartedly referred to as the Little Apple) competes in the highly competitive Big 12 Conference whose members include many perennial powerhouse programs including in state rival the University of Kansas. The intrastate rival Kansas Jayhawks are often referred to simply as KU and are located a mere 85 miles to the west with the city of Topeka separating the two schools.

The K-state men’s basketball program has been around for over a hundred years with competition on the hardwood beginning roughly ten years after the game was invented. KSU played its first game in 1902 and would go on to enjoy an impressive seventeen conference championships over the years and enough noteworthy victories to land a spot in a 2005 list by Street & Smith (New York City publication) as one of the top 25 greatest college basketball programs ever.

This article is specifically for athletes. Making the most of your training session is simple. You simply must never be on autopilot when training. A great mentor of mine once said, “If you want to learn quickly – slow down.” What he was referring to is what I call, conscious training. In this article, I show you how to do this so you can get on top of your technical changes faster than ever before.

Do you know the feeling I am referring to when I talk about being on autopilot? Perhaps you have driven to training in your car and could not even remember the trip? Perhaps your coach has been talking to you and you couldn’t hear anything. Are you just going through the motions? These are all symptoms of being on autopilot. Being on autopilot, for a whole training session means you have not improved.

To ensure you are not on autopilot you simply need to focus on what is going on around you. Listen, see, feel, taste and smell your environment. Get in touch with your surrounds and tune in to them. This is the first part of consciously training.