 Yo, what's going on guys? I just had some things I wanted to share. Just got back from the gym. That's why I look like a mess. Oh, and for those who are listening to this, this is the first video podcast and for those watching the first video podcast, you could be listening to it. So I'm going to try to do more video podcasts or just most of the time try to do a video podcast when I could podcast so not just audio, you could see video just because I like to do it. Today, I went to the gym to dunk. I dunked yesterday as well. And this podcast is going to be basically all about just a motivating day that I had that I think would be helpful to share just because it definitely helped me. So I've been in a slump lately. I had a really good day on 10 feet at the rim I went to a couple of days ago. I uploaded on Instagram that session just yesterday, I think it's like the Orlando practice gym and I did okay, but I've done way better on that rim. So it's always hard when I have worse days on a rim that I know I've done better on. So I went dunking yesterday on like a 9-11 rim, but the rim feels tough. Even though it's like 9-11 and it's a little bit like tilted up, it feels difficult to dunk on. So it feels like 10 feet and I know it's not, but like it just is difficult. I know that sounds ridiculous, but it's a tough room to dunk on. But I like the challenge and I like to, I want to stick to more legit rims just so on good days I have good practice on a legit rim. So that way all my progress and my practice goes towards the actual thing I'm going for and not just technique practice, things like that. I want to start doing all my technique practice on all 10 foot rims. Anyway, I went yesterday feeling fresh and good, but I just had no bounce and I've been feeling like that lately and I've been trying to figure it out. And today I went, so I went hard yesterday, but not like till exhaustion. And so I, because I wanted to save a little bit for today to see if I can jump a little bit better just because I didn't have the bounce yesterday and I had free time today. And today I went and same thing, but worse, meaning actually it wasn't the same. I'll explain. It was just worse feeling to start off. I had even a worse sleep. I've had like a couple of nights of bad sleep where I just went to sleep too late, just had too many things to do and just felt really fatigued. My body did not feel like ready to explode or anything like that. I didn't feel like going my hardest. I just didn't feel like I had that crazy fire to go hard. But I'm like, I really got to push, see what I can do. And the point of this podcast basically is to find something that motivates you and pushes you because that's the only way you're going to break through. Because if you're just feeling like you're just waiting for a good day, I've said this before, but it's just another time it happened. It's really impactful for me that you have to push to break through. And every time I slump for so hard, it's always the days that I push the hardest or when I feel the worst that I finally break through. And I feel like that's what led me to break through the other time I had like my highest day, which was a few months ago already maybe, was that I had so many bad days in a row. I just, instead of trying to figure out what's going wrong, I just went harder. And that's kind of what I did today. I started off feeling like super low energy, super bad. And I decided to picture this day as the lowest day I'll have going forwards. And meaning do what I can do and act as if this is the lowest day I'll have. So that motivated me and got me hype because if I'm able to, for example, dribble dunk on a tough rim, which is hard for me and windmill or get close to other tougher dunks on my worst day, then that's progress for me. And if I'm able to get some just decent height on my worst day with all these excuses I could have had, that motivated me to jump my hardest. And what I got out of doing that was I jumped harder than I have been in my last sessions, even though I've been feeling better and more energized in my other sessions. I think I didn't have that next level aggression to jump my hardest. And I tried on other sessions. I had a few jumps and I definitely had some jumps that I did that, but it felt like most of them I was just pushing and I was thinking it's like I'm sluggish because I just finished strength phase and I'm going to have a good day where I feel that explosion coming soon. But I just didn't have that ability to push harder than I thought I could. And today, just trying to make my low day higher than it was and just had that mentality. I think I was able to jump harder than I have. And I think I even jumped higher than I did yesterday on a few jumps or at least a little bit better and just a little bit, just harder. And yesterday I was fresher and had more energy and I just didn't have the mental ability to jump that hard. And I just wasn't doing it. And I was trying to and I was always trying to jump 100%. But it takes more than 100% to break through. And I feel like because I was able to break through a little bit today, I didn't jump higher than ever. I didn't even jump high as I've been recently, but I jumped higher than I thought I would and higher than I have on days where I felt like this. So and just jumped harder like I could feel my body moving a little faster or planting harder or taking off a little further, things like that. Where I was using a full jump, I was able to do that on a day where I felt so bad to start that now I feel like on a good day, I can go even harder than I've ever gone. Meaning I can, since I have more strength and I have more ability to jump higher, I can now access it. Because before I wasn't able to because I wasn't pushing myself harder. Because even though you're training and you're getting stronger and things like that, you have to jump harder and you have to jump higher. You can't just jump with the same intensity to jump higher. You have to jump with more and more intensity. At least that's what I think. And that's what's helped me get to the height I've been. And also another side note about this day was that I've been struggling for a while now and I've had some peak days and then I had a minor setback. So I had a really good day. It was like over Christmas, I think it was Christmas and two months ago already. And I had a really good day off the dribble. But then that same day, my knee felt weird and I started rehabbing it as you might know, and I went back to basics of just rehabbing my knee. And after that, I don't know if that was my 10 foot was after that, my 10 foot good day. I think it was before that, but since then I had a really high day that day and I haven't really got back to that level yet. But these low days have been getting better and what I've been focusing on, which is my dribble dunks have gotten better. And no one knows that I've been at the same level for a long time more than me. So I definitely see that I have barely progressed, but there is minor things that I feel in myself like my dribble dunking for one, my ability to jump more, things like that have definitely increased. And mainly my low jumps compared to my high jumps have a smaller gap. And overall, that's what I've been focusing on because I didn't like the fact that I could fly off a bounce, like I could throw a toss, take off from crazy distance or height and crush it with like room to spare. And I could like barely dribble dunk. So I've been focusing on my slower approach jumps. And I think that's partly why my max jumps haven't really increased that much. But my dribble dunks have like a lot of times these sessions, if you notice, my warm up dunks are almost as good as my max jumps. Like I'm dribbled dunking in my warm ups, but then when I try to go harder on the dribble dunks, they're not getting that better. So much higher. So going forward, I just need to get back to that crazy explosiveness where I go super aggressive. And things I'm gonna be focusing on is probably my drop step just because I'm so bad at it and drop steps or like slow approach like one, two step dunks. Not really slow approach, but just one, two step dunks are way more efficient for game dunks. I'm never gonna have my full lane. I'm never gonna have my exact path. And I'm never gonna have my full approach from the angle I want in a game. I'm gonna have like a pass and have like one or two steps to be able to take off. And I want to be able to dunk off that hashtag T dub style. Just like one step drop step dunk and I'm not close to that on 10 feet. But I'm definitely close to that on like nine, nine. Today, I even did like a drop step with the ball and I grabbed the rim with my fingers. So that's pretty good because I just need to like work on that a little bit. Get some technique in a couple of inches and I will probably be able to drop step dunk, which is really crazy to me. But overall, you really gotta push yourself. You gotta push harder than ever always and the struggle happens for a long time. And the thing also for me is that, yes, it seems like I plateaued and I definitely did, but I'm at a higher plateau now. And even though my plateau is long or whatever, these dunks or these days used to be my high days. And usually people have like high days and they have slump days. And like it goes like this, but mine's like my low times are a lot longer than like my high times. So for those of you that are struggling for a long time, it could take a long time and any progress is good. It'll it'll always work towards the higher vertical and higher jumping and better performance. But you have to always know that you can push yourself harder and always your first priority should always to try to go harder. Don't worry about cuz you could always, you'll be surprised by what you can take or how you end up doing if you push yourself to that next level. And you don't really, there's very more, much more beneficial things that could happen when you push yourself harder than you think you can go than the negative things. Yes, you can get injured and things like that. But as long as you're safe and not injury, that's the worst thing that can happen. But my point is, the negative things that could happen is maybe you over-train, but then you kind of know your limit and then you could push your limit. But you have to push your limits if you want to exceed your limits. You're not gonna keep exceeding your limits if you're just not testing them. So you gotta test your limits. I guess that's the overall theme of this is test your limits because if you think you have a limit, you're gonna just work at that limit. If you want to raise your limit, you have to push, like you're raising your limit. So do that, do the hard stuff, go dunk on no sleep one day because then on a day where you, for example, if you had a contest or something like, you know, Dunk League, I have insight because I have a lot of friends that were in it. They didn't have much rest. They dunked a ton. They had to dunk like three days in a row. They had to sit and wait for hours, things like that. It's not optimal for these dunk sessions. Like you don't want to be the person that can only dunk when you have eight hours of sleep, you have your perfect meal, you dunk in an hour and a half after that and you have a perfect 20 minute warm up and that's your peak jump. You want to be able to have peak jumps at any time. So that way you're more resilient and I just think that's way more beneficial and in the long run, you'll be a lot more able to get dunked or achieve your goals dunking wise because you don't want to just have only restricted to good days and things like that. So push your limits, test your limits. I think that's it. But just exceed your limits by pushing your limits and you'll get there. And I'm struggling with you. So let's get it. By the way, NeverEnding Conversations podcast. If you like it, let me know. We're keeping it going. This is more of the motivational dunk related just video I was talking about. If you follow my Instagram, I mentioned that I wanted to do videos like this and I have ideas like this all the time. So if I have this setup like this, it helps me just spew it out quickly. So I hope this is really beneficial. And if you're listening, I really appreciate it. And if you like, let me know if you like the audio or the video better. I'm still going to do both, but I'm just curious to what people are listening on and if you like it or not. And I like the video because I could, I talk with my hands a lot and when I do vertical I use like my fingers and I use like rim heights like this. You feel me? All right. Thank you. Love you. Dunk life. Let's get it.