The Basketball Strong Podcast

Basketball is in Michael Plansky’s blood. Two of his brothers won state titles in high school, his dad coached his sister’s teams to another state championship, and his brother Mark played on Villanova’s 1985 NCAA championship team. After his own successful playing career in both basketball and baseball at Fairfield University ended, Michael decided to move into coaching. After serving as an assistant at Brandeis University for four years, Michael learned from the legendary Tom Davis at Unive...

Ken Hunter still remembers the night he pulled a kitchen knife to stop his dad hitting his mom. What came next was even more extreme, although for anyone growing up in southwestern Detroit, it was normal. The court provided Ken with some solace, and he quickly grew into a top prospect, attending the same school where Jalen Rose had won a state title. When his football coach kicked his butt for skipping school, Ken also became a standout student, even while living off friends’ couches and with...

Most young assistant coaches dream of the day when they’ll finally get a crack at promotion. But few are ready for the realities of being a head coach. Jesse Wright realized he still had a lot to learn when he was tasked with running the weight room for the NFL Europe team in Barcelona while still in his early 20s. His work ethic and ability to problem solve got him through that trying season, and upon returning to his native Philadelphia, he soon found himself working for the 76ers as a cons...

Coach John Mosley can still remember the day his life changed forever. Gang members fired bullets outside his Los Angeles high school in a drive-by shooting, and Mosley was on his way to get revenge. But as he was about to jump in his friend’s car, he asked himself, “What am I doing?” Soon afterwards, two words took him down a different path: “Basketball tryouts.” Mosley came late to the game, but his stellar point guard play earned him minutes at East LA College (ELAC), The Master’s College ...

Strength and conditioning for young pro athletes isn’t easy, but because they’re bouncy and resilient, you can experiment more to find a line of best fit. But what about when you’re training older athletes aged 35 and up, either in the general population or a pro sports setting? That’s the question legendary strength coach answers in this podcast. In this part 2, he and former Lakers S&C coach Tim DiFrancesco discuss:Why you should make a “who’s smarter than me?” list and then seek those ...

Tim Frazier was told he was too small and weak to play contact sports. But sibling rivalry fueled him to prove his doubters wrong and propelled him to a basketball scholarship with Penn. There, his stellar play at the point earned Tim All Big Ten honors. Yet disaster loomed, and he tore his Achilles just a few months later. Looking at the game through his coaches’ eyes, he turned a negative into a positive and worked his way back onto the court with courage and determination.In his senior yea...

Tim Frazier was told he was too small and weak to play contact sports. But sibling rivalry fueled him to prove his doubters wrong and propelled him to a basketball scholarship with Penn. There, his stellar play at the point earned Tim All Big Ten honors. Yet disaster loomed, and he tore his Achilles just a few months later. Looking at the game through his coaches’ eyes, he turned a negative into a positive and worked his way back onto the court with courage and determination.In his senior yea...

Tim Frazier was told he was too small and weak to play contact sports. But sibling rivalry fueled him to prove his doubters wrong and propelled him to a basketball scholarship with Penn. There, his stellar play at the point earned Tim All Big Ten honors. Yet disaster loomed, and he tore his Achilles just a few months later. Looking at the game through his coaches’ eyes, he turned a negative into a positive and worked his way back onto the court with courage and determination.In his senior yea...

Ax throwing. Log balancing. Carrying kettlebells through the forest. Standup paddling. Visitors to Gray Cook’s lake cabin invariably do some activities that might seem unconventional at first but actually train every major movement pattern and then some. Gray applies a similar real-world lens to the movement and function assessments that he co-created for athletes, including the Functional Movement Screen (FMS), Functional Capacity Screen (FCS) and Selective Functional Movement Assessment (SF...

Ax throwing. Log balancing. Carrying kettlebells through the forest. Standup paddling. Visitors to Gray Cook’s lake cabin invariably do some activities that might seem unconventional at first but actually train every major movement pattern and then some. Gray applies a similar real-world lens to the movement and function assessments that he co-created for athletes, including the Functional Movement Screen (FMS), Functional Capacity Screen (FCS) and Selective Functional Movement Assessment (SF...