Raw Transcript: How Do the Best NBA Athletes Really Train in 2025 with GBG Hoops? | Hyperarch Fascia Training

[Music] Great. So, today we have Mike G, who is a performance coach for a lot of the NBA players. Yes, sir. Yeah. So today, you know, I I really like your content because you you know, it talks a lot about the the importance of the foot and I see you're training with all a lot of the NBA athlete like how many athlete are are you currently training right now? Because I see, you know, some of the some of the NBA champions, right? Well, you know, self admittedly, a lot of the content isn't it's it's evergreen, meaning it doesn't age even. So, which means that unless you really pay attention, you'll see a lot of the content that I post is maybe from two, three, even four years ago. So, I I I I hope to not give people the wrong idea that I'm working with all these amazing athletes currently, but no, that's not the case. I actually only work with one specific NBA athlete fulltime, and that's Fred Van Vleet, point guard of the Houston Rockets. Yeah, he's NBA champ. He is an NBA champ. He is. won with the Toronto Raptors, but I don't work with AD anymore or Drew Holiday or Spencer Denwitty. Um, I actually gave up that book of business to work exclusively with Fred. And I also work with a couple other Rockets just because I'm in the same vicinity. But, um, as of right now, it's it's predominantly one player and that's Fred. Right. So, your approach is very different than a lot of the mainstream approach, which is, you know, let's get them to heavy weightlifting. And I see a lot of your content and training requires barefoot as well. What is your what is your insight on training barefoot for those athletes? Well, number one, everything is personal because um that's kind of what inspires our thought, you know, how it affects our self. And me personally, I have extremely wide feet. I've actually posted my feet a few times, so you know, some people have seen my feet and know that I literally have hands for feet. And um my personal experience with basketball sneakers has always been a negative one because they always squeezed my feet into this narrow toe base, right? Which, you know, hurt my heart because I love Jordans. You know, I love to wear Jordans and I love to play basketball. So, you know, I'd always be uncomfortable. So, you know, intuitively, I knew that this wasn't good. But I knew that this wasn't safe and could lead to potential problems. So I started to work out barefoot 13 14 years ago. And then a mentor of mine by the name of Scott Mitchell, who's a fellow of the Institute of Motion, Michelle Dalcourt, and those fellows, those guys um introduced me to uh the Vibram Five Finger toe shoes. Yeah, I I had them all those. So those got pretty the Frog Man shoes. So those got pretty um popular at the time, but they kind of lost steam because people started to make wide barefoot like sneakers and and and and Vivo Barefoot. Uh Vivo Barefoot was a brand that kind of came to the surface first initially. So everyone's, you know, kind of migrated to that direction. And then currently I'm sponsored by Zero Shoes as a performance coach for basketball because we recently released the first ever barefoot minimalist basketball shoe that's on the market. It comes out March 26, which I'm extremely excited about because not only do I love this sneaker personally for myself, but I just know the impact that it's going to have to the basketball world. So, you know, not to go down to the rabbit hole too much, but yeah, it was a personal situation for me because I knew that this wasn't something that felt safe or felt naturally good to me being forced to train in sneakers that didn't really fit my foot because the foot has um 30 some odd joints, let's just call it 20 some odd bones. And you know, we preach mobility and stability behind these joint systems all the time, the knee, the hip, the ankle, etc. the shoulder, the spine, but we don't really talk about the foot. And and and it's composed of all this stuff that we talk about. So why wouldn't we address that as well? And there's no true form of fashion of trying to address that than to be connected to the earth or the surface that you're in, which is barefoot. So that's kind of the the the progression that came up to what is now barefoot training for me. Ah okay. Okay. Very cool. Very cool. And I also see that recently you have been promoting the uh Nabuso products that really stimulate the the planter fascia. Mhm. Right. With Dr. uh Emily Splitel who I actually had a had a few discussion with. Yeah. I just always understood and felt like, you know, the most sensitive rich parts of our body are our hands and our feet for a purpose. But for some reason, for mo for, you know, reasons that obviously we can critically think about, we always cover our feet up. And um if you're doing that, you're robbing yourself of some such a sensory rich experience to not only feel the earth around you as well as understand body and space and body positioning aka proprioception, but also what about the things that you talk about how the bottom of the foot is connected to the glute through the fascia and yeah through the fascia and the hyper arch and those types of um terms that are becoming more and more prevalent. in our space. But the only true way to to connect those parts of our body is through the fascia, the planter fascia, the bottom of the feet. So, how do I access that if I can't do that with a bulky shoe on? You have to be connected to a surface barefoot. And the reason why Nooso is such a beautiful product is because they have a very special texture to their products that really lights up that area in the brain for the communication from your brain to your foot to know where you're at in space and really connect to the floor or whatever it is that you're on and allows that type of training to be super effective. Right. Exactly. So in terms of your training principle, um because you know a lot of the uh the weightlifting uh you know community uh they focus on you know the perhaps the the strength level of athletes but when I see your GBG hoops you know I see exercises that is I would say has a different flavor to it. It's it's different. It's not about okay let me build let me bulk up let me build up my big muscles but it's a lot of towards you know stimulating your your glutes because I do some exercise that you posted I can feel it in my glutes and some of the core and also a lot of them are can be done barefooted right like you don't do a lot of the heavy weight type of stuff like what is your what is your reasoning behind that why is it different yeah I think it boils down to the conundrum that's typical in our field which is how strong is strong enough. So the weight room in my opinion is an environment that unless you are with the sole intent and purpose of either powerlifting which is your competition in sport is lifting weights or a bodybuilder or bodybuilder like goals which is aesthetics. I want to look a certain type of way. then that just means that the weight room needs to support a goal that allows you to do your skill or sport more effectively. It's that simple. It's a means to an end in my opinion. So if I look at the weight room as such, then that means that anything and everything I do in the weight room needs to correspond dynamically into the same goals of the athletes specific demands or efficiencies or even proficiencies as it relates to them as an athlete. Case in point, basketball players, does my basketball athlete truly need to deadlift? umbrella term, strength term, 405 pounds. Will that make them a better basketball player? I don't know if that truly is the case outside of a little bit of confidence because there is truth into building confidence in the weight room. If I am stronger quantitatively, maybe I'm a little more confident in my strength perhaps. But outside of that, how strong is strong enough? If if if you look at a slashing type point guard like a John Morant, what type of weight program does he need? What type of strength training does he need? Look at his style of play. Look at his position. Look at his previous injuries. Look at what he's always struggling with and let's choose exercises and strength training that's going to help those things versus just saying to ourselves, "Okay, he needs to be strong. Let's get him as strong as we can because how do we know that that's actually going to make him better on the court? Okay. So, you don't you don't believe in the the uh for example the mainstream understanding. Okay. Let me just make the muscle strong then the person will likely to prevent to to have less injury. You don't believe that? I I think it's the biggest, easiest, most copout answer in the