Rekindling the dream of becoming a star

Chapter 135 The Big Devil of the Youth Games

"Coach, do I always do this without weights?" Chen Fang asked Wick in the equipment room.

"A thick Olympic bar, 20KG, is enough for you to practice high cleans." Wick explained.

“Once you’ve mastered it, you can add unilateral exercises, dumbbell cleans, and rowing movements.”

"The high-cleaning movement is perfectly matched to your shooting movement and start. If you learn the high-cleaning movement, your trunk conduction ability will be greatly enhanced."

Seeing that Chen Fang seemed to understand, Wick turned on the TV next to him and found a picture of full-body muscles.

"Our body muscles are divided into fast muscle fibers and slow muscle fibers. The characteristics of fast muscle fibers are fast response to nerves, strong explosive power, and coarse muscle fibers. The disadvantage is that they have poor aerobic function and are easily fatigued. Their muscles are white. Look, this is it." Wick pointed to Chen Fang.

"Red is slow muscle, it has good aerobic performance and strong endurance, but its disadvantage is low explosive power."

Chen Fang discovered that his abdomen, back, calves, and upper arms were all white.

"The deep muscles are made up of slow muscles, while the surface muscles are made up of a combination of fast and slow muscle fibers. The fast and slow muscles of each person are determined by genes, and it is almost impossible to change the combination ratio of fast and slow muscles later in life."

"What we have to do is to use functional training, that is, nerve stimulation response, to let the nerves determine muscle growth."

"If you only do high-intensity aerobic training, your fast muscles will atrophy and be squeezed out by your slow muscles." (For teenagers, if you think you have fast reactions and strong explosive power, please do functional training instead of high-load dead muscle training.)
"So we need to do anaerobic training to stimulate nerve response, step by step. Do you understand now?"

"Understood." Chen Fang nodded and the training continued.

Functional training is easy to fatigue, and there is a lot of recovery time during training. Wick will supplement the recovery time with some special drinks and food.

He would also often explain some of the deeper logic surrounding muscles and nerves, such as nerve excitement, which helped Chen Fang understand why he could always achieve better athletic performance than usual when he was excited.

"Nerves control the contraction and extension of muscles, which generate strength. When muscles are fatigued, as long as the nerves are not fatigued, they can still force the muscles to continue working. However, at this time, it is easy to cause muscle strain and injury."

“And if the nerves are fatigued, even the best muscles can’t stretch and contract effectively, and there’s no strength.”

"Extremely excited nerves will give you a super strong burst and fully control the percentage of muscle contraction."

"Is this a good thing or a bad thing?" Chen Fang asked while drinking a special drink.

"Depending on the sport, if it's a short-distance run, that's the best. For something like basketball, if you keep getting so excited throughout a game, you might end up in a state of nervous lethargy for a week."

Chen Fang nodded thoughtfully. Isn't this just a complete explanation of the crazy person? He acts like a god in one scene and a ghost in three scenes.

"Therefore, to achieve long-term and stable muscle performance, you cannot get too excited. You must learn to control your nervous excitement and maintain both mental and physical calmness," Wick warned.

"I understand, coach. I have a solution." Chen Fang was not worried because he knew how to regulate his breathing.

Wick nodded. He had noticed that Chen Fang had a peculiar habit of sitting cross-legged with his eyes closed in meditation, but out of professional ethics, he did not ask.

The training schedules of the three are also orderly arranged. Usually Wick only appears once a day, and then an afternoon or morning belongs to him.

Carl and Hannon filled the rest of his time, and Chen Fang only had personal time after eight o'clock every day.

One evening in late August, in the height of summer, Chen Fang and Lu Yun sat on the balcony in the backyard, enjoying themselves quietly.

Listening to the chirping of cicadas and frogs, Lu Yun and Chen Fang lay on bamboo armchairs with a fruit plate in the middle, feeling the cool breeze blowing in from the Missouri River, looking extremely leisurely.

"By the way, how's your practice going?" Chen Fang asked slowly.

"It must be different after spending the money. I guess I just joined a random team."

"Are you sure?" Chen Fang expressed his doubt.

"There will be tryouts for admission to the school, just wait."

"How are you doing here?"

"I plan to continue for a month, this will be more effective."

"Then when are we going back?" Lu Yun suddenly asked.

"It should be the end of September. Just wait for the notice. We should be able to catch up with the preseason after the games." Chen Fang was not nervous. He had asked the coach and was told that there was still enough time.

"Did you pass the Wu Zi test?"

"Well, the results came out yesterday."

"Are you planning to come together after you finish playing in the Youth Games?"

"Yes, I don't want to be in two places."

Lu Yun was silent for a while: "Just be serious."

"More than that, I swore that I would get married when I reached the legal age."

"Ha, don't you regret it at all? If you enter the NBA and become a star, do you know how many women will come to you automatically?"

"My door has a fingerprint lock. No one can open it except Wu Zi."

"Don't be so absolute. You have no idea how many women there are in this world that you can't control."

Chen Fang closed his eyes and felt the river breeze, as if he was back on the banks of the Nanyang River. He could faintly smell the fragrance of Wu Zi's hair.

I miss you so much and want to be by your side in the next second.

※※※

One afternoon in late September, Beal and Tatum came to the training ground together.

The three of them played a round-robin match on the court. Under the rule of 21 points in each game, the loser defends and the winner continues to attack, Chen Fang successfully won the second game.

Chen Fang's defense has improved significantly.

Devin talked to three trainers on the sidelines.

"He learns very quickly and can use many things he learns once," said Carl.

"The training data shows that Chen has a lot of fast-twitch muscles, especially in his back and calves." Wick said, "This is not a good thing. It means that he is more easily fatigued than ordinary people. His performance in the game will gradually weaken as he plays more games."

"What do you suggest?" Drew asked.

Wick shook his head: "I will use more group tool sets to compound his nerve training, and try to keep his fast and slow muscles at the same level and improve steadily."

"So what do you think is his best playing time?" "At present, 30 minutes is the limit. If it exceeds this, his performance will drop off a cliff."

"It's enough, this is more than the average playing time of a starter." Drew was not too worried.

"Does this mean that Chen's competition cycle will be shorter? This is also a hidden danger." Hannon suddenly interrupted and asked.

Wick nodded: "Yes, fast-twitch players are like that. He can't sustain the intensity of the NBA, play a full 82 games, and face the even more terrifying playoffs."

"I am also thinking about how to improve his tolerance in the next stage so that Chen can recover more muscle strength within a one-minute interval."

Drew frowned and asked, "Does Chen know it himself?"

Wick shook his head: "He only knows that he gets tired easily. As for playing time, he once said that when he was in China, he would allocate his playing intensity and try his best to help the team win within 25 minutes."

"Very good, I'll talk to him about this."

"Guys, the two-month special training is about to end. What do you think?"

The three of them looked at each other, and Carl said, "Let me tell you, he has accumulated enough defensive strategies. In today's sparring, you can see that he already has more mature strategies to deal with different offensive options."

"Yes, Chen is much stronger now than when he first arrived," Billzo testified after a rest.

"Thank you for your recognition." Carl thanked politely.

"Chen gained 15 pounds and his body fat percentage increased to 8.5. This gave him better fighting capital and reduced his chances of getting injured."

“Physically, he already has the strength to play in D1.”

"Very good, Hannon, you speak last." After listening to the two people's answers, Drew said to Hannon.

Hannon said: "In terms of fundamentals, I have corrected many of his deficiencies. The current problem is that he is still figuring out his rhythm. Overall, I think he can play D1."

"But the distance to the NBA still depends on his position. If he is a ball-handling core, he will need more skills to support it."

Drew listened silently, then clapped his hands and said, "Thank you for your hard work, guys. The bill has been sent to your email and the money has been deposited into your card. If everyone confirms that there is no problem, this cooperation will come to an end."

"When is the next one?" Wick asked.

"Depending on the situation, the three of you will continue to train Chen in a single lesson."

"Okay." Wick understood: "I should also go home and comfort my wife, otherwise the backyard will catch fire."

"Haha!" Wick's words made everyone laugh.

Everyone has been busy here for two months, and it is indeed time to go back and deal with their own affairs.

Chen Fang talks to Tatum.

"I won't be back until late October." Chen Fang said.

"That's about the time when the state league starts its preseason. I'll be waiting for you then."

"Okay, I heard there's a new player on the team?"

"Yes, the scouts have recruited a few people and they will arrive in the next few days, but I believe that they can't threaten you in any way," Tatum comforted.

Chen Fang smiled and shook his head: "I never worry about this."

"I'm thinking about another question. What is your focus this year as a senior?" Chen Fang asked.

Tatum thought about it and said calmly: "My wish today is to win the continental championship. As for the rest, I am not interested."

“I’ve played enough this year, and Drew told me that my focus this year should be on training, not playing.”

Chen Fang understands this very well, because interstate invitational tournaments, whether it is Nike's Peach Jam, McDonald's Invitational, or Under Armour All-American Tournament, all have only one purpose, which is to be seen by more universities and then enter a better D1 university.

This will give them a greater chance of making it to the NBA.

This mechanism is already very mature in the United States, where elementary schools are absorbed by junior high schools, then high schools recruit better potentials, followed by colleges and finally the NBA.

This AAU league, which covers the entire United States, can provide tens of thousands of outstanding basketball talents to thousands of universities every year.

On average, D1 produces one NBA spot for every 3000 players, making up 50-60 draft picks that year.

15 players, ranging from freshman to senior year.

At all times, we ensure that the NCAA has a full base of 1 players from D3-D15.

The NBA always maintains 450 starting players, and has varying numbers of players in the Development League as a reserve talent pool.

Seeing Chen Fang deep in thought, Tatum guessed what he was thinking. He patted Chen Fang on the shoulder and said, "There will be a lot of invitational tournaments this year. I'll go depending on the situation. Even though I've already decided on Duke, I don't mind bringing back a few more national trophies for the school."

"But I've lost a lot this year. With you, I think we can set our goals even further."

Chen Fang finally felt relaxed. What he needed was exposure, otherwise a continental league would be too low.

"See you in October!" Chen Fang reached out and held Tatum's hand.

"Let's shock the whole America!" Tatum's goal made Chen Fang smile.

"Of course!"

"We will probably be given a lot of nicknames by the media, and if possible, we can think about it in advance so that we can avoid some unpleasant nicknames."

"Then think about it carefully. I'm going to go say goodbye to Drew first."

When he came to Drew, Drew mainly told him what he needed to pay attention to and maintain training.

The two talked to each other for a while, and finally Drew reminded: "The next year is very important to you, including the running-in with your teammates. How far this team can go depends on you and Jason."

"clear."

After saying goodbye to the three coaches, Chen Fang left the training hall. Lu Yun was already waiting in the car.

"We'll leave tomorrow." Chen Fang smiled excitedly after getting on the car.

"Go home, haha, the kings of the Youth Games are about to appear!" Lu Yun started riding his bike and rushed out with a step on the accelerator.

(End of this chapter)