SadimirPutin
Superstar
For the brehs that have an The Athletic account.....could one of you post the article
The new look James Harden
- Thread starter SadimirPutin
- Start date
For the brehs that have an The Athletic account.....could one of you post the article
SadimirPutin
Superstar
Rapid body changes can make one prone to injury, so hoping it all works out for him
Curious to see the results
I am curious to see how his slashing holds up
It's been two months and will be at least 4 before he plays again. Thats more than his regular offseasonRapid body changes can make one prone to injury, so hoping it all works out for him
Curious to see the results
superunknown23
Superstar
The complete opposite of 1998 lockout Shawn Kemp
I'm just wondering how much is from this high week intense camp
I was just wondering how 
and out of shape he might be the other day. This is a pleasant surprise.
He needs to let his hair go though. His hairline is washed.
and out of shape he might be the other day. This is a pleasant surprise.He needs to let his hair go though. His hairline is washed.
Lakerman0834
Veteran
Hopefully he didn’t lose his strength when driving
Here's the article
“Oh, we got one!”
“We got one! We got oneeeee!”
The combination of sweltering Phoenix heat and fatigue should have been making James Harden throw up that early May afternoon. He certainly shouldn’t have been the one wide-eyed, laughing and full of energy — wanting to crank up the pressure, amused at his friend Christian Polk bent over nearby vomiting.
After all, it was Polk’s idea to head over to Tempe Butte — or “A” Mountain, as it’s referred to by Arizona State University residents. Polk, a close friend and former teammate of Harden at ASU and the current head of Eduprize basketball, had insisted they take a trip to the mountains even though Harden had just finished working out earlier.
Harden obliged but Polk didn’t expect him to go as hard as he was, considering the amount of work they had already done in the day. Two-a-days are generally reserved for football teams in training camps, not NBA superstars on a two-month hiatus.
“You know, it was kind of my idea to get him back on that mountain,” Polk told The Athletic, “Thinking that I would be able to kind of push him cause I do it all the time. And he came right back and hit the ground running.”
“‘I called Earl’ is what we like to call it,” Polk said, laughing as he recalled the experience. ” James was kind of pushing the tempo so hard that I had to take a little break and get that up [out] of me and then get back to it. We all got a pretty good laugh out of that.”
The real reason Harden should have been exhausted lay in Justin Allen’s hands.
Allen, a Houston-area athletic trainer, traveled to Phoenix via Harden’s request. The younger brother of NFL tight end Dwayne Allen, Justin always dreamed of playing football but decided to make the career pivot after a nasty hip injury he suffered at New Mexico State.
Despite his football and life hardships — growing up homeless and living in shelters at one point — Allen always wanted to make an impact on his community.
“I put my focus on my second dream,” Allen said. “My dream was always [to] create a gym and help give back to the youth, to the community. So that’s just what I did — started training and it just took off from there.”
Allen founded ALL-EN Sports Performance, a facility geared toward quality development and training for athletes or those interested in pushing their fitness goals. Over time, ALL-EN grew in popularity through word of mouth. It didn’t take long for Allen’s program to catch Harden’s attention.
“He reached out through a mutual friend and then his manager reached out to me,” Allen said. “[We] set up a training date, and we’ve gotten to work ever since then.”
He called Polk. Harden was coming back to Phoenix — and he was bringing Allen with him.
On the phone, Harden and Polk discussed plans to get things in order. Had this been a normal year, Harden would head to Arizona to unwind in the offseason — Scottsdale in particular. But it wasn’t the offseason.
“He said, ‘I’m not coming out here to hang out and relax,'” Polk said, referring to their conversation. “‘I want to make sure that you’re getting me up early, where I’m keeping busy.'”
A week full of high-intensity sessions would be the ideal preparation for the resumption of sports. Harden wanted to work out two, three times a day, mixing in different techniques and specific drills curtailed to his style of play. The hiatus had caught him off guard, but the return wouldn’t.
“He wanted to make sure everything was amped up,” Polk said. “We kind of approached everything as if the league was about to start — if he had to go play a playoff game tomorrow.”
A plan like this needed the input of all three parties. Polk, who played ball with Harden, thought it would be best to recreate the Sun Devils atmosphere, doing the same things they did as college athletes. “I do my best to create the same vibe that we had here while we were at ASU,” Polk said. “Not only was it a lot of fun, but we made leaps as players and athletes, especially mentally.”
RELATED: An oral history of Harden’s playing days at Arizona State
Over the course of the week, Harden would train in Tempe, Scottsdale and Gilbert. All three are within a 30-minute drive of one another. Polk would handle the basketball workouts and mountain drills, Allen would take care of everything else related to his body. He had already spent enough time with Harden, using his prior background in basketball, previous workouts with him and understanding his unique style of play, to figure out the best way to work.
“Just focus on body control,” Allen said of the week’s focus. “Putting him in uncomfortable positions so that when he gets in those uncomfortable positions, his body’s comfortable with the different movements, foot placement and working on a little more quick-twitch with his feet. So just little things like that. I mean, he’s already James Harden. So it’s just a small thing that we’re focusing on.”
Since Allen first started working with Harden in Houston, he’s been able to break down their sessions into components, a system he employed in Phoenix. Every morning that week, Allen would meet Harden in the weight room. Here, Harden wouldn’t just lift weights to bulk up or build muscle. At 30, he doesn’t necessarily need to get stronger. His body is at the point where endurance is more important, in the sense of avoiding injury.
“He knows what his body needs, and he knows what his body wants to know,” Polk said.
Harden’s main points of emphasis in the weight room are balance, stability and body control. Different sets of weights are used, but the goal is maintaining a center of gravity. To aid his quest for achieving balance, Harden participates in yoga and pool workouts.
Afterward, Harden will do “contrast work” in the field, starting with drills in the sand. The point of the sand is to build some sort of resistance, making Harden have to exert force to make moves he would do with ease on a smooth surface. Once the sand workout is done, Allen will bring him to the field. Here, Allen will bring his football knowledge into play, putting Harden through a series of running back drills. For running backs, the important things are reaction time and fast-twitch actions into further reactions. To give Harden the NBA familiarity, Allen will introduce “three or four defenders in front of him,” where Harden will have to act as if he’s in the half court and get to the desired spot on the floor, for game-like finishes.
“Everything we do at ALL-EN is to help in-game performance,” Allen said. ” It’s designed down to the way a player walks, which translates to the way he moves. Even the lifts in the weight room, the lifts are to mimic how a player plays. so it benefits him to have an advantage on his opponent.”
When Harden was with Polk, the on-court basketball work would come, but this was more about repetition than anything. The real work would be done on the mountain. Tempe Butte is a popular spot for those living in the area, one that Harden and Polk frequented during their days roaming the campus. This week, concerning the mountain, Harden was targeting speed and explosion, sprints in intervals. Polk would mark different spots on the mountain and they would do a certain number of sprints depending on the day and workout. They would sprint to a spot, rest, stretch and then go higher. This would be repeated until reaching the mountaintop.
Where Harden separates himself from the NBA norm is his dedication to sports science, particularly in two areas: plyometrics and the importance of fast-twitch muscle fibers. Harden has been diligently studying plyometrics and has incorporated them into his regular routine, doing such exercises on his own before ever getting with a trainer. Though he might not be as athletic as a Blake Griffin or even his teammate Russell Westbrook, Harden has elite footwork. He wanted to further enhance his quickness and his first step.
Plyometrics is also known as ‘jump training’ target power, where the muscles can exert a large amount of force in a small window. For an NBA player with the ball in his hands more times than not, this is ideal.
“Plyometrics are an important piece of the training puzzle because they train and stress multiple systems,” said Dr. Rajpal Brar, Doctor of Physical Therapy and Sports Scientist and owner of 3CB Performance. “Obviously plyometrics involve training, jumping and higher intensity movements but further it can train balance, a system called “proprioception,” which is partly responsible for unconsciously informing the brain about the body’s position and space, and arguably most importantly, plyometrics can train deceleration and movement control, especially during landing components. Each of these pieces is important for Harden but deceleration and control is especially key because it feeds directly into Harden’s start-stop style of play.”
There are two types of muscle fibers that athletes work on based on the sport they play, slow-twitch and fast- or quick-twitch. Slow-twitch muscle fibers are used for endurance, most notably seen in Olympic long-distance runners. Fast-twitch fibers are used for quick deliberate movements. Football players such as wide receivers, running backs and defensive backs utilize this. But Harden’s playstyle also dictates the importance of fast-twitch muscle fibers, especially his stop-start movements, his shifty nature and his deceleration step-back combo.
“Fast-twitch muscles — which are referred to as Type II muscle fibers, further categorized into IIa vs IIb fibers based on how quickly they fatigue — are key for explosive, high-intensity movements,” Dr. Brar said. “For example, during acceleration and jumping, for Harden — whose playing style is predicated on change of speed, start-stop movements — these fast-twitch fibers are key during those critical moments where he has to quickly accelerate to beat the defender off the dribble, to explode on his step back to create space, to generate quick lift on his jumper, and so on.”
During the course of the week, Allen learned quite a few things about Harden the person, away from the training. ” Oh man, he’s so down to earth, humble,” Allen said.
“As a person, man, I got so much respect for him, just finding out the guys who he keeps around are the guys that he grew up with from high school. I mean he remained the same and he’s very genuine, and he has pure intentions man. But one thing about him, he’s going to work. He loves the work, he puts in the work to be the best — his mindset is that. I learned that he’s got a killer instinct man. He wants to master something. Like he’s going to master it. That’s just how his mind is wired.”
Allen has seen all sorts of athletes come through his facility and has worked with all body types. There’s a narrative around the league, as far as #NBATwitter is concerned, that Harden is out of shape or doesn’t work hard. That’s ridiculous.
“I don’t know where they’re getting that from,” Allen said. “You don’t average 35 points a game and not be in shape. I think people don’t understand there [are] different body types. There [are] some people that work out every day, every day, every day and their body won’t look like the guy that has a 2 percent body fat. But their performance — the guy that has the 2 percent body fat might not be able to have the endurance of the guy that has the perception of not being in shape.”
“It beats me, man,” Polk said. “It beats me. To be honest, a lot of people have had different roads to get to where they’re at. James’ road has been strictly a result of hard work. I watched the freshmen come in, a McDonald’s all-American that felt like he was underrated compared to some of the other kids in his class. I watched him outwork people and outwork people and reap the benefits of his hard work. So you could say a lot about Harden, but hard-working is definitely something that you need to put in that mix.
“I’ve been around a lot of players, man. I played at a high level of myself, you know. I played alongside James in college, I played overseas. I won a G-League championship with the Vipers, I’ve been around other high-level guys that have been in the league and play at a very high level. And I’ll tell you James Harden’s work ethic is second to none. I haven’t seen, you know, anybody for that matter go at it the way he’s gone at it, you know. He’s had MVP years and finds ways to continue to elevate his game every year and that’s a direct result of hard work. I can’t say enough about his work ethic because without it he wouldn’t be where he’s at today.”
“We got one! We got oneeeee!”
The combination of sweltering Phoenix heat and fatigue should have been making James Harden throw up that early May afternoon. He certainly shouldn’t have been the one wide-eyed, laughing and full of energy — wanting to crank up the pressure, amused at his friend Christian Polk bent over nearby vomiting.
After all, it was Polk’s idea to head over to Tempe Butte — or “A” Mountain, as it’s referred to by Arizona State University residents. Polk, a close friend and former teammate of Harden at ASU and the current head of Eduprize basketball, had insisted they take a trip to the mountains even though Harden had just finished working out earlier.
Harden obliged but Polk didn’t expect him to go as hard as he was, considering the amount of work they had already done in the day. Two-a-days are generally reserved for football teams in training camps, not NBA superstars on a two-month hiatus.
“You know, it was kind of my idea to get him back on that mountain,” Polk told The Athletic, “Thinking that I would be able to kind of push him cause I do it all the time. And he came right back and hit the ground running.”
“‘I called Earl’ is what we like to call it,” Polk said, laughing as he recalled the experience. ” James was kind of pushing the tempo so hard that I had to take a little break and get that up [out] of me and then get back to it. We all got a pretty good laugh out of that.”
The real reason Harden should have been exhausted lay in Justin Allen’s hands.
Allen, a Houston-area athletic trainer, traveled to Phoenix via Harden’s request. The younger brother of NFL tight end Dwayne Allen, Justin always dreamed of playing football but decided to make the career pivot after a nasty hip injury he suffered at New Mexico State.
Despite his football and life hardships — growing up homeless and living in shelters at one point — Allen always wanted to make an impact on his community.
“I put my focus on my second dream,” Allen said. “My dream was always [to] create a gym and help give back to the youth, to the community. So that’s just what I did — started training and it just took off from there.”
Allen founded ALL-EN Sports Performance, a facility geared toward quality development and training for athletes or those interested in pushing their fitness goals. Over time, ALL-EN grew in popularity through word of mouth. It didn’t take long for Allen’s program to catch Harden’s attention.
“He reached out through a mutual friend and then his manager reached out to me,” Allen said. “[We] set up a training date, and we’ve gotten to work ever since then.”
He called Polk. Harden was coming back to Phoenix — and he was bringing Allen with him.
On the phone, Harden and Polk discussed plans to get things in order. Had this been a normal year, Harden would head to Arizona to unwind in the offseason — Scottsdale in particular. But it wasn’t the offseason.
“He said, ‘I’m not coming out here to hang out and relax,'” Polk said, referring to their conversation. “‘I want to make sure that you’re getting me up early, where I’m keeping busy.'”
A week full of high-intensity sessions would be the ideal preparation for the resumption of sports. Harden wanted to work out two, three times a day, mixing in different techniques and specific drills curtailed to his style of play. The hiatus had caught him off guard, but the return wouldn’t.
“He wanted to make sure everything was amped up,” Polk said. “We kind of approached everything as if the league was about to start — if he had to go play a playoff game tomorrow.”
A plan like this needed the input of all three parties. Polk, who played ball with Harden, thought it would be best to recreate the Sun Devils atmosphere, doing the same things they did as college athletes. “I do my best to create the same vibe that we had here while we were at ASU,” Polk said. “Not only was it a lot of fun, but we made leaps as players and athletes, especially mentally.”
RELATED: An oral history of Harden’s playing days at Arizona State
Over the course of the week, Harden would train in Tempe, Scottsdale and Gilbert. All three are within a 30-minute drive of one another. Polk would handle the basketball workouts and mountain drills, Allen would take care of everything else related to his body. He had already spent enough time with Harden, using his prior background in basketball, previous workouts with him and understanding his unique style of play, to figure out the best way to work.
“Just focus on body control,” Allen said of the week’s focus. “Putting him in uncomfortable positions so that when he gets in those uncomfortable positions, his body’s comfortable with the different movements, foot placement and working on a little more quick-twitch with his feet. So just little things like that. I mean, he’s already James Harden. So it’s just a small thing that we’re focusing on.”
Since Allen first started working with Harden in Houston, he’s been able to break down their sessions into components, a system he employed in Phoenix. Every morning that week, Allen would meet Harden in the weight room. Here, Harden wouldn’t just lift weights to bulk up or build muscle. At 30, he doesn’t necessarily need to get stronger. His body is at the point where endurance is more important, in the sense of avoiding injury.
“He knows what his body needs, and he knows what his body wants to know,” Polk said.
Harden’s main points of emphasis in the weight room are balance, stability and body control. Different sets of weights are used, but the goal is maintaining a center of gravity. To aid his quest for achieving balance, Harden participates in yoga and pool workouts.
Afterward, Harden will do “contrast work” in the field, starting with drills in the sand. The point of the sand is to build some sort of resistance, making Harden have to exert force to make moves he would do with ease on a smooth surface. Once the sand workout is done, Allen will bring him to the field. Here, Allen will bring his football knowledge into play, putting Harden through a series of running back drills. For running backs, the important things are reaction time and fast-twitch actions into further reactions. To give Harden the NBA familiarity, Allen will introduce “three or four defenders in front of him,” where Harden will have to act as if he’s in the half court and get to the desired spot on the floor, for game-like finishes.
“Everything we do at ALL-EN is to help in-game performance,” Allen said. ” It’s designed down to the way a player walks, which translates to the way he moves. Even the lifts in the weight room, the lifts are to mimic how a player plays. so it benefits him to have an advantage on his opponent.”
When Harden was with Polk, the on-court basketball work would come, but this was more about repetition than anything. The real work would be done on the mountain. Tempe Butte is a popular spot for those living in the area, one that Harden and Polk frequented during their days roaming the campus. This week, concerning the mountain, Harden was targeting speed and explosion, sprints in intervals. Polk would mark different spots on the mountain and they would do a certain number of sprints depending on the day and workout. They would sprint to a spot, rest, stretch and then go higher. This would be repeated until reaching the mountaintop.
Where Harden separates himself from the NBA norm is his dedication to sports science, particularly in two areas: plyometrics and the importance of fast-twitch muscle fibers. Harden has been diligently studying plyometrics and has incorporated them into his regular routine, doing such exercises on his own before ever getting with a trainer. Though he might not be as athletic as a Blake Griffin or even his teammate Russell Westbrook, Harden has elite footwork. He wanted to further enhance his quickness and his first step.
Plyometrics is also known as ‘jump training’ target power, where the muscles can exert a large amount of force in a small window. For an NBA player with the ball in his hands more times than not, this is ideal.
“Plyometrics are an important piece of the training puzzle because they train and stress multiple systems,” said Dr. Rajpal Brar, Doctor of Physical Therapy and Sports Scientist and owner of 3CB Performance. “Obviously plyometrics involve training, jumping and higher intensity movements but further it can train balance, a system called “proprioception,” which is partly responsible for unconsciously informing the brain about the body’s position and space, and arguably most importantly, plyometrics can train deceleration and movement control, especially during landing components. Each of these pieces is important for Harden but deceleration and control is especially key because it feeds directly into Harden’s start-stop style of play.”
There are two types of muscle fibers that athletes work on based on the sport they play, slow-twitch and fast- or quick-twitch. Slow-twitch muscle fibers are used for endurance, most notably seen in Olympic long-distance runners. Fast-twitch fibers are used for quick deliberate movements. Football players such as wide receivers, running backs and defensive backs utilize this. But Harden’s playstyle also dictates the importance of fast-twitch muscle fibers, especially his stop-start movements, his shifty nature and his deceleration step-back combo.
“Fast-twitch muscles — which are referred to as Type II muscle fibers, further categorized into IIa vs IIb fibers based on how quickly they fatigue — are key for explosive, high-intensity movements,” Dr. Brar said. “For example, during acceleration and jumping, for Harden — whose playing style is predicated on change of speed, start-stop movements — these fast-twitch fibers are key during those critical moments where he has to quickly accelerate to beat the defender off the dribble, to explode on his step back to create space, to generate quick lift on his jumper, and so on.”
During the course of the week, Allen learned quite a few things about Harden the person, away from the training. ” Oh man, he’s so down to earth, humble,” Allen said.
“As a person, man, I got so much respect for him, just finding out the guys who he keeps around are the guys that he grew up with from high school. I mean he remained the same and he’s very genuine, and he has pure intentions man. But one thing about him, he’s going to work. He loves the work, he puts in the work to be the best — his mindset is that. I learned that he’s got a killer instinct man. He wants to master something. Like he’s going to master it. That’s just how his mind is wired.”
Allen has seen all sorts of athletes come through his facility and has worked with all body types. There’s a narrative around the league, as far as #NBATwitter is concerned, that Harden is out of shape or doesn’t work hard. That’s ridiculous.
“I don’t know where they’re getting that from,” Allen said. “You don’t average 35 points a game and not be in shape. I think people don’t understand there [are] different body types. There [are] some people that work out every day, every day, every day and their body won’t look like the guy that has a 2 percent body fat. But their performance — the guy that has the 2 percent body fat might not be able to have the endurance of the guy that has the perception of not being in shape.”
“It beats me, man,” Polk said. “It beats me. To be honest, a lot of people have had different roads to get to where they’re at. James’ road has been strictly a result of hard work. I watched the freshmen come in, a McDonald’s all-American that felt like he was underrated compared to some of the other kids in his class. I watched him outwork people and outwork people and reap the benefits of his hard work. So you could say a lot about Harden, but hard-working is definitely something that you need to put in that mix.
“I’ve been around a lot of players, man. I played at a high level of myself, you know. I played alongside James in college, I played overseas. I won a G-League championship with the Vipers, I’ve been around other high-level guys that have been in the league and play at a very high level. And I’ll tell you James Harden’s work ethic is second to none. I haven’t seen, you know, anybody for that matter go at it the way he’s gone at it, you know. He’s had MVP years and finds ways to continue to elevate his game every year and that’s a direct result of hard work. I can’t say enough about his work ethic because without it he wouldn’t be where he’s at today.”
HandyWithTheSteel
Superstar
Good for him. He was starting to look
High quality poster
Veteran
nikka gonna coke back gunning
For the brehs that have an The Athletic account.....could one of you post the article
“Oh, we got one!”
“We got one! We got oneeeee!”
The combination of sweltering Phoenix heat and fatigue should have been making James Harden throw up that early May afternoon. He certainly shouldn’t have been the one wide-eyed, laughing and full of energy — wanting to crank up the pressure, amused at his friend Christian Polk bent over nearby vomiting.
After all, it was Polk’s idea to head over to Tempe Butte — or “A” Mountain, as it’s referred to by Arizona State University residents. Polk, a close friend and former teammate of Harden at ASU and the current head of Eduprize basketball, had insisted they take a trip to the mountains even though Harden had just finished working out earlier.
Harden obliged but Polk didn’t expect him to go as hard as he was, considering the amount of work they had already done in the day. Two-a-days are generally reserved for football teams in training camps, not NBA superstars on a two-month hiatus.
“You know, it was kind of my idea to get him back on that mountain,” Polk told The Athletic, “Thinking that I would be able to kind of push him cause I do it all the time. And he came right back and hit the ground running.”
“‘I called Earl’ is what we like to call it,” Polk said, laughing as he recalled the experience. ” James was kind of pushing the tempo so hard that I had to take a little break and get that up [out] of me and then get back to it. We all got a pretty good laugh out of that.”
The real reason Harden should have been exhausted lay in Justin Allen’s hands.
Allen, a Houston-area athletic trainer, traveled to Phoenix via Harden’s request. The younger brother of NFL tight end Dwayne Allen, Justin always dreamed of playing football but decided to make the career pivot after a nasty hip injury he suffered at New Mexico State.
Despite his football and life hardships — growing up homeless and living in shelters at one point — Allen always wanted to make an impact on his community.
“I put my focus on my second dream,” Allen said. “My dream was always [to] create a gym and help give back to the youth, to the community. So that’s just what I did — started training and it just took off from there.”
Allen founded ALL-EN Sports Performance, a facility geared toward quality development and training for athletes or those interested in pushing their fitness goals. Over time, ALL-EN grew in popularity through word of mouth. It didn’t take long for Allen’s program to catch Harden’s attention.
“He reached out through a mutual friend and then his manager reached out to me,” Allen said. “[We] set up a training date, and we’ve gotten to work ever since then.”
Like every athlete during the coronavirus pandemic, Harden wanted to stay ready during this unplanned time off.
Even though his workload and usage during the regular season would warrant some time off, he understood the other side of the equation. The stoppage of basketball was so sudden that it was plausible to think that a good chunk of players wouldn’t be able to maintain the regimen they’re accustomed to by way of team trainers, but more importantly, team facilities.
“I’ve been doing a lot of cardio,” Harden said. “I’ve got treadmills in my houses, weights, and all that good stuff. It really hasn’t affected me like it’s affected a lot of other players.”
Still, he needed to be on his toes. As the conversations between the league and the players’ association continued, logistics needed to be maneuvered. How many games would we get to play before the playoffs? Do we even get that option?
This uncertainty didn’t sit well with Harden. Decisions about the league’s return and structure were out of his control, but one thing he could control was his body. He wasn’t going to be a playerwho needed to get back in playing shape. So he decided to ramp up his workouts. Harden needed space to work, he needed familiarity, and most of all, he needed heat.
Photo by MJD Photography.
He called Polk. Harden was coming back to Phoenix — and he was bringing Allen with him.
On the phone, Harden and Polk discussed plans to get things in order. Had this been a normal year, Harden would head to Arizona to unwind in the offseason — Scottsdale in particular. But it wasn’t the offseason.
“He said, ‘I’m not coming out here to hang out and relax,'” Polk said, referring to their conversation. “‘I want to make sure that you’re getting me up early, where I’m keeping busy.'”
A week full of high-intensity sessions would be the ideal preparation for the resumption of sports. Harden wanted to work out two, three times a day, mixing in different techniques and specific drills curtailed to his style of play. The hiatus had caught him off guard, but the return wouldn’t.
“He wanted to make sure everything was amped up,” Polk said. “We kind of approached everything as if the league was about to start — if he had to go play a playoff game tomorrow.”
A plan like this needed the input of all three parties. Polk, who played ball with Harden, thought it would be best to recreate the Sun Devils atmosphere, doing the same things they did as college athletes. “I do my best to create the same vibe that we had here while we were at ASU,” Polk said. “Not only was it a lot of fun, but we made leaps as players and athletes, especi ally mentally.”
Photo by MJD Photography.
He called Polk. Harden was coming back to Phoenix — and he was bringing Allen with him.
On the phone, Harden and Polk discussed plans to get things in order. Had this been a normal year, Harden would head to Arizona to unwind in the offseason — Scottsdale in particular. But it wasn’t the offseason.
“He said, ‘I’m not coming out here to hang out and relax,'” Polk said, referring to their conversation. “‘I want to make sure that you’re getting me up early, where I’m keeping busy.'”
A week full of high-intensity sessions would be the ideal preparation for the resumption of sports. Harden wanted to work out two, three times a day, mixing in different techniques and specific drills curtailed to his style of play. The hiatus had caught him off guard, but the return wouldn’t.
“He wanted to make sure everything was amped up,” Polk said. “We kind of approached everything as if the league was about to start — if he had to go play a playoff game tomorrow.”
A plan like this needed the input of all three parties. Polk, who played ball with Harden, thought it would be best to recreate the Sun Devils atmosphere, doing the same things they did as college athletes. “I do my best to create the same vibe that we had here while we were at ASU,” Polk said. “Not only was it a lot of fun, but we made leaps as players and athletes, especi ally mentally.”