The way some athletes train are insane. Innovative ways always come out daily but you’ll be intrigued to read how Kawhi Leonard and Steph Curry use strobe lights to train.
Most of us are sensitive to light and thus, sleep in the dark. Even while driving, the glare will annoy you and headlights also cause some damage. Those with epilepsy must feel it in the worst of ways. Strobe lights have been linked to headaches and seizures so to hear that Kawhi Leonard and Steph Curry are using that to train is even more interesting.
The two NBA stars are using a method that Michael Jordan pioneered back in his Bulls days. The flashing of the cameras were messing up his form and he really wasn’t able to shoot. Think about your phone’s camera and how bright that flash can literally knock you out.
And yet the obvious corollary — that it affected Jordan, and that he’d adjust — has been a secret until now. Also a secret, for a whole different set of reasons, is that the fix he devised has untold neurological performance benefits that touched off a new area of scientific study, benefiting everyone from modern soldiers to Stephen Curry and Kawhi Leonard.
What better candidates than these two to potential give this a green light for other stars? It is worth noting that Phil Jackson hated the strobe lights.
What Tim Grover did, in fact, was to call a local DJ in Chicago and set up his strobes in the corners of the practice gym where Grover worked out Jordan, Juwan Howard, Kendall Gill, Michael Finley and other Chicago-based NBA guys, who were all sworn to secrecy. Traditional shooting drills were now occasionally paired with strobe lights. At the flip of a switch, Grover lit that place up like a dance floor.
This is an idea that’s been waiting to be formally announced.
Dr. Alan Reichow, at an earlier job, helped develop the glasses Grover bought for Jordan; Reichow later became the global research director of Nike SPARQ Sensory Performance and Vision. Grover eventually found him, and the two became fast allies in getting new and better goggles for Grover’s players. In the late 1990s, Grover received Reichow’s prototypes, gave them to his players and relayed feedback to the Nike headquarters in Oregon.
Curry’s improvement has been severely noticed.
Curry wore the goggles during his workouts over the course of the season and kept his neuromuscular efficiency at full tilt. He turned defenders into statues and blew the lid off of efficiency norms. He notched the first 50/40/90 shooting season while scoring at least 30 points per game, becoming the first unanimous MVP in NBA history.
Leonard was skeptical about the goggles but gave it shot and described how it felt to use them.
So Leonard got his hands on stroboscopic goggles. Exactly how that happened remains a bit of a mystery. Terrified that word of the goggles will get out, one Spurs staffer after another refused to talk. What we do know is that for four days, Leonard wore these high-tech glasses at the gym — picture a sleeker version of Horace Grant’s goggles — during his traditional dribbling, passing and shooting drills. Unlike Nike Vapor Strobes, this particular set of eyewear, the MJ Impulse model, is marketed toward elite military officers for combat training.
“It’s like the ball is moving in slow motion,” Leonard told ESPN.com.
“They affect your perception, which will make you focus more on feel,” Leonard says of the stroboscopic glasses before, characteristically for a Spur, downplaying the importance. “I used them like once or twice. … Just being able to handle the ball in the games is where you get most of your confidence as far as that goes.”
I know what you’re thinking, “That’s it? Does it prove that it helped him?” Have you seen how his defense is through the roof this season? He might not revisit them but they perhaps were able to help adjust his focus on the court.
Will you attempt to try a pair of these bad boys to help your game out?