Isaiah Phillips
Isaiah and I were teammates on the boxing team at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. Two years later, once we had both stopped competing in college boxing, he set his sights on playing basketball overseas and asked me to prepare him — he knew I was in Kinesiology and already coaching.
Where We Started
An old ankle injury was still limiting him. When we began, he could not dunk.
What We Worked On
Feet and ankles first — rebuilding what the injury had taken and restoring load tolerance before anything heavier went on top of it.
Then conditioning, rebuilt from the ground up. What a boxer's engine needs and what a basketball player's needs are genuinely different, and his had to be re-tuned for repeated sprints, jumps and changes of direction across four quarters.
Once he was playing overseas, the work continued remotely: nutrition guidance and a peaking block built around his game schedule.
Where He Got To
Running and dunking again. He went on to play for the De La Salle Green Archers, whose Season 86 side won the 2023 UAAP men's basketball championship.
You Don't Have To Be An Athlete For This To Apply
The reason this case is worth reading is not the championship. It is the order of the work: find the thing that is actually limiting you, rebuild that first, and only then load the rest on top of it.
That is the same order I use with a sixty-year-old who wants to keep carrying their own groceries. The exercises differ. The thinking does not.
Tell Me What You're Working Towards
Come in, tell me where you are and what you want to be able to do, and we'll build backwards from there. No commitment beyond that.
