Winning Pick-up Runs Is A Waste Of Time

Do you get angry when you lose a pick up run? Or do you notice other players going full-tilt angry when they lose? I'm here to tell you that solely focusing on winning those pick-up runs or practice games is a complete waste of time.

So, you won Wednesday night's 8 to 9pm pick-up run against a team composed of some decent players and some weak-links. Congrats bro, you the king. Man, that shite's a waste of time. Let me tell you why. Firstly, no one outside that gym gave a shit that you won. Secondly there were no refs, so that means that 90% of the players didn't give 100%. Thirdly, you probably only used your safe moves or moves you felt extremely comfortable with in order to "secure" your victory, along with most of the other players.

What does all that equate to? It means most likely you learned nothing playing that game. You didn't get any better from a skill point perspective. The only benefit probably was that you got some exercise and maybe felt a little better about yourself.

But where's your pride? Winning is everything!

Pride eh? I'm not advocating to not try your best. Winning is everything? No one ever said that about a pick-up game.

So what's your point?

Here's how you should play in a pick up game. Pick something you've been practicing and try it during your pick-up runs. Pick-up runs are for experimenting! Don't give a fuck what others say when you clank your new move, it's not about them. It's about you getting better. Obviously though, don't anger your whole team. It's a balance. Your focus though is to get better with whatever individual skill you care about at that moment. For example, I wanted to really work on my left side cross jab. So on some plays during my runs I would iso and work that move almost regardless of what the defense was giving me. Why didn't I care about what the defense was doing? I didn't care because I don't always have time during the week to practice my moves against actual people, so I can only take what I can get. Other plays during the run I'll relent and play how the team likes so as to continue to get invited to play :)

In summary, use your practice runs to get better, whether it be practicing v-cuts, cross jabs, in and outs etc., don't waste that opportunity to get better.