ASCA Podcast #77 - Nik Popovic

Nik has a Masters degree in Exercise Science from the Edith Cowan University. He has worked with professional basketball teams both nationally and internationally for a total of 23 years - 13 years in the Australian NBL (West Sydney Razorbacks, Sydney Kings, South Melbourne Dragons & Melbourne United) and 10 years in the Chinese CBA (Dongguan Leopards and Shenzhen Leopards). Nik has also been part of two Olympic campaigns (2004 Athens & 2008 Beijing) a World Cup Championship (Japan 2004), and a Commonwealth Games (Melbourne 2006) as the Performance Coach for the Australian Men’s National Basketball team. Over the last two decades, Nik has been a coach with 4x NBL Championship teams, a Commonwealth Games Gold winning team and the NSW ABA Sydney Comets Championship team as a player. Nik is an Accredited ASCA Level 3 S&C Coach and Accredited Elite Level Coach, within the Professional Coach Accreditation Scheme. He also is both an Accredited NSCA Certified Strength & Conditioning Coach and Registered Strength & Conditioning Coach with Emeritus Level – one of only 9 non-USA based coaches & one of only 4 Australians to hold the honour. Additionally, he is an ASCA Accredited Level 1 Tactical Strength & Conditioning Coach. QUOTES “You are only as good, strong or skilled as what your mind allows you to be so retaining information, learning new strategies and skills, there is that cognitive approach that needs to happen and if you haven’t fully developed that, how are you going to get better?” “I’ve always believed in communicating as much as possible the importance of what we are doing to each and every person in the organization” “You’re not going to program a lot of jumps for a given athlete that jumps a lot in games… but you still have to have some type of RFD element in their strength & conditioning” “I feel that the strength & power work wakes the body up for whatever team or skill activity you are going to do” “There is no reason you can’t come in for 15-30 min to work on 3 different areas that will keep your body getting better that won’t detract from what you are going to do on the court, from a skills point of view” SHOWNOTES 1) Nik’s journey from working on computers to coaching basketball internationally 2) The 9-month preseason, nutrition, and other differences between coaching in Australia and China 3) Learning to learn and an athlete’s cognitive development for their success in sport 4) How increases in available data and player involvement have changed in the NBL and CBA 5) The importance of developing movement in different planes of motion for basketball 6) Individualising jump programming in basketball and coaching correct landing mechanics 7) Nik’s favoured assessments to use in basketball 8) Fitting in S&C sessions around a professional basketball schedule PEOPLE MENTIONED Paul Batman Julian Jones Denise Jennings Stuart Cormack Brian Goorjian David Stiff