Q&A with James Harden’s personal strength coach Paul Fabritz

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Wilkins: Now, let’s step into the lab. Last season, Harden showed why he is regarded as one of the game’s finest guards, by becoming the first player in league history to score over 2,000 points with 900 assists and 600 rebounds.

Which specific areas of his game was he seeking to improve upon this past summer, prior to the start of training camp in Houston?

Fabritz: Well, he started off the offseason in isolation. And basically just locked himself in the gym. Didn’t have any type of distractions. Didn’t even want to have a social life….he did whatever it took to clear his mind.

And I think that is where everything began to come into fruition for him, because he was locked in. In terms of what he was seeking to improve upon, he was more focused on improving his overall strength and conditioning, where he lost quite a bit of body fat. On the skill side, he just came back into the gym shooting the ball so well. He found a way to improve his shooting within isolation sets.

He comes in with these new moves every year. Like, a few years ago, it was a spin stepback that he got to every play. Last year, it was a side step. He adds a new layer to his game every single year, that makes him more and more impossible to guard….and practiced a lot working primarily off of ball screens, to get more comfortable playing within Mike D’Antoni‘s system in Houston

 

Wilkins: As Harden’s personal strength and conditioning coach, what were your goals in regards to helping him get primed and ready to go for the 2017-18 regular season?

Fabritz: For me, it was just making sure that his conditioning was at a high level this season. Like, he is playing 40-plus minutes a night, and his usage rate is so high. He has the ball in his hands at all times, and while Chris Paul helps him out a little bit with that, we did a lot of injury prevention stuff due to the way in which he typically plays. Because he is going into the lane quite a bit, and is getting fouled just about on every single play, as a result of looking to draw contact.

So, you have to really have a strong and robust body, to be able to consistently take that and stay healthy. We did a lot of stability and balance drills, to help him gain a better level of mobility and flexibility, which I think helps separate him from the rest of the competition because his range of stability is what allows him to be so good off his step-backs and Euro-steps, and finish plays even with the contact.

 

Wilkins: What was a typical day like for you and The Beard this past offseason?

Fabritz: He traveled around quite a bit. When he was in Los Angeles, he would work with me. On a typical day, he would usually come in to either train with us either in Anaheim, or I would just head into Los Angeles to meet with him depending on the given day. But he would come into get his strength and
conditioning. We tried to keep it real efficient, and cut everything off at an hour.

Then, he would get on the court directly after that and work with his skills trainer Irv Roland, who was going everywhere with him, which he also would keep relatively efficient. That would be for about an hour, and then he did something that he does not always do a lot of in the offseason…he played a lot of pickup
We would go and play pickup with a lot of NBA guys. There were even a few times in which he and Chris Paul were working out together. So, I’ve been at workouts where they were working out with one another, and pushing each other through strength side, followed by on-court skill work and partake summer games at UCLA to establish a level of chemistry with one another.

So, it’s a full day. You’re getting two hours of training, two hours of pickup games. And then afterwards, it’s straight recovery where he is getting messages and stretched out for another hour, then meeting with his chef, to get the right nutrients in his body. It’s a full-time job.

And people wonder what NBA players are doing when they’re not playing…they still have a nine-to-five

 

Wilkins: How much interaction do you have with the Rockets front office throughout the process? And if so, how does that happen?
Fabritz: I have a little bit of interaction with them. However, they place a lot of trust in James. Like normally, the teams of the younger players that we train are very involved in the process. Because a lot of times, some players might not have any idea in regards to what it takes to put together a productive offseason.
Those are the teams that I typically talk with every single week, just to let them know what we are doing, and that they showed up to workouts. The Rockets know that James is so tuned into the grind, that they don’t even need to check up on him everyday. The communication is more so between him and their staff, to let them know about what we are doing, and that he is doing well.
He works a lot with them too. There are times throughout the offseason, where he will go back in the summer to work out with the staff in Houston or just have the staff of coaches here with him.

So, it is a fluid process, whether he is working out with myself or Irv Roland, because he has fully earned their trust to the point where they don’t need to be concerned about him all the time