Apparently, it is possible to break your Twitter account.
Jeremy Hays experienced this recently with both his professional, @FadeawayFit, and private, @Hays_31, accounts. Three times. In one evening. The sheer number of mentions was overloading the system.
Hays, a basketball skills coach and trainer both locally and regionally through his company Fadeaway Fitness, started the #beatthetrainer movement on Twitter and Instagram, initially as a way to get some of his clients some extra work in whilst they wait out the stay at home orders issued in states like Ohio and West Virginia.
Oh, you thought he’d give you a break? Anyone who’s had the opportunity to work with Hays knows he pushes his clients to the max from the first minute they step on his court to the last. He knows unutilized and underutilized skills get rusty and regress through lack of use. He’s not about to let that happen.
So three weeks ago, Hays posted his first skills challenge video, a regiment of five right hand dribbles, six right hand side to side dribbles, the same from the left side, then five crossovers, five betweens, five behinds and closing it out with 10 pushups. Two videos later, he closed his posting with his time, challenging people to beat him and dropping the #beathetrainer hashtag to close.
Little did he know it was about to blow up and reach far beyond his client base.
“I never really started this to make it a challenge,” Hays admitted. “I figured I would put out a video for my clients to do at home once the quarantine started. It would give my clients around here and those that follow me on social media something to do. A few days later, O put out a second drill, and then a third. At that moment, I decided to give it a name and challenge people. That’s where the #beatthetrainer video challenges began.”
And So It Begins
Hays was happy to see of his clients, like St. Vincent 7th grader and West Virginia Thunder AAU member Alexis Bordas taking part. Bordas’ talents are well known locally, but soon, she wasn’t the only named player taking part.
The Western Pa. Bruins AAU girls basketball organization already followed Hays on Twitter when its Twitter page took notice of the challenge and shared it with their team members, all of whom jumped at the chance to try and beat Hays’ time.
First Love Christian Academy’s basketball Twitter account followed suit. A private school in nearby Washington, Pa., Hays’ is First Love’s athletic performance coach. So naturally his players had to get involved.
But it just kept growing and growing.
“I had no idea that it would really take off like it has,” Hays said. “The Western PA Bruins AAU Organization really follows me on Twitter and they really helped me start all this! One of their coaches shared my first #BeatTheTrainer challenge video to the athletes within the program and my phone started getting a bunch of Twitter notifications of these girls posting their videos and times and tagging me in them.”
From there, other bigger women’s basketball Twitter profiles started sharing the videos as well—many from outside the Valley. The West Virginia Thunder, Capital City Comets and the Colorado Basketball Club all got involved. As did Wisconsin Flight Elite.
Two of the top sophomores in the country in Kamy Peppler from Wisconsin and Katie Ambrose from Florida have been daily participants. Peppler, the No. 4 ranked player in the 2022 class in Wisconsin, has already verbaled to UW-Milwaukee. Ambrose, who moved from Missouri to Florida for her eighth-grade season, had a tryout with the U16 U.S. national team last summer and has a number of offers already.
Participants from All Over
Hays double checked Tuesday and, thus far, he’s been tagged in videos from approximately 41 states in the U.S., along with athletes in Mexico, Canada, Japan, Brazil and Spain.
“It’s all been pretty crazy the rata that these videos have taken off,” Hays said. “One specific night, I broke my Twitter three different times due to the volume of activity my accounts were receiving. It’s a pretty good problem to have.”
Hays has slowly increased the difficulties as the challenges have progressed, but not to the extent they are unperformable. He wants to make sure that all athletes can take part, not just the elite level players.
“If I do something that’s entirely too hard for someone, a beginner may really struggle and not even want to try,” Hays admitted. “This really was a fun way to keep kids moving and working on their basketball skill development in a positive, fun, competitive way.”
The main idea, whether they can beat the trainer or not, is to improve their skills and get better. That’s why Hays says this process has been super rewarding. He’s bringing the community closer together during a time of need when any ounce of positivity is treasured.
“It’s a pretty awesome feeling that I’m doing something that’s bigger than myself.”
Another stat Hays noticed is that the response and participation of the videos has been overwhelmingly female driven.
He credits that to the number of girls’ organizations promoting it in the beginning, but also in the girls’ willingness to stay dedicated to craft.
“I commend all of them. It really shows the mindset of these athletes who are supper dedicated in their craft that they will get better at any cost,” Hays said, noting that while his First Love players have all joined in, the breakdown has been roughly 80 percent boys to girls in participation.
Going Forward
Hays said in talking with Bordas, one of his top clients, that the #BeattheTrainer challenge can involve more than just ball handling.
He’s working on adding in shooting challenges, fitness challenges, anything to do with the developing basketball athlete. That will be critical at a time when players normally would be hitting the AAU tournament circuit hard, showcasing their skills for college coaches and scouts and getting it much-needed game-atmosphere work.
Hays is ready to get back to work in the gym, but given the success of these challenge videos, he plans to incorporate them going forward.
“I’m ready to hit the ground running with all my Fadeaway Fitness Training Sessions and Camps and Tournaments, but for now the #BeatTheTrainer video challenges have gone way better than expected,” he noted. “So, I would like to continue these videos year round”
He’s not the only one. Running through his list of recent followers to the Fadeway Fitness Twitter page, Hays has noticed around 400 college coaches not tuning in. That’s definitely upped the visibility quotient, not only for Fadeaway Fitness, but for the respective athletes participating.
