Chapter 407 - Training for the Movie 1

The other day Jake was training even more willingly and had also returned to running training for marathons and also for the 10,000 meters sport, as he was in his best physical condition he trained as well as before traveling to Tokyo.

If Jake had not told Coach Davis that he had not trained since the marathon, Coach David would have thought that Jake had trained while in Miami, after all, Jake went almost two weeks without training and should have performed poorly.

That way he could understand why Jake wanted to increase the intensity of his training and why Jake didn't mind trying to train when he was in Miami, he knew it wouldn't make much difference and so he didn't even try.

In the training of the Tar Heels team Jake also tried harder than in other training and this encouraged his teammates to train more, Jamison and Williams even played well in the last game, but Carter failed to perform well and hindered the team.

This left Coach Guthridge more relaxed because he realized that the players were becoming inattentive in the games, he was also happy to see that he could count on Jake again and would have no problems until the end of the season.

Even though Tar Heels fans and the media had already forgotten that Jake had not participated in a game, the companies that negotiated to sponsor him had not forgotten, with the Lakers' team David Falk had already closed a verbal agreement.

The Lakers were also close to closing the deal with the Los Angeles Clippers team, Nike had no longer responded to David Falk's request for a better contract, but Adidas was still negotiating and was close to agreeing with Jake's requests.

This made Jake happier with Adidas, he remembered that many times players had career crises and needed the support of sponsors at that moment to be able to recover more easily.

This time Jake had not participated in just one game in which his team had won and yet several companies gave up on having an agreement with him, only the companies David had contacted before they continued with the verbal agreement.

If the Tar Heels team won the ACC tournament and the NCAA tournament Jake was sure that these companies would try again for a contract, at that moment Jake would ask for a contract with a much higher value to accept those companies that had given up.

Jake knew he had the skills and when he arrived in the NBA, the companies that trusted him and bet on him would have a lot of return in the few years of the contract, and Jake didn't need the money and just wanted to be recognized for his work as a professional player.

While Jake thought about concentrating fully on training his racing and basketball team, something he had forgotten came back to take him by surprise, one of the members of the film he was going to participate in a few months had come to the university.

Because of university and also the games with the Tar Heels team that basketball season Jake had to join the film crew for The Matrix a few weeks later, and because of that and because his character had many martial arts scenes that required training to make the film's directors the Wachowskis asked to send someone to teach him martial arts while he was at university.

Jake had naturally accepted it because the Wachowskis were already making an exception by accepting that he later joined with the other actors on the film crew, so fight choreographer Yuen Woo-ping was sent to train with Jake.

Jake knew many films that Yuen Woo-ping participated in, after all, Jake was a fan of many martial arts films, but Jake didn't know exactly what he would learn, he knew that it was not any real martial arts but only to fight in the filming.

This did not mean it was easier to learn even if it wasn't an original martial art made for self-defense, then if Jake spoke to Yuen Woo-ping a little he learned that it would be more difficult than he thought because he would have to train with cables wires and he would have to do stunts in the air with safety equipment.

Talking to Yuen Woo-ping, Jake learned that many actors ended up getting hurt when doing training in both fight training and cable acrobatics, Jake was confident that his body was much stronger than normal actors, but he still would be careful.

Because of that, Jake would have to stop doing running training again because he couldn't stop going to classes and neither could go to training with the basketball team, as they didn't have the necessary equipment to do the stunts and training in Corporal Jake would learn all the technique and fighting movements before.

Later, when he could leave the university, they would train what Jake had learned in the cables and learn the necessary stunts, as Jake would be the one who needed to fight more in the film, his training would have to be more intense.

The other actors had already been trained by Yuen Woo-ping and so he was worried about what Jake's training would be like, it was usually supposed to be easier because Jake was an athlete, but Jake was too tall and that could make it difficult for him to learn the skills techniques.

After all, Jake was 2.01 m and was 15 cm taller than Keanu Reeves, in addition, Jake with 19 years old had a body with many muscles and even if he was not exaggerated it could affect his agility and balance.

The other actors have been through martial arts training for more than 3 months with him and worked hard, but he would have less time to train with Jake because he still had to play basketball games during training.

In the early days, he would just teach Jake some martial arts moves, so he could learn the moves that would be used in the fights, the moves were real martial arts even if the fights were choreographed.

So after a day of training with Jake, Yuen Woo-ping totally changed his mind and started to think that training with Jake would be much easier than he thought, Jake also concentrated and devoted himself a lot to learn the movements as well as the other actors.

But Jake learned the movements much more easily than the others, in a few hours he could do almost the same thing as Yuen Woo-ping who was teaching him and with the same agility as him.

This left Yuen Woo-ping pleasantly surprised and so he managed to teach Jake even more things from day one, on the second day of training Jake continued to learn quickly, Yuen Woo-ping realized that this way Jake would take less than 2 months to learn everything that the other actors learned over 3 months.

Jake also enjoyed learning martial arts with Yuen Woo-ping and was excited about the film, but they had to stop training the other day because the Tar Heels team's next game had arrived.

Jake had also put a lot of effort into training with the basketball team for this game, his teammates were also dedicated and were more confident for this game.

This would be another game at home at the Dean Smith Center which gave a great advantage and confidence to the players of the Tar Heels team, the opponent of that game was the Wake Forest team which, even though it was not doing so well in the season, was a difficult opponent for the Tar Heels team.

The media spoke again before the game as Team Wake Forest had been the last team that managed to defeat Team Tar Heels last season if Team Wake Forest won that game the media would be very excited about the reports they could do.

Of course, Coach Guthridge and not even the players on the Tar Heels team wanted to lose this game, besides Jake and Jamison Coach Guthridge was also one of the most praised, at the beginning of the season nobody believed he was able to replace Coach Dean Smith with the same quality.

But in his first season as head coach, the Tar Heels team had not lost a game and they were the favorites to win the ACC tournament and the NCAA tournament again.

"Welcome to everyone who came to follow this game of the basketball season at the ACC conference, today the Tar Heels team will play against the Wake Forest team."

"The Tar Heels team has been getting better and better with an incredible streak of victories for over 1 year without losing a game, Jake and Jamison have been playing very well this season too and they are the favorites to win again today."

"But the Wake Forest team came to win in this game, they are the last team that defeated the Tar Heels team before starting this sequence of victories and they want to win today again."

"It's true, the Tar Heels team is the favorite to win that game today, but if the players on the Tar Heels team perform as badly as they did in the last game it will be difficult for them to win again depending on Jake."

Just as commentators said everyone's concern was the performance of the Tar Heels team players, but Coach Guthridge was confident that the players would perform well because they trained hard in the past few days.

Shammond Williams, who was playing well in the last few games, was sent to defend against Tony Rutland, Jake was defending against Robert O'Kelley, so the two main players of the Wake Forest team on the three-point line would be scored.

Right at the beginning of the game, Jake took the Tar Heels team to press on the attack, in the last game he had already seen that they didn't lose because they made a very good 1st half and the opposing team took a long time to recover and so Jake managed to guarantee the victory for the Tar Heels team.