In 2017, when Make Yourself was first created, the vision was to help Alaskans find personal, lifelong fulfillment in learning to stretch beyond their limits, embrace discomfort, and create positive change within themselves and the people around them.

Hard work, and thereby sweat, has always been and will continue to be the driver that facilitates this change.

Overtime, Make Yourself has grown into a two parted entity serving both basketball in Alaska and strength and conditioning in Anchorage.

The organization, though chiefly run by one person (Alysa Horn), is made up of a team of coaches and partners, an armada of sweat collectors, and has even grown into a physical space (The Sweat Lab) in Anchorage.

It’s a special community of people challenging and uplifting one another, growing and evolving together, and genuinely having a great time.

The Sweat Lab, Anchorage AK — *The Sweat Lab is located at 300 E 76th Ave in Anchorage, Alaska.*

The AKademy

One program that evolved in 2022 and merged these two facets of Make Yourself, is the AKademy. Designed to help young basketball players build confidence, athleticism, and skill, athletes alternate days of basketball skill development and sports performance strength and conditioning.

Because basketball is such a mentally and physically demanding sport, this combination sets the athlete up for the greatest amount of success.

On the court, we dial in:

Individual skills on the offensive and defensive end
Expand game IQ by covering team concepts and in game reads
Work intentionally on leadership and communication skills

In the weight-room, we:

Teach the athletes how to perform lifts, including Olympic lifts, properly, so that they are equipped to be able to train on their own for life
Train speed, agility, stamina, endurance, and work on improving reaction time
Test training variables such as vertical jump, mile time, muscular endurance, absolute strength, and power output
Give athletes an entire library of different movements to do that specifically relate to improving performance on the court, and that keeps training interesting
Improve jumping and landing mechanics, running mechanics, posterior chain, mobility, and core strength and endurance in order to bulletproof the body’s resilience to injury

Coaching, Accountability, and Love for the Process: A Winning Recipe

Coach Alysa Horn, who has been a basketball player development coach for the past 10 years, and is also a Certified Strength and Conditioning Specialist, is the curriculum designer for this program. She does not coach any teams, she is solely an additional resource from player’s normal coaches and teams, to help players improve their game.

This focus on development-only is very intentional, as it’s important for players to have a neutral, knowledgable party that they can go to for advice and development outside of their normal coach and team.

In conjunction with professional coaching, players get to work in groups with athletes from all over the city of Anchorage and that sometimes include guest apperances from players from all around the state! United by the one uncommon goal of being wanting and willing to put in extra work, the players get to experience healthy competition without the pressure of competing with one another for playing time.

We push hard to make workouts a constantly varying, challenging and fun experience, so that athletes learn to love hard work and the process of getting better.

We are not outcome focused. Because we focus so intensely on the process, the outcome ends up taking care of itself in very positive ways.

Elementary Age

There are also workouts for Elementary aged players! These workouts are a scaled down, age appropriate version of what the older kids do, but without the strength and conditioning in the weightroom.

Current Schedules

Fun fact, we have discounts for multiple athletes in a family. The second athlete to sign up gets a “Plus One” discount of 20%, and the third athlete and on gets a “Family Discount:” of 30%. Contact Coach Alysa here to access these discount codes.