“Ability may get you to the top, but it takes character to keep you there-mental, moral, and physical. “ John Wooten

John Wooden was great at keeping basketball mental toughness as part of his coaching routine.

So why is basketball mental toughness important?

In order to be a successful coach, player, or team all need to be united in their mental basketball game.

In this day and age many distractions revolve around social approval. Social approval is something a lot of people crave, strive for, and desire.

In the sports world it seems as if social approval is what makes you prominent.
Sometimes this aspiration for social approval can get out of control and start to affect your talent, games, mental-moral and every day physique.

It’s important when coaching, playing or participating on any basketball team that your focused on how to manage social approval.

So what exactly is social approval?

Social approval is the encouraging appraisal of an individual or group in a social context. For example, lets pretend you are a talented basketball player, you thrive at every practice, but you struggle with performance anxiety. You become concerned about what other people such as (parents, coaches, teammates, spectators) will think about your performance.

This type of performance anxiety is directly related to social approval and often times can affect your emotional composure. Sometimes in the professional leagues and even collegiate leagues there are specialists for who are educated and qualified to help alleviate this need for social approval and help regulate your emotional exposure.

The lack of emotional exposure it will leave you feeling vulnerable and exposed. A lot of athletes will feel embarrassed, mad, sad, or even become nervous and depressed due to emotional exposure.

How can you relax when your need for social approval is high?

Your performance directly dictates how the crowd will respond. We have some easy ways to help manage your mental basketball game.

First, learn to establish your winning feeling. Take yourself back to a game or performance where you felt that optimistic feeling. Now take the crowd away. Could this be a time you were playing street ball or at the gym? The pure hunger of the game is what got your adrenaline high and that mind-blowing feeling when you crossover, fake the center and swish it the hoop, and that was without a crowd cheering that made you feel this way. Go back to this feeling and eliminate what you think the crowd may be thinking of you.

Second, go back to basics and center yourself. Centering is extremely effective in improving your basketball mental toughness, because of the frequent pauses during the game. To center yourself you just need to stop and be aware of your body. Plant your feet, take deep breaths, close your eyes and maintain your attention in one spot.

And last but not least you can rely on another breathing technique, which is the 5-breath method. This technique is as easy as it sounds, you just need to calm your mind long enough to begin and take 5 deep breaths.

If you are a player or coach and unsure of you or your teams mental basketball toughness then you can download the free mental game assessment and get started on Improving your Mental Game in Basketball.