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Basketball Mental Skills Article

Mental Prep = Success

“The right mindset and attitude give us opportunities to do the best we can and realize the potential that’s in every one of us.” Tom Brady

When you are preparing for a football game, you will gather and organize your equipment, make sure you have your uniform, helmet, shoulder pads, and other necessary accessories for the game.

While these components of preparing for the game are essential, it is also important to prepare mentally.

How to Prepare Mentally

Mental toughness is one of the key mental game skills all successful athletes possessed.

Mentally tough athletes don’t worry about things they cannot control. Instead, they focus their energy on the things they can control.

They focus their energy and attention on the things they can do.

They focus their effort on doing what they can every single day to improve their physical and mental skills.

Mentally tough athletes are flexible and are constantly adapting to change.

They know that fear of change is paralyzing and a significant threat to their success.

They look for change that is lurking just around the corner, and they form a plan of action should these changes occur.

Preoccupying yourself with issues outside of your control and uncertain thoughts is not a good use of your time and energy. If you focus there, eventually, your confidence in football will go down.

Effective Coping Strategies

The ability to cope with changes and adversities takes time and experience

There are football psychology strategies you can follow to develop your mental game skills, which in turn will help you cope better with changes and adversities.

Reframing is one strategy.

This strategy refers to changing the way you view events so that you may experience them in a positive way and find positive alternatives.

This often means asking what the opportunities are in any given situation.

In order to reframe, you need to develop an awareness of your negative assumptions and thought patterns and utilize strategies to shift these to more positive thoughts.

1. Observe your thoughts in action.
2. Develop self-awareness.
3. Understand where negative thoughts and behaviors come from.
4. Understand that most situations are impermanent and changeable.
5. Develop some go-to positive thoughts or strategies
6. Take a few deep breaths.
7. Use milder, more accurate wording.
8. Ask ‘what can I learn from this?’ or ‘what is the best way for me to accomplish this?’

Improving the way you respond to adversity can be challenging at times.

Remember when you embrace change, you can find the good in it and us it to your advantage to be successful.

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