“I would tell players to relax and never think about what’s at stake. Just think about the basketball game. If you start to think about who is going to win the championship, you’ve lost your focus.” – Michael Jordan

Have you ever wonder about why it is that certain athletes seem to elevate their game or usually manage to stay composed and focused during moments of high intensity on the court; while others seem to fall to pieces?

Self- awareness and basketball mental toughness tend to be the defining factors that separate athletes into these two camps.

While some are naturally more self-aware, inclined and open to working on these facets of their own mental game, basketball athletes (at all levels and ages) can be taught to sharpen their senses over time. The whole process can be ushered along with the aid of a mental game coach.

The scope of sports psychology for basketball is vast and every athlete faces different challenges and obstacles on their path to achieving their own peak performance. Mental toughness can be derived by consistently and methodically working on both their physical game as well as their mental game.

One of the areas that tend to yield positive results for many athletes is learning how to prepare for competition by focusing on the process of execution while also diverting any thoughts away from their overall performance expectations or the outcome of the game.

By eliminating the negatives brought about from focusing on performance expectations and the end result many athletes begin to understand the unwanted effects of such thought patterns and actually start experiencing drops in their levels of anxiety, worry and number of mental distractions.

In order to break these naturally occurring but unwanted thought patterns athletes have several mental weapons at their disposal.

One such weapon in their arsenal is focusing on performance cues that help them to perform at their best level.

A performance cue can be any thought, feeling or image that helps the individual athlete in achieving their best execution and therefore performance. Some athletes may find that focusing on tactics elevates their game while others may find that focusing on their technique gets the job done for them.

Athletes that have an established pre-game routine, which is an excellent time to orient the mind to the processes and to focus on preparation, tend to squash any unwanted thoughts and find themselves primed physically and mental for the challenge they are about to face.

On the contrary, athletes that use their pre-game time eyeing up the competition enter a weaker mindset which they tend to take into the game with them afterwards.

By establishing achievable process goals athletes can nurture their mental game.

Process goals can be seen as either being a performance goal or a mental goal. Process goals are the goals that are based on a measurable task, such as the number of assists, turnovers or rebound percentage.

Mental goals take the form of goals that help the athlete to focus on one shot at a time or one play at a time by committing to a plan of visualizing their shots going in or the execution of each play before the start of the game.

Notice how neither type of goal is tied to the outcome.

Competing has to be fun in order to get the most out of an athlete and fun can usually be found when remaining focused and present in the moment.

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