“Long-term success is a direct result of what you achieve every day. Goals provide your daily routine” Rick Pitino

In most sports, athletes spend more time in thinking than they do playing. This tendency can wreak havoc on an athlete’s mental game after they make a mistake.

Many athletes beat themselves up, get down on themselves, and lose confidence.

What is needed is a mental recovery routine – a systematic process to help “let it go” after a mistake and keep their head in the game.

Creating a Recovery Routine

Athletes have to be resilient, let go of mistakes and be mentally tough. This, however, is easier said than done.

That is why it is important to implement a basketball mental game strategy. With practice, you will be able to brush off mistakes and keep your head in the game.

Mental Recovery routines can increase your control over your performance by enabling you to prepare every area that impacts your sport directly. Those areas can include your equipment, your body, and your mind.

Mental Recovery routines allow you to make your preparation more predictable by knowing they are systematically covering every area that will influence performance.

You can plan for every eventuality that could arise during a competition. Eventually, you will be better able to stay focused and relaxed before and during the competition.

How to Create a Recovery Routine

Your mistake ritual should include three things:
1. Change your focus away from the mistake
2. Physically and mentally calm you down
3. Neutralize any negative self-talk

Focus switch. After the play is over-focus on how things can be improved. This should be quick, factual, and focused on what you can control.
Ask yourself these questions:
 What went wrong? Stick to the facts and focus on things you can control.
 Can I fix it now or does it need to wait until later? Some things can be changed during competition while others need to wait until practice.
 If I can fix it now, what adjustment do I need to make? Answers to this question should be short, simple, and doable in the time allowed.

Calm Yourself. This is a crucial transition.

 Take a deep breath. This taps into the body’s nervous system to shift from stressed to engage.
 Tense and release muscles. This will help you to release muscle tension that may have caused the stress. Excess muscle tension can inhibit performance and cause further mistakes, so it is best to release it now.
 Now that you have dealt with the mistake and reset your body and mind you are now ready and able to focus in the moment.

Control your mind. Finally, you can use positive trigger words or movements to get your mind and body in sync.
 Use positive self-talk strategy to get locked in on the game. Sports psychology for basketball shows that positive self-talk can lower your stress and improve your mental game.

These above steps can quickly be done before, during and after practice.

The point is that you need to address the mistakes and get focused on the next play.

*Download the free mental game assessment and get started on Improving your Mental Game in Basketball.