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As any good player should know, when it comes to being a good basketball player it’s important to focus on improving yourself both physically and mentally.
Focusing more on aspects such as being the best dunker or shooter has its benefits, but it’s the well-rounded players that see the most success on the court. Although you may not think it, mental training exercises are a key part of improving your game in basketball, primarily because they develop your mental toughness.
If you can’t tap into the right mindset going into a game, either because of thoughts that cloud your mind or distractions that take away your focus, that’s going to reflect heavily on the way that you play. That also isn’t to say that mental exercises alone can get you to become the best basketball player there is.
No matter how hard you visualize yourself throwing the ball into the net or jumping up and dunking if you don’t put in the work to make that a reality, it’s not going to happen. Again, the best players are the well-rounded ones that delve into becoming better both physically and mentally.
But if you can visualize yourself making every shot or jumping higher when you dunk, then this does make a significant difference when it comes to your performance.
So with the goal in mind of becoming a better player and incorporating mental training into our routine, let’s look at some of the best mental exercises to get you into the correct mindset and well on your way to improving your game and mental toughness.
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5 Best Mental Training Exercises For Basketball
The most popular mental exercise that will lead to amazing improvements in your game is to form a habit before playing that you perform every time.
1. Habitual Preparation
Habitual preparation is the routine that you consistently perform throughout the day before entering every game.
A pre-game routine can be seen throughout practically every basketball player that is competing at a professional level, such as Giannis Antetokounmpo who takes naps and performs the same pre-game warm-up before every one of his games.
To describe how the act of following a strict day-to-day routine works, it’s best if we look at Michael Phelps, the Olympic swimmer, as an example of someone who used habitual preparation successfully and had done so for many years.
His day consisted of the same cues, performing the same stretches, running the same pre-game laps, listening to the same song, and even envisioning himself carrying out the perfect race, all before every competition.
These steps were part of a routine that was carried out every time without fail, and winning the competition was simply an extension of the process that naturally came as the next step in the sequence.
Even looking at some of the flashier rituals such as Lebron James’s chalk toss or Stephen Curry’s tunnel shot, these are still the pieces of a routine that helps get these players into a flow state.
Building a Habit
Now, there is no perfect routine for everyone to use; learning how to properly get into this flow state will take time with plenty of trial and error of doing more of what works and getting rid of everything else.
Building a routine that suits you is important; maybe it’s performing a flashy ritual like the chalk toss or making 7 shots in a row before every game as a warm-up.
Ever tried to make 7 shots in a row?
Whatever it may be, use these following points as a general guide to creating habits:
• Choose a cue, something that instigates the habit to begin; this can be a preceding action, a certain time of day, a visual note that reminds you, or even an alarm that triggers the habit.
• Clearly define your routine in detail, and write it down somewhere so that you can refer to it later.
• Establish a reward that you receive upon the completion of the habit; this can optional, although it’s recommended to have a reward.
• Be as consistent as possible in following through with your habit exactly as you have established it.
To give an example:
At 3:45 PM I’m going to the basketball courts to practice my shot for 1 hour,
afterward, I’m going to watch videos for 10 minutes.
Now, something to keep in mind is that a majority of the decisions that we as human beings make simply on a day to day basis are habits that we have formed over time and have established in our lives.
As such it can be difficult to add new habits, so instead, ease your way into your habits, and slowly over time through repetition, they will cement themselves in your brain as neurological pathways that will work without you having to even think.
Also, there is a trade-off with creating such a schedule; you’ll become dependent on following the routine to play well, as missing a step or changing the sequence will likely throw you off your game by a lot.
However, the upside of being able to consistently get into the zone at will and play at a professional level more than makes up for this downside.
2. Visualization
Visualize the action before you do it
Visualization is one of the strongest mental exercises you can perform that will lead to amazing results, as it affects two very important aspects of your ability to play the game, those being your confidence and your accuracy.
This secret tool has been used by both professional athletes and Olympians for years and is still applied by trainers and coaches today.
Confidence
You might not realize it, but visualization is an exercise that will help you understand yourself and your game on a more fundamental level. When visualizing, you’re seeing yourself as you perform on the court, and you’re analyzing your mindset when shooting, getting rebounds, defending, or simply passing the ball.
The reason why you want to visualize yourself going through the motions is that you gain a much better perspective into the mindset you have at that given moment. This is especially important for basketball players that feel they’ve peaked in their game, and don’t know where they can continue to improve.
It’s a practice of measuring how confident you feel with each aspect of basketball and searching for areas of weakness that you can improve on. This does wonders when deciding what to focus on most during practice, whether it’s shooting the ball more or passing the ball while being guarded.
Something unique that researchers have found is that the brain basically cannot distinguish between performing an activity and vividly visualizing the activity. This means that visualizing yourself playing basketball can be just as effective as actually training on the courts.
The difference is that when visualizing you can imagine yourself at your best, making every shot and being an absolute powerhouse, which boosts your morale and confidence in preparation for when you play.
Accuracy
Want to increase your shooting percentage?
Harvard researchers have found that the act of visualizing a task in advance causes the person to carry it out with almost complete accuracy.
When you see yourself constantly making a shot, that has a very powerful effect on the mind and your performance on the court. Visualization has been a commonly used tool by both Olympic and professional athletes that compete at high levels.
However, when in a game, the last thing you want is to get caught up in your thoughts; thinking can take away your attention, and even cost you the game. Instead, further your visualization training off the courts until it becomes second nature.
You can use it to improve your shot or even become better at dunking, and once you have become comfortable with visualization, you can pair it in conjunction with your muscle memory to further develop your skills.
How To Visualize
To visualize, it’s as simple as imagining yourself playing basketball, whether it be shooting a basketball, dunking, defending, etc.
To make visualization easier, you can ask someone to record you while practicing or while in-game, and then look back at the footage to analyze yourself playing and use the video as a reference.
Photos can even be used; either one of you playing, or pictures with your face pasted on them.
3. Goal Setting
Goal setting is the action of defining specific goals you want to achieve and writing them down, which helps create clarity in the mind as to what to focus on specifically.
Goal setting is a great habit to build in general
This exercise is meant to be used alongside visualization, since the act of visualizing your goals, in specific visualizing them as completed, makes them much more meaningful to the mind and entices the brain to want to achieve those goals.
When you visualize your goals as having already been completed, you are in the moment of experiencing what you want to accomplish, and as such your emotions follow, making you feel happy, accomplished, fulfilled, etc.
Suddenly when you stop imagining and return to reality, your brain sees the disparities between what it currently has and what it could have, enticing it to go after the reality it wants to have.
Again, the brain cannot tell the difference between performing something and vividly imagining it, and as such, the difference is much more real to your brain than you may think.
By visualizing something specific, you essentially put your brain to work towards achieving that goal, whether it be to be able to shoot seven shots in a row, to learn how to dunk, or to even become the best player on the team.
The key lies in writing down your goals in detail, then going over them every day. This keeps you focused, and by reminding yourself of your specific goals, you begin to self-motivate yourself to continue improving.
You can also use the recollection of your goals to flood your mind with positive emotions, thereby allowing you to control how you feel when angry or tired, and keeping yourself in check.
Process-Setting
On other hand, focusing on your goals too much can become problematic as you treat them like the standard you must meet rather than something that provides direction. These issues can include:
- Brief enjoyment followed by long periods of disappointment.
- Measuring the wrong thing.
- Failing to continue growing once you complete a goal.
Goals are a guide, not the end. Your final aim is not to make seven shots in a row; it’s to become a better shooter. Goals are great for giving you direction but work well for little else, which is why you should instead focus on the process.
The process is the training that you put yourself through each day. Look at that system and ask yourself, “What is my trajectory if I continue?” A good process will bring you closer to becoming who you want to be, whereas a bad process pushes you farther away.
Remember, losers and winners have the same goal. The work you put in and the system you follow is what’ll make the difference.
4. Exercise
The discipline shapes you to be able to handle more discomfort
Although I’m sure you already workout to some degree as an athlete, the idea behind exercising as it relates to mental training is to force yourself to perform something you don’t want to do.
This is quite literally the pinnacle of improving your mental toughness, as the habitual nature of doing something that makes you feel uncomfortable, such as an intense training session, builds the muscle in your brain that tells you to withstand the fight or flight response.
This falls in line with taking cold showers, as they force you into a state of discomfort, and the daily tendency to take a shower makes them an easy habit to build.
Cold showers also reduce muscle soreness and increase circulation
To put it into perspective, this is essentially a type of brain training where you condition your own mind to withstand more discomfort, much how a Muay Thai fighter conditions the legs to become stronger.
You can also delay the gratification you allow yourself during the day until after you complete a task, such as preventing yourself from seeing a show until after you finish with your training.
There are various other techniques for strengthening your perseverance, but the important thing to keep in mind is to develop these different methods as a part of your routine. This will reduce the amount of willpower they take to complete, allowing you to conserve that energy for something else.
Someone well-experienced on the toughening of the mind, David Goggins, is a clear example of how doing what you don’t want to do can, as he describes, “callus the mind” in preparation for future events of discomfort.
This skill translates well into basketball as it toughens you to deal with problems on the court, such as feeling tired and agitated or playing against a tough team that has the lead.
Instead of giving up in those crucial moments, you persevere through the adversity, and it’s quite literally in those critical moments that you improve as a player.
5. Focus On What You Can Control
Focus on what you can immediately do
In truth, although there are many things you can do to improve your chances of winning a game, there will always be factors in a game that you simply cannot control.
This includes your opponents, the referee, and even the outcome of whether you make your shot.
Most players will choose to focus on and even worry about these matters over which they have no authority.
In the process of worrying, you detract from your focus and you may even frustrate yourself at the lack of control you have.
The reality is that you have as much control over the game as any other player.
Choose to instead focus on what you can control, and learn to play in the present moment, paying attention to what you’re doing now.
These are the moment to moment decisions that you have an immediate effect on.
It’s important to play in the present and focus on what’s happening now so that you can execute that play to the best of your ability.
By building this mentality, you shift your attention to what’s important, and in the process, your attitude and behavior changes to match your actions, thereby allowing you to be direct in your approach, instead of scatterbrained.
What to Focus on
When shooting, don’t preoccupy yourself with the shot from before or the upcoming shot; your only priority at this moment in time is to make this shot.
Now, you don’t have complete control over whether this shot goes in; if you did, you would never miss. Instead, focus on what you can do to improve your chances of making it.
This includes:
• Having the correct stance
• Identifying a target on the hoop
• Using your shot pocket
• Shooting with proper form
• Following through
By identifying the process in the current moment and analyzing each part, you begin to focus on the factors that can influence the outcome in your favor.
Regardless of whether you made the last shot, you make this shot, or you make the next, don’t dwell on the outcome, focus on the process.
Conclusion
These five mental toughness exercises can be combined with other aspects of your training, whether it be shooting drills or dribbling drills, to further the results you see from practicing.
Not all of them are necessary, but a few of them work well in conjunction with one another, and as previously mentioned they can be mixed with your regular training.
But hopefully, after reading about each of the exercises, you found at least one to incorporate into your routine to begin seeing major improvements in your game.
