Mental Toughness In Basketball

A question from Coach Michael:

Q:  How Do I Make My Team More Mentally Tough?

A:  This is a broad question – and an important one, as mental toughness is a critical component to team success and personal growth.  I’ll try to give a few ideas on building mental toughness into your team.

• Define Mental Toughness To Your Players.  Constantly. Sounds simple, but understanding mental toughness is something that many young players and inexperienced coaches struggle with.   Very often, manufactured stoicism (acting tough) or, worse yet, bullying behavior, is mistaken for mental toughness.  It is important to clearly communicate what mental toughness is  to your players.  Here are some qualities that I would say describe a mentally tough player:
  • Rebounding from mistakes immediately.  Here’s a classic example of a player failing to rebound from mistakes – and of how is COSTS the team big-time:
    1. The player hits his head with his fists whenever he makes a mistake.
    2. I’m yelling at him to get over it, go down the floor, and play defense.
    3. He’s giving me a dissertation on why he made the mistake
    4. His man ends up dunking on us on the other end
    5. He bangs his fists on his head and starts to explain why he didn’t get back on defense.
    6. Meanwhile, our point guards fires a pass off his face
  • Understanding the big picture – what is important (and cutting out what is not important) - I once had a player who was very talented but was so easily distracted from the big picture that he regularly hurt the team.  In one game, he started jawing with the referees.   The opponent got a steal and was on the way to a breakaway layup – my player caught him from behind, blocked the layup, then proceeded to SLAM his hand against the backboard to show how ‘tough’ he was.  He got a technical foul so I sat him down and talked to him about priorities.  When I thought he had calmed down, I put him back in the game – and he proceeded to do the EXACT same thing on another breakaway layup!  He was teed up again – we finished the game with 4 players and lost by 3 points.  A mentally tough player would have done what was important – block the shot – and cut out everything else (slamming the glass, getting into a mano y mano with the ref and with me).
  • Having a high degree of self-confidence
  • Performing under pressure
  • Consistently embodying these qualities
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• Get your team in the best physical condition possible. – “Fatigue makes cowards of us all”.  “The mind and the body are interconnected”.  No matter what cliche you use to describe this concept, the bottom line is this:  If your players aren’t in top physical condition, they won’t be mentally tough as basketball players.    I can’t count how many times I’ve heard coaches say “I don’t know how good we’re going to be, but I know one thing:  We’re going to be the best conditioned team in our league”.  Coaches make this statement because they know how important conditioning is.  But for all the coaches that SAY it, only one team in any league DOES it.   Challenge yourself and your players to actually be that team.

• Model Mental toughness to your players. Exude the qualities above consistently to your players and team.  They say that a team is a reflection of it’s coach.  That statement is as true with regard to mental toughness as any other area of the game.

• Actively encourage visualizing success. It’s up to you to develop your rapport and communication with your players in such a way that they will receive this message.   Some players – actually several players – will respond to this message skeptically (i.e. they’ll think you’re corny) if it isn’t communicated effectively.   Still, when players can visualize success, they develop increased certainty in what they are doing, and eventually they get better results.  Perception shapes reality.
  • Here’s an interesting exercise.  I’ve never tried to explain it in written form before, but I’ll give it a shot.
    • Stand up, raise your right arm and extend your index finger so that you are pointing straight ahead.
    • Without moving or shifting your feet, move your arm clockwise as far as you can
    • Remember where you were pointing when you stopped (i.e. to your right, behind you, etc.)
    • Now, put your arms down, continue standing, close your eyes, concentrate,  and visualize yourself completing the same exercise…but visualize turning 270 degrees
    • Keep your eyes closed, concentrate, and repeat the process but visualize turning all the way around so that you are again pointing straight forward.
    • Now open your eyes, raise your right arm, extend your index finger and move your arm clockwise as far as you can
  • Statistically – people that try this turn an average of 25% further AFTER they go through the visualization exercise.

  
  

• Create pressure situations in practice - work pressure situations into your practices by having winners and losers as often as possible (competing), implementing pressure free throws, practicing time and score situations, and anything else you can think of.    Exposing your players to pressure situations, and giving them opportunities to experience success at them, increases the likelihood that they’ll succeed in pressure-packed game situations. 
  

Filed Under: Basketball Coaching Tips

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