Just like every other area of basketball, we believe that a coach must study mental toughness and have a well thought through plan to help players develop and improve their mental toughness.
There are hundreds and hundreds of definitions of mental toughness. Here is a place to start as mental toughness applies to basketball.
Mental toughness is the ability to control thoughts and actions and maintain a focus on what is truly important in a calm and poised way under competitive pressure.
It is important that your players know and can explain whatever you define mental toughness to be.
Here are some ideas for things you can do to improve the basketball mental toughness in the players in your program.
- Take time every basketball practice to rehearse different pressure situations that arise in games. Having a definite plan that players have practiced will help them focus on what to do under pressure and less on the pressure itself.
- Make it a point of emphasis that bad body language, moping, pouting, displays of disgust with officials, and other negative behaviors are training the players for failure. Correct them any time they occur in practice, games, or in the locker room.
- Be a role model of poise and self control. Players will feed off of you and draw confidence from your mental toughness.
- Use the fact that the subconscious mind does not know the difference between a real and an imagined experience. Work with your players on visualizing success and performing skills the correct way.
- Do not allow anyone in your program to accept or make excuses.
- Point out times in your game films or games you record on TV when a lack of poise and mental toughness by an individual cost a team a chance to win.
- Have some type of phrase you can use when a player makes a mistake to focus them back on mental toughness and what is happening next in the game. A simple phrase such as "Play through it!" can be your signal to them that we need to get on to the next play.
- Teach players when they make a mistake to recognize it, admit it, learn from it so that it doesn't happen again, and then forget it so that it doesn't affect any more plays.
Steve Siebold started as a world class tennis player and coach, so he understands mental toughness as it relates to athletic competition at a very high level. 177 Mental Toughness Secrets of the World Class is the result of his work in the fleld of coaching mental tougheness. His materials have been applied with much success by basketball coaches with winning programs.
Click on the link to read the first five chapters of each book at no expense.
177 Mental Toughness Secrets of the World Class has a lot of great information to help the reader grow in the area of mental toughness and each chapter has several resources to other great books, DVDs, websites, and action items to help in the quest for improving mental toughness. Click on the link above to read the first five chapters for free.
Coaching 177 Mental Toughness Secrets of the World Class is the companion to the first book. Click on the link above to read the first five chapters for free.
For more information about the mental toughness secrets contained in the books you can visit Steve's Mental Toughness Blog. Itis an audio and video blog with postings on various topics that relate to mental toughness and to his two books.
Click on the link to sign up for Steve's The Greatest Things Ever Said About Mental Toughness e-mail.
The Champions Interview e-mail Magazine by clicking here.
This is the best book for improving mental toughness that we have seen.
LIsten to our interview with Steve Siebold by clicking here:
Listen to our interview titled: Fierce vs. Furious by clicking here
Dr. Alan Goldberg has put together The Competitive Advantage web site. It has free mental training resources for several sports, including an article devoted to mental toughness for basketball. The site has several free resources for coaches, players, and parents. Dr. Goldberg was the sport psychology consultant to the 1999 NCAA Men’s Basketball National Champion University of Connecticut Huskies, and the 2000 men’s soccer NCAA champions.
Some other great FREE resource sections on the site are:
This site is a great source of mental toughness information!
Free Excerpts from other Mental Toughness Books
To read an excerpt from and reviews of each book, click on the title below. You will be taken to the Amazon.com website on a page with information about the book. Under the icon of the book, click on "seach inside this book" to see excerpts from the book. Clicking on the white arrows on the side of the excerpt will scroll to the next page.
Basketball Fundamentals: A Complete Mental Training Guide
by Jay Mikes
The Inner Game of Golf
by W. Timothy Gallwey. It has several applications to the mental approach for any sport.
We have a blog post with some thoughts on poise
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