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Certainly a hot button issue last March Madness now, wasn't it? I've spent the last few years researching the ways in which basketball coaches value - good, bad, or indifferent - emotional regulation as a psychological skill within their coaching practice. While some of the results have been surprising, for the most part, the coaches responses were what you'd expect: emotional regulation matters for a coach's performance. Emotional regulation in coaching is a multi-faceted

I listened to a segment by the great Kevin Eastman regarding the 10 concepts of great leaders, and "values" was one of them. He specified what he meant by "values" as that which you're willing to get fired over. It took me no time to think about my experience as a head coach for the semi-professional Men's basketball team in the Palestinian Basketball League, De La Salle. During that time, I was a young coach trying to establish myself and how I coached. One thing I knew f

In researching emotional regulation among basketball coaches, gratitude came up, over and over again, as a technique that coaches actively use to maintain control of their emotional state. We know from research, and from the findings of Positive Psychology, that the positive impacts of gratitude reach far and wide. So, if we're drinking the Kool-Aid on gratitude, how do we train it? Like many other mental skills, it can be trained actively, but we must shift the paradigm fro

I keep thinking: I wish someone told me this when I was growing up playing hoops. Like many young athletes, in love with their sport, I lived and died with each performance. I tied my self-esteem, my self-worth, to the results of my basketball games. If I played well I was riding a high, if I played poorly I would be brooding and upset for hours or more. I couldn't separate who I was as a person from what I chose to do. And then I met someone hugely influential to my thi

What is the most important play in any game? We often say “the next play.” Make a mistake, miss a shot, turn the ball over. As coaches we want our players to forget about such errors and immediately focus on the next play. Well-regarded mental skills coach Graham Betchart, who has worked with Aaron Gordon, Jaylen Brown, Ben Simmons and other NBA players talks about getting your “next play speed” under one second. While all of this is true, the reality is that the next play is

Stress. We all have it. Some deal with it better than others. Athletes and other performers are tasked with dealing with a variety of stressors to the best of their ability, throughout their competition or other performance. What are some ways you can manage stress? Ah, the age old question. I offer up 3 ways: Re-interpret Reframe Release Let’s break them down. Re-interpret stress For athletes, oftentimes your identity is tied to how you perform in your sport. Important