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In mental skills training we talk a lot about pre-performance routines. And it's for good reason: routines put in an athlete in a consistent state of mind by creating a "sequence of task relevant thoughts and actions" (Moran, 1996), A routine allows an athlete to keep consistency in the turbulent and ever-changing world of sport. There are many factors that change regarding your performance: location, venue, weather, time of day, opponent - just to name a few. By maintain

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

How do you show up daily? #sixwordsportpsych "80% of life is showing up," said Woody Allen. Supposedly. Wherever the quote came from, as a society we value the day in and day out actions of those that show up. This, to me, speaks to Jacob Riis and the value of the little successes en route to a greater goal: " Look at a stone cutter hammering away at his rock, perhaps a hundred times without as much as a crack showing in it. Yet at the hundred-and-first blow it will spli

This isn't about Sport Psychology. Nor is it really a mental skill. This is truly a way to conceptualize your own free will and take hold of the choices and actions you live by. Think about a chessboard. There are 64 squares on the board. Think about these squares as the objective facts of your life: where you live, how old you are, how tall you are, that you live in a world with other people in it, that the moon exists (shout to Ali G). Sure, we can argue about what is

We all struggle at times. Confusion can supersede confidence. Basketball is a free-flowing game with a ton of information to absorb, internalize and execute on. For instance, your coach put forth a game plan with requirements in the full-court and the half-court, you are toggling between multiple defenses, you need to know where multiple players may be in a given set, and you have to be able to zero in on the rim when you have an open shot with a player closing out at you. H