March 07, 2024 | Tagged Coaching,
How Dreams Can Improve Your Basketball Game
NBC Basketball Camps
Sports psychologists have found a major link between great basketball players and daydreaming. Those who have achieved the highest levels of success in their sport have a very high capacity for vivid daydreaming.
Here is what they found:
1. Visualization. Daydreaming for the great athletes consisted of specific vivid images of succeeding in pressure moments.
2. Silence and space. Great athletes created time to be alone and rest the mind. Their thoughts were peaceful, restful and carefree. Consider the word carefree. How would allowing yourself more of this type of thinking help you on the court?
3. Solidify what you learn. After practice or a game, daydreaming helps you move your experiences into long-term memory. "Your brain wants you to tune out other tasks so you can tune in to what you just learned," says Lila Davachi, an assistant professor in NYU's Department of Psychology and Center for Neural Science. Great athletes take time after games to daydream. They use this time to allow their brain to record sequences, patterns, and new understandings.
4. Hard work is tied to dreaming. The bigger the dream, the harder you are willing to work. If you find you are dreading the work involved to be great, take a look at your dream. Find out what is interrupting, weakening or hindering your dream. Dreams are the fuel to your willingness to work hard.
5. Value and respect your brain. It is more powerful than you can imagine. Take time to invest in your daydreaming. You know your dreaming is on the right track if it generates momentum to work hard, to follow through, to write down your goals, to become better. You know you are on the wrong track with your dreaming if your dreams cause you to live in a false place of delusion and fantasy. Dreaming without working is escapism. Dreaming which leads to action is transformation.
About NBC Basketball Camps
We want to train campers who love the game of basketball enough to work hard. If you want to make big changes in your game we want to work with you. NBC Basketball Camps offers summer camps, travel teams, year-round training, high school team camps, and college basketball prep camps. Find a program for you. Visit http://www.nbccamps.com/basket... or call 1-800-406-3926.