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November 10, 2024   |   Tagged Skills,

How to elevate basketball performance

Basketball performance athletes compete

Performing our best on and off the basketball court when the stakes are high is a key habit to cultivate. Performing well consistently becomes a habit through specific skills and daily disciplines. Many people mistakenly think a person has limited control over their performance but it's not so. Elevating performance requires discipline and intentionality like all worthy life endeavors. By creating habits that increase your performance, you can become a more confident, stronger, and consistent basketball player and student-athlete.

What is performance?
Performance means accomplishment, completion, or execution of a particular action, deed, or procedure. Performance results in a person or community’s competence or achievement.

How do we judge performance?
By what measurement, criteria, or standards would we determine a performance to be successful? One of the biggest struggles in athletics is navigating the disconnect between how a student-athlete perceives his or her performance to be, as well as how a parent perceives their child's performance, compared with how coaches/professionals perceive the performance. Misalignment between these three creates frustration and confusion for all.

Key Terms:
Tactical Performance
measures how effective a student-athlete is at the strategy of the sport: how reliable, consistent, and mechanically accurate they are in the execution of the task.

Adaptive Performance measures how innovative and flexible, creative and inventive the student-athlete is during a performance. How well can they read and react to the opposition?

Consistent Habits of Great Performance:

Skill Mastery--- Skills are solidified in muscle memory, therefore all mental attention can move to adaptive performance once enough muscle memory is developed. Too often, players have deficits in the tactical aspects of their skills (not enough muscle memory) which render their brains busy and overly focused on the execution of these skills, in effect shutting off their adaptive performance. For example, a player may struggle dribbling with their non-dominant hand. In practice this may not stand out clearly but in a game it will be highly exposed under the pressure applied by good defenders.

Mental toughness--- mental toughness is found in the running inner dialogue student athletes have in their mind. How tough they talk to themselves—“Confidence”, “Love and serve the game and others”, “I'm ready” versus fearful or severe language such as “I hope I make this shot”, or “I keep making mistakes!”

Calm under pressure—the higher the pressure, the more performance can be negatively impacted. Pressure exposes skillsets and mental toughness. In the big moments of life when pressure is very high, great performers have learned to excel under pressure through being calm and focused, serving the best interest of the team, and diminishing all negative effects.

Habits of success—stats don’t lie. You are what you repeatedly do. Shooting is mathematical and not based on chance. The hard reality is that most people have not put the time into shooting consistency. Performance doesn’t improve shooting it reveals shooting. If you can go out each morning under a pressured situation and hit 8 out of 10 free throws, then you know you should be able to hit 8 out of 10 free throws in the game. A key aspect is practicing under pressure. What are you doing to increase the stakes when you are practicing. For example, if you miss you owe two wind sprints or 10 burpies. Having an unpleasant consequence can raise the stakes for the shot to game like scenarios.

How to Elevate Basketball Performance

To play basketball to the best of your ability requires discipline mentally, emotionally, physically, and spiritually.

Physical is the most obvious. A strong muscle is a fast muscle. One of the most important tasks for basketball is to build strong, quick, fast muscles and great skill execution. Ask yourself, “What am I doing daily to improve my strength and skill?” Athletes between the ages of 8-11 should focus on specific skill set training to improve the strength of their muscles. This is the best age to improve athletic performance.

According to researchers, athleticism is best developed through participating in multiple sports and disciplines through the ages of 11-15 years. The best combination of these sports are complementary such as basketball and yoga, swimming and table tennis, volleyball and foot speed agility, and on and on. This protects the body from overuse injuries and provides balance to the mind and body.

Physical well-being is crucial to optimal performance. Hydration, sleep, and nutrition all have highly researched and documented benefits.

Next is mental excellence on the basketball court. You need the mental toughness to work on your weaknesses and be objective about your skill set. You also need quiet, unshakable confidence that allows you to move through the pain and success of basketball without discouragement or burnout.

Third is emotional excellence. Emotions require discernment. Sometimes you don’t feel like working out. Sometimes you "feel" the coach doesn’t like you or you don’t like the coach. These feelings can interrupt your success. Wisdom comes from understanding feelings give us important messages, but they are not a god. They have a voice but not THE voice. Not listening to your intuition is foolish as is becoming subservient to your emotional whims.

Finally, spiritual excellence is a component many people miss or bypass but often it can be the most important. Your soul or spirit is aligned with your heart- the wellspring of your energy and passion. The spiritual core is your missional purpose and the bedrock from which all actions and behaviors emerge. Faith is not merely what you say but more importantly how you live. What you believe and your inner faith and soul will be revealed in your daily words and habits. If a person needs a life transformation, it always happens at the heart level.

About NBC Basketball
Since 1971, NBC Basketball has been building stronger, wiser, and better athletes on and off the court. Getting better is a choice and a cornerstone philosophy at NBC Camps. NBC stands for Nothing Beats Commitment and the philosophy that our daily habits reveal our future. For more information about these transformational programs visit www.nbccamps.com.

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