Good in practice, bad in games

I’ve been there.

You feel that you are ready. You have put yourself to work. Hours and hours in the gym putting shots, training with your friends, doing exercises.

Entire offseasons put into one specific skill and then bam. It does not translate to games.

You can’t translate to games. Somehow, when the time comes, you start to feel the nerves. Everything feels more vibrant, alive. Every move you make is slowed down in time, and every possible decision runs through your mind, making you doubt yourself second by second.

It happens on all levels. You see it in the NBA when players seem to get stuck despite claiming to work on X, Y, or Z. (Hey Dion, I’m looking at you, dude).

So what can you do about it? How do you become the guy (girl) who is at his BEST in gaming, the Timmy T of basketball? Let’s look at some things he can do to improve his performance.

1. Visualize. Visualize and visualize some more. Ideally, every moment and experience you’re going to have in a game feels like you’ve had it many times. When you step on the court, you’ve already imagined it a dozen times. When that ball is going to kick off, you have focused on the feelings of nervousness that you may have.

It’s felt like the ball feels when your hands are hyperactive and yet somehow unresponsive.

Have you imagined your first tray with the defense on your back. Have you imagined that first pass before shooting.

By doing this, you will lose a degree of that edginess or urgency you feel in games that is likely a factor in your “shaq-at-the-free-throw” type of play.

Interestingly, you don’t want to feel completely disconnected from the experience, as a little excitement is good, so if you get to the game and you’re so disconnected that you don’t even feel like you care about basketball, start getting excited. and be rowdy with your teammates like pro players do at the start of every NBA game.

2. focus and confidence. A major factor in fighting syndrome in games is overthinking every action you take and mentally tracking the results.

Am I having a bad game? Am I having a bad game? Where is my mom? What does my mom think? Oh shit, what’s my girl think? All my classmates hate me. Kyrie hates me (my worst nightmare).

That good neighbor who says he’s always there is gone, that’s how bad I am for this mistake.

And that is the problem. It’s a mistake. By overthinking every missed shot, every mistake, you guarantee that you will make more mistakes and miss more shots. In addition, you will be disconnected from the game and you will not focus as much on things like defense and increasing the energy of your team. Good run, negative nancy.

Instead, focus and trust. You know you’ve tried. You know it. You’ve seen your shot snap in practice many times, and you’ve seen yourself outperform your competition in games.

So trust your body. Now is not the time to analyze. It’s time to play. Just trust your body and focus only on making the right basketball decisions.

It sounds counter-intuitive: see the forest, not the trees. If you keep making the right decisions and don’t beat yourself up about the result, eventually that result will catch up.

So lose stress and relax.

3. Practice better. If you’re on a real team doing scrimmages, it’s less likely to apply, but it’s still important for anyone coaching on their own or playing for fun. You need to simulate what happens in games in practice.

You’ve probably heard this before, and if so, it’s because it’s true. You need to play at the “speed of the game”. In games you get tired; everything feels faster. Within a second you’re going around a screen, the ball is thrown at you, you realize you’re open, and you shoot before the window closes.

There’s no room here for “let’s take a break, grab a soda, and listen to the Weeknd.” Take the same shots in practice as you would in games, at the same speed, in the same conditions (tired as hell).

For one last quick tip, have an idea of ​​what you want your performance to be like. The feeling you want to have. You know when you do that and one and you feel like you’re on top of the world? Something like that.

Focus on that image and block out everything else.