Below is a excellent video for anyone who wants to accomplish something great. Whether you want to become an all-state basketball player, a 1000 point scorer for your school or even get an academic scholarship to college, the ideas that Arnold Schwarzenegger talks about in this video can be applied to your life.
The concepts are not difficult to understand… it is all in how they are applied that counts. Are you going to be the winner who takes control of their life or are you going to let life “happen to you”? Watch this video and decide how you are going to make your life outstanding!
Want someone to talk to about your plans for greatness?
Coach Wheeler can be hired via Coachup.com for one hour sessions either in person or via telephone or Skype (sign up for an in-person session and we will set up the telephone/skype option).
Or you can ask one of your team mates or friends to watch the video and then have a conversation with them about what each of you are going to do differently.
Don’t let someone else talk you out of implementing Arnold’s words of wisdom. The time you spent watching the video will have been wasted if you do nothing with it. Make it worthwhile. Make something happen!
Today I had the pleasure of hearing Dave Hopla, Basketball Shooting Expert, speak at the Pure Shot Basketball Camp in Jaffrey, NH. Special thanks to Dave & Nancy Springfield who run the camp and arranged the event. The event was also sponsored by Dennis Wright and if anyone has more background on the sponsor, please be sure to add it as a comment so we can all thank him as well.
One of the points that Dave Hopla made was that players who were serious about improving should be taking notes. I did not have my notebook with me but I wrote down everything I could remember soon after the event. There was a lot of great information and I’m hoping that by posting my notes, it will help reinforce some of the ideas presented by Dave AND anyone who can “fill in the blanks” will add a comment below so that we can all benefit as much as possible from Dave Hopla’s speech and amazing basketball shooting demonstration.
Here are my notes from the event (in no particular order)…
How Dave starts out…
– He warms up with rollers to get his muscles moving and loosened up. (He told me this prior to the speech when he was just warming up.)
– He goes through a “shooting progression” which involves shooting one handed from 3 spots (left, right & center) near the basket and then moving out. He then added his “guide hand” as he shot from further out.
Tips on your Basketball Shooting Technique:
(notice the alliteration or use of similar letters at the start of many words)
– Toe(s) toward Target
– Form an L with your Elbow
– Wrinkle at the Wrist
– Follow Thru – “put your hand in the basket”
“Words Matter” – Don’t call it a “foul shot”. Foul things stink.
“Only one shot matters… the one you are taking.” [The past is over and the future isn’t here yet. – DW]
Mindset 1st ! Get your head right before anything. “Good is the enemy of Great. Feel GREAT!”
Visualize what you want to happen. [Track your progress.]
Catch the basketball with your EYES and your HANDS.
Get a journal and take notes! Players who write down the good ideas they hear become better.
Play “Beat The Pro”. It starts with a “free shot” and the pro scores with every miss.
Dave mentioned a handout called the “Maravich Practice Drills” that someone gave him when he was young which helped him improve as a player. Here is a link to a YouTube video with 10 “Maravich Drills“. I don’t know if these are the drills that Dave was referring to but I am sure they will help you improve.
Practice your basketball shooting EVERY DAY. You don’t have to be perfect. You just have to be dedicated.
I spoke with Dave after the event and he said that he has a website but did not mention it because he has not been active with it recently. He also has a book that comes with a DVD (Amazon link).
– Below is a YouTube video featuring an interview about basketball shooting with Dave Hopla.
I welcome your feedback in the comments and please feel free to say what you got out of the event. When it comes to basketball shooting, Dave Hopla is a highly skilled individual and, personally, I found it facinating to see what it looks like when someone makes 98% of the shots that he takes. (He had someone keep track during the event and that was the actual % he made! Amazing!)
Confidence is critical to success both on the court and in life. Do you have the confidence to take the shot with the game tied as the closing seconds wind down? Can you step to the foul line and make your shots to win the game? Do you have enough confidence to ask out someone on a date? Can you try something new without knowing if you will succeed? It all boils down to one thing… Confidence.
After watching the video on this page featuring the Dena Evans story about her loss of basketball confidence when she was playing at Virginia, you will start to see some of the ways that a basketball player can undercut their own confidence as well as some ideas for building it back up.
There are 3 keys to Building Confidence, whether it is on the basketball court or in real life. They are:
Your Habits of thinking,
What you Focus on and
How you have Earned confidence.
How does your loss of basketball confidence start?
It would be nice to know where the basketball confidence went to in the first place. A loss of basketball confidence might start with a bad game. Maybe you were not feeling 100% or were coming back from an injury and did not perform at the level you expected. You might not even notice when it exactly started. Dena doesn’t go into much detail in her video. The important point in time is when you start to question your skills, your abilities and once that happens, it can be like a snowball rolling down a hill, gaining in size and momentum until it cannot be stopped… or can it?
Your confidence is built on the words you use in your head. Maybe a coach or a family member noticed your poor performance and gave you a “suggestion”. They probably were trying to be helpful but you translated that into something like, “I’m not good enough” and the snowball started rolling.
Each failure or non-success after that was noticed by your mind and added to the “evidence” that you are not good. Pretty soon, it was all that you could think about.
Where do the words in our head come from?
Most of the rules we have for ourselves, the beliefs we hold about the world, were all, at one time or another, presented to us by other people. It starts with your parents when you are a child and is built on by the friends you have growing up and into adulthood. Coaches can give us words or rules that we carry into life and apply not just on the basketball court. On top of this, there is the media … with advertisements and any number of “talking heads” telling us what is right or wrong and what type of car or perfume we need to purchase. All these words mold how we think and how we act. In many ways it is helpful since we are able to understand and interact with society, but in many ways it prevents us from become the best that we can become.
How do I overcome the beliefs holding me back?
The first step in taking back control of your mind and restoring your confidence is to notice the thoughts that are causing the problems. Every time you think, “I messed up” or “I’m not good enough”, ask yourself “How could I look at this differently?” Almost every situation can be seen from at least two different “angles” and once you start noticing your negative thoughts, you can decide that belief would be more empowering and would make you more confident in your basketball game.
For example, if you notice yourself thinking “I can’t believe I missed that shot. I am a lousy shooter”, you can step back and realize that even the best shooters miss and, assuming it is true, you have practiced that shot enough that it was a good shot to take and a miss is not the end of the world. Maybe you were even defended well on that shot. Don’t look for excuses but also be sure you are dealing with the reality of the situation. You don’t have to beat yourself up for every miss. If there is something to learn from an experience, take the lesson, apply it somehow and keep getting better.
Confidence is a habit.
As you start to notice your thoughts, positive and negative, you will probably find that you have to make an effort to correct your negative thoughts, at least in the beginning. This is part of training your brain to work for you. Eventually, more positive thoughts will fill your mind and fewer negative thoughts will find their way in. Your confidence will grow as you build the habit of controlling your thoughts… but that is not “the end”.
What you Focus on Increases
Aside from “catching” negative thoughts, it is important to use your Focus, or attention, to build your confidence as well. Dena Evans talks about how after her sophomore season, she needed to write down 10 things she did well after every pickup game or workout. At first she struggled but eventually she was able to Focus on what was going right during a game which make it easier for her to write down her “10 Good Things” and start reviving her confidence in her basketball skills & abilities.
Note for Coaches:
If you are a coach and you see that your team lacks confidence, maybe you are focusing on the wrong thing. I am not suggesting that you avoid correcting mistakes. That’s an important part of learning and developing as a player but don’t forget to reinforce the good things that your team is doing, especially as they learn new skills. They might not recognize in the heat of a competitive game or scrimmage that they just successfully used the move you have been teaching them for the past three weeks. Applaud the successes and you will get more of them. Focus on good things and they will multiply. As the coach, how you deliver your feedback is a critical part of your player’s basketball confidence.
Thinking isn’t enough
After reading this article, maybe you have come to the conclusion that all you have to do is 1) Create the Habit of controlling your thoughts and 2) Focus on the good things. Those are two important elements but basketball confidence is not that simple. You don’t get confidence without EARNING it. What does this mean? It means that you work hard on your moves. It means you put in extra effort so you are in peak physical shape. If shooting is an important part of your game, it means that you have shot more shots than probably anyone else you know. You KNOW you are good because you have put in the effort, learned what you need to know and have built your basketball confidence based on results.
You know that you can hit that shot with the seconds winding down because you have practiced it. You know that you can execute a spin move that leaves the defender looking stupid … because you have practiced it… and practiced it… and practiced it. You have earned the right to be confident … and now you know how to control your mind so that it is there when you need it.
I don’t have all the answers. I have some answers and I ask questions of some very smart and experienced people so that I can find out some clues to the answers, but I am a work-in-process and you should apply your own common sense before you try anything that I might suggest. (Or anything other people suggest.)
What’s so important about “building a winning mindset”?
If you have found this blog, I suspect that you already have an appreciation for the fact that winning starts in your head. Your mindset is made up of many components… values, beliefs, theories, hunches and much more (that I will explore on this blog). Having said that, we are usually our own worst enemy when it comes to achieving our goals, either in life or on the basketball court. Often we know what needs to be done but we don’t do it. Or we could figure out a solution if we would just recognize the problem.
Why is Coach Wheeler writing this blog?
Over the years, I have learned quite a bit about performance psychology and how the mind can be trained to improve your performance. As a basketball coach, I teach my players how they can control their mind to improve their skills as basketball players and, hopefully, they can apply those same lessons beyond the basketball court. If you are reading this blog, my hope is that you can use the basketball stories as examples and then apply the lessons to your own life as well.
Why are there questions before every paragraph?
I find that it makes the articles easier to read … and it helps me organize my thoughts. Does it bother you? Or does it make it easier for you to read the articles? Let me know in the comments section.
Do you have a question that you would like to ask… add that in the comment section too !
What if you have a question that you don’t want to make public? Use the “Contact Form” on my InviteOnlyBasketball.com site or on this site to send me a message.
Coach Wheeler can be hired via Coachup.com for one hour sessions either in person or via telephone or Skype (sign up for an in-person session and we will set up the telephone/skype option).
Let me start off by telling you…