How to Stay Focused During Games in Basketball

You are listening to the Sports Psychology podcast with master mental game coach Dr. Patrick Cohen. Learn proven mental game strategies to improve your sports performance. He's been helping athletes win for over 30 years. Here's your host, Dr. Cohen. To get distracted on the basketball court and have trouble regaining your focus, I am Dr. Patrick Cohen with Carolyn Lawley. We're going to talk about how you can get dialed in on the basketball court, especially after you've lost focus or you become distracted. You're listening to the Sports Psychology podcast. Carolyn, obviously focus is everything when it comes to sport performance. If you're not focused and your head's in the weeds, you're somewhere else, your head's off court or you're thinking about what you did before the game. For example, you're worried about what you're going to do after the game, homework assignments, etc. It's very, very difficult to play the game in the way you want to play. We call that a basic mental skill. Let's break it down and talk about how to ball players get distracted on the court. Yeah, absolutely. I think the number one thing to do here with focus is to identify some common distractions that you have as an athlete. For basketball athletes specifically, paying attention to what's going on in the crowd, especially during a timeout, you may see some athletes not focused on what coach is saying, but focused on the parents looking at your parents in the crowd, wondering what you're going to do after the game. If there's some pressure involved, worrying about the outcome instead of worried about what you're doing in the moment. So in the game of basketball, there's a lot of opportunities for distraction. Yeah, we can discuss two different types. One is you just not clicked in going into the game. You don't have your focus on. And then the second one is when you're in the game, as you said, there's a lot of opportunities for distractions going on around you, which we call external distractions, but also those internal distractions. Like is coach going to pull me now? Or am I going to still be a starter next game? Or where am I going to eat after the games? So there's both those external distractions and internal distractions as well. So if you're distracted on the court, and I'm sure you've been there from time to time, then how does that affect performance? Well, it's pulling you away from what you're doing in the moment. And that's whether you're on the court or whether you're on the bench, right? Because if you're on the bench, you need to stay focused and ready and prepare to be put in whenever coach pulls you. And if you're on the court, obviously you've got a job to do. So a lot of the times we talk about the first step in recognizing the distraction is the recognition part, right? You've got to understand what you're typically distracted by, whether that's an internal or external distraction, and then understand how to get back and refocus yourself on what you're doing. Are you getting the most out of your game? Learn proven mental strategies with our free sports psychology report. 10 costly mental game mistakes athletes make before competition. Visit Peaksports.com today. Okay, let's break it down. How do you have that awareness? I think it all starts with the awareness. As you said about what are my typical triggers as we call them? What are my typical distractions? So once you have those that list, let's say of typical distractions, then how do you get ball players to recognize that their really their mind is off court or it's not in the game? Yeah, and I think that that's something that you have to practice a little bit. Maybe it's not going to come natural. So you may utilize some self-talk in that moment and think, okay, I'm distracted. I'm thinking about what I'm going to do later. I need to refocus on what I'm doing now. I think one of the ways that we get players to recognize is to certainly lay out what all those triggers and distractions are. But the other thing I think is equally important is are they dialed in on their process, their process and their role for offense and what their cues are for offense. Do they know exactly what their role is in transition? Do they know exactly what their role is on defense? I think it's easier for ball players to recognize when they're off task when they know where their mind is supposed to be. So just a couple things on offense, couple things on transition, couple things on defense, then it's easier to recognize when they are off task. Absolutely. And going through that, the different task with basketball, offense, defense, transition during a free throw, those opportunities for some distraction and knowing what those are and what you should be doing so that you can refocus on those, what we refer to as his process goals. Let's get into that refocus. So the three hours we call it for refocusing really comes from Ken Ravisa and some of his work that he's done. It's a modified three hour, we can say. So what are the three hours and what would that look like? Let's say I'm looking at my parents in the stands. Let's go through that. Yeah. So the first one, what we were talking about awareness, recognize is the first star. So being able to understand and pull yourself out for a second, say, hey, I'm not focused on the task at hand. The second one is regroup. So the next step in that would be, okay, what am I going to do? A lot of the times I give my athletes a cue. So whether that be a physical or a visual cue, wiping your hands on your short, locking in on the scoreboard for a second to regain that focus and that last r, the third r is refocus, which is again, shifting the focus back to what you're doing, your process goal, whatever that is. Yeah, I think the refocus is the most important step out of all of them. Certainly once you become aware, you want to get refocused. And some of the things that we tell our players is, hey, let's focus on the next play, but you can get even more specific with them with that third r and that refocus. You can give yourself some self-talk, focus on hitting the next shot, focus on sprinting back on defense, being very specific with yourself and what you need to focus on. And that may be helpful, especially in the beginning as you're going through the three hours to give yourself some instructional self-talk and what you need to be refocused on. Great. So be aware of your top triggers and be ready to recognize those top triggers so that you can stop them and refocus on what's important on the core, what we call the three hours for refocusing. I've been talking with Carolyn Lolley, one of our mental performance coaches at Peak Performance Sports. If you want more information, jump over to PeaksPorts.com. Thank you for listening to the Sports Psychology podcast with Dr. Patrick Cohn. For more information about mental training, visit [email protected]. Your number one source for Sports Psychology and Mental Training.