Mental Toughness

Life and sports are one in the same.  You can learn so much through sports about how to adjust, adapt and achieve high success that apply directly to life. Basic skills include communication, being competitive, working within a team, commitment, leadership, diligence, sacrifice and my favorite - mental toughness.  

To be mentally tough is much more valuable than being physically strong on the court. Anybody can be strong and muscle themselves around to achieve some success. Keep in mind, that as a player or coach someone will always be stronger, faster, taller etc. so you must find a way to overcome the adversity.

"You can be strong individually but you must develop mental toughness as a team to sustain long term success." 

-Brenita Jackson

How can one develop mental toughness?

Each and every work out should include disadvantage drills to create adversity such as 5 on 4 shell drill or 11 man break (constant 3 on 2) so that players can learn how to overcome adversity. In an individual setting, you should condition and weight train first then do skill work so you are fatigued and really focusing on fundamentals.  Conditioning and weight training themselves can create adversity especially when you get to that last set and once players over come these battles consistently they wll have more confidence and gain mental toughness.  

Each work out should be challenging mentally and physically and running a mile is a great test of mental toughness.  We all know that during that mile you hear negative thoughts that make you want to quit and give up. Once you train your body and mind to fight through something as basic as finishing the run, then you are ready for competition! If you can't compete with yourself to get better, hang it up trying to beat anyone else. 

If you train yourself to overcome the negative thoughts and push yourself beyond your limits, you will be successful!  That is the ultimate definition of mental toughness!

Defense

     DEFENSE!! Who thinks defense doesn't win championships? Everyone knows that saying "offense sale's tickets and puts people in the stands." Although that may be true and all but let's not forget that the game of basketball has allways been about buckets and if defense stops a team from getting buckets, how could a team win or how would that saying "offense sale's tickets and puts people in the stands " apply. If the score of a game was 115 - 116, one team got a defensive stop at some point to help their team have an opportunity to score one more point then the other team. As you can see, that's an example of a little defense probably at the right time of the game helping to win the game. 

      I hear people debating all the time about defense vs offense and which one they would rather have. Both sides of the ball definitely has it's benefits separately and to one another. I have to say I would choose DEFENSE everytime. Defense, when taught properly to players as far as their body position, hands and feet activity, eye coordination, IQ, and mentality about defense within your defensive philosophy is a beautiful thing to watch. When all those defensive skills are getting steals, rebounds, and other 50/50 balls to set up your offense to get easy transition buckets fueling your team's confidence on offense and igniting the crowd, how could you not love defense? Some of the greatest players to play the game, killed you on offense and then would stop their opponent from scoring by playing defense. 

     When you think about it, when you can stop the other team from scoring by playing good defense, and you score points on offense that's the true meaning of out scoring the other team. DEFENSE would be a great ground base to start a game plan incase you would ever have to wonder. Defense can pull you through ugly games when all else fells. What's your prospective on defense? Which side of of the ball are you for, offense or defense?