Trust Your Skills (Don't Think Too Much)

As you progress in your sport, you will receive instruction from many sources including your parents, coaches, other players, videos, and books. To learn a new skill (or correct one that is deficient), you need to understand the fundamental movements that comprise the skill and how these movements flow together in the proper order and timing. You will need to initially think about the skill and (to some extent) observe and analyze your execution of it.

When you are competing, however, it’s essential that you trust the skills that you have learned and practiced. As the Nike motto says, you need to “Just Do It!”

You cannot think about how you will execute a skill during a game. If you do so, you will obstruct the natural, unconscious mind-body connection that you’ve developed through hours of practice. Likewise, observing yourself (as if you were a third person watching yourself) will also hurt your ability to perform well.

Confidence and positive imagery is the key to your success. You must know that the ball will go in, and see it doing so in your mind’s eye. See yourself executing the skill with perfect form—without thinking through each step of it. Live in the moment of this image—picture your success.

For example, a broad or triple jumper in track needs to get his or her approach’s steps down properly to achieve the longest jump. The last step should ideally land immediately before the far edge of the takeoff board. Repeating a successful approach and takeoff over and over in practice will ingrain the mechanics of this skill within the jumper. Thinking about how this is done during a meet will only inhibit the “body’s” ability to do what it has been trained to do. Instead, the jumper needs to cast away any doubt about his or her footwork and envision a perfect approach, takeoff, jump, and final result.

When I played basketball in high school and college, I always approached the free throw line thinking that these “gimme” points were mine and envisioned the ball going through the hoop. Once I had begun the initial movement of my shooting motion, I would clear my mind, focus on the target, and let the hours of practice take over.

This process of letting your body take over is sometimes made easier by incorporating trigger movements at the beginning of the skill. In golf, this might be a simple “waggle” of the club’s head prior to beginning your backswing. When I shoot a basketball free throw, I bounce the basketball four times to engage my body and then exhale immediately prior to beginning the actual shooting motion.

Practice your skills to the point that you don’t need to think about how you perform them. Try out newly learned skills at lower levels of competition (e.g. pickup games with friends) and add them to your game-time repertoire as their execution becomes second nature.

Trust your skills and play your game with confidence knowing that your body will follow your mind’s eye to the result you see and desire.

Copyright 2009 Jeffrey S. Rhoads; All Rights Reserved

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