This basketball season is soon coming to a close. This is a great time for reflection and self assessment. Whether you led your team to a tournament championship or found yourself riding the pine with a losing season you are the only person that can hold yourself accountable for your performance of lack thereof.
1. Be Honest with yourself.
What does it mean to be accountable to yourself? When talking about your skills and awareness on the basketball court you MUST have a critical view of your own performance. Did you have a problem committing turnovers? Or maybe your shooting percentage wasn’t what you hoped or expected it to be.
When having the conversation with yourself about what went well and what could be better it is vital that you do not sugar coat it; that you use the season that you are coming off of as tool to identify the areas of your game that need immediate attention.
2. Don’t Procrastinate; Get Better At Something
If you look at players considered the best at any level of play from high school through the pros you will see a common theme. Players that are considered the best are CONSTANTLY working on 1 or more aspects of their game. They understand that the off season isn’t for the players- it’s for the spectators. The time to get into basketball training for dribbling, shooting, running a fast break or applying pressure defense full court is NOW. Between now and November you have the opportunity to visualize the type of player you want to be and with that in mind you can put your head down and begin to grind out the bumps and smooth the edges of your game until you become the player you see yourself capable of being. Get to it.
3. Seek Out Help
We would all love to believe that we can figure things out on our own all the time but sadly that just is not reality. We all need help at some point to push us to the higher levels we reach for. Don’t let complacency or embarrassment hold you back from achieving your goals and feeling the satisfaction of reaching and surpassing your own expectations. Search for the resources that are available to you. There might be local basketball classes or private basketball training that you can take advantage of to get you on track for next season. The internet is a great resource to get ideas for training individual skill sets if you can’t find resources that are local to your area.
4. Commit And Follow Through
This is probably toughest thing for many people to really accomplish. Sure you may have really analyzed your season and come to some tough realizations about where you need to improve. You might have begun researching the resources that are available to you and have a plan to put them to use but until you start the process, none of your preparation matters. Put a start date in your calendar and stick to that commitment. Taking the initiative and getting back in the gym to work on your game will put you a head of 75% of your competition when the next season arrives. So just showing up and beginning to work gives you and edge but in order to get ahead of the other 25%; well that’s a topic for another article but it starts where this one ends. Who knows, you might get voted as the Most Improved Player heading into next season! GET IN AND GET WORKING.
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