"Dialing In" Your Game

Just wanted to share a quick mental imagery thought I used with a player the other day. As a player you need to be able to "dial in your focus" to whatever task is at hand. I explained it to the player that your focus is like dialing in your favorite radio station - not the easy digital type, but the old school type where you had to line up the line with the station. Many times you can hear the station, but it's not clear it's fuzzy and sometimes you can also hear another station. In order to really hear your station you need to be tuned exactly in - it needs to be perfect. This is how I explained mental concentration to the player - you might be concentrating on what you are doing but in your head you are thinking of other things as well - your girl, your friends, your life, your favorite song, etc. If you are doing this you really are not perfectly tuned in. You are getting static and other stations as well. So when you are playing basketball, before you play, you need to "tune yourself in" and put the dial squarely on basketball and the task you are performing. Great players have the ability to tune themselves in, average and poor players play with static and other stations playing in their head. It's really a simple analogy, but one that I think will resonate with players to help them imagine the level of focus they need to succeed.