George is joined by Michael Huber to explore how mental performance training can help athletes become more present, resilient, and adaptable under pressure.
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In this episode, George is joined by Michael Huber to explore how mental performance training can help athletes become more present, resilient, and adaptable under pressure. Michael shares practical strategies for mindfulness, self-talk, visualization, and communication, while also discussing how coaches can build mentally challenging practice environments that better prepare players for real-game adversity.
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Welcome to the Transforming Basketball Podcast. On today's show, we have Michael Huber as a guest. Michael is a mental performance coach and he helps young athletes become confident problem solvers through mental performance coaching. So Michael, welcome to the show.
George, thanks so much for having me.
Pleasure. What exactly is mental performance coaching?
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Right.
And that's sort of my work is teaching them how to use some of these skills and apply them on their own when they're operating in a coach-led environment.
And what sort of skills, I guess, like the fundamentals of mental performance?
Yeah, I think for me it all comes down to awareness, mindfulness, right? Like understanding what you're thinking, understanding what you're feeling, understand what you're seeing, and do it without judgment so you can be as present as possible, right? Like, to me, that's where it starts.
So when you sort of extend beyond that, it's Breathing, right, as a skill. Simple, but can be difficult to come back into the present moment to regulate, right? To be able to get back to a place of present moment awareness. It's self-talk. How do I cue myself back into the present while my mind is sort of dwelling on the last shot that I missed, right?
Or what if I get the ball in this situation? I want to be kind of rooted in the present moment. I use that through sometimes through self-talk, right? Visualizing, right? How do I see myself not only doing something successfully, but how do I see myself responding to adversity, to failure?
So those are the most common skills. I think when we're talking about basketball players, it's a very fast-moving game. Learning how to apply those skills can be really difficult.
Man, I think meditation to me, since I've been just a little bit more intentional about it, Recently, like I've always found time to meditate, but it'd be like a day here, you know, take a day off, a day here. And it'd be short bursts.
Whereas now, like, you know, I'm very intentional about what it looks like, but more so about just making sure that I have time to just be instead of like trying to focus on my breathing so much, trying to do box breathing. It's just more, all right, let me just be here and think and be still and know and be aware to your point.
So like, how important is that in the grand scheme of things when you talk about mental performance?
It's one of the things that I try to— I suggest to athletes very consistently. I bring it up. I try to get them to try it, right? To experiment with it. Because what you just said is extremely important. And it's exactly the reason why I would have a young basketball player or any young athlete try to meditate, learning how to be still.
Is really difficult, right? Learning how to recognize your thoughts and where your mind is bouncing around, like the ability to do that without panicking, without judging, especially in a game environment where there's— you're under pressure. Like meditating is just like lifting weights, right?
I'm learning how to build that mental strength through a practice that's off the court. Just like I go into the weight room and I do squats and deadlifts and bench presses and all those things. Meditation is learning how to be quiet, have your mind be quiet.
And there's a great video I show my athletes, my clients, from Kobe Bryant and Phil Jackson about it. And that's how I sort of get them to sort of buy in and be like, Kobe Bryant talks about, I meditate every morning for 10 to 15 minutes, right?
Obviously he doesn't do it anymore, but when he was still with us, he talked about that being an anchor, right? Like, sets me up for the day. I can sit in stillness. I'm not reacting. I'm sort of dictating the pace. That's really valuable to get into that habit, to learn how to do that when the things around you, the constraints around you, as we were talking about when we started recording, are sort of going haywire.
I'm able to maintain that calm anchor.
Talk to me more about anchors. Like, what else can be an anchor? I wake up 10, 15 minutes in the morning, I meditate. If I'm an athlete, I can do this. before the game. What else are anchors? You talked about self-talk as well.
What else are anchors specifically for both coaches and players? Or maybe, you know, maybe it's separate.
I think for any performer, to me, intention, right? Intention setting is a great anchor, right? So what I mean by that is like, I'll just give you the most concrete example I think I could give you is with a lot of athletes, I have them put a notebook in their backpack, basketball bag, whatever, right?
And I want you to write down your intentions for the game. What do I want to do when I get into the game? So you're sort of setting that reminder in writing externally in front of you, and you're seeing it, you're doing it, right?
And now you're priming your mind to say, these are the things that I want to do. Setting those intentions can really anchor you. And usually the intentions are fully controllable, right? I want to be in an attacking mode. I want to be a good teammate.
I want to be a good communicator, right? These are all foundational behaviors of things that we want to do. I want to make good decisions. I'm going to shoot open looks, right? As a basketball player, those are the kinds of intentions we want to set that anchors us in like, okay, we're going into the game, we're setting a goal for that game, but it's about the controllable behavior.
It's not about The outcome. That's very anchoring if they can stick to that process. Having a system of reminders is, I think, a really valuable thing for an athlete to be able to have in front of them.
Something as simple as writing it down. And I would imagine that for coaches, it's the same. And I think for coaches, maybe it's even easier because you have your practice plan. Just write it down in the practice plan in terms of what your intentions are for the practice or for the game.
Okay, maybe I want to, and I think something that, you know, Alex taught me was always, not always, but whenever you get a chance as a coach, set a KPI. That's the same thing we were talking about. Set the intent, set a goal for a player going into each game.
All right. So for this game, I want you to lead 2 huddles in the game. So when there's a free throw, your job is to, is to lead 2, at least 2 huddles in a game. And that's something so specific.
Yeah.
It's not necessarily about their skills on the court, but it's powerful.
I love that. That's not something that I've suggested to an athlete, but that example is very similar to what I would suggest. And it's great, right? You take responsibility for leading the huddle, bring your team together. There's 2. It's measurable, right? It's realistic.
It's measurable, right? When we think about goal setting and it's completely controllable, it has nothing to do with putting the ball through the basket. Which I think is so important because I think for any athlete, but we'll stick with basketball because that's what we're talking about, is for a lot of basketball players, and I'm sure you see this as a coach, if they're not putting the ball in the basket, they don't think they're making an impact on the game.
And nothing could be further from the truth, right? There's a great Billy Donovan video out there. There's one basketball and there's 5 guys. Not everyone can score. There's so many things you could be doing on the floor, on both ends, in the huddle, in the locker room.
to impact winning, and it has nothing to do with scoring. And I think a lot of that has to do with the way that they're conditioned as they develop through the ranks.
Absolutely. And I think, like, to your point, to build on that a little bit, most of the game is played without the ball as well. You have to know, like, how to impact the game without scoring because you're, you know, it's 10 guys on the court at all times.
You're going to be on the bench sometimes. So you have to know how to be a good teammate on the bench anyways. Moving on, I do want to ask you, you have a podcast yourself. I'm curious because I always have a lot of fun speaking to the guests because I learned so much.
So just from you, what are some things that you've learned from speaking to all your guests?
Oh my goodness. So many things, right? I think, you know, being a coach, like, and I have coaches, I have athletes, I have different people on the podcast, but I think the thing that I learned, this is a very vague answer, but it's very true.
Coaching is a really hard job, right? Like, there's so many different personalities and there's so many different things that are going on. And I think athletes don't truly understand. They have a hard time empathizing with their coaches about how difficult it is to be able to execute a group and move them in a direction with those sorts of goals and intentions and KPIs.
And you're the one responsible for managing all these people in the environment, right? It's I think being a coach is really hard, and I try to import that, right? It kind of goes both ways. To me, that's just the first thing that jumps out.
The other thing I talk about my— on my podcast a lot is transitions and sort of learning about the way people handle transitions, right? How do I prepare myself for that next level before I've actually gotten there? And that's a really, really difficult thing, and everybody has their own way of, of handling that.
How do you do that? It's a place that you want to get to. I think it's always harder to stay there than to actually get there. But how do you do that in terms of how do you visualize it? How do you come up with it?
Like, what does it look like? How do you get in the mindset to, all right, I'm going to get there. I'm going to see it. I'm going to taste it. And then I'm going to, you know, actually know what to do once I get there.
Well, I think it kind of relates to some of the things we have been talking about so far, which is like, I think you've got to identify what it looks like at that next level, right? Maybe for a basketball basketball player would be, I want to be a college basketball player.
What do college basketball players do? How am I going to do that thing that they do, right? What's my intention and how am I going to respond to it when things don't go the way I want them to, right? Whether it's in an AAU tournament where my coach— there's a whole bunch of college coaches watching me, or I'm not getting recruited, or I don't play the way I want to in a big game, Or my process isn't evolving, or I get to college and I do make it and I'm not playing as much as I
want. Thinking ahead about how I'm going to respond in those situations. And what I would say to a player, what I say to athletes all the time is you never really know until you get there, but you've got to really think about what it's going to be like and try your best to try to replicate that.
When we think about talking about the constraints-led approach, I was actually You know, kind of thinking about it before we got on the podcast and I was reading a research paper about it. And the research paper talks— was a study that was like, well, when we did mental skills training in a constrained environment, the results were better in practice, but the results in games were the same or not as good.
Why? Because it's impossible to replicate game conditions, I think, in a practice, right? So we've really got to be intentional about that and know that We can practice all we want, any skill, mental skill or otherwise. When we get to a game, it's a whole nother ball of wax.
And how do I handle that when it doesn't go my way? Do I stay calm and present going, well, I tried this in practice and it worked, but I can't do it here? Well, how do I stay calm and mindful and stick to the process versus going, uh-oh, what do I do?
Right? So that's a long-winded answer of saying, hey, this is really about figuring out what it's going to look like. And doing your best to prepare and have an answer ready when it comes so you don't kind of fold under pressure.
You know, it's super interesting. It sounds like you work with a lot of, you know, really smart athletes. And we spoke about this before in terms of the different constraints in an athlete's environment. And that could be the coach, right? Tells them to do something that may not get them to that goal that they have, which could be, you know, getting to college.
So maybe the coach doesn't want them to Shoot certain shots, right? So that's been a big topic of conversation recently with Mark. But how do you help athletes balance, you know, what a coach thinks they should do and what they think they should do to reach their goals?
So I think that is one of the biggest topics of conversation that I have with my athletes. And you're right, they are extremely smart. The thing that I try to impart to them is Listen, your coach has a way of coaching. He has a system, he has a philosophy, he has reasoning about why he's doing what he's doing.
And I think we've got to accept that, right? We don't want to operate in the face of that. Then we're not serving any purpose either, right? We're being selfish in that environment. But what we want to be able to do as athletes is manipulate the constraint, right?
Again, I'll use that language of, hey, can I talk to my coach to understand Why he wants me to do these things, right? Can I explain to my coach why I'm doing what I'm doing? Can we move the bar so that he understands me and I understand him?
At a minimum, I can't change the way my coach thinks, but I can understand why he wants me to do the things that I do, and then I can learn to accept it and embrace it, right? Versus I don't know why, because that's probably the biggest complaint, right?
The biggest challenges. My coach says, we're doing it this way because I said so. And he's not saying we're doing it this way because here are the reasons why, right? Like, you know, I may want to get to the basket off the dribble and score 30 points a game, but he wants to shoot, you know, gold, silver, and bronze shots.
Well, if I understand why the coach wants me to do that, and that's going to be the reason I get into or don't play in a game, I'm probably going to adopt that and embrace it. But if I don't understand why I'm doing something from a motivational perspective, there's just going to be friction and then everybody's not going to be happy.
So really communicating is probably the biggest thing that I ask them to do is like, understand the coach, have them understand you, let's set expectations. And then you have to accept sometimes that you're being asked to do things from a role perspective or a system perspective that you don't like because there's nothing you could do to change it.
That's a great answer. It's like you have to help them. Well, you have to make each other better, basically is what I heard. And you have to challenge the player to speak to the coach and vice versa. And I've always felt this as well.
Like when players ask me questions about why we have certain principles on the team and why we, you know, maybe stay on certain constraints and really try and stick with it, especially early on in the season. You know, I always feel like if I don't give them a good enough explanation, then I feel that friction.
I feel them just a little bit like, our coach doesn't care about, you know, making sure that everyone's on the same page. He just cares about making sure that his team is as good as it can be and disregarding me as a player.
And so I've always felt like I've really, I have to explain myself clearly. To the players. And it's funny because I feel like the younger you go, the more you have to make yourself clear because I just feel like younger players ask a lot, especially like if you go really young, like under 10, they ask a lot of questions.
And then, you know, you get to the teenage years, some of them care, other don't. It's not that they care or not, but they ask more questions. They're more evolved. So it's just, you know, it's very interesting seeing you hear that. It's basically, you just have to communicate to a point where There's no stone left unturned on the team.
The team can get better.
Yeah, I'm glad you brought up that example. I think it's a great one.
Right?
Clearly, you're intentional about communicating the why, right? The reasons why we're doing this. But even if you have the best intentions and you go out of your way to communicate the reasons why, there still might be one kid on the bench who doesn't understand it.
Right.
And all it takes from a team chemistry standpoint is for one person to not buy-in to affect, right, the big picture.
Right.
But that's what I talk to kids about. I was like, listen, coaches have constraints too. Coaches have limitations. They've only got so much time. They've got one of them, two of them, three of them, and 12 to 15 of you. They might not fully be able to explain it in a way that's like, you know, unique to what you need.
Therefore, especially like to your point, age, you know, from an age appropriateness standpoint, when you're 15, 16, 17, You have to, as an athlete, a player, shoulder some of that responsibility and think about having the conversation to get the clarity that you need to move forward in a constructive way versus saying, coach isn't coaching me in the way that I want, and now I'm going to be frustrated by it, or I'm going to allow it to affect my performance or the way I show up and my attitude versus I don't get it.
Let me go ask the question and understand why this is happening or Why aren't I playing? Or what do I need to do to get better? Or how do I contribute to the team? It's a two-way street, and coaches can't do all of that for you.
And I think it's something that I do a lot of in my work with individual clients is helping them to prepare for those kinds of conversations, to ask good questions and get answers so that they can operate more efficiently in the environments that they're in.
Great point. I'm always interested how coaches can combine Mental performance and same kind of skills that we talked about in the actual practice environment. So I'm curious from your standpoint, how would, like, if you were a basketball coach or any coach for that matter, like, how would you design practice so that you can add in this level of, you know, mental resilience during playing, maybe during water breaks, maybe before practice in the huddle?
How would you do that?
Yeah. So. I think the constraints-led approach in terms of designing practices, right? Ecological, you know, learning, like that's really the biggest part of it is creating obstacles in that practice, right? Not making practice, you know, a linear block practice where we're doing everything without any sort of decision-making element or without any challenges.
Because if you go into a practice and it's really, you know, really simple and slow stress, And you do everything right, you have this false sense of confidence, right? So the first step, I think, is designing those practices to say, hey, we're going to make it hard.
We're going to embed failure into the practice. Then it's maybe incentivizing using those mental skills, right? If I turn the ball over, there might be some response that you have built in. Take a deep breath or say something to yourself or out loud.
And if you don't do that, right, if you don't do that thing, you're penalized, right? You're not going to play the next round or in the next drill, right? So building in those incentives to say, we have to incorporate these mental skills into our training, and if you don't use them, it's going to be judged the same way as it would be if you didn't make that pass, right?
Because that's my biggest challenge as well, is taking an individual client and saying, hey, go into your practice environment and try something new. Use your breathing. And it's not reinforced by anybody but themselves. That's a really hard thing for a young athlete to be able to do.
So I think it's building the constraints and then, you know, building the skills into that and encouraging and incentivizing using those skills in the environment.
What do you think as well about maybe that player having a conversation with the coach? Hey coach, I'm going to be trying, you know, this out because I'm really trying to become better mentally in the game.
I think that's really one of the hardest things that I do in my work, George, because I think there's still, for whatever the reasons are, I think there's still some stigma about that, right? Like, so I'll give you the best example I can give you from my own experience.
A lot of times I'll have athletes write something down on their hand or somewhere visible that reminds them of the way they want to bounce back after a mistake, right? So for basketball players, it's typically I turned the ball over on the offensive end, and now I'm jogging back half speed in my head, and I'm not focused on playing defense.
I'm thinking about the mistake I just made, and now I'm not communicating, and there's a breakdown defensively, right? So it's writing something on their hand before a game to say, if I make a mistake, I have this reminder to bring my attention back to what I want to do, right?
Whatever that thing is for that kid. Sometimes I write those things down and other people see them and they're embarrassed by it. Like, what's that on your hand? Right? Like, you're doing something to make yourself better and have these reminders and these cues, taking deep breaths.
I'm trying to incorporate these things, but nobody else is doing them, right? You're 1 of 12, and you don't want other people to know that you're working with a mental skills trainer. You don't want other people to know what you're doing. And so you kind of keep it to yourself, which is really hard to train it because you're not getting any external reinforcement, right?
The coach isn't reinforcing it.
Yeah.
You're not communicating and doing it with your teammates. You're trying to do it by yourself in a group environment. And that's really, really challenging.
It's definitely like coaches should definitely, you know, listen to that and really create spaces in their practice environments to add that part of the game in. Because there's so much talk. And I agree, man, you see it all the time. LeBron doing box breathing, right?
Pre-game huddle. Steph doing the same thing, tuning out 20,000 people. You know, between the 3rd and the 4th quarter by themselves, eyes closed, cameras on them, eyes on them. And I find it so important. I just really think coaches should really, you know, take 2 minutes, if that, but just find ways to fit it in their practice environments.
To your point, it's like maybe, all right guys, today I'm going to officiate really poorly. Like if you touch the guy, it's a foul. So I'm going to, you know, call terrible. I'm going to be the worst ref you've ever had in your life.
And I'm going to be consistent both ways. So maybe that's not the worst rep, but I'm going to make bad calls and you guys have to deal with it. And so that's a great way as well. And because in the game you'll see that.
So it's a way to add it in.
I think that's another wonderful example, right? And like, hey, because right in practice we're not making those kinds of calls or whatever. And then we get into a game and then we have this third-party referee who's making these calls and all of a sudden we break down.
And we don't know how to handle it versus, oh, we've already dealt with this adversity. We know what the response is already. You made a bad call. This is how we're going to deal with it, right? When the ref makes a bad call, we're all going to take a deep breath and take a beat before we open our mouth and say something.
And listen, that same thing frankly goes for coaches, right? Like if the coach demonstrates that behavior, the players a lot of times are going to follow, right? So it's also behaving as a group from coach down to player. Everybody.
Yeah.
is operating under the same constraints of, hey, referee makes a bad call, we're going to take a deep breath and let it go because it's not going to do anything to benefit us, right? We're going to get back and we're going to stay composed and not let that call dictate what we do on the next play or the next quarter or whatever.
Yeah, I love it. And it could even be like, ref makes a bad call, that, you know, one player is like, guys, remember, next play. And then everyone just, you know, it's that reinforcement in the environment, just one player reminding another. Or one coach reminding player or player reminding coach.
It all works hand in hand. I want to pivot a little bit. I know you have a lot of baseball guests on your podcast. I'm curious, is there any tag games, maybe a small-sided game that could help runners get from bases? I don't know.
I'm sure you, you know baseball more than basketball, but just any tag games that you think could help that.
I've never really thought about it, right? We don't— it's interesting, right? When we talk about baseball, I'm either talking about the pure mental side or we're talking about like the strategy of baseball, right? I've never really talked about practice design with any of my guests.
It's really more performance. It's a really interesting question, but I do— I'm familiar with Rob Gray's work. I've actually read a number of his studies, right, in terms of the way he sort of studies baseball, right? And I think, you know, being able to build in constraints generally is really important in any sport, right?
I'm not familiar with any games that would apply in baseball, but like, I think it'd be really simple to build in those constraints to allow runners to make decisions, right? I'm going to go to first to third on a base hit to the outfield.
How do I make that decision, right? Rather than just being like, okay, on this play in practice, we're going to go from first to third. We're going to build in like a game-like situation, right? You have to decide based on evaluating some external factor in the environment, whether or not you stop at second base or you go to third base, right?
Like, that's really important. I think it's building in those game conditions is really important in any sort of practice, right? The things we were talking about before in terms of being able to handle adversity, practice should look hard at least some of the time in baseball, just like basketball.
Great answer, Michael. I want to ask you a transformative tip. If you could leave one piece of advice to someone listening, a coach, to instantly improve their practice environment, what would that be?
I think it would be what you said earlier, which is clear communication, right? Clarity. If I understand exactly what you want me to do and why you want me to do it and how you want me to do it, and frankly, how we're going to measure it, The outcomes, the results are likely to be much more effective, right?
I think communication, as generic as it sounds, is such a fundamental part of success in any sport, whether it's a practice or game environment. When we understand what we're being asked to do and how to do it and why we're doing it and how to measure it, it becomes a lot clearer, even if we don't agree with it, right?
Without that clarity, Then there's a lot of confusion. And I'll just speak from my own experience as a coach working with young athletes. That lack of clarity becomes anxiety because there's uncertainty, and the brain is a machine looking for, you know, sort of to protect from that uncertainty.
It's going, well, I don't understand what coach wants me to do and why they want me to do it. Now I have to try to figure it out between my ears. That puts my focus of attention internal instead of external. If I know what I'm supposed to do and I don't have to think about it, Now my attention is where it's supposed to be.
It's out in the environment externally. So I think that clarity, that certainty, that clear understanding about what I'm doing and why I'm doing it goes a long way to getting what you need out of your athletes.
Michael, that's great. I couldn't agree with you more as well. I just think even in life, communication is such a big key. So, Michael, thank you so much for the time, for the conversation. It's been great.
Thank you for having me, George. It's been wonderful.
