Ethan Khoza explains how short visualization routines before practice, workouts, or games improve in-game decision-making and execution by activating mirror neurons and mental rehearsal. He recommends spending about 10–15 minutes visualizing specific basketball situations (e.g., free throws, ball screens, mismatches, attacking closeouts) and cites studies where visualizing free throws led to higher free-throw percentages.
Questions this video answers
10–15 minutes.
Shooting free throws.
Chapters
Using visualization to your benefits before maybe a workout or a practice, just kind of going through and visualizing yourself executing the drills that you're doing and, you know, making shots, whatever the case may be. And then before games, visualizing yourself in different situations, making the right decisions, reacting to the defense, playing with confidence, playing with mental toughness. Visualization is so powerful because it activates those same mirror neurons as if you're focusing physically, doing that thing right. There's been studies done where they'll take subjects and have them just visualize themselves shooting free throws. And at the end of the study, they take them to actually shoot free throws and their sh. Their free throw percentage goes up. That's the power of visualization and the power of what your brain can do by utilizing it and going with that. Before practices, before games, before pickup, take 10, 15 minutes to just visualize through different situations, visualize yourself having success, making shots, being in certain situations, making the right reads. So maybe visualize yourself in a ball screen. And you come off the ball screen and you see that, you know, the defender is, is dropped really far. And so you get to the elbow and you hit a pull up and maybe the next time they switch and you know, okay, there's a mismatch now. So you drag the ball out and you entered into your, your big man who's posted up. Now you want to get better attacking closeout. So you visualize yourself catching the ball in the wing closeouts coming, you rip through hard, get downhill and finish in the basket. The more that you do this, the more natural it's going to feel for you to execute those same things in games.