Get Your Head In The Game

In sports you train your body to be in tip-top shape. But what about your mind? Meet Graham Betchart, who is on a quest to expand mental conditioning throughout athletics.

- Christina M . Tapper

Ten years ago, Graham Betchart was leading a mental skills drill at a basketball camp in California’s East Bay when he asked for a volunteer to shoot free throws. Eleven-year-old Aaron Gordon, now a third-year forward for the Orlando Magic, accepted the challenge. " I go to the line and made the first shot," Gordon says. "Then I missed the second one."

Gordon was not a happy camper. “I hung my head, and my shoulders were slumped,” he remembers.

Betchart used Gordon’s disappointment to teach a valuable lesson. “I asked Aaron, ‘What was the mistake in that situation?’ He said, ‘I missed the shot.’ I told him, ‘That’s not it. The mistake was how you responded after the miss,’ ” Betchart says. “You are free to fail. But how fast can you move forward afterward? That’s key.”

The pick-yourself-up-and-keep-pushing idea is a guiding principle of Betchart’s work. It’s also what Betchart calls “next play speed” — the ability to move on without getting hung up on things like an error, a bad call, or a booing fan. He preaches this concept as a mental conditioning coach who helps high school, college, and NBA players train their minds. Betchart, 38, is one of a small number of such professionals in sports today.