The best football players are those who think the fastest when time is not on their side. In football, in order to make it to the elite level, you must be able to think faster than your opponent, have uncanny anticipation, perfectly execute tackles or posses split second moves, all while being under severe pressure.
Every Sunday you watch NFL players perform at many different football positions and they make you say; Wow! These types of feats can’t be practiced or repeated by many players. Is it GOD given talent they possess? Sure. But the best football players in the game spend a lot of time developing their mental game. When the best football players go against each other every Sunday, in most cases, the mind game is the greatest competitive advantage they have.
In fact, the single element that makes great plays possible is speed. Don’t think game speed but rather mind speed, information-processing speed, mental quickness, and brain clarity that allows the body to move without any conscious thought.
Don’t get me wrong, your physical abilities are also required to make great plays consistently, but to play football on an elite level, you must acquire the additional quality of mind speed. You can be the biggest, strongest and fastest player in high school or college, and those qualities might get you drafted into the NFL. But, if your mind has not been trained to work at a much higher speed than average, you will not play in that league for long.
This known fact is proven every year when some college stud is drafted in the first or second round and their career ends before year four. It’s not because they forgot how to play. It’s because they are unable to teach their mind to think on a level consistent with the best football players in the world. The brain must be taught to recognize, process and react without thought.
What really sets NFL players apart is their ability to act and react at a fraction of a second faster than everyone else. Just think what a mere tenth of a second improvement in reaction time would mean if you were up against Champ Bailey one on one, press man, for the entire game.
The faster your brain is able to process information, the quicker and better decisions you will make. While talent, physical training, football goals and conditioning are important, you will be staring defeat square in the face when you are up against an opponent with a trained and superior mind.
In the NFL, all players are talented. Mind speed is what enables some players to become Pro Bowlers and Hall A Famers despite having no greater physical gifts in terms of size, strength, speed or technique than players that do not reach such great feats. The absolute best way I found to develop mind speed was through the use of visualization. Mind speed is all about preparation of the subconscious mind.
The subconscious mind controls all movement. You can program your subconscious mind by the thoughts, words, statements and emotions you choose. Mind speed occurs without conscious thought. Visualization is a powerful tool for training mental quickness and awareness.
These skills of the subconscious mind can and must be trained if you want your chance of becoming one of the best football players. Don’t fall into the mental trap into believing you can’t. That will turn out to be one of the worse mistakes you will make during your training.
If you want to be one of the best football players, you must train your mind to think and process information at a much higher speed. You can not separate the mental from the physical when attempting to maximize your ability.
Isaac Byrd is a retired NFL player and Founder of D1 Athletes. He trains youth, High School and college players by using NFL style technique, drills and elite mental preparation strategies so they are able to perform better on game day. To contact Isaac about his upcoming camps, speed training sessions and/or 1 on 1 coaching, please email him at isaac@d1-athletes.com or visit him on the web at http://www.d1-athletes.com
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