The NBA has partnered with Headspace to provide all league and team employees across the NBA, WNBA, NBA G League and its NBA 2K esports league access to the meditation and mindfulness app.
In exchange, the NBA will codevelop mental training content with Headspace this summer designed to prepare athletes at all levels for competition, which it will share on its mobile app.
“The focus in sports training has often been exclusively on physical conditioning, but as top athletes at all levels have increasingly learned, mental fitness is also a critical determinant of success,” NBA Commissioner Adam Silver said in a statement.
As part of the deal, league and team staffs will have unlimited access to Headspace’s library of meditation content, including its “Headspace for Sport” package, which includes a series of guided talks meant to strengthen an athlete’s mindfulness and meditation skills with a focus on motivation, concentration, training, competition, analysis and recovery. Headspace will also conduct events across the NBA related to mindfulness and health, such as wellness programs for employees and meditation sessions for players.
“We hear it time and time again from athletes that the differentiator is not their physicality, but their mental toughness and focus,” said Headspace co-founder and CEO Rich Pierson. “Mindfulness training allows us to be more aware of ourselves and to be more in the moment.”
An inside look at how the @Lakers use @Headspace to, “train their mental game,” to help players cope with the pressure to perform. Check it out in today’s article from @espn. https://t.co/1DnUSItPGm pic.twitter.com/r4rJhcMRDY
— Headspace (@Headspace) December 7, 2017
According to the Wall Street Journal, the idea for the partnership hatched several months ago after an NBA player asked a Headspace employee the best way to get back into the game after a missed shot. That led to Venice Beach, Calif.-based Headspace leading a meditation session for the Los Angeles Lakers two days before their first game. The Journal reports that no money was exchanged between Headspace and the NBA, as Headspace views the NBA partnership as a grassroots marketing strategy that it intends to use instead of expensive traditional ads by leveraging the NBA App’s 42 million downloads.
Their partnership comes a few weeks after Nike and Headspace teamed up to bring motivational guided runs led by Headspace cofounder Andy Puddicombe, mid-distance steeplechase runner Colleen Quigley and Nike Running global head coach Chris Bennett to the Nike Running Club app. Nike told SportTechie that mindfulness training has become part of the regimens of many of the pro and amateur athletes who come through Nike’s facilities in Portland, and that the Headspace partnership represents an attempt to expand those resources to its global fitness community.
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Mindfulness is part of a broad trend focused on mentally preparing athletes to be in the zone. The New York Knicks have been using mindfulness training since 2014, led by former team president Phil Jackson.
Some teams have gone so far as to use devices to train their brains, such as the NBA’s Portland Trail Blazers, which deployed the Neurocore Pro this season to read players’ brainwaves and alert trainers if their minds start to wander off a particular task.