Kirby Lee-USA TODAY Sports

Los Angeles Rams: Cooper Kupp Reveals His Intense Mental Training Technique That’s Becoming A Problem at Home

Originally posted on LAFB Network | By Ryan Anderson | Last updated 5/24/24

Los Angeles Rams wide receiver Cooper Kupp went on the Games with Names Podcast and revealed to the host, Julian Edelman, that he uses visualizations to practice route running. While it isn’t unusual for athletes to practice creating vivid and detailed mental images of activities or outcomes they want to achieve, the intensity of Kupp’s is becoming a problem.

Los Angeles Rams Receiver Adds 1000 Extra Reps In His Mind

“My wife knows. I’m laying in bed and suddenly I’ll just ‘POW,’ flinch out like. ‘Okay. What were you doing there? What was happening?’ ‘I was running this route and the safety was driving down.’ It’s like it’s real. It’s like you get to this point where you’re visualizing things to the point where your body is like reacting to it.”

“This is like a full on, I’m awake laying in bed and I’m just visual. It’s playing so clearly in my head, what’s happening that my body is reacting to what’s happening in those moments. It’s honestly become a problem to the point where my wife’s laying on me and I’m daydreaming or something, BOOM, her head’s popping up off my shoulder. It’s a problem. We’ve had to figure out how to balance those things a little bit so that we’re not hurting each.”

Kupp seems to be able to imagine a world so detailed and visceral that he steps into another realm or state of consciousness, so real that he can be startled by an imaginary defender.

NFL Network reporter Bridget Condon followed up on the story with Kupp at Rams OTAs this week. Kupp describes the incredible level of detail he achieves from this technique handed down to him by his grandfather.

“[Kupp] said that his grandfather, who played in the league, used to visualize things to the point where he was getting thousands of reps just by going through them in his head. And that’s something that Cooper Kupp has done growing up, and it’s something he still does. He’s so good at it, he says, he can sense the entire energy of a crowd, the way that the grass feels and he’s going through these reps like the game plan, and it’s helping him because he’s getting 1000 more reps than he would at practice.”

This article first appeared on LAFB Network and was syndicated with permission.

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