mental skills | Warrior Mind Coach - Helping You Achieve Peak Performance

Coaches, Do You Have a Mental Strength Map for Peak Performance?

Nov 022012

Often in doing research for my posts I find some excellent articles from other experts. I came across the below article from Hillary Greene of The Chicago School of Professional Psychology.

It’s so good nothing else needs to be said.

So, if you’re a coach take this message to heart and create you own mental strength map for peak performance.

“Calling all coaches: Do you have a mental skills map for the season? Many of you probably answered “yes” and it is likely the map was developed for your athletes. Great! You are on your way to facilitating your players’ success by teaching them both the technical and mental skills necessary to improve. You are aware of the importance of implementing mental skills tools when coaching your athletes, but did you ever think how mental training may help you?

For example, many coaches will teach athletes to use relaxation and energy management to control emotions on the court or field; but oftentimes these coaches forget to utilize the techniques themselves. Some coaches let their emotions control behaviors on the sideline or in the huddle and forget to harness those emotions to focus on the task at hand.

As a coach, you go through similar stressful events and emotional experiences as your athletes. Many of you feel pressure and put pressure on yourself to perform well. Therefore, the mental skills you teach your athletes are also applicable to you. Developing mental skills, such as the ability to manage emotions, control arousal, and simulate pressure can be implemented into your own mental skills map.

Consider making a mental skills map for yourself this season. Here is an example from one young soccer coach.

U-8 Club Soccer Mental Skills Map

Daily Affirmation: You are a dynamic young coach!

Team Motto: Fast footwork

Positive self-talk: Use my daily affirmation and remember my team motto; review and refine my coaching philosophy.

Energy Management: Write down what I can control and what I cannot control. Harness my emotions by using relaxation and positive self-talk during practices and games.

Relaxation: Take deep breaths anytime I sense frustration or anxiety. Also, use relaxation before games with my imagery.

Imagery/Visualization: After I am in a relaxed state, focus on where my players are on the field. Visualize myself on the sidelines. How am I responding, and coaching? Focus on my body language and voice control. “

This is just one example to help you get started. Create your own mental strength map for peak performance. Then follow your map to become a better coach!

Get started now on creating your own mental strength map by picking up a copy of “Mental Strength Training of Athletes”

Post Footer automatically generated by Add Post Footer Plugin for wordpress.

Keep Learning...

Mental Strength Skills and Athletic Performance

Athletic Performance No Responses »

Apr 212011

Do you use mental strength skills to enhance your athletic performance?

To help better answer this question let me define what I mean by mental strength skills. This way we have a common understanding what ‘mental strength skills’ are and how they affect your personal performance.

Sound’s good, right?

A while back, a group of international sports psychologists worked together to develop an inventory to measure the mental skills that athletes utilize to enhance their athletic performance. In the development of this tool, one crucial step was to figure out exactly what mental skills to measure.

The question asked by these researchers was this; “What mental skills positively influence athletic performance?” By studying the elite level athletes, the scientists were able to uncover the mental skills that these athletes used to achieve success. It is these skills that were integrated into the inventory.

SIDEBAR: This is called “modeling” in NLP. NLP suggest finding someone(s) who has or is doing what you want and is excellent at it. Find out their thoughts, feelings, internal representation and “model” them in your own life…success has to follow! Cool yea?

OK…back to the athletic mental skills assessment…

To understand if and how well you make use of mental strength skills (in your select sport), you need to start by assessing and evaluating how well you use those skills that are applied most often by elite level athletes.

So…are you up to it?

Are you ready to evaluate your mental skills and abilities?

Sure you are!

The following questions are adapted from the mental skills inventory and will begin to help you assess your use of the mental strength skills that have been found to enhance performance in elite athletes.

Elite athletes don’t use all the mental skills all the time, but they are aware of them and use them when the situation calls for them. The first step is knowledge of were you are and then develop a plan for where you want to be.

That plan would to be to constantly make use of some of these skills in your practice and competition to help manage the mental aspect of your personal performance.

The intent of this exercise is to get you to think about how you now use mental strength skills and how effective, or ineffective, they work for you.

Energy Management

Elite athletes use various mental skills and strategies to manage their physical and mental energy. This requires using strategies for relaxation – to clam your body down, and activation – to get your body fired up.

Are you able to increase your energy when feeling lethargic or flat?
Do you effectively psych yourself up to get ready to practice or competition?
Are you able to relax efficiently if you get too nervous?

Visualization

This skill was discussed in detail in a previous post. Visualization involves creating or re-creating a full sensory (see, hear, feel, smell and taste) athletic experience in your mind for the purpose of athletic performance enhancement.

Do you imagine fully specific athletic skills and techniques in practice and or competition before executing the desired skill?
Do you mentally rehearse the “feel” of the performance?
Do you “see” the rehearsal through your own eyes?

Goal Setting

This is an imperative strategy for planning and tracking your athletic performance level. Both short-term and long-term goals, as well as processes and outcome goals are important for maximizing your personal performance. Elite level athletes set both types of goals in their training and competition.

Do you set long-term and short-term career or outcome goals?
Do you set long-term and short-term process or personal performance goals?
Do you evaluate your progress toward your goals on a consistent basis?

Self Talk

Again, as discussed in an earlier post, this skill relates to managing what you mentally (and verbally) say to yourself before, during and after practice and competition to facilitate performance.

Do you talk positively to yourself before, during and after an event or practice?
Are you your own best friend?
Do you consciously manage and alter what you say to yourself in practice and competition?

Emotional Control

Elite athletes are characterized by an ability to manage their emotions effectively, before, during and after an event. This means being able to deal with frustration and negative emotions and get on with the business of performing.

Are you able to manage your emotions under pressure?
Are you able to manage your emotions when there is no pressure?
When something upsets you, does your performance suffer?

Attention Control

This skill focuses on concentration or the ability to maintain focus on relevant cues, and is a crucial mental strength skill to train since distractions are commonplace in most athletic endeavors. I like to compare this skill with a wolf and dog. A wolf once on target will let nothing distract it from its mission. A dog on the other hand…squirrel… squirrel, where’s the squirrel?

Does your attention wander during training like a dog?
Are you able to focus your attention like a wolf on effective performance cues?
Are you committed to W.I.N. – What’s Important Now?

Negative Thinking

Elite athletes use specific mental strength skills to deal with negativity and to mentally get back on track following a mistake or distraction.

Are you able to refocus when distracted?
Do you have thoughts of failure or images of screwing up?
Are you able to “cancel” negative thoughts as they come up?

Well that was just a small sample of questions but let me ask you…how’d you do?

Are you good at managing your images, self talk, attention, but lack a bit on the emotions, energy? That’s OK, you now know where you stand and you can move forward and develop a plan to enhance some of the skills and maintain others.

You can understand and see how improving these mental strength skills will be an asset to your athletic performance…can’t you?

Read through the questions again and again to identify the mental skills that would be helpful for you to address. Seek resources to help in areas you identified as needing improvement…like a mental strength coach.

Also, check out “Mental Strength for Athletic Performance.” The program covers many of the skills in this post; how to develop a mental skills plan and nine audios track the help implement them.

OK, now it’s your turn. Please let me know your thoughts in the comments below.

Energy Management and Athletic Performance (warriormindcoach.com)
Mental Strength Tip #37 – The Art of Conversation and Personal Success (warriormindcoach.com)
Mental Rehearsal And Athletic Performance (warriormindcoach.com)
Practicing Mental Strength For Peak Personal Performance (warriormindcoach.com)
Eliminating Anxiety for Peak Performance (warriormindcoach.com)

Post Footer automatically generated by Add Post Footer Plugin for wordpress.

Keep Learning...

Energy Management and Athletic Performance

Athletic Performance, Personal Performance 4 Responses »

Mar 312011

I’ve published several posts on mental strength and athletic performance. The primary objective of these posts is to provide you with tips and strategies to best develop your mental skills to enhance your athletic performance and help you achieve your athletic goals.

If training is your sport, then these posts can assist you in reaching peak personal performance as well as help you reach your personal goals.

A critical factor I haven’t discussed yet is arousal or energy management. Because of other thoughts that come to mind with the word ‘arousal’ I will use the word energy….just want to keep your attention on athletic performance and not a different kind of performance

When you hear the term energy management, what comes to mind? If you’re like most athletes, you equate this skill strictly with controlling nerves and calming yourself during times of high stress like before and during a game.

Energy management is much more; it is a multifaceted mental strength skill that involves the ability to relax when too nervous and the ability to activate or ‘get pumped’ when flat or lethargic.

Everyone and especially athletes need to be able to get pumped or relax both their minds and their bodies to effectively manage energy. Let’s take a look at how you can begin to better understand and improve the management of your energy to effectively and positively influence peak performance.

Ask yourself the following:

Are there days at the gym when you feel like you can’t complete one rep much less two sets?
Has stress from a long day ever caused you to bail on the workout or unenthusiastically go through the motions?
Have you ever been waiting at the gym, or a 5K race and found yourself yawning and not really caring about how will you do?
Or, prior to a race, has pre-race anxiety caused tight muscles, worry, and increased heart rate?

If you’re like most goal oriented athletes you probably answered ‘yes’ to at least one of the above questions, right?

These questions are all associated with mental and physical energy. They described symptoms of too much physical energy, i.e. increased heart rate, rapid breathing, and too much mental energy, i.e. worry, negativity, pre-race thoughts. As well as too little physical energy, i.e. tired, lethargic, and too little mental energy, i.e. mentally flat, unmotivated.

Following is a simple strategies you can implement to help you better control your arousal or energy level.

What Affects Your Energy?

To manage your physical and mental energy, you must become aware of the things that affect your energy levels, both increase and decrease, and to take determined steps to manage these internal and external factors, so that you will reach your peak performance…when you decide to.

So, get a pad and pencil or open up Word make two columns. One labeled ‘deplete energy’ and the other ‘enhance energy’ and begin to think about specific situations in the past.

Identify things that deplete your energy, some maybe – lack of sleep, poor diet, stress, negativity, and lack of purpose – all of these can be factors that can sap your energy.

Now identify those things that refuel your energy and get you jazzed, things like – maintaining a positive mood, remembering a great race or a great workout, specific music, a balanced diet, training goals, and being with friends.

You need to take purposeful steps to control all of factors. Concentrate on removing any depleting factors and focus on the factors that refuel your energy level; work on your mental strength to better manage these internal and external influences. This in turn will have a great affect on your managing your energy levels.

Mental Strength Skills

You need to arm yourself with the mental strength skills and strategies that can be used to positively affect your energy levels both physically and mentally…on command. The following are a few examples of strategies found to be beneficial in managing energy levels. Practice these to determine which ones will be most effective for you and add more of your own.

Energy System
- Physical
  - Too much (need to relax)
    - Slow stretch
    - Deep, belly breathing
    - Gentle massage
    - Progressive muscle relaxation
  - Too little (need to get excited)
    - Active Stretching
    - Quick, deep breathing
    - Jumping jacks
    - Eat/drink water
- Mental
  - Too much (need to relax)
    - Positive self-talk
    - Remember past successes
    - Focus on one goal
    - Distract self from pressure
  - Too little (need to get excited)
    - Set challenging goal
    - Workout w/partner
    - Envision long-term achievement
    - Motivating self-talk

As with all the mental strength skills recognize that energy management is a skill that, with practice and patience, can be learned, developed and mastered. Make a choice to work on these energy management skills and strategies so that you can begin to take control of your physical and mental energy and reach your peak performance.

I’m putting the finishing touches on my new program “Mental Strength In Athletic Performance.” It will be 2 e-books and 9 audio tracks complete with hypnosis sessions, affirmation, tracks to get you jazzed before a workout or event and track to calm you down for rest and recovery. I’ll announce it first in my newsletter with a discount code, so make sure you’re receiving it.

In the mean time a great book to help with you energy and thought management is “Develop the Mental Strength of a Warrior.”

Please let me know your thoughts on this post in the comments below.

Post Footer automatically generated by Add Post Footer Plugin for wordpress.

Keep Learning...

Practicing Mental Strength For Peak Personal Performance

Athletic Performance No Responses »

Mar 012011

Do any of these statements sound familiar?

“In practice, I didn’t fumble once. Yet during a game I fumbled a few times.”

“In the practice I hit 4 out 10 balls. Then during a game I only can hit 2 of 10.”

“I easily make 8 out of 10 free throws at the end of practice, yet in games I’m shooting 40%. It doesn’t make sense.”

Do you find that at times you perform at a specific level in practice but are unable to perform at this same high level in the competition?

Certainly, numerous factors can come directly into play to impact performance and cause the differences between practice and competitive performance; components such as your opponent, environmental conditions, expectations of yourself and others, level of aggressiveness, confidence, strategies, tactics, and anxiousness all come into play.

That being said, let’s check out one factor that is going to influence your performance and, when addressed, can help you perform closer to your potential in the competitive environment, that is, the environment of your training.

As a dedicated athlete, you prepare to compete and win. You’re practice on a daily basis to enhance your athletic skills so that you can perform at your peak during a competition, whether it is to attain a personal performance or a team victory. Essentially, you train with the aim of performing at your best in the competitive arena.

The key question is – is your training environment actively structured to help you succeed in the environment of competition? With many athletes, this isn’t the case. Instead, practice is typically structured to help you perform well within a controlled training environment. Yet, players expect to be able to execute in competition at the same level that they practice at. It is like comparing grapes to oatmeal for the reason that the structure of practice and the competitive environment are completely different. This difference…this mental training, needs to be adjusted to improve overall competitive performance.

For many athletes, the specific practice environment is actually characterized by drills, repetitions and putting the time in. Within this practice environment, you may not think about your internal dialogue i.e., how did you react to your mistakes, your attitude throughout the session as well as your confidence, the target is on the physical execution.

Additionally, many players do not practice the potentially adverse problems and situations that can arise in a competition, such as deafening crowd noise, faulty equipment or adverse weather conditions.

Compare your mental strength skills required in the training environment to those mental strength skills, the feelings and behaviors you’re required to demonstrate in the heat of battle. Top athletes desire (and need) to be self-confident. Top athletes want to maintain positive self-talk and be dedicated to what they need to do well. Top athletes need and expect to handle their emotions so that they don’t hurt their performance. Top athletes need to deal with expectations of their self and others, and need to manage their own reactions in front of the throngs of people or their challenger. This list could is almost endless and I think you hearing the message right, so I won’t belabor the point anymore.

So, how do you train and practice similar to competition? First, evaluate how you as a player require yourself to perform in competition, and then train those skills. For example: You want to maintain a positive attitude and focus on your overall performance, so during train work on managing your own self-talk and practice using inner dialogue and use words that will enhance performance.

If you want to work on your reactions to errors or frustration, then challenge yourself to do the same in practice. Work on the appropriate and empowering ways of managing your emotions.

Would you like to approach a competition with certainty, confidence and “must win” attitude, then purposefully set your intention to do the same at practice.

To prepare with regard to external distractions, employ imagery in instruction to simulate the particular competitive environment. Based on your sport, it’s also possible to prepare for the environment through bringing in “fans” to observe train, piping in noises or creating stress or challenging conditions.

Additionally, embrace problems when they present themselves used. When you break a shoelace or your racquet stringed pops, rather than stop, continue to play through. Use situations as much as possible and see them as opportunities to learn how to perform through adversity.

The end result is the more you can structure your practice environment to resemble your competing environment, chances are your competitive results will improve. Your mental strength in practice will only help you reach your peak personal performance.

Improving Human Performance – A Process Approach (warriormindcoach.com)
Visualization For Peak Performance (warriormindcoach.com)
The Action Part of Goal Setting – An Athletic Perspective (warriormindcoach.com)
Mental Strength – The Unfair Advantage (warriormindcoach.com)

Post Footer automatically generated by Add Post Footer Plugin for wordpress.

Keep Learning...

Warrior Mind Podcast – Episode 2

Mental Strength, Podcast No Responses »

Jun 072010

The 2^nd Episode of Warrior Mind Podcast Covers:

Perception is projection
- 2M bits of info being received
  - Only 126 bits get into our consciousness due to filters
- Filters function is to
  - Generalize
  - Distort
  - Delete
- Where do filters come from
  - Values
  - Beliefs
  - Experiences
- Nothing has meaning except the meaning you give it
- How can you use this info
  - By reprogramming your filters you will see and experience an different reality

Inner World vs. Outer World
- Inner World consists of
  - Emotions
  - Feelings
  - Thoughts
- Outer World consists of
  - Experiences
  - Circumstances
  - Events
- Worlds are independent but related
  - One affects the other
- There is no happiness or sadness in the Outer World

Click on the link below to listen or you can subscribe via iTunes.

Please let me know your thoughts and any suggestions for future podcasts.

Post Footer automatically generated by Add Post Footer Plugin for wordpress.

Keep Learning...

Focused Attention Leads to Mastery

Mental Strength 2 Responses »

Jun 042010

Concentration is perhaps the least understood and trained mental strength skill. It is an essential mind skill for optimal performance, especially in a tense or stressful situation.

Here’s a great excerpt from Napoleon Hill concentration.

Controlled Attention Leads to Mastery

by Napoleon Hill

“Controlled attention leads to mastery in any type of human endeavor, because it enables one to focus the powers of his mind upon the attainment of a definite objective and to keep it so fixed at will. Controlled attention is self-mastery of the highest order, for it is an accepted fact that the man who controls his own mind may control everything else that gets in his way.

It was this sort of control which Harriet Beecher Stowe had in mind when she said:

When you get into a tight place and everything goes against you, ‘til it seems as though you could not hold on a minute longer, never give up then, for that is just the place and time that the tide will turn.

The tide seems always to turn in your favor if you are determined to see that it does. Your state of mind has everything to do with turning the tide. Plato expressed this thought in his statement:

The first and best victory is to conquer self; to be conquered by self is, of all things, the most shameful and vile.

Francis Parkman showed his understanding of the power of the mind, and particularly the power available through controlled attention, when he wrote:

He who would do some great thing in this short life must apply himself to work with such concentration of his forces as, to idle spectators, who live only to amuse themselves, looks like insanity.

Washington Irving expressed his respect for the power of the mind in these words:

Great minds have purposes, others have wishes. Little minds are tamed and subdued by misfortune; but great minds rise above them.

The potentialities of the power of controlled attention, through concentration, are many, but none of them is greater, nor more important, than that of concentration upon a definite major purpose. Hidden in these two words: controlled attention – is a strange power that will enable you to remove all self-imposed limitations which most people accept or set up in their own minds, and by which some are bound throughout their lives.” – Source: PMA Science of Success Course. Pgs. 334 & 335

Concentration abilities are not fully automatic; they need to be trained, just like any other “muscle.” Daily use of concentration, i.e. reading a book, performing a moderate task or figuring out a problem, does not create the type of intense concentration required in high-stress circumstances. Concentration of this magnitude is exhausting.

There a various ways to test and train your concentration. There a several books on concentration and as well as online tools.

There is another concept in concentration and that is “Circles of Attention.” Nowicki (1994) indicated that Russian sports psychologist placed a great deal of attention to these “circles of attention.” They are:

Wide Circle of Attention: you are aware of everything in your environment; a broad panorama of what is happening
Middle Circle of Attention: you are aware of what is happening in the general area that you are responsible for.
Small Circle of Attention: you are aware of what is going on in your personal space.
Internal Circle of Attention: you are aware of what is happing in you body, what some describe as the “internal focus.

Concentration has been an important mental strength skill for ages and is crucial in a person’s personal development and personal empowerment.

So…let me ask you….how’s yours…what do you do regularly to improve your concentration?

Please share your experiences, tips and tools in the comments below.