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Mental Training and Sports Performance

Mar 172011

Mark Spitz once said, “Practice is 90% physical and 10% mental and competition is 10% physical and 90% mental.”

How true!

There is a vicious circle that occurs without the help of mental strength. There’s a trigger, it could be a missed catch, a dropped pass or a missed putt, what ever it is this event gets’ anchored into the psyche of the athlete. You don’t have to be a professional for this to happen. This can happen to a weekend warrior, armature or semi-pro athlete.

What happens is this trigger event causes all sorts of chatter in the mind. This chatter takes the athletes focus away from what they can control, i.e. their specific sports skill and puts it on the outcome, i.e. winning the game/match.

When and athlete becomes outcome focus, i.e. win the event or what will happen if I do or don’t win – this leads to distraction in performance. When the athlete becomes performance focus, i.e. how can perform this technique the better? – This will lead to peak performance.

When a player focuses in the “right” things, there are no distractions.

So, how does an athlete focus on the “right” things?

Taking Back Control

By becoming aware of this chatter and by using power of the mind to enhance personal performance, the athlete will flex his/her mental strength and start to take back control of their thinking.

Your mind and its power can either enhance or disrupt performance; it’s up to you…when you take back control.

When an athlete finds themselves in a situation where they’ve come off their game and they try to use self talk to stop struggle in their performance, they actually create more struggle. What you focus on expands….what you resist, persists.

Any attempt to control an out of control mind and its thoughts will lead to distraction.

By shifting to empowering performance and in-control thoughts, this will lead to peak performance.

This is why is so important to set-up a pre-game ritual as well as an intra-game and end-game ritual. If the athlete can go into the competition feeling confident in their abilities and NOT the outcome of the game, they’re more likely to have a peak performance.

Three critical items that will spiral an athlete out of control are:

1- Destructive self talk (disempowering inner coaching)

2- Focus of concentration on what’s wrong or not working

3- Focusing on what they can’t control, i.e. the other team/players, the weather

Guaranteed that by paying attention to these three things an athlete will not have a stellar game.

Again, the first action to resolve these two factors is awareness of the inner dialogue. Is the self-talk supportive or destructive? Also, where is the focus of concentration before and during event? Is it on performance and what’s working, or is on what’s not working and trying to win?

It’s also good to look at what is the trigger is for the destructive self talk? Then there are several processes that can assist in “naturalizing” the thoughts associated with the event.

Remember with self talk, you get what you expect, so say it the way you want it.

When an athlete is involved with destructive self-talk there is a direct connection to the body, this is manifested as nervousness, stress or anxiety. These states’s cause:

Tight muscles
Inefficient and shallow breathing
Cold extremities (hands and feet)
- Blood flows to ‘deeper’ muscles (fight or flight – parasympathetic)
- Can ‘sense’ the object, i.e. ball, club, bat, stick etc

The power of the mind must be respected for how it affects the body.

Try this:

Sit up straight; now turn your head as far as you can to the right looking over your right shoulder behind you. Pick a spot to mark your position. It could be a picture on the wall, a lamp, anything that will let you know how far you’ve turned your head.

Got it?

OK, bring your head back forward and close your eyes.

Now, imagine turning your head again to the right. This time imagine yourself turning your head past the reference point you picked….way past see. Really see past the point your picked, feel what’s it’s like to have this flexibility. Enjoy being this flexible and going way past your previous point.

Great…now open your eyes and turn your head to the right again.

How far did you go this time?

Amazing, right!

That’s just a small sample of the power of your mind and how it affects your body. Now imagine what you’re doing when you’re thinking about all the things that are going wrong?

Your body will respond!

You can use your mindset to lower you’re the quality of your game or you can use you mindset to raise your performance.

This reminds of the Native American story about two wolves that live inside everyone of us.

An old Cherokee chief is teaching his grandson about life:

“A fight is going on inside me,” he said to the boy. “It is a terrible fight and it is between two wolves.

“One is evil – he is fear, doubt, anger, envy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, self-doubt, and ego.

“The other is good – he is confidence, self assured, joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion, and faith.

“This same fight is going on inside you – and inside every other person, too.”

The grandson thought about it for a minute and then asked his grandfather, “Which wolf will win?”

The old chief simply replied, “The one you feed.”

Which one do you feed before and during your event?

Please let me know your thoughts and any pre, itra or post game rituals that keep in a supportive mindset.

Visualization For Peak Performance (warriormindcoach.com)
Improving Human Performance – A Process Approach (warriormindcoach.com)
Mental Strength – The Unfair Advantage (warriormindcoach.com)
Practicing Mental Strength For Peak Personal Performance (warriormindcoach.com)
Excellence In Your Physical Training, It’s A Mindset (warriormindcoach.com)

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Practicing Mental Strength For Peak Personal Performance

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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.