Success Is No Accident
“Success is no accident. It is hard work, perseverance, learning, studying, sacrifice and most of all, love of what you are doing or learning to do” – Pele
The ‘healthy mind, healthy body’ philosophy dates back to ancient Greek and Chinese civilisations. Socrates believed that the ‘good life’ was one devoted to the pursuit of excellence in all things – physical, intellectual, and ethical – and that an individual’s emotional state could affect their physical state.
The study of sports psychology and how the mind affects a sportsperson’s body has developed in much more recent times but, even without such deep historical roots, it has grown quickly into a recognised and significant part of the science of sports performance coaching. Sports psychology 2 uses cutting-edge technology to demonstrate how developing mental training skills can lead also lead to developing the ’winning edge.’
“Olympism…exalting and combining in a balanced whole the qualities of body, mind, and will” – Pierre de Coubertin (Olympic Games revivalist)
In its widest sense, sports psychology encompasses all areas of exercise, fitness and leisure, not just competitive sport, but in terms of competition results, what are the factors that lead us to the conclusion that the best man, woman, or team won on the day?
The person holding the trophy is undoubtedly the winner but there’s much more to getting your hands on the prize than simply turning up on the day and hoping you play better than the other competitors. Without appropriate levels of fitness and physical preparation, the chances of playing well are instantly limited but equal emphasis must also be placed upon mental fitness and preparation if a top performance is to be realised.
Here are some frequently heard comments made by sports commentators:
- “He seems to be struggling to find his form today.”
- The winner, “…just wanted it more.”
- “They’re all over the place; there doesn’t seem to be any spirit in the team.”
- “There’s no sparkle; she seems to be just going through the motions.”
- “His focus would appear to be on picking fights with officials rather than on his game.”
- “That missed shot seems to have shaken his confidence; he’s struggled to regain concentration since then.”
Now, here’s a list of proven sport psychology, or mental skill, techniques used by sports psychology 2 to ensure those comments are never true of your own or your team’s performance:
Goal Setting
Setting a course towards the ‘big event’ and progressively working through a series of lesser events, or smaller goals strategically placed in a training schedule, will ensure you achieve your peak performance when it really counts. Sports psychology 2 encourages athletes to set specific, measurable, achievable, recorded, and appropriately time phased goals to keep motivation high in training and in competition.
“The most important key to achieving great success is to decide upon your goal and launch, get started, take action, move” – John Wooden (basketball coach)
Understanding Motivation
By learning what motivates you, you can prepare a training schedule that will keep you going even when the going gets tougher! Understanding motivation is an important part of the goal setting process. Sports psychology 2 promotes the need for each athlete to understand what motivates them as an individual, even if playing as part of a team.
“Even if you are on the right track, you will get run over if you just sit there” – Will Rogers (actor/humorist)
Positive Mental Attitude
Things can, and do, go wrong! An athlete’s ability to remain positive when the pressure is on is key to allowing them to realise their full potential. Sports psychology 2 techniques can’t prevent things from going wrong but they can develop powerful mental skills that make it much easier to remain positive when they do. A positive attitude is a winning attitude.
“It’s not the disability that defines you, it’s how you deal with the challenges the disability presents you with. We have an obligation to the abilities we DO have, not the disability” – Jim Abbott (baseball pitcher)
Understanding ‘Mindset’
In a nutshell, the term ‘Mindset’ describes an individual’s view of who and what they are. A person with a ‘fixed mindset’ holds the belief that they are what they are and nothing will change that. A person with a ‘growth mindset’ holds the belief that change is always possible and that nothing is set in stone. In a sports environment, a fixed mindset leaves no room for learning new skills or improving performance through making changes.
It could also lead to a successful athlete resting on their laurels in the mistaken belief that they don’t need to work at their skills – as they’re a given! Promoting a growth mindset is therefore of vital importance if athletes are to thrive through continued learning and the mastering of new skills. Sports psychology 2 helps athletes to identify their current mindset and paves the way to making positive changes.
“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit” – Aristotle
Developing Team Spirit
‘There’s no I in team,’ or so the saying goes. There’s also a great comedy come-back to that line that goes, ‘But there are four in platitude quoting idiot.’ It goes without saying that an effective team must devote a large proportion of training time to the actual physical practice of perfecting their skills as a unit. However, an effective coach will also recognise the need to utilise the learned skills of goal setting and understanding motivation for each individual player if a winning team is to be formed. True team spirit can only be achieved through open communication and trust. Sports psychology 2 provides practical, effective methods of analysing – and improving – the available lines of communication between players and coaches as well as between players themselves.
“If anything goes bad, I did it. If anything goes semi-good, then we did it. If anything goes really good, then you did it. That’s all it takes to get people to win football games” – Paul ‘Bear’ Bryant (American college football coach)
Visualisation
Learning how to visualise a positive outcome under any set of circumstances is key to preparing any sportsperson in any sport for the pressures of competition. A vision of exactly what it takes to create a winning performance must be clear in the athlete’s mind’s-eye and there should be no surprises on the day! Negative external factors such as poor weather or noisy crowds will no longer have the power to break concentration or focus when visualisation techniques, along with the ability to use positive self-talk, have been mastered. Sports psychology 2 trains athletes to go beyond ‘seeing’ a winning performance and to also, hear, feel, smell, or even taste it too.
“To give yourself the best possible chance of playing to your potential, you must prepare for every eventuality. That means practice” – Seve Ballesteros (golfer)
Building Confidence
Everyone experiences moments of self-doubt but it’s important that athletes should not experience those moments just as they are about to compete in the most important event of their career so far. Building confidence also builds greater self-belief. Sports psychology 2 not only provides effective methods of developing confidence but also powerful coping mechanisms for those high pressure moments of doubt.
“Experience tells you what to do; confidence allows you to do it” – Stan Smith (tennis player)
Improving Focus
Developing an understanding of and practicing the techniques used in the above – goal setting, motivation, positive mental attitude, mindset, team spirit, visualisation, and confidence – will have the added bonus of improving an athlete’s ability to remain focussed and to maintain concentration when it matters most – in competition. We are all creatures of habit, we like our comfortable, familiar training environment. The competition environment often takes an athlete out of their comfort zone and the result can be a loss of focus leading to a poor performance. The mental training skills developed through sports psychology 2 techniques provide athletes with the ability to focus and concentrate only on what’s important and to disregard the rest – the noisy crowds; the 747’s flying over; the loose dog after the police display; the call for the lost child on the loud-haler just as they are about to perform…
“When I go out on the ice, I’m just thinking about my skating. I forget it is a competition” – Katarina Witt (figure skater)
Here’s the question, “Why are some athletes able to rise to the occasion and perform well under pressure when others seem to lose the plot?”
“Luck? Sure. But only after long practice and only with the ability to think under pressure” – Babe Didrikson Zaharias (golfer)
The answer? Explore Sports psychology 2!
Creating a Motivational Environment: The Power of Role Modelling
Most interviews with successful sportspeople contain the question, “Who has been a role model for you in your career?” and most sportspeople answer by naming other successful players in their sport. Occasionally, inspirational characters from other areas of life are noted and every now and again their coach gets a mention!
“People never improve unless they look to some standard or example higher and better than themselves” – Tyron Edwards
To coach an athlete to international success is the stuff of dreams for many coaches but the majority of people who choose to coach do so simply for the love of their sport or to “give something back” to a sport that has given a great deal to them. At grass-roots level, the coach can be the biggest influence in a young person’s sporting life but that doesn’t mean they have to be a caped-crusading-all-knowing-super-hero. Sports psychology 2 techniques can help coaches at the entry level of sports find the most effective methods of motivating people to become involved in sport and, perhaps more importantly, stay involved.
Newcomers to sport, particularly children, will often learn most in the initial stages through a simple ‘monkey-see-monkey-do’ system. A coach’s enthusiasm will rub off on his players; a coach’s ability will become matched by his players; and a coach’s attitude and behaviour will also be mimicked. Being a good role model therefore carries with it a great responsibility and a major part of that responsibility is to identify where your strengths and weaknesses lie as a coach.
It’s important to remember that although newcomers to your sport may look upon you as some kind of hero, being an effective coach and a good role model doesn’t mean having to don that cape! Sports psychology 2 techniques allow coaches at every level to build on existing strengths and to shine a light on areas that could use further training or practice. The key is to continue developing your own coaching skills so that you are in a position to continue developing your players skills.
Being an effective motivator is just one element of being a good coach and through sports psychology 2, coaches can learn how to understand what motivates their players and themselves. Effective coaches don’t rely on gadgets or gimmicks to inspire their athletes, they rely on the fundamentals of good coaching.
The pillars of performance – technical, tactical, physical, psychological – form the basic structure on which all sports psychology 2 techniques are built and strong sports performances grow from strong supporting pillars. As coaches, an important step towards creating a motivational climate for your players is to look at your current skill set in relation to those pillars and ensuring a balance by developing equal strength in each pillar. Develop any weak areas you discover through being open to further learning, talking to experts or attending classes.
Hiding behind strengths can be tempting but this will only stifle progress in the long run. Weaknesses should be viewed as opportunities to grow. Sport psychology 2 gives you the opportunity as a coach and a role model to encourage your players to remain open to learning by leading through example. After all, each new player who comes to you has the potential to go on to international success so give yourself every opportunity to be one of those motivational role models they mention in their interviews!
To learn more about sports psychology 2 techniques, check out the *NEW* updated Coaching Edge Mental Skills for sport course coming soon! To register interest e-mail support@zonedinperformance.com
Creating a Motivational Environment: What is a Positive Climate?
With sports psychology 2 techniques, coaches involved in any sport at any level can learn how to get the best from themselves and their athletes in every session.
Creating a positive coaching climate is key to allowing athletes to achieve their true potential and it’s also an essential element of ensuring the best version of you is always presented whenever you coach.
“In essence, if we want to direct our lives, we must take control of our consistent actions. It’s not what we do once in a while that shapes our lives, but what we do consistently” – Tony Robbins
As people, we are generally creatures of habit so in terms of coaching this tends to mean we stick to what we know best. Unfortunately, a coaching style that motivates one athlete can actually be a style that de-motivates another.
In many cases, coaching a session becomes so routine that the coach is unaware of how his methods – or lack of them – are affecting those he coaches. Sports psychology 2 techniques allow coaches to identify strengths and potential weaknesses in their coaching style which can help change training sessions from one-size-fits-all experiences into much more motivational ones for all concerned.
What motivates an athlete can be complex but it’s essential that the coach learns to understand each athlete and, in the case of team sports, each player as an individual. For some, coaching is simply a case of yelling a lot and when things are not working out, yelling louder but without a positive climate in which to train, athletes or players are unlikely to perform well in the long run.
Positive coaching methods allow athletes to develop and grow. Negative coaching methods rarely achieve anything other than frustration and disappointment. For example, try the following simple sports psychology 2 exercise to understand a little more about coaching climates.
Here are two ways a coach might approach an athlete struggling to perfect a javelin throw:
- “You’re not getting the distance because you’re doing it wrong. How many times have I told you, if you keep throwing like that you’re not going to qualify. Go and do it again but get it right this time…”
- “That run up was much better so now let’s think about where you’re looking as you prepare to throw. Keep that run up and let’s try…”
Which method is likely to achieve the best results? The above are examples of verbal feedback a coach might give during a training session but even without spoken words, a positive or negative climate can be created by the coach’s body language or general attitude. Imagine the de-motivating effect of seeing your coach shake his head in disgust at your performance or of noticing that there’s no real point in actually trying to ask a question right after he’s said, “any questions?” because he always turns his back and walks off!
An effective coach will take time over creating a positive climate in which to nurture the potential of each individual athlete under his guidance. A positive coaching attitude will help to develop athletes with equally positive mental attitudes and positive attitudes lead to positive actions.
Sports psychology 2 techniques allow coaches to build on existing strengths and develop mind training methods that will keep them and their athletes on track to being the best they can be.
To learn more about sports psychology 2 techniques, check out the *NEW* updated Coaching Edge Mental Skills for sport course coming soon! To register interest e-mail support@zonedinperformance.com
