The Herminator – He came back!
Sports Psychology, Mental Toughness and Performance Mastery
What is it that keeps an athlete coming back for more when the odds are stacked against them? What is it that drives an athlete tipped as the favourite to win to keep going when the gold medal is no longer within their grasp? What motivates great Olympians like downhill skier Hermann Maier to pick themselves up and carry on after a horrific spill on the slopes that left the viewing public convinced he must be dead?
Inner strength comes from a desire to succeed; an ambition to achieve goals. Those goals are as individual as the athletes who set them but research into how competitive athletes define success has shown that there are three main types of goal:
Mastery
Mastery goals, also known as task goals, are those associated with self-improvement. Achieving technically excellent form or achieving any sort of personal best performance constitutes success. Athletes motivated by mastery-oriented goals strive to continually improve their performance, irrespective of whether they win or not.
Ego
Ego goals, also known as ability goals, are those associated with demonstrating high ability. Athletes motivated by ego-oriented goals constantly strive to prove their ability by performing better than everyone else – winning is everything. How they win is secondary. The majority of athletes who make it into the Olympic arena do so because of ego-oriented goals: a need to win.
Social approval
This type of goal is more common in junior athletes who strive to please others with each performance.
At Olympic level, athletes are going for gold. They are motivated by the ego goal of winning a gold medal and in doing so, proving to the world that they are the best in their event. However, there’s no guarantee that gold will be their’s on the day so a mix of both ego and mastery oriented goals is a healthier and more balanced way to approach top level competition. If winning is your only goal, what happens to motivation should you fail to make the podium? If achieving perfection in a particular aspect of your event or achieving some form of personal best are also goals, a performance can still be successful without a win.
At the Nagano winter Olympics in 1998, Hermann ‘Herminator’ Maier was considered to be the best downhill skier in the world and touted as favourite to win every event he competed in. On his downhill run, travelling in excess of 70 mph, he attempted to turn left on an icy bend. His skis didn’t catch the snow and he flew, literally, off the course. High winds had already forced an alteration to the course and they now picked him up and hurled him through the air before dropping him onto the course to begin a 50 yard tumble into some safety netting. The crowd held their breath – he must be dead. In fact, he stood up and walked off the course!
“I was very fast and there was a lot of wind from the back side…I went up in the air and was looking at the sky. I looked down at the snow and waited for the crash” – Hermann Maier
The Herminator suffered injuries to his shoulder and knee but over the next few days he demonstrated his own brand of inner strength by not only returning to the slopes, but dominating them by winning gold in both the super G and giant slalom.
The question is, considering his injuries, what motivated him to get back onto his skis? Did he still have gold in his mind or did other goals motivate him to continue? Perhaps his self-belief was such that he knew he could still ski the pants off his rivals even if he had both legs in plaster!
To learn more about ‘Mental toughness” in sport to achieve winning results check out the *NEW* updated Coaching Edge Mental Skills for sport course coming soon! To register interest e-mail support@zonedinperformance.com
