How to Think, Perform, and Win Like a Champion
ALERT!
Squash is falling behind wrestling in the poll of which sports should be included in the Olympics 2020 in “Inside The Games”, which is widely read by IOC members. So your help in voting and emailing/tweeting all contacts at your disposal and asking them to vote for squash at the following website would be greatly appreciated and very helpful to getting squash in the 2020 Olympics:
Squash 2020 – Back the Bid! Follow on twitter @vote4squash
Squash Olympic Bid for 2020
Help squash make it into the Olympics -
FORWARD this link to friends, family and colleagues
who are sport enthusiasts!
Roger Federer Back The Bid To Get Squash In The Olympics
You may or may not know that squash is vying for a coveted place in the Olympics with its Back The Bid campaign to get into the 2020 Olympics. The Professional Squash Association sent out the following message to all players and it would be great if you could help out with the campaign today.
Just take 5 minutes to help make history and get squash into the Olympics!
Even Roger Federer backs the bid because he knows that squash should have been in the Olympics a long, long time ago.
Dear Players,
Re: Squash 2020 Olympic Campaign
I’m writing to you in my capacity as CEO of the PSA. As you may know, there have been some recent developments regarding Squash’s bid for Olympic inclusion in 2020.
Wrestling is no longer a core Olympic sport, and it joins Squash along with 6 others sports competing for election to the 2020 Olympic Games Sports Programme. Squash has a crucial presentation to the International Olympic Committee Executive Board at the end of May and a decision will be made in September on the sport to be added to the 2020 Games.
So the next six months or so are critical to our Olympic ambitions and your support is paramount.
Vero Communications, the company advising our Bid, has given us some ideas on how we can help build support for the bid and from our end I hope you will join me in my enthusiasm to get Squash included in the Olympic Games.
We want to create a push on Twitter via @vote4squash and the hash tag #Vote4Squash and through FaceBook status updates by all the key players on tour. This will help give a quick and potentially significant boost to the bid via your social media following.
With this in mind I have a proposal for all of you:
Send out a Tweet asking people to follow @vote4squash and to include the hash tag #Vote4Squash on Tuesday 19th February at roughly noon UK time – this will help the trending of the hashtag as it is morning in USA, early afternoon in Europe and evening in Asia/Australia.
Essentially, we want followers of @vote4squash to dramatically increase and for #vote4squash to trend on Twitter.
So ensure your followers have #Vote4Squash in their Tweets, that they follow @vote4squash and add comments about Squash’s bid e.g. – ‘I’m backing the Bid, are you? Show your support via #Vote4Squash. If not, why not? #Vote4Squash.’
If you are not on Twitter, you can help on Facebook by posting #Vote4Squash in your status – hopefully your Facebook fans and followers will then promote it on Twitter.
WSA fully support this idea also, so if we co-ordinate our efforts and send out a united message to the wider public, International Olympic Committee and media, it will certainly help our campaign and demonstrate the global support for Squash to join the Olympic Games.
Thanks for your support.
Regards
Alex Gough
CEO PSA
I recently read an article in the Virgin Australia Inflight Magazine that quoted Brisbane-based performance psychologist Dr Phil Jauncey as saying that
“Mental toughness isn’t the ability
to get your mind right before an event,
it’s being able to execute when your mind is saying you can’t.”
This is of primary importance to anyone who is competitive in sports and/or in a performance environment (musician, public speaker, etc.)
If you want to learn more about mental toughness, click the hyperlink or the image above to access a list of books I’ve read and reviewed on the subject.
You can do your bit to get squash into the 2020 Olympics by joining the worldwide initiative Back The Bid… The best way is to go to your local squash club tomorrow – October 20th and participation in what will become a World Record event… World Squash Day.
Today’s discussion is one of those topics that appears self-evident but really isn’t – to most people.
That is, the transition from one performance level to the next.
As a squash player, I’ve transitioned from breaking rackets to breaking strings. With the level of intensity and high frequency of play, I used to break more rackets than strings. As I was acquiring my skills, I would often hit and scrape the wall as I got to more balls and played increasingly better players.
Without the consistency in my racket skills, the contact point with the ball would vary widely on the racket strings. Eventually, the racket frame would give way and a replacement racket had to be purchased.
In 2010, that changed. With increased focus and attention on my racket skills, I stopped hitting/scraping the wall and the contact point with the ball narrowed to become the center of the racket (sweet spot). You can see it in the centre of the blue racket.
That meant I started to break more strings than rackets. At one point, I was re-stringing rackets every week! (Averaging 10-15 hours of play with brand new strings!)
That’s when I raised my game to the next level – hitting with 60-80% pace instead of “bashing the ball” at 80-90-100%. It’s a widely held (false) belief that hitting hard and faster is better…
There are multiple lessons to be learned – the sports lesson is that if you are a competitive athlete, you need to assess where you’re at. I discussed this with my squash coach. We purposefully focused on improving my racket skills and strokes – primarily with direction to the ball and foot placement.
Many (most?) athletes are not aware of the distinctions involved here and therefore have no clue where they are nor where they should be.
The most important lesson to become a champion in sport or business is to…
Establish what I call Management By Metrics. Specific targets and milestones and focus on improvement. In today’s blog post, it’s about breaking fewer rackets and more strings, not to save money because it’s a trade off and about the same price when it all works itself out.
Management By Metrics requires that:
Once the measurement takes place, then you can gauge, assess and analyse progress or development.
Without measurement, you’re blind and hoping for the best. You won’t be a champion in sport with that approach and you certainly won’t have an optimally profitable business without systems and procedures in place to create SPECIFIC OUTCOMES.
Too many people still believe that champions are born rather than made. Champions are made – manufactured with metrics.
Every single Champion’s biography reveals (at least some of) the secrets that made the SUPERIOR at what they did.
The key is for you to identify where you are to close the gap between that and where you want to be.
I know this blog focuses primarily on elite athletic strategies and techniques, but the video below is a MUST WATCH to remind us all of the benefits of exercise.
If you have a family member or friend who is not exercising at all, make sure you send them a link to this blog post…
Thank you to Ray Keefe of Successful Endeavours who forwarded this to me.
When you come across anything like this, “pay it forward” and send it to me so I can share it with others.
Many business people want “success” to be more ‘cerebral and complex’… When it’s not.
Just keep thinking about how you achieved at a sport and developed mastery – without clarity and concentration of focus, it’s IMPOSSIBLE.
Everyone wants to think champions are “born” and that talent is a god-given gift. It’s not. It’s pure hard work and execution of the basics. “Pure talent” like Michelangelo and Da Vinci are so rare that over the CENTURIES there are only a handful of such examples.
All the other “great masters” spent the same 10,000+ hours learning their craft – MOST of them dying destitute BECAUSE they acquired mastery too late…
On one hand it’s sobering and on the other it means greatness is within us all – IF WE WANT IT.
I see this manifest itself all the time, on the squash court and in business.
People want to win in squash and get more leads, projects, contracts in business, but most are not willing to do what it takes to achieve “game excellence”.
Everyone can have an “excellent game” when everything flows and the stars in the universe line up, but “game excellence” is the ability to do it consistently, over and over again.
Game excellence is acquired with deliberate practice.
If only more people would just give up on the self-perpetuating myth and realise the reality… You need to INVEST in yourself to get the PAYOFF.
If you’ve ever wondered how really great athletes perform their magic, it’s because they have acquired a wide range of skills and abilities that are now part of their IMPLICIT Mental System. Matthew Syed explains in it outstanding detail with amazing clarity in his bestselling book “Bounce“.
Rather than try to summarise Syed’s explanation, I thought I would share with you a real case study from Sydney Tennis Coach, Alison Scott.
Hi Marc,
Today I was teaching a 12 yr old girl the forehand. She had come to get some lessons after having a break from playing for a couple of years and wanted to get back into it again. She was a medium beginner – where she had 2 years of lessons before she stopped playing.
15 minutes into the tennis lesson I noticed a pattern where she would miss hit balls that she had to run out wide to hit.
I was aware she looked awkward and not feeling natural moving out to her right. I stopped and asked her to come to the net.
I asked her what she was focusing on when she was running wide for the forehand. She thought about it and then said she was focusing on her feet/footwork.
I suggested that we work on tracking the ball visually and working on her timing. I explained in more detail the exercise and we continued.
After another 15 minutes she was hitting the ball cleanly and was more balanced. She came to the net smiling and said it felt so easy and she felt more control with the ball. I explained a couple of things, one was getting her to understand that movement is as natural as walking down the street or around the house. You don’t think about it [because it's in your IMPLICIT Mental System]. By putting her attention on the ball as the main focus made everything else fall into place naturally.
When she put her attention back on the ball and followed it from the bounce up to her racket she was able to apply her intelligence to that taks and consequently it improved. [This is the EXPLICIT Mental System at work, learning and applying new knowledge, skills and abilities with concentration and deliberate effort.]
I often see tennis players who are distracted away from the cause of the problem by looking at the effect instead. This often becomes bigger and harder to fix the more attention they put on it. [Matthew Syed explains this as the primary source of choking.]
It’s important to realise where you’re getting distracted or diverted and then get back on track quickly. Having a good tennis coach is a must to help you overcome the obstacles that prevent you from becoming a much better tennis player – usually with a lot less effort, stress and anxiety.
Kind regards,
Alison Scott
Modern Tennis Australia Pty Ltd
I previously blogged about redefining sports with an endzone touchdown flip that has to be seen to be believed… Today’s blog post is similar, this time involving an ice hockey player who headed a pass like a soccer/football player.
If the link doesn’t work, cut and paste this into your browser:
What’s going on out there on the playing field?!?
Elite athletes are so gifted they are combining all kinds of skills and tricks maybe forgetting they have their cleats or skates on!
Fun stuff if you can do it!
Discover the key thoughts, ideas and patterns super–achievers use to produce Gold–Medal, World Championship Results
Two action–packed presentations from Dr Marc Dussault, a self–made multi–millionaire business and Internet entrepreneur
Australia's #1 Exponential Growth Strategist Millionaire and A-Grade competitive squash player finally reveals:
"58 minutes of giggling fun learning 29 easy-to-understand squash metaphor lessons that will SIMPLIFY complex, intricate and sophisticated strategies that you can deploy to make money in your business TODAY!"
