If you’re into my 1 Percent Improvement Doctrine, you’re constantly looking for that elusive 1 percent improvement. Of course as an Exponential Marketing Enthusiast, you want to look where no one else is searching so you can get that secret ‘edge’ that is both effective and easy. I came across an article in Men’s Health Magazine that stated that 70 percent of Australians who admit doing a very low level of exercise. That is shocking to me – that’s the percentage who ADMITTED to it, which means the REAL percentage is even higher!

That’s why another article on the same page really hit home – it’s one of the ways you can get a 1 Percent Improvement with minimal ‘effort’ and have fun!

Life In The Fast Brain

Life In The Fast Brain

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We’ve all heard it before “drink more water”. What you may not know, is that by the time you’re thirsty, your performance has already been negatively affected. That means if you’re serious about your performance, you have to include drinking more water. I’ll discuss other types of drinks in future posts, but for now, let me give you an additional tip that I have to be honest, really surprised me.

Men’s Health Magazine (November 2009) reported that in The Journal of Sports Sciences a study quoting that cyclists who actually wrote down their drinking strategy consumed 55% more water than those who didn’t. A drinking strategy for a cyclist can be be as simple as “the mouthfuls art the 15, 25 and 35 minute marks or at the 10, 40 and 50 Kilometers.” For a squash player, it could be “drink a full glass one hour prior to my practice/match, then half a glass on my way to the court, then 2 mouthfuls in-between each game, then a full bottle after the practice/match”.

Just having a drinking strategy can make a big difference – try it out and see what happens! Of course it may just improve your performance by a few percentage points, but in squash, that’s 1 point per game and y’know what? I’ll take it!

Too many people are looking for the BIG BANG solution, when very small, easy steps can add up to produce BIG RESULTS.

Stick with me and this blog and you’ll see how easy it really can be if you actually DO THIS STUFF!

This blog celebrates sports and its athletes’ achievements. This short video is one of those examples where the laws of physics seem to be twisted into a knot. Watch how this 9-year old scores this goal. You’ll be rewinding it over and over again in amazement. I once played with someone who had a similar trick – unfortunately it was way before YouTube was around.

If you have a secret weapon like this – develop and nurture it. The unleash it when you need it most!

Psst! If anyone can teach me a similar shot like that in squash, I’ll pay big money to learn it!

Thank you to Andrew Powell from Montreal Canada for forwarding this to me.

In a previous post, I blogged about identify the orientation you have regarding your sports performance. Because of your predominant orientation, you’ll create attributions differently and therefore KNOWING that attributions are will help you become more self-aware as an athlete so you can more easily and quickly realign your training for improved results.

Attributions are best understood within the framework of self-efficacy. Self efficacy is a judgment about one’s capability to perform a particular task (1) at an elevated level, (2) with certainty, and (3) repeatedly over time. It means much more than just being confident, but that’s a discussion for another day.

Where self-efficacy explains the transition from expectation to effort, attributions re-direct the focus to the causes of expectancy beliefs, that is, HOW success and failure affect continue motivation.

With this in mind, there are three critical characteristics that underlie attributions:

1. Locus of causality. Perceiving an outcome to have resulted from either internal or external factors. Can you see how your orientation can affect this?
2. Stability. Perceiving the likelihood of the same outcome recurring.
3. Locus of control. The perception of whether an outcome can be manipulated. Once again, your orientation will sneak in here!

Let’s look at some examples and be honest with yourself… Where do your attributions lie?

Locus of causality.

• Internal: Your effort or an injury
• External: Field conditions, Equipment, referee, judge

Stability.

• Stable. Your talent and ability.
• Unstable. Weather, luck.

Locus Of Control.

• Controllable (Internal). Your game plan, pre-game preparation.
• Uncontrollable (External). Opponent’s actions, referee, judge, field conditions.

From this summary explanation, you can see there are many dimensions or what I call distinctions to dice and slice the Mindset Of A Champion. The more precise you can be about WHY you do stuff, the better you can be at FIXING the errors and mistakes.

More importantly, if you can change, alter or improve your mental model and motivations, the physical manifestations will follow with a lot LESS EFFORT.

That is why the Mindset Of A Champion is the one defensible advantage that you can count on. Talent won’t be enough. There is always someone out there with more talent – but very few with the mindset to beat you and win.

So, the question for today is – where do your attributions lie? The more honest you are, the better your results will be.

Remember, this is a completely confidential process – ONLY you know (and of course your coach or other champions who can see right through you!)

That’s the power of this psychological stuff – once you know it, it becomes your weapon, like an X-RAY machine that reveals all.

Fun stuff isn’t it?

This blog is called the Mindset Of A Champion Blog, dedicated to anyone who wants to think, act and perform like a champion. Of course sports metaphors, analogies and anecdotes are used, but as we all well know, there are a lot of similarities and parallels between ‘life’, business and sport. I’ve been researching top trainers, psychologists and coaches and will share with you some of their key findings in this blog – such as your orientation.

Sports participants are said to have one of two orientations: (1) task-mastery when they take pride in the progressive improvement of their knowledge and ability relative to their own past performance or (2) an ego orientation, intent on demonstrating superiority over others, motivated by social comparison and desire statistics in the win column.

One isn’t better than other – as we’ll see in future blog posts, they affect everything you think about and do (don’t do).

Psychologists and coaches generally agree that even though DURING competition, one’s orientation can shift, we each have a predominant orientation. By knowing what that is, you can become much more self-aware of your behaviours – the ones that help as well as hinder your progress.

Give it some though – which orientation are you?

What does it mean in respect of what you do/don’t do, how you train and how you compete?

It’s worthy of reflection.

Of course you can then extend this orientation to your life, career, business and other activities and hobbies.

I’ve blogged about Dr Malcolm Simons before. He is truly an inspiration, not just because he was a top world-ranked squash player, but because he lives his life with such an intensity and passion that is so rare. Anyway, the reason I am blogging today is because Malcolm sent me this e-mail several months ago and with his permission, I want to share it with you.

An element which distinguishes some of us from others is the capacity to focus, to resist distraction.  Once we have prioritised how we want to apply our resources of energy and time, we then identify the essential elements and hold them in focus in order to most efficiently and expeditiously achieve the projected outcome. While the process takes place, variations arise, as they do with all evolutionary, emergent processes.

Another distinguishing characteristic of successful people is to be flexible enough to allow reprioritization as these inevitable variations arise. Some have been hunched earlier, so they come as less of a surprise and therefore incur less resistance to review and change.  Others are unexpected, even unimaginable, coming from some space that is not on the stage on which we are currently strutting. The mental image that I hold is of the Galilean thermometer in front of me now on my desk. The indicative glass balls respond to variations as they arise, in this case primarily environmental temperature. They respond smoothly as they sense the destabilising change, then float quickly to the appropriate level, in the process rearranging the grouping of the other balls.

I have the existential experience of reprioritization on a now-by-now basis, such that the process is as fluid as the thermometer indicator changes. Once priorities are rearranged, the secret is then to implement the most appropriate changes required, again, to ‘most efficiently and expeditiously achieve the projected outcome’.

Another element to which you allude, and which is to be recognized and usually avoided, is to change a winning game. [Personal communication removed] There’s a developed skill in seeing one’s life in that sort of structure so that the occurrence of variations and the impact of those variations on achieving a winning game or in departing from a winning game, are most easily discerned.

Whatever the stage on which we strut, and whatever the accolades or brickbats that we experience, always remember that “life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player, that struts and frets his hour upon the stage and then is heard no more; it is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”

Words Of Wisdom that we can all learn from, thank you Malcolm!

A friend sent me a link to a 2-day Squash Bootcamp with Former World #1 and current World #8 David Palmer in Sydney next week, January 6 and 7 2010.

David Palmer Squash Champion

Of course I jumped at this rare, one-time opportunity. The reason I’m blogging about it is because if you know anyone who’s an avid competitive squash player, this is a rare opportunity to spend time ON THE COURT with a WORLD CHAMPION… Send them this blog post link.

That’s it for today – stay tuned for some of the lessons I learn from David…

You might not know this, but I have a lot of ‘fans’ who follow my squash exploits – not because they are squash fanatics or addicts, but because they are either champions themselves or are seeking greater awareness of their own Exponential Potential. Many of them send me stuff like the video below which keeps me pumped, passionate and pushing myself…

Before you go ahead and watch the video below, I just wanted to thank you for all the support, love and encouragement you’ve shown me in the past week while I was competing at the 2009 World Masters Games. I will be blogging about several other distinctions and insights on this and my other blogs over the next few weeks – it really has been a surreal experience. One that even surpassed my own expectations by a long shot.

Every time I stepped on the court, I felt you there with me – that meant I played harder and better. I highly recommend that you compete in sports and when you do, that you involve others to be there with you -physically or in spirit. It makes a difference.

Anthony Robbins calls it leverage and I totally agree – however not in the sense of getting you to do something you otherwise wouldn’t do, but for successful people who are already at a good, great or excellent level – to stretch their sphere of influence to become the best they can become. The person they knew they always could become.

Once again thank you and here’s a video that was sent to me by Bruce Hildebrand of Balance and Control Pilates in Melbourne… Enjoy!

It all comes down to the last game… All the hard fought matches and games, all the training, lessons, routines and drills. When it’s all said and done – you have to enjoy it because losing the Bronze in 3 very close matches would otherwise be a heartbreaker. All 3 games were won by the slimmest point spread of 2 – These World Masters Games were the first to have PAR-11 scoring.

Don’t worry, I’m not heartbroken – the first match was 10-12, the second 15-13 and the last one 11-9. On the day, I couldn’t overcome bad referees (not biased, just terrible calls that totally upset the match momentum – for BOTH players, not just me). It simply amazes me that people who PLAY can’t REFEREE. But that’s a discussion for another day.

The lesson is quite simple for today – sometimes there is ‘no reason’, no in-depth analysis required – it could have gone either way – there can’t be less of a gap in points than there were in these 3.

I am proud to have played each game full-on and accept that I didn’t lose and my opponent won.

I do know however that within the next year, the situation will be COMPLETELY DIFFERENT – I will be MILES AHEAD of where I am not and heading into ‘uncharted’ territory…

I know without a doubt I have the talent, skills and ability within me to completely re-think my game and my ranking and aim for the Top 10.

That’s what I take out of this competition – a top 20 ranking and the absolute conviction that the Top 10 is within reach – WITHIN ONE YEAR – not 3 or 4 as I had previously expected.

So yes, be disappointed for me because I wanted a medal, but trust me that this realisation is even more valuable to me than a medal.

This means I have something else to aim for way beyond my own previous expectations!

The only consolation is seeing a friend lose today – for the same reason – it could have gone either way – it went the other guy’s way.

That’s sport.

That’s life.

That’s the Mindset Of A Champion.

What can I say? It all started with a nail biter I lost 10-12. I felt confident I could win this match. The next game went my way with an 11-8 win that wasn’t decisive, but it was a solid game. The next game was all over the place, he took it 9-11, once again only a few points separating us. At this point, I’m thinking it’s still going to plan even though I am down 2-1 in games. All the preparation, planning and routines are still going to pay dividends.

The fourth game was another good effort, yielding an 11-7 win for me.

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