In business, I call it Management By Metrics, but in sport I guess I should call it Mastery By Metrics. The question is “How do you know how well you’re playing?” Today’s post is one of the ways I do it as an elite squash player.

These photos are self-evident, but the question for you is how do YOU know how you’re progressing? What feedback mechanisms do you have in place to gauge progress and development?

Squash Racquet Strings Usage Comparison

You want to consider this on an on-going basis so that whenever the opportunity arises, your Reticular Activation System (RAS) will pick up on it.

Squash Racquet Strings Usage Close Up View

In future posts, I’ll share additional feedback mechanisms I use. Of course if you have some you’ve used in other sports, by all means share them with me so I can share them with our readers!

This blog is all about bringing you stuff you wouldn’t find on your own. This YouTube video of Bruce Lee is fantastic. It shows what you can do when you are creative and want to demonstrate someone’s absolute mastery. He was so good, it’s almost believable. Almost.

Thank you to Michael Pye of the South Shore Diet for forwarding this to me. Thanks Michael!

I’ve blogged about Dr Malcolms Simons before, the first time introducing him with a post on self-awareness, then recently sharing some of his Words Of Wisdom and now I want to share some of his professional expertise in molecular biology and then relate this back to having the Mindset Of A Champion

Cell Language Theory

The concept of cell language has been defined in molecular terms. The molecule-based cell language is shown to be isomorphic with the sound- and visual signal-based human language with respect to ten out of the 13 design features of human language characterized by Hockett. Biocybernetics, a general molecular theory of living systems developed over the past two and a half decades, is found to provide a physical theory underlying the phenomenon of cell language.

Nerve Cell Language Chart

The concept of cell language integrates bioenergetics and bioinformatics on the one hand and reductionistic and holistic experimental data on the other to account for living processes on the molecular level. The isomorphism between cell and human languages suggests that the DNA of higher eucaryotes contains two classes of genes–structural genes corresponding to the lexicon and ’spatiotemporal genes’ corresponding to the grammar of cell language.

The former is located in coding regions of DNA and the latter is predicted to reside primarily in noncoding regions. The grammar of cell language is identified with the mapping of the nucleotide sequences of DNA onto its 4-dimensional folding patterns that control the spatiotemporal evolution of gene expression.

Such a mapping has been referred to as the second genetic code, in contrast to the first genetic code which maps nucleotide triplets onto amino acids. The cell language theory introduces into biology the linguistic principle of ‘rule-governed creativity,’ leading to the formulation of the concept of ‘rule-governed creative molecules’ or ‘creations.’

This concept sheds new light on molecular biology, bioinformatics, protein folding, and developmental biology. In addition, the cell language theory suggests that human language is ultimately founded on cell language.

What does cell language theory have to do with the Mindset Of A Champion? Read More »»

I have to be honest that I can’t believe they still allow this kind of intimidation to happen before a match, but that’s just my personal opinion. That being said, I think this an awesome example of how to get INTO the Mindset Of A Champion. I mean c’mon… How can you not want to GET GOING after watching this? This is classic neuro-associative pre-framing. All champions do it – whether they do it blatantly like this (externally) or internally within their own mind.

One thing is for sure – you have to get pumped up for your games, training and competitions – I’ll address this in future blog posts. There are several anecdotes that you’ll really enjoy!

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

Read More »»

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!