Last year, I competed in the 2009 World Masters Championships and I lost the Bronze Medal in my division by 6 points and the Silver Medal by One Game or I increased my ranking from a ‘Top 50′ to #18 in the world. Which one do you think I focus on?

That’s right – my ranking – NOT because I didn’t win a medal, but because I went in with the explicit outcome to INCREASE my ranking from a Top 50 to Top 32. Getting to within the Top 20 was HUGE accomplishment, but that’s not the point I want to make today.

The result doesn’t change over time just because I got so close to a medal. If I didn’t have the Mindset Of A Champion, I’d hate myself for losing, when in fact if you asked me BEFORE the competition, would I be happy with a top 20 ranking, I would have said “YES!”

But y’know what?

Easier said than done.

Distorted Retrospective Perceptions

I can see it in people’s faces – the ones who understand this and the others who don’t. The expressions give them away.

Your lesson for today is simple, but not that easy. Set yourself an outcome or goal and WRITE IT DOWN. Go ahead and compete and then RETROSPECTIVELY evaluate the result. Be honest with yourself and you’ll see your orientation and attributions will come into play.

Master yourself and you’ll master your sport.

This is a classic and says it all – “Clear The Mechanism” might not be catchy, but when you can do this, YOU are in TOTAL control, unstoppable, in the zone, the flow… At your ultimate very best. Learn to clear YOUR mechanism and watch what happens to your performance.

I recently competed at the 2009 World Masters Championships and ‘ALMOST’ had this mastered, but not quite – I know it’s one of my Next Best Steps to (excuse the pun) focus on. With bad refereeing (not biased, but just plain bad) this ability is paramount.

A friend who is a champion plays every point without distraction – like a ‘robot’ – totally in control. THAT is SELF MASTERY. That is the Mindset Of A Champion. This video is what I use to get into the ‘ZONE’.

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?