I know you always look forward to the antimimeticisomorphism series of blog posts, this one won’t disappoint.
Archive for the 'Sports Psychology' Category
Take 1 Step Back To Take 2 Steps Forward
I often tell people it’s wise to “take 1 step back to take 2 steps forward”, but it’s rare those who actually follow through. The reason is that the brain operates with what academics call “positive intent“. The brain’s desire to please itself here and now rather than later on. It’s a complex psychological force that is much more powerful and persuasive than you might think.
In squash (or tennis) for example, during a long rally, the brain will feel the fatigue and will attempt to end the point prematurely to get some rest (instant gratification) rather than play out the rally and win the point (delayed reward). It is such a powerful force that it prevents otherwise skillful players from reaching the top of the rankings.
Overcoming this force is much easier said than done.
In business it’s not all that different. Going for the quick sale rather than the long-term market share building initiatives plagues most small businesses.
So what can you do about it?
First, recognise that a change or improvement is necessary.
Second, identify what needs to change and then commit to changing it when it’s most convenient (after a tournament is preferable to doing it just before…)
Third, accept that at first, the 1 step back means you’ll lose more points before you start to win. If you’re not willing to go through that, don’t bother.
“Lose now to win later.”
Again, easier said than done, but well worth the investment and eventual rewards.
BUT and there usually is a but…
But, when you do take the 1 step back, you have to follow through to take the 2 steps forward otherwise you only end up where you were (1 back, 1 forward = zero improvement) with a lot of wasted time and effort.
Therein lies the rub. You either commit or don’t even start.
My recommendation is you make the investment during your “off season”, in-between tournaments. Give yourself as much time as possible because often, the change will take longer than anticipated.
Just remember that most athletes are not willing to do this, so when you do commit, the rewards will be there for you. Once you’ve had this much needed breakthrough, you’ll be at a whole new level, beyond your current peers.
That’s why you want to do this – to excel and become the best you can become.
I recently competed at the 2010 Pan Pacific Masters Games, in the men’s squash tournament, in the 45-49 age category, I played well with significant challenges and obstacles as I noted in a previous blog post.
While I was in beautiful Queensland, I took the day before and after the competition to relax and enjoy what the Gold Coast has to offer. One of my favorite pastimes is reading. Over the weekend, I read 3 books (I am after all a speed reader!). Two of them were on sport psychology and the third on business and strategy.
One of the strategies I use to get access to hard-to-get information, tips and strategies is to go into second hand bookstores and look for non-bestseller titles that could be a priceless source of inspiration, motivation or information.
While browsing through a second-hand bookstore in Broadbeach, I stumbled across “Venus and Serena: My seven years as the Williams sisters hitting coach” by David Rineberg.
Written in a very personal style synonymous with non-professional writers, his detailed account of their training regimen was both illuminating and revealing.
The amount of preparation that went into their ‘formation’ as future professional tennis players was as unique as it was strategic. I highly recommend it if you are an elite or otherwise competitive racket sport athlete.
There are countless lessons, tips and techniques to glean from it.
The top 3 that come to mind include:
- Train so you develop the skills and abilities of the athlete you want to become, within the time frame you’ve set for yourself. In my syntax, determine your decision-making horizon and retrospectively chunk back to where you are today.
- Be patient with you progress without becoming complacent. Everything takes time and as long a progress is being made, be content with it in so long as it is within your designated time frame.
- To out-perform your peers and rise in the rankings, you have to do something different. If you train and do what everyone else does, you’ll only track along with THEIR progress. Training MORE won’t do it. Only DIFFERENT will.
Self-analysis, diagnosis and prognosis are a must – unless you know what you’re doing, you can’t identify what to change, fix or improve let alone how to go about that improvement. In my business coaching and mentoring that I do with my entrepreneurial clients, I serve that role.
In sport, you need to have a coach or at the very least a feedback mechanism such as video footage to dissect what you’re doing, or not doing. Objectivity of course is key!
A second book, this one a bestseller is John McEnroe’s autobiography “Serious”. Growing up with McEnroe, Connors, Lendl and Borg as the tennis elite, it was enlightening to hear his view on his ‘tantrums’ and outbursts… It’s a very valuable perspective on a lonely journey to the top and back down. Every racket sport athlete should read it, along with Pete Sampras’ “Mind Of A Champion”.
The reason I blog about these books is because as an elite athlete, your progress is not solely dependent on your physical ability, skills and aptitudes. It’s also heavily dependent on your psychological and emotional maturity and development in lockstep with your physical accomplishments. The better you get, the tougher you need to become.
Easier said than done.
One of the ways to get tougher is to understand what others have been through and how they overcame their insecurities, vulnerabilities and weaknesses. It’s a personal journey that transcends sport. The games, seasons, championships and rankings are just a score-keeping mechanism to let you know how you’re going!
There are not enough really good books out there to help you become the best athlete you can be – but I can tell you one thing, I came across a really, really good one at the Pan Pacific Games that I will introduce you to in my next blog post – you’ll have to wait for my “official review” and analysis!
Psst! I met with the author personally and guess what? He’s a multiple champion athlete and based in Rocky (That means he’s an Aussie).
For more great mental toughness books I recommend, click the hyperlink.
This blog is called the Mindset Of A Champion because it focuses on what it takes to win. In sport, but also in life. As a champion you don’t want to be…
- A procrastinator that will get around to it one day…
- A gutless person who can’t make the tough decisions to fire someone or change suppliers…
- So undisciplined that you can’t even put aside 5 to 10 minutes a day to focus on what you really should be doing…
- A dreamer who dreams and never makes any decision to change your predicament…
- A fat or obese person who keeps overeating and doing NO exercise…
- An athlete who justs wanst to play and never practice, reinforcing your bad habits…
Just something to think about now that you have the Mindset Of A Champion.
You are not striving to be perfect or better than anyone else. A true champion only seeks to become the best he/she can be.
Easier said than done.
Now that you know what to avoid, you can re-focus on what you want and strive to become…
Today’s blog post is important if you’re an athlete who regularly competes in tournaments.
One of the foundational principles I teach (even my business clients) is:
Planned Preparation Prevents Piss Poor Performance
One of the key concepts is NOT to become superstitious – if you do, you’re putting yourself at risk for no good reason. You want to create a routine, one that YOU CONTROL 100%, leaving nothing to chance.
That means you need to document it so you can follow it carefully and methodically.
If you don’t have a routine, you want to CREATE one. Here are some examples of what I do to get ready for a competition.
- I play 2 hours/day for at least 1 week, ideally 10 days up to 2-3 days before a tournament. That gives me endurance and stamina to last if matches go to 5 games as well as quickness and speed.
- I taper off by not playing for 2 to 3 days, depending on travel considerations. This allows me to recover and be ready with full guns blazing right from the start.
- Each night before a game, I watch at least one professional squash match – one that I’ve seen before that highlights the player(s) that emulate what I am focusing on for the next game. If I am going to make more “kill shots”, I will watch a match with at least one player who is playing that way. I will just watch him, almost ignoring his opponent. If I am concentrating on footwork, then I will watch another match with my eyes watching their feet and not the ball… Depending on your sport, you may not have access to videos or DVDs, then substitute it with a magazine or other visual cue.
- The reason I watch the match the night before (and just before going to sleep) is to focus my RAS on the techniques I have been practicing. Letting my subconscious do its magic.
- I will wake up based on my match time – VERY EARLY for a morning match and later for an afternoon start time. It’s important (for me) to be awake at least 3 hours before a match, otherwise I am not alert enough to play in “peak state”. You need to test this, once again – based on your sport of choice and your own preferences.
- I get to the squash facility one hour before my scheduled match. I’ve tried getting there closer to the start time and it throws me off if the court becomes available early – this is why you want to have a SYSTEM… To test and refine what works and what doesn’t.
There are several other things I do, but am not willing to share in a public forum… but once the countdown starts, you MUST have another ‘countdown routine’ established – to handle your nerves and re-focus your excitement and arousal. I’ve blogged about arousal levels previously so I won’t go into that now.
The ‘countdown’ routine you establish must remain within your control – don’t rely on your lucky shirt or shorts or some other superstitious crutch. Make sure your system stands on its own – preparing you for peak performance.
For example this is part of my countdown routine: Read More »»
I have added several more books to my mental toughness book reading list. You can click on the hyperlink to access the list which is being added to on an on-going basis. Because I do speed reading, I can get through a book like this in about an hour… I tell you this because mental toughness can improve your game more than you probably think. As I coach my business clients, there is an optimal way to learn and master any skill. Sure, practice is important (as long as it is deliberate) as is match and competition play. But – I am now of the belief that the mental part of the game is much bigger contributor to success than I used to think it was.
The reason is quite simple. Your mental state, level of awareness as well as ambition and determination will determine HOW you practice and HOW you play. If you are confident, you will play differently than if you are intimidated. If you master your emotions and mental sphere, the physical will follow suit in lock step with your thinking. The bottom line is the game is played in your mind and actualised in your body. When you finally make that ultimate mind-body connection, you’ll make a quantum leap in your results.
The same is true in your personal and professional life. That is the beauty of sport – it is a metaphor for life. The true champions who understand this go on to achieve well beyond their playing careers, whereas the ones who think it only applies to the tennis court, the cricket pitch or football field come crashing down very, very quickly when they retire from playing their sport.
In fact, the true champions know that retirement is just a PHASE in their evolution as an athlete – not the end, but a transformation to bigger and better things…
So, if you want to raise your game in business or in your career, you’d be well served to read a few of the mental toughness books on the list.
Just keep this in mind – most people don’t even read 1 non-fiction book/year. What that means is that if you read just 2 or 3 of these books – you’ll know way more than most people you play or compete with. You might even know more than your coach!
Think of what that could mean for your confidence and self-esteem.
In a previous post, I discussed how much you should train and introduced the concept of overtraining with Olympic training anecdotes. I got quite a bit of feedback with one common question: How can I tell if I’m over training? From The Sport Psych Handbook, here are the physical and psychological symptoms you should look out for. Over course if you see these symptoms in your training partner(s) – let them know!
Overtraining - Don't do it!
Physical Symptoms Of Overtraining Read More »»
Overtraining - Don't do it!
I don’t know about you, but I never thought I’d see the day when Mark Spitz’s record of 7 Gold Medals would ever be broken. Primarily because athletes today are so specialised that it would take a super-human to win THAT many medals against the specialists… But Michael Phelps did it with 8 Gold Medals – all in World Record Time in Beijing in 2008.
Sports scientists are suggesting that training loads are increasing by what some estimate as 10 to 20 percent every five years!
Mark Spitz, won his seven gold medals in the 1972 Olympics by swimming 9,000 meters per day. Within 20 years, the average COLLEGE swimmer was swimming more than this and by 1995, Olympic hopefuls were swimming a whopping 36,000 meters PER DAY.
That’s no wonder why elite athletes are complaining. 28% and 10% of 1996 Summer and 1998 Winter Olympic athletes cited overtraining as the reason for their sub-optimal results. Trying too hard didn’t work.
Michael Phelps 8 Gold Medals
It’s not a question of poor sportsmanship, winging or sour grapes. Read More »»
Today’s post is an inspirational half-time speech by Al Pacino in the movie Any Given Sunday. It needs no introduction. The YouTube video says it all – life and sport (football in this case) is a game of inches – whoever is willing to fight for those inches will win the game of life. Enjoy this courtesy of Andrew Powell of Montreal, Canada who forwarded this to me.
In a previous post I discussed the perspective of champions, what gives them the winning edge and ended with an example of Mike Tyson, promising to explain what’s happened after his championship years ended.
The word is accountability. In sport, competitors are held accountable to the sports rules, regulations and rankings. The higher the level, the more exacting and demanding the accountability becomes.
If you don’t hold yourself to that standard, guess what? You lose, you fall in the rankings, game over.
Accountability
It’s brutal and harsh. Read More »»
