Once you’ve mastered the basic strokes and court movement principles, as an elite squash player, you need to get into “A Champion Mindset” as often as you can.

What I picked up from Winning Squash was Jahangir’s reliance on his cousin Rahmat Khan’s coaching skills and abilities. As a top squash player, reaching world #12 and a Khan, he understood and appreciated what it takes to be a champion.

Without a mentor, coach, friend and advisor, there is no doubt in my mind (or Jahangir’s) that his achievements would have been much less prolific than they were.

The key for any aspiring athlete is to get multiple points of view and then choose ONE that works. Listen, obey and respect that ONE voice. That ONE direction. That one FORCE.

Otherwise what happens is you get splintered into multiple, divergent directions and lose momentum and confidence. Confidence makes a big difference in a quick-response sport like squash. With mere fractions of a second to choose a shot (or return), the brain needs to feel it’s capable of pushing the envelope to select the best shot to make, instantly calculating the risk/reward ratios involved.

The second and almost as important revelation was Jahangir’s training regimen and mental focus. I expected this from the all-time-best squash player, but what I found interesting was how much of it was ‘trusting the coaching process’.

Even back then (the book was published in 1985), Jahangir noticed that young players had difficulty succumbing to authority (elders, teachers and coaches). I can attest to that with adults of all ages. There is something inherently arrogant with athletes who think “they know it all” even though they continue to languish in the “B” leagues.

Being coachable is a trait all champions possess. They recognise the need to have an outside perspective that focuses on them from a much more objective viewpoint with a set of skills designed and developed to extract the best from them.

You can’t be ON the court AND watch the game at the same time. Each has a role and responsibility to the process of creating and sustaining excellence. Today’s elite athlete has to invest in the best technology and training which now includes psychological training well beyond the traditional visualisation and pre-match preparation techniques.

Winning Squash is a classic – it captured the essence of the Champion Of All Champions – Jahangir Khan – at his apex of achievement.

All elite athletes face the dilemma: How much is enough versus too much?

Most athletes however it’s a case of too little and too infrequently.

Too often, there is a reluctance to going full-on with training when it’s the fastest and usually the safest way to create breakthroughs.

The challenge is knowing WHAT to do to push yourself beyond your current limits into a new realm of possibility. Unless you “up” the intensity, you’re simply not going to get those all-important quantum leaps you want.

Depending on your sport and level of proficiency, intensity can means doubling your on-court time, doubling or tripling your running or swimming distance, increasing your gym visits, yoga or aerobics classes to 2/day instead of 3/week…

You are the best judge of what ‘intensity’ means to you – one thing is for sure, you need to go beyond your comfort zone – ideally to total exhaustion (without injury or pain) or as close to it as you can.

What you’ll quickly realise is that you’re capable of much more than you’re currently doing.

What set Michael Phelps apart from all other swimmers is that he aimed to become the best swimmer HE could become.

Michael Phelps and his coach NEVER set any limits. His autobiographical book’s title reveals his and his coach’s mindset “No Limits“.

My message to you today is simple and straightforward – what limits have you placed on your training or playing?

What time limits?

What frequency limits?

What intensity limits?

Today’s blog post is short and sweet – for racket sport athletes as Chester Barnes, a table tennis champion said “get to it somehow and hammer it somewhere!”

There are two parts to this – Doing whatever it takes to get to the ball and then doing something with it.

Easier said than done!

Once you’ve mastered the basic strokes and court movement principles, as an elite squash player, you need to get into “A Champion Mindset” as often as you can.

What I picked up from Winning Squash was Jahangir’s reliance on his cousin Rahmat Khan’s coaching skills and abilities. As a top squash player, reaching world #12 and a Khan, he understood and appreciated what it takes to be a champion.

Without a mentor, coach, friend and advisor, there is no doubt in my mind (or Jahangir’s) that his achievements would have been much less prolific than they were.

The key for any aspiring athlete is to get multiple points of view and then choose ONE that works. Listen, obey and respect that ONE voice. That ONE direction. That one FORCE.

Otherwise what happens is you get splintered into multiple, divergent directions and lose momentum and confidence. Confidence makes a big difference in a quick-response sport like squash. With mere fractions of a second to choose a shot (or return), the brain needs to feel it’s capable of pushing the envelope to select the best shot to make, instantly calculating the risk/reward ratios involved.

The second and almost as important revelation was Jahangir’s training regimen and mental focus. I expected this from the all-time-best squash player, but what I found interesting was how much of it was ‘trusting the coaching process’.

Even back then (the book was published in 1985), Jahangir noticed that young players had difficulty succumbing to authority (elders, teachers and coaches). I can attest to that with adults of all ages. There is something inherently arrogant with athletes who think “they know it all” even though they continue to languish in the “B” leagues.

Being coachable is a trait all champions possess. They recognise the need to have an outside perspective that focuses on them from a much more objective viewpoint with a set of skills designed and developed to extract the best from them.

You can’t be ON the court AND watch the game at the same time. Each has a role and responsibility to the process of creating and sustaining excellence. Today’s elite athlete has to invest in the best technology and training which now includes psychological training well beyond the traditional visualisation and pre-match preparation techniques.

Winning Squash is a classic – it captured the essence of the Champion Of All Champions – Jahangir Khan – at his apex of achievement.

For more outstanding books on the Champion’s Mindset and sport psychology books, click on the hyperlinks.

I will also be creating a new list of sports psychology books that go more into the general aspects of elite peak performance in sport.

Mental toughness is not just for sports athletes – it translates to all aspects of life.

A few pointers before you embark on mental toughness training…

1. You need to know the context you’re dealing with (the more specific, the better)
2. You need self-awareness (or a coach to know you)
3. You need to be willing to change and test if progress is being made
4. You need to be honest with yourself because all the dialogue is internal (or have a coach who won’t let you off the hook)
5. You need to have a plan (1 Percent Improvements)
6. You need to be strong because it won’t happen immediately, but once it does – WATCH OUT!

I call that being on the wrong side of the Chasm Of Competence™.

It’s when you don’t have the skill or ability to overcome your adversary… but you know you’re close, so close in fact you feel you could reach out and touch it.

In my case, that watershed moment occurred at the 2009 Australian Masters Games when I lost the Gold Medal match to ‘win’ the Silver.

First, I believe we’re either REASONS or we’re RESULTS.

So when I was losing and then lost the Gold Medal match, I made sure to make a complete list of all the REASONS I was losing as it was happening.

I say while I was losing because I knew that with such a bad ref and an opponent who was exploiting the bad calls (not on purpose, but due to lack of ability on his part), the match was over early on.

At the time, I wasn’t good enough to overcome my opponent AND the bad ref. I had never contemplated the extreme role a bad ref can have on a match. I was totally unprepared.

So I made my list of REASONS and one by one, I solved them. It took two years to get the result (The Australian Masters Games are played every second year), but I knew I did everything to create the RESULT I wanted by removing all the REASONS.

The Chasm Of Competence™ simply means getting rid
of all the REASONS that prevent your desired RESULT from happening

Once you’ve crossed the Chasm Of Competence™, you have the skills, abilities and thus the competence to produce the RESULT.

I call it a chasm because it’s an obstacle most social athletes never cross. The discipline, perseverance and tenacity needed to cross it either pushes them beyond their comfort zone or the resources (time, effort, money, drive, ambition) they’re willing to devote to their sport.

One of the greatest misconceptions about excellence is talent. There is no such thing. Talent is an acquired skill or ability – NO ONE IS BORN WITH IT.

Some of us develop it, while others don’t. It’s as simple as that.

Malcolm Gladwell explained the various concepts involved in his bestselling book Outliers.

If you want to learn more about how to cross the Chasm Of Competence™, you can read Bounce by Matthem Syed and Flow In Sports by Jackson and Csikszentmihalyi.

Fundamentally though, the books don’t reveal what YOU need to do to cross YOUR chasm. Each athlete’s chasm is different and specific.

For one it might be movement, for another racket skills and for a third fitness and endurance.

The key to unlock what I call your Exponential Potential™ is  self-awareness. Without it, you can’t identify the REASONS for your non-success. With unfiltered, honest self awareness, the REASONS become self-evident and crystal clear.

The challenge is being honest with yourself – to see yourself as you ARE, not as you wish you were.

Easier said than done.

So in closing, if you want to excel in sport (or any other endeavour), all you need to do is figure out all the REASONS you’re not achieving, deal with each one and watch your RESULTS improve. To know if what you’re doing is working or not, you need to monitor your progress and development. In business I call that Management By Metrics™.

In sport, you use tournaments and other point-based rankings, but you also need qualitative and intermediary measures. One easy way to assess your progress is with video analysis. Record yourself playing and then watch yourself – assess and evaluate what you’re doing. Having a coach to give you insight helps a lot.

One final point – Before you start on your quest to cross the Chasm of Competence™, you need to have what I call a Decision Making Horizon™. A clearly defined timeline to make the transition, transformation and metamorphosis. It needs to be reasonable, but short enough to create pressure. Without a sense of urgency, you simply won’t create the momentum you need to overcome your current inertia – That’s a discussion for another day.

If you’d like to know more about how you can acquire the Mindset Of A Champion, <- Click here.

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:

• Go to the bathroom within 30 minutes of the start time.
• Drink liquids BEFORE the game to make sure you don’t dehydrate.
• Tighten shoe laces before warm up so feet are not cramped or uncomfortable when the first game starts.
• Warm up with lunges and quad stretches to extend the muscles, but not over-stretch them.
• Make sure you’re almost sweating before you get on the court.
• Replay in your mind your strategy for the game. (e.g. Hit deep and tight, only go for boasts when he’s out of position OR hit as many boasts and drops to tire him out quickly.)
• Maintain your POSITIVE self-talk with a focus on YOU and not your opponent – you can’t control him, but you can control “YOU”.
• During the warm-up – watch for his tell signs when he hits the ball, look for weaknesses, position and movement, while maintaining your focus on the rhythm, pace and feel you want to start off with.

One last piece of advice – once you are in countdown mode, you have the right and the obligation to control everything you can. If there are friends, family and other supporters around, tell them you need to prepare and move away physically. Keep your eyes focused on your task without engaging eye contact with others. Make a point of moving around so it’s obvious you’re in ‘pre-fight’ mode.

You need this time to create what is called “concentration of focus” – you need a certain level of arousal to perform at your peak level. With time, you’ll know what that sweet spot is.

If you don’t practice routines like these that you develop and enhance, it becomes a roll of the dice each and every time.

You’ve trained too long and too hard to play the odds.

Of course every time you use your routine, you want to evaluate and assess the components and make the modifications as necessary, but not too many at once – otherwise you’re back at square one!

But this is not a commercial for my products and services. If you want to get the Mindset Of A Champion, you can click the hyperlink and get it – it’s electronically delivered.

This blog is all about introducing you to the concept of the Mindset Of A Champion. I try to fit in at least one blog per week into my busy schedule, so as a subscriber you’ll get as many as 50 tips and ideas – ALL FREE.

If you don’t want to wait and want to win sooner, just contact me and join one of our programs or start with a product and go from there.

Today, I just wanted to let you know what my clients know that YES! you can change your orientation – if you are ego involved, it’s going to be a struggle, but it’s a battle worth fighting – the war for your mind.

That’s a war you want to win.

It’s an on-going battle for all of us – casual, social, competitive and professional athletes alike.

That’s because we’re HUMAN.

Once we understand and embrace that, then we can start to USE and LEVERAGE that to our advantage. Therein in lies the Mindset Of A Champion – learning to think, perform and win like a champion, by using everything that’s available.

Often it’s one little thing that will make a BIG difference. Stick around and I’ll prove it to you in future blog posts.

If you want to purchase an inexpensive product and you’re a squash, tennis or badminton player, you’ll really enjoy Squash Lessons For Marketing.

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!

As I keep saying, we’re reasons or we’re results. This match and competition was a GREAT RESULT – it ‘ranks’ me as #12 in Australia, which puts me way ahead of my development schedule and confirms I am training properly as I ascend through the rankings.

Some people (non-champions) think RESULTS means winning, but that’s often not the case. It quite often is about IMPROVING so that you can eventually ‘win’. In my case it’s not even about winning because as I’ve mentioned before, I am not aiming to win the World Championship, but to get into the top “16” in the world. When I get to that point, I will have reached what I consider to be my equitable and optimal ‘RESULT’. In case you didn’t read the blog posts about this – my opportunity costs are much too high to devote the time and effort to trying to beat people who do this for a living and have a 30 to 40 years head start.

Plus – it’s still just a black ball in a white room that you have to hit before it bounces twice…

Anyway, amongst the many lessons (there are more than I list below) I learned, I’d like to share the following with you as my gift for supporting and following me on my journey.

Lesson #1:

My training is paying off. All the things I have focused on have improved – dramatically. As I keep telling my clients – you get what you focus on and Exponential growth only happens with CONCENTRATION OF FOCUS…

My suggestion to you is make sure YOU know what you’re focusing on so you KNOW what you’re doing and if it’s working or not. I know this sounds self-evident, but it’s really important. As you know from my previous posts, I focused on ‘dealing with a biased ref/umpire’ I focused on that for the past 6 months and I now have strategies that work, that I can count on. As part of my arsenal, I can select it whenever I need ‘on command’ as needed.

Lesson #2:

When I compete at this elite level, I owe it to myself to immerse myself in it – totally and without distraction. This competition was in Melbourne and I scheduled non-stop meetings including late dinners every night. That was a mistake – productive and fruitful for my clients, but detrimental to my process of immersion – not that my results would have been different, but the experience would have been and who knows what would have changed on the court. I know I’ve earned the privilege to give myself this time to compete and enjoy the process more fully.

I wanted to TEST this and now that I know, I won’t do that again. At the World Championships last year, I focused on squash for the entire week I was there – with some daily e-mails, but it was minimal.

I didn’t know how important it was and this test convinced me of the fine line that I don’t want to cross the next time. This will be VERY important since the World Championships are in Sydney.

That’s why I tested it in Melbourne – in anticipation of next month…

Lesson #3:

There are rituals that work for me and I need to stick to them – not to be superstitious, but because they work as anchors and reference points. Sorry, but these are confidential and personal. I’m sure you can understand it if you are or have been a competitive athlete.

Do you have rituals and anchors that work for you in sport and/or business? If you do, you should jot them down, test and refine them. Once you’ve optimised them, stick to them and create new ones.

Lesson #4:

I have reached a new level of performance in-between the really good social player and the pros/coaches… To make the quantum leap to the next level, I have to change a LOT about who I play, how I play them and become much more disciplined and strict with my focused outcomes. Pre-competition preparation is KEY. I need to be able to count on a regimen PRIOR to the tournament – not left up to people’s availability and personal whims. I need a bullet-proof SYSTEM I can count on. There is nothing worse than expecting to PLAY/TRAIN and then being let down at the last minute with no recourse but to practice on your own which is no substitute for match play.

My goals are mine and no one else’s. I can’t expect others to help me. I have to make what I need to happen, happen without it being a burden or responsibility on anyone else – that’s the challenge.

That’s one of the primary reasons most people don’t succeed in sport or business for that matter. Once they get to this point of performance, it gets real hard, real quick. For most – it’s not worth the extra effort and that’s when they plateau and reach what’s called their terminal stage – the ‘best they will ever be’.

Lesson #5:

I’ve known for a long time that I need more match time and a higher variety of players… Then it was a nice-to-have, now it’s a MUST. I MUST make the time, investment and effort to play more tournaments, players.

It wasn’t my Next Best Step, until now.

Lesson #6:

Cross training as well as strength conditioning for improved quickness, agility and speed is the next ‘dimension’ of the game I need to expand. This will be fun because the results will be instant AND DRAMATIC.

I watched several seeded players who played last year and this year and their game has not improved substantially, in fact some have lost their edge as age takes its toll.

That means I am running faster than the train I am trying to catch.

That was really important to confirm. Otherwise it’s an impossible task and pointless to keep running after something that will always remain out of reach.

I know my weaknesses and how to correct them, so this will be ‘easy’ and just a question of finding the time and ‘doing it’ within my schedule.

Lesson #7:

The mental game has become a much more important part of my improvement. It’s one of my key strengths which means I’ll be playing to my strengths (pun intended).

In this competition, I had several opportunities to test different alternatives of self-talk, mindset, preparation and strategy. I won’t bore you with the details other than to say an artist can’t paint without a canvas – tournament play is an exceptional canvas – I strongly encourage you to find a canvas in your business, career or life to paint your own masterpiece.

It is a journey of self-exploration that makes all the hours, injuries, drills, travels worthwhile.

Thanks for listening and I’ll have another retrospective post over the weekend as I then shift my focus toward next month’s World Championships!