Sport Psychology Consultanting
Pole Vault Fail Accident – Nick Frawley 5.20 from 5 lefts
Mar 29th
I must tell you about Nick as you watch this video, I have had the chance to compete against for 3 years and he is a fierce competitor. He exhibits many metal skills that most top level athletes have. And I must say that Nick has a fearless mind, to be an extreme sports athlete you need to be fearless, but I will say that after having something like this happen to you and then want to get back on a pole to compete again is brave, But that is how Nick is and if you ask him about the event he will probably be more excited about how he made 17 feet 1 inches running from 10 steps, that is a pretty remarkable achievement. Again the sign of a high performing athlete is they always focus on the successes and the positives and work on things they can improve, in Nick’s case it could be getting out of the way of the pole. But when you jump that high it is an inherent risk that most jumpers take.
Fearless Mind: Components that make up a Fearless Mind.
Mar 29th
There are several components that make up a fearless mind, in fact as outlined in the book The Fearless Mind, written by Dr. Manning, there are 5 essential steps to high performance, ie. a Fearless Mind. I am going to out line the first concept which is confidence.
Confidence is a feeling or a thought process in one’s powers or ability to succeed. For example, I would exhibit confidence by saying “I am good at what I do.” or feeling a certain way, “I am confident in my ability to succeed.” It is easy to define confidence, but it becomes tricky when we try to define how confidence is developed.
Research shows that the number factor in the development of confidence is previous successful experiences, and the reason for this, is because we have a knowledge that a certain achievement is possible. Confidence starts with a belief in one’s ability to succeed, then is usually driven by certain motivation to achieve and then a commitment to finish out the objective. The key to successfully develop confidence is having the right objective, I talked about this in another post, the Performance Journal. (click here to recap) Having the right objective can accelerate the growth of confidence or completely destroy confidence. For example setting an objective just slightly beyond a persons capability but not out of reach is the right kind of objective. Sometimes we set goals or objectives that are way out of our reach and so when we fall short we begin to doubt our ability and lose our confidence in our selves. Just to recap, confidence is developed by previous successes, belief leads to motivation which leads to commitment which leads to action to accomplish a certain objective, once we have accomplished that objective it becomes a previous success, therefore building confidence.
Research shows that confidence is the number one aspect in the success of high performing individuals. And it all starts with believing that I can achieve anything. Once we have learned how to develop confidence we can repeat the cycle over and over until we have reached our final objective, no matter what it is.
Every athlete needs confidence to be successful, some athletes are really good at faking confidence and other have it, but the most successful know how to develop confidence and keep on developing it while at the same time removing doubt. I mentioned at the top of this post that this skill is outlined in detail how to develop confidence in the book The Fearless Mind.
Performance Journal
Mar 27th
A performance journal is a tremendous way to develop any kind of skill, a performance journal is also known as a mental skills journal. Mental Skills Journal allows individuals to channel their spiritual, emotional, mental, and physical energy towards their objective. Mental Skills Journal also helps individuals become accountable for their objective, and stay focused when interference or distractions come into our view.
Buy a Mental Skills Journal Here
Let me Just give an example of how the performance journals works. At the Beginning of every year people make New Years Resolutions, one of the most famous resolution made every year is to lose weight, Golds Gym and personal trainers make all or their money in the first month of the year because of resolutions. Lets take for example I want to lose 30 pounds. So I set my goal and I get motivated and the first week I work out every day and start eating a better diet, but I only lose 2 pounds. 2 pounds is pretty good for a none athlete, but 2 pounds is not 30 pounds so right away, people begin to think that 30 pounds is going to be harder then they originally thought. So the next week they may not be quit as diligent in the eating area or may not work out every day. Week two they may only lose 1 pound, but you can see here how their confidence begins to decrease and then motivation, belief and commitment then begin to decrease and finally they quit. By late February and early March, the folks at gold gym are just the regulars.
Now if we simple just adjust our objective a little or how we perceive our objective our results will be dramatically different. Let me explain, we will take the 30 pound weight loss example again, instead of setting our objective at 30 pounds we should set it at 2 or 3 pounds per week, then when we are super motivated and committed in week one, and we work out really hard and eat right and we lose 3 pounds in one week, we are very excited. We have succeeded in achieving our objective for week one. Now 30 pounds looks doable, our belief levels go up, our motivation goes up, and the next week work even harder and eat even better, again losing 3 or even 4 pounds. The Performance Journal helps you channel that energy the right way.
Buy a Mental Skills Journal Here
Research suggests that we should be doing mental skills training 2 to 3 times a week. The Performance Journal allows for you to do this without having to consult with someone, the performance journal is designed to help you be accountable and help you achieve what ever you desire.
Dr. Craig Manning a sports psychology consultant has developed a performance journal that is easy to use at an affordable price you can check it out here. www.visualizeone.com
Psychology of Sport
Mar 26th
Psychology of Sports is still a relatively new concept and ideology, and when I say new with in the last 30 to 40 years, and it really has only been the last two decades that people have began to study what things make athletes excel, what kind of behaviors and what kind of thought processes high performing athletes exhibit. There are two types of sports psychology, one is the theory behind sport psychology which would fall mostly in the academia world of psychology, mostly full of theories and research, then there is the applied sports psychology aspect, which in tails more of the teaching and training of specific mental skill sets that help athletes and individuals achieve greatness. These skills can include, visualization, relaxation, confidence, motivation, reducing interference, increasing assertiveness.
Here at visualizeone.com we have outlined 5 essential steps to high performance, these steps are found in a book written by Dr. Craig L Manning called the Fearless Mind.
What the main focus of sport psychology is shifting towards is less on theory and more on application, what makes the greats great. This is something that I have wondered all my life, I was an athlete and I watch sports, I noticed a number of people who were very athletically gifted, but then there were a few who were just a notch about the rest of the competition, and I could tell that it was not because they were more athletically gifted, in fact in some of these sports there were athletes that were more gifted than the greats. I always wondered what is was the made these individuals great. People like, Micheal Jordan, Larry Bird, Wayne Gretzky, Pete Sampras, Nolan Ryan, more recently, Kobe Bryant, Alex Rodriguez, Peyton Manning. These athletes are a notch above the rest, turns out it is because of the mental skills that they have developed over time. These mental skills are what allow these players to out perform their competition on a daily basis. I wanted to know what these skills were. Because I was an athlete I actually sought out a sports psychologist, he was good at diagnosing and specifying what skills a high performing athlete exhibited, but he was poor at teaching me how to develop these skills.
Here at Visualizeone.com we focus on mental skills training, research has shown that there are specific skills that people do to perform at a high level. We have actually published what these skills are and how to apply them in a book called The Fearless Mind, written by Dr.Craig L. Manning, we also train people how to develop these skills.
Psychology of sport is the study of the thoughts and behaviors that are exhibited in sports by individuals associated with those sports. This can be coaches, athletes, fans, and parents. But we all can develop the skills necessary to perform at a high level, no matter what area of life we wish to apply those skills whether is it sports, family, or business.
The Fearless Mind
Mar 26th
The Fearless Mind, is a book that was put together to help individuals improve their lives. Life is a performance, no matter what we are performing in, parenting, sports, business. The Fearless Mind has 5 essential steps to high performance. All of the athletes that I work with learn the skills that I teach in the fearless mind. They also use a performance journal that was put together to help people channel their energy in the right direction and not get distracted by negative feedback and interference. The fearless mind book and the performance journal go hand in hand with each other. You can learn the skill from the fearless mind and then you can apply the skills when using the performance journal and these two books are the key to high performance. Athletes that have used these books and these skills, have won national championships and finished in top five and ten in major competitions. These skills have helped athletes improve state, national and world rankings as high as number one in the world. Some athletes have even won Olympic Medals using these skills. Most recent was Jaret “speedy” Peterson who won the silver medal these last Olympics. Applying the skills found in the fearless mind can help anyone improve their lives in what ever aspect they want.
Uh-Oh Moments
Mar 25th
I would like to mention a pretty crucial aspect to high performance. I will title it the Uh-Oh moment. Sometimes when we are competing or performing, not matter what it is in life, from sports to parenting, we have Uh-Oh moments. These moments can really either make us, if we focus on the right thing, or they can break us, if we focus on the wrong thing. Let me just give an example here, lets take freestyle skiing first. in the freestyle moguls a skier must ski as fast as they can switching back and forth down a hill through moguls then they will go off a jump launching them into the air, they preform a trick and then begin skiing down another set of moguls and off another jump, performing a trick, all as fast as they can. It is important to be very assertive while you are competing in a sport like this because decisions have to be made very quickly and frequently. An uh-oh moment can happen at anytime you lose that focus for a split second, even when you are doing everything perfectly right. During the finals at the Winter Olympic Games recently in Vancouver, the finals of freestyle moguls, one athlete was skiing the best race of their life, making all the cuts necessary and hitting big air and landing a great trick on the first jump then back to skiing great, the fastest this person has ever skied, then the second jump, the skier had been launched into the air higher then ever before, the spins and flips came and for one split second while the skier was in the air, a thought crossed the mind, “uh-oh, this is big air”. The skier lost focus for one split second and was not able to adjust for the landing and missed the landing, costing possible a medal at the Olympics. Now we have to be careful how we evaluate our performance here. Because too often we focus on the mistake, “man I missed the landing.” When in reality we need to celebrate the fact that we have just skied the best, fastest and got the biggest air that we have ever done. We have just skied the best ever and we are down on ourselves because of one little tiny uh-oh. Now if we dwell on the fall or missed landing, that can spiral us into negative thinking and failure, but what high performing individuals do in this situation is celebrate the successes and then go to work trying to improve the uh-oh moments so that they don’t happen the next time. The best are always trying to improve.
Lifting the level of mental toughness to the match the level of adversity
Mar 25th
I am increasingly moving further and further aways from what I would consider being in shape. Over the last couple of months I have regressed to the point to were I am only doing pushups every other day to maintain some level of fitness. Last Monday I got down and started to do some pushups. I have my goal of what I want to get to (my objective) and I usually focus on technique (process) to achieve my goal. After the first couple of pushups the thought popped into my mind “ohh….I am tired and heavy to today…” I quickly stopped what I would deem to be a mild doubt as to whether I could reach my goal or the day. It didn’t take alot of mental toughness to override the doubt so I continued on my way, getting into a rythm and knocking out some sets. About 2/3 of the way through a stronger doubt popped into my mind “I am really tired today you should probably stop.” This time I had to lift my level of mental toughness to again override the doubt. This took more energy than prior but nothing extra ordinary. Again, I continued to go through some sets. About 5 pushups short of my goal number a strong doubt popped into my mind, “you are sick, it’s okay to stop today, you have done enough, just stop.” This time the doubt was intense, so I had to lift my level of mental toughness, “I got this, I can do this” to the point I was almost yelling to myself, inside my head of course not externally. I was able to complete my desired number of pushups and it felt great. Not because I was possibly physically stronger but the feeling of overcoming doubt, the feeling of being able to achieve what you what is empowering. It feels like you can do anything when you overcome doubt. I know it is just pushups but I believe this applies across varies fields of life.
Utilizing our mental skills to overcome doubts
Mar 4th
I am increasingly moving further and further aways from what I would consider being in shape. Over the last couple of months I have regressed to the point to were I am only doing pushups every other day to maintain some level of fitness. Last Monday I got down and started to do some pushups. I have my goal of what I want to get to (my objective) and I usually focus on techique (process) to achieve my goal. After the first couple of pushups the thought popped into my mind “ohh….I am tired and heavy to today…” I quickly stopped what I would deem to be a mild doubt as to whether I could reach my goal or the day. It didn’t take alot of mental toughness to override the doubt so I continued on my way, getting into a rythm and knocking out some sets. About 2/3 of the way through a stronger doubt popped into my mind “I am really tired today you should probably stop.” This time I had to lift my level of mental toughness to again override the doubt. This took more energy than prior but nothing extra ordinary. Again, I continued to go through some sets. About 5 pushups short of my goal number a strong doubt popped into my mind, “you are sick, it’s okay to stop today, you have done enough, just stop.” This time the doubt was intense, so I had to lift my level of mental toughness, “I got this, I can do this” to the point I was almost yelling to myself, inside my head of course not externally. I was able to complete my desired number of pushups and it felt great. Not because I was possibly physically stronger but the feeling of overcoming doubt, the feeling of being able to achieve what you what is empowering. It feels like you can do anything when you overcome doubt. I know it is just pushups but I believe this applies across varies fields of life.
High Performance is not to either extreme
Mar 4th
From my experiences as an athlete, coach and sport psychology consultant it has become more and more obvious to me that high performance is in the middle. The zone that some many athletes take about getting into involves a twecking mentality to find the right balance. So many times athletes are changing aspects of their performances that ultimately cause them to jump over the zone without ever really finding the zone. The main cause for jumping over the zone is focusing to much energy on what the athlete is doing wrong. When an athlete pays the majority of their attention to what is not working it often results to changes. Here are is some food for thought. What happens when an athlete over trains? What happens when an athlete under trains? What happens when we sleep to much? What happens when we don’t sleep enough? Etc etc. The best performers whether athletes, business people, professionals, parents appear to me to find a nice balance in everything they do. I really can’t think about anything that is better when we do it to the extreme.