Sport Psychology Consultanting
Performance Journal: Knowing your objective keeps the mind focused.
Apr 3rd
One of the largest challenges that athletes face is when interference sneaks into our brain during practice or during a competition. These distraction can cause our performance to shift in the wrong direction. Having a clear objective can keep our mind focused on the tasks at hand. A performance journal will help an athlete keep that focus, most high performing athletes use them on a daily basis, in practice and competition.
I really enjoy watching athletes who are focused on executing their objective or the task at hand. I watched the Duke vs West Virginia game in the final four of the NCAA tournament. Even though I was cheering for WVU, I thoroughly impressed by how duke continually executed their plan each time down the court. They were focused, they were not worried about winning or losing, they were just focused on scoring the ball on one end and stopping the ball on the other end. Because they were focused on their objective there was no interference and when the time ran out, sure enough they had won the game.
On the other hand, you could see what had happened to WVU. In the second half when duke was up by 11 with about 10 minutes left in the game, players on the WVU team seemed to get distracted, perhaps thinking about the outcome of the game. Thinking “oh-no what if we lose this game, that would be devastating.” Their minds had shifted away from their objective of executing the play, to “we might lose.” I could see this fear in the players faces, I could see the slouching in the shoulders. Then WVU best player got hurt and it seemed like WVU just quit. They had not lost the game there was still a lot of time on the clock, but they did lose their focus and as a result their performance took a step down, turnovers, missed shots, no hustling around screens or contesting shots. Then sure enough when time had run out, they were on the losing end.
The challenge in this situation is can you say to yourself “did I give it my best?” Only each athlete can answer that, but I will say this, when your focus becomes outcome oriented or on the outcome of the game, that means that your focus is not on the task at hand. You may still win or you may still lose, but if you stay focused on the task at hand you will always come out on top, because you can say “I gave it my best.”
A performance journal is a powerful tool to help you set a clear objective that is in writing that will help you stay focused when interference enters your mind. As an athlete I have experienced countless times during a game or competition when a doubt or a fear or some sort of interference enters my mind, and every time this happens I just think back to what my objective was and then re-focus. Mastering this skill is something that will accelerate growth in practice and competition, thus allowing you to reach your true maximum potential.
Mental Skills: Confidence, it changes the game.
Apr 1st
Confidence is a mjor part of sports, in fact it is the number component that leads to high performance, and at its simplest form, if you don’t believe you can do something you wont. If you believe you can do something then you will. A large component to developing confidence is having a previous successful experience.
Let me share a story about the building/development of confidence and how it can change the game. I have worked with an athlete his who is a pole vaulter, we will call him Chris. Chris has a lot of natural ability, he is pretty fast on the open track and he is pretty strong in the weight room, but the one thing that he lacked was belief in himself, or a little confidence. He would often times tell himself and tell other people that he had confidence and he believed that he could jump high, but where his lack of confidence became evidence was when he actually got on the runway to jump. He did not believe he was fast enough, to get on big poles and jump as high as he wanted, until something interesting happened. Chris decided he wanted to run the 100 meter dash as part of his training for one particular meet. Chris went and ran 11.02, which for a pole vaulter is pretty quick. Once Chris discovered that he was actually pretty fast, he began to improve dramatically. In practice he began running faster down the runway, and as a result of that he began to get on bigger poles. In his first outdoor competition he tied his lifetime best. That week in practice we moved him to a longer pole. The second competition he Improved on his lifetime best by 4 inches, and nearly 3 more inches on top of that. In the sport of pole vaulting inches make a big difference. Now Chris has the second highest mark in the nation.
The interesting point here is that Chris had it in him to jump this high all along, he just had to believe it. Once he had the successful previous experience that suggested that he was pretty fast, he began running faster, because he had confidence that he could run faster, and the result is that his performance when up dramatically. Physical ability is a large part of being a good athlete, but the mental skill of confidence or the mental ability is what allows for the physical ability to be effective. You never know what you maximum ability may be if you don’t learn the Mental Skills that allow you to reach your maximum ability.
Learn more about these skills in the book The Fearless Mind, begin learning these skills with a Performance Journal, this will set you up for success.
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.