Gareth J. Mole, Sports Psychologist

How To Measure Mental Toughness

Mental aspects of training, mental aspects of competing, general functioning / mental health and wellbeing can all be measured.

“I have been struck again and again by how important measurement is to improving the human condition”
Bill Gates, Co Founder of Microsoft

Mental Toughness Is Measurable … Just

I am rather jealous of professionals who assist athletes with the physical side of performance. Tests like the VO2 max for cardiovascular endurance, and stretch and reach tests to measure flexibility simply don’t have objective mental equivalents.

Assessing Mental Toughness is so tricky that when Condor Performance first started offering sport and performance psychology services back in 2005, we didn’t even attempt it! Instead, we just asked meaningful questions during the Kick Start Session (our first-ever session with a new client).

But if not bothering with something because it was hard was something we did frequently, we’d be in the wrong business. So, over the years, we have tried on an ongoing basis to improve how we assess the very areas we help our clients with. Namely their mental health and mental toughness. I will not go into detail about why we measure mental aspects of performance (mental toughness) and mental health separately, as you can read a full explanation of this here.

Measuring Mental Toughness Will Always Be An Estimation

Fact: There is no direct way to measure anything psychological. We can try to assess several areas via questions and/or observations, but at best, the results of these will act as a “guide”. Measuring Mental Toughness will always be an estimation, an approximation.

The exception to this would be a formal intelligence test (such as the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale). Although it would be easy to fake a poor score on the WAIS (by giving incorrect answers on purpose), it would not be possible to get a high score without actually possessing those abilities. This makes tests such as the WAIS more objective than most other psychometrics, which rely 100% on opinions and/or observation.

With The Luxury Of Time …

With the luxury of time, the reliability of the information collected can be improved. Observing athletes or performers in real-life situations can provide very valuable extra data when attempting to measure mental toughness and mental health. In the work we do as qualified sport and performance psychologists, this tends to be slightly easier when working with professional athletes who are televised all the time when they’re competing. For example, for tennis players ranked in the top 50 in the world, every minute of every match will be professionally filmed and therefore easy to get hold of and watch back. It goes without saying that this high-quality footage is a more useful record of the tennis player’s body language than asking him or her about it.

For the performers who are not automatically filmed as part of what they do then some creativity is required. Fortunately, with the invention of smart devices, it is now much easier than it was to ask a family member to record our clients whilst they are competing and/or performing.

Another way to improve the accuracy of the information being collected is to ask multiple sources. Human beings are not always the most reliable reporters of information about themselves. Asking family members, coaches and teammates can really help boost the likelihood that the data we are collecting is solid.

Relative Subjectivity

Mainly due to sheer convenience, the majority of psychometrics are what we call ‘self-report measures’. Basically, these are questionnaires consisting of open or closed questions that the test subject answers themselves. But although these answers are opinions it doesn’t render these tools useless by any means. It just means we have to be mindful of their relative subjectivity when interpreting the results.

“What exactly are we trying to measure here?”. This is a great question when choosing, designing or reviewing any psychological assessment. Our psychologists consider the main purpose of our questionnaires (below) to be time savers. Without the answers to one of our Mental Toughness Questionnaires in front of us from the very beginning, we would have to use the majority of the first session asking about really, really basic stuff.

When these fundamentals have already been asked and answered via one of our online assessments it allows us to jump straight into some of the more meaningful topics within the first 30 minutes with a new client. This allows us to move on to ‘solutions’ much earlier in the process. We’re mainly interested in these four general areas:

Mental aspects of training
Mental aspects of competing (if competing)
General functioning / mental health and wellbeing
Other important stuff like age, sport and long-term goals

Five Major Subcomponents of Mental Toughness

The open and closed questions then generate scores about various aspects of mental toughness and mental health. It looks something like this when we get the email from Qualtrics.

Summary Scores

Overall Training Mental Toughness = 72 %

Overall Mental Health = 63 %

Breakdown of Your Current Mental Toughness:

DURING TRAINING	YOUR SCORE OUT OF 20	PRIORITY
Motivation	18
Emotions	9	**
Thoughts	13
Unity	15
Focus	18

MENTAL HEALTH	YOUR SCORE OUT OF 21	CATEGORY
Depression	2	Normal
Anxiety	12	E. Severe
Stress	9	Mild

These tables provide the sport psychologist or performance psychologist with incredible insight into how to assist this performer.

Let me use the above made-up example to explain. This athlete or performer wants to prioritise how they manage their emotions during training as well as their everyday anxiety.

Mental Health is screened for with the inclusion of The Depression, Anxiety and Stress Scale (DASS-21) at the end of all our Mental Toughness Questionnaires.

Due to the fact that 99% of our work is 1-on-1 then we can work on both mental toughness and mental health at the same time without pretending they are the same thing!

Four Free Mental Toughness Questionnaires

The four questionnaires are listed below. They can be completed by anyone for free looking to gain insight into the areas already mentioned. The questionnaires are all similar but use language relevant to that role (for example, officiating instead of performing). The coaches’ questionnaire is the most different as this also includes a section asking about the coaches’ perceived mental coaching abilities. Let’s not pretend or assume that being mentally tough and mentally well automatically makes you a good mental coach.

Why not jump into the one that is most relevant to you and fill it out now? It goes without saying that it is best done in a focused setting and that the more honest you are the more accurate and beneficial the result will be. Depending on the time of year one of our team will email you your results within two or three days. And if you are the kind of person who wants to actually improve on the scores there is an option to ask for information about our individualised performance psychology services.

Mental Toughness Questionnaire for Athletes

Mental Toughness Questionnaire for Coaches (Sporting)

Mental Toughness Questionnaire for Sporting Officials

Mental Toughness Questionnaire for Performers

Mindfulness For Sport

Mindfulness For Sport is a free article by one of our Senior Sport Psychologists on the subtle differences between Mindfulness for Sport and Regular Mindfulness.

Mindfulness and Sport – Like Fish and Chips

Mindfulness For Sport

For most competitors, the ideal outcome is excellence over a long period of time …longevity and consistency.

It’s worth starting this short article on Mindfulness For Sport by clarifying a few things. The word performance tends to refer to the bit that is required under pressure of competition. Of course, there is a performance element to practice, but I find it easier to separate preparation from performance.

Why?

Because the ideal mindset for each is very different, on the one hand, preparation wants to be all about constant improvement. Going into a gym session, for example, it would be useful to know what physical areas will be targeted for improvement during the next 60 minutes.

This is in stark contrast to the optimal mindset for competition day. Wanting to improve on our previous performance is very rarely something that we have a lot of influence on. So, the ideal mindset for ‘the big dance’ is actually just turning up. Turning up combines trusting the previous preparation with being as present and mentally flexible as possible.

It is absolutely possible to try too hard when you compete.

You can read this entire article on The Law Of Reserve Effect for more on this.

How Does Performance Mindfulness Fit Into This?

Performance Mindfulness is not the same as regular mindfulness. Regular mindfulness is typically done for mental health benefits alone. And, of course, we now know that there is a strong association between mental health and performance, so indirectly, there should be a performance boost by doing anything to improve your MH.

But for mindfulness to have the kind of impact on performance that we want it to, it requires a few additional ingredients.

You need to treat ‘becoming better at being mindful/present’ as you would any other improvement area. It requires practice sessions, regular practice sessions. Going to the gym now and then is a waste of time. So, trying to be mindful/present once in a blue moon will also not achieve much.

Furthermore, you really want a combination of Synthetic and Organic mindfulness practice. Synthetic, for example, is the use of one of the many Mindfulness Apps. An alternative to these is using the Really Simple Mindfulness recording I created earlier this year.

Listen Or Download Below

Using one or both of these three times a week for a year ticks a significant box. But we want a clear link between doing that work and what you are required to do on the weekend.

The best way is to make some of your practice mentally harder on purpose. Maybe it’s a case of just moving your skills session to the hottest part of the day to increase the likelihood that your thoughts and feelings will try to distract you. The secret ingredient of synthetic mindfulness training is that it should increase your ability to simply notice uncomfortable thoughts and feelings while sticking to the task at hand.

It’s also possible to come up with mentally harder training sessions that have nothing to do with your actual sport. As most of my clients will know all too well, we often work together to design small exposure exercises that occur as part of everyday life. For example, one of my clients will start a conversation with a random person every time he goes to the supermarket. This can’t be with one of the staff, as this is too comfortable!

Warning!

Most of the time, when we provide sport psychology tips via our blogs, it need not come with a warning. However, as per the above example, the concept of intentional exposure to uncomfortable situations is one of those rare scenarios where it would be far better for you to design this concept in collaboration with a regulated sport or performance psychologist.

If this is something you’d like to explore, then get in touch with our Admin Team via the Contact Form here, and one of the crew will get back to you within a few days to explain everything and anything about what we do at Condor Performance and how we can help you to take that next step (and the one after that and so on).

For further reading on this topic, please click here to open a 2019 article on the same topic.

The Confidence Myth

The Confidence Myth is the notion that we generally tend to OVERVALUE how important confidence is in sport and performance. Read more here.

What Is The Confidence Myth?

Let us start with a fact. You do not need to be confident in order to perform well. I know it feels like you do, but you don’t.

A feeling of confidence is not an essential ingredient to performance consistency and excellence. In other words, human beings are more than capable of performing very well with little or no confidence.

So, The Confidence Myth refers to anything that suggests otherwise. And I’m well aware that this will come as a major shock to many and may produce a bit of controversy around this article. If you disagree, then I recommend that you do the following. First of all, read this article twice in detail. Once you have done this, provide a counterargument via the comments section below, and I will do my best to respond as soon as possible.

This Myth Is Very Entrenched

Many people involved in competitive domains will preach about the importance of being confident. I hope that this article goes someway to correcting this very common furphy.

If you Google quotes containing the word confidence, you will find thousands of statements from the past perpetuating this myth. There are some real stinkers out there. I will list just two of them:

“If you don’t have confidence, you’ll always find a way not to win.”
Carl Lewis

Sorry, Carl, I mean no disrespect, but this is completely incorrect.

“If you do not believe you can do it then you have no chance at all.”
Arsène Wenger

Sorry Arsène, but this is not true. Recent sports psychology research confirms this.

What Is Confidence Really?

Before going through why chasing confidence directly is risky, I thought learning more about the word itself would be worthwhile. The origin of the word confidence comes from Old French. Here is a screenshot from Etymonline:

The word trust appears a few times above, so this appears to be meaningful.

The Cambridge Dictionary defines confidence as “the quality of being certain of your abilities or having trust in people, plans, or the future”.

Hmm, more trust … with a pinch of certainty in there, too.

A Thought, A Feeling Or A Combination?

Putting confidence under the microscope from a psychological perspective is essential here. Some may experience ups and downs of confidence in a very cognitive way. In other words, being full of confidence will essentially be automatic thoughts like “I know I can do this”.

On the other hand, a lack of confidence will be mainly experienced via self-doubting thoughts. The most common might be “I suck, I know I’m going to fail etc”.

Others might experience variations in confidence in a much more emotional manner. This may be as simple as feeling confidence via bodily sensations, commonly associated with being relaxed. And on the other hand, feelings of underconfidence may show up as nervousness and the like.

How Do You Experience It?

In psychological flexibility frameworks such as ACT, thoughts, feelings, and actions are not as linked to one another as initially believed. In other words, you can feel hungry and not eat (an action). Or you can eat (action) whilst not feeling hungry. You can think about the consequences of missing the spare (ten-pin) but still execute your pre-bowling routine and start the ball on the ideal line (action).

Confidence is NOT an action.

PsychFlex is a big deal for us at Condor Performance. We attempt to help the performers develop skills that will allow them to execute their required actions and processes, regardless of how they are feeling and thinking at that time.

One way that it was explained to me many years ago, which I like, is that it removes a lot of unnecessary conditions that we inappropriately put on ourselves to perform well.

I need A, B, C, D, E, X and Y to perform well! Wrong!!

In reality, it’s more like this:

To perform well, I need just A, B and C. With A getting there on time, B having the best possible pre-game prep, and C having your equipment. Of course, there is a strong argument that a certain amount of quality preparation would be useful, but come competition time, that’s all in the past.

Although I’ve referenced this throughout the years, I think it’s very important to use this article to clarify why “to perform well I need A, B, C, D, E, X and Y” is such a barrier to the Holy Grail of consistently excellent performances.

If D, E, X and Y are specific thoughts and feelings, and we know that our influence on these is tenuous at best, we will always struggle when those thoughts and feelings are not showing up in the way we’d like to. Not through lack of intent but as a natural byproduct of how the human mind works.

Examples Please!

Of course, you can try to think a particular way via some preparation or previous rehearsal. Maybe you are a cricket or baseball batter who likes to think, “Watch the ball” when the bowler or pitcher is about to release it. There is nothing wrong with using these cue words unless your actions of actually fixating on the ball depend on these three little words.

Unlike actions, such as the trigger movement, which after a certain number of repetitions becomes virtually guaranteeable – this mantra, as simple as it is, may actually abandon you when you need it more. Maybe the crowd is so loud that you cannot hear yourself think. Maybe the pressure is so high that your thoughts become self-protective in nature.

Interestingly, some high-performers have worked this out. In the short YouTube video clip, you get to hear from some outstanding cricket batters on what they are doing in order to watch the ball, but none of them actually reference saying “watch the ball”.

Summary

It’s important for me to summarise by clarifying that a feeling of confidence is by no means a bad thing. In fact, in our latest definition of what performance mental toughness actually is (coming soon), we actually include confidence as something we regard as beneficial. But it’s crucial that we accept that any feelings of confidence are simply a natural by-product of us being competent.

Since 2005, we have helped countless individuals and teams to improve their confidence, but we don’t do this talking about confidence directly. We have done this by assisting them in optimising their performance. And surprise surprise, greater confidence normally follows.

And this is exactly the approach we’d use with you if you decided to become one of our clients too! To make a formal enquiry about our 1-0n-1 performance psychology services, please Get In Touch via this form here.

Pre Competition Routines

How do you spend the hours before you compete? More importantly, does this time help or hinder your performance?

Pre Competition Routines

Although most of our 1-on-1 clients come from sports, we also work with a select number of non-sporting performers. Some are doctors (medical personnel), others are students, and there is also a heathy group of military and special forces performers in there too!

If there is one thing that all of these Condor Performance clients (past and present) have in common, it’s this. Their abilities will be tested via some upcoming event or events. For the athletes and coaches that we work with, these tests tend to come in the form of sporting competitions. For the rest, it could be an exam, a speech, a board meeting, a concert, a sales pitch, a procedure or an operation.

Pre-competition Routines should really be called Pre-Performance Routines, but either way, they are a significant tool in modern-day performance psychology.

PCRs – The Basics

Regardless of what type of event it might be, the same basic rules apply. You’re trying to time your “A-Game” for that event … for when it matters. And if your A-Game is not possible, then being smart about your preparation to guarantee your B-Game is essential to performance consistency.

In many ways, the work that performance/sport psychologists do is just that. We help athletes, coaches, sporting officials, and non-sporting performers be as good as possible when it counts. Note the ‘as possible’ part. Trying to be excellent 100% of the time is impossible and counterproductive. For more on this, read this feature article on Perfectionism.

But how exactly do we go about helping performers to be as good as possible when it counts?

Pre Competition Routines are Mental Skills

For a start, we take the individual differences that exist between people very seriously. What this means is that although all of the mental skills we suggest are scientifically based, the way we introduce them is highly tailored to the individual.

The one-on-one conversations that dominate our working time ensure that the psychological skills are all based on the needs and wants of that person. Not the client before or after, but the one sitting in front of us right now. In some situations, these can be the exact opposite of what we suggested to his/her teammate an hour beforehand.

But sports science ensures that despite the highly tailored nature of our work, there are still common threads that keep the complex tapestry together.

What’s The Main Aim Of A Good PCR?

One such common thread is the importance given to the lead-up to a competition. To put it bluntly, the day or three before the competition is a time that is often skipped when looking at optimal performance strategies. It often slips between the cracks of practice and competing.

In my work, I consider it to be part of the competition. In other words, competition for my clients starts with their Pre Competition Routine, not the actually completing part. For sports that either last a long time (cricket) and/or have long tournaments, this process can last for days rather than hours.

But despite this variation in duration, the overall intention of these routines is always the same. They are designed, through actions, not thoughts, to help the performers become as present and focused on their processes as possible. Trust the work that has taken place and let their muscle memory do its thing.

Easier Said Than Done!!

Here are four golden rules to help you.

First, the word routine(s) is probably not the best choice of words here. The word routine can suggest it’s got to be the same every time. This can be distracting and, therefore, defeats the purpose. ‘Pre-event preferences’ is arguably the best semantic label for this mental skill.

In other words, there wants to be a certain degree of flexibility built in from the very part. This is crucially important and is the first of the golden rules for good reason. Think about it. Putting on your lucky socks and accidentally forgetting them at home. You really want to listen to your favourite playlist, but your phone runs out of battery just before you click play on Spotify. For every single part of your routine, there needs to be a backup that is guaranteed. And an acceptance that your actual performance does not depend on your PCR. Analogy: it can be helpful to know some Japanese when travelling to Japan, but it’s not essential. Useful, not crucial.

Second Golden Rule

The second golden rule is to remember what works for you works for you. Individual differences in sport psychology are a very big consideration. Even if you are an athlete who is part of a team sport, ideally, the majority of your lead-up to kick-off time is spent doing things you want to do and not what the coaches think is best for you.

The third rule is that practice makes permanent. In other words, if you want to ease through your Pre Competition Routine on the actual day of the competition, it’s a very good idea to practice it multiple times beforehand. One of the best ways to do this is via visualisation.

The final golden rule is to try to get in front of someone qualified if you want help with this mental skill (or others). There is a growing number of pseudo-professionals out there who mean well but do not have the appropriate training to assist you / anyone with mental health/toughness changes.

The Condor Performance team is made up of only qualified psychologists, so get in touch if you’d like to learn more about who we are and what we can do for you.

Psychology of Luck In Sport

What role does luck play in sporting outcomes? Mentally, how do you deal with good and bad luck? Our Founding Sport Psychologist looks at the psychology of luck in sport and performance.

Which way will the ball go? One way, you **lose** the point, the other, and you **win** …

“The Harder I Work, The Luckier I Get”
Samuel Goldwyn (1976)

The Concept Of Luck In Sport And Life

Luck in sport … I recently rewatched the 2006 Woody Allen movie ‘Match Point’. The film starts with slow-motion footage of a tennis ball hitting the net and then going straight up. The voice-over says, ‘There are moments in a match when the ball hits the top of the net, and for a split second, it can either go forward or fall back. With a little luck, it goes forward, and you win.’

During the days after I watched the film, two of my sporting clients mentioned luck during our Zoom sessions. One spoke about ‘good luck’ and the other about ‘rotten, filthy luck’. One even asked me, ‘Mentally, how should I deal with luck?’ The question came at the end of the session, which luckily allowed me to do a little reading up before replying via email the following day (one of the massive benefits of our monthly approach to mental training is the ability of our clients to communicate between sessions at no additional cost).

First of all, I wanted to consider what exactly luck is. More specifically, what is it in the context of competitive sports? And is there a healthy way to interpret what luck really is from a mental toughness point of view?

Before we go through some common examples, let’s try to define luck in sports as a generic concept. Luck would appear to be the word most commonly used to describe the variances in outcomes most impacted by chance.

Lexico defines luck (the noun) as …

‘Success or failure is apparently brought by chance rather than one’s own actions’. For sport, I would adapt this to something like the following. Luck (the noun) is ‘success or failure apparently brought more by chance than through one’s own actions’.

In other words, some sports have a greater luck component than others. And indeed, this is the case. The video below shows the results of Michael Mauboussin’s research on this very question. It’s worth the watch and should automatically without you having to leave this page if you click play.

Examples of Luck In Sport

There are too many sports and too many examples to choose from to do any justice to the section. So, I will go through three scenarios I have found quite common in my work as a sport psychologist.

Example One – Luck In Sport

Let’s go back to the footage that was used at the beginning of the movie Match Point. But let’s make it more specific. You are a tennis player who is serving to stay in a match that is of great importance to you. The second point turns into a slugfest from the baseline after losing the game’s first point. An attempted cross-court winner from you results in the ball smashing into the top of the net, where it bounces right up. It then drops down millimetres onto your opponent’s side of the net. You win this point and the game. You then go on to win the set as well as the match.

Example Two – Luck In Sport

You are a young baseballer who decided to specialise as a pitcher early on. You live for your fastballs and your curveballs. When you finally make it onto your Division One college squad, you realise that this particular team has a much better pool of pitchers than batters and fielders. It feels like rotten luck that your place in the team will probably depend on others either getting injured or underperforming in the upcoming season. Dirty, rotten luck.

Example Three – Luck In Sport

You are a cricketer who picked up a significant ankle injury just before the coronavirus turned into an official pandemic. In normal years, this injury would have resulted in you missing the season’s first ten games. However, you could complete a full rehabilitation program during lockdown due to measures introduced to contain the virus. This resulted in you missing no games at all. The coronavirus turned out to be a very lucky break for you from a performance point of view.

Spectrum of Influence

We can try and see the role that luck plays in many ways, not just in sports but in everyday life. One of the cornerstones of our approach to psychological performance enhancement is The Spectrum of Influence.

How much influence do you have on various aspects of your sport? This involves two tricky considerations. First, you have to be able to separate things that don’t normally get separated mentally. For example, the rain and putting up an umbrella or someone shouting at you and you walking the other way.

The art of mental separation is a vital pre-requisite in being able to manage Lady Luck in the most effective way. The second skill is knowing what aspects of training and competing you have lots of influence on and which you have little or no influence on.

Try It Now …

Go back and read through the three examples above once again. This time, pick out which aspects contribute to good and bad luck scenarios. Now, try and mentally separate these from one another. And finally, put them into order from most influenceable to least. In doing this, does it change the way you look at the situation in your mind’s eye? Let’s go through them together.

Example 1: The tennis ball hitting the top of the net.

So the main elements involved in this are:

the player (me)
the ball
my racket
the net
the winner of the point (also me)

For the sake of simplicity, let’s assume the weather played no part at all. No breeze helped push the ball to the lucky side of the net. In order of most influenceable to least, I would suggest the following:

me ~ most influence
my racket
the ball
the result of the point
the net ~ least influence

So you could say I have a lot of influence over the intended shot and none over the net (the height, what it’s made of, etc). With this in mind, there is a strong argument that your mindset wants to be more orientated towards yourself. In other words, instead of thinking you won that point because of the luck of the net, consider the amount of power you managed to get on the ball that still allowed it to make it over – albeit by the smallest of margins. Maybe a better mental response at the moment is a change of game plan that would allow you to hit fewer shots so close to the top of the net.

Example 2: The baseball pitcher is competing against other excellent pitchers for the first time.

In this vignette, the issue is mentally joining (fusing) the desired outcome (to be one of the starting pitchers) with the abilities of others and the decisions of the coach. Teammates, other baseballers and coaches are just other people. How much influence do you have on them? None, a little, some or lots? I would lean towards some for those you are close to and only a little for the rest. Although I can totally understand why teammates’ abilities can be perceived as a threat (bad luck), the data suggests it will have the opposite effect.

In other words, as you will have to work harder (lots of influence) due to the healthy competition, you will likely become even better. So, it might easily be said that the above example (#2) is actually a good luck scenario rather than a bad luck one. Regardless, the best mental responses will always be similar. Direct your limited mental energy towards the “stuff” you have a lot of influence on. Elements such as your own effort, your own plans and your own actions. Don’t get too caught up in the abilities of others.

Example 3: The cricketers who got lucky due to Corona Virus.

This is the trickiest vignette as it seems the most innocent. But there is a mental gremlin hiding. Can you find it? Go back and read it and ask yourself what is the danger of this situation.

As an experienced sport psychologist, I can see the issue from a mile away. The player in the example is potentially giving too much credit to this once-in-a-lifetime (we hope) pandemic. In fact, the majority of the credit wants to go to how the player responded to the setback. Of course, this is different (mentally separate) from the setback itself.

Depending on how luck or chance is perceived, you can imagine two very different statements from this cricketer at the end of the season.

“I got really lucky, you know. The virus gave me an extra ten weeks of rehab. In fact, due mainly to the pandemic, I didn’t miss a match in the 2020 season.”

Verus …

“At the start of 2020, I picked up an ankle injury. As soon as I had my rehab program, I was determined to stick to it no matter what. In the end, I managed actually to regain full fitness by the start of the season. Oh, and the season started late that year, from what I remember.”

So luck plays a part in the outcomes of sport. Sometimes a big part, other times a small part. Sometimes, luck will help you, but it will do the opposite at other times. Accept this as the ‘price of entry’ and return to your trusted, practised processes.

Want Some Help With That?

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Fill in the form via our Contact Us page or
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Perfectionism in Sport

This free article by one of the acclaimed sport psychologists from Condor Performance looks at the pros and cons of Perfectionism.

Can we learn to strive for excellence without it coming back to bite us?

What Is Perfectionism?

I thought starting this article on perfectionism with a couple of dictionary definitions would be useful. First of all, this is how The Cambridge Dictionary defines it:

“perfectionism” – UK /pəˈfek.ʃən.ɪ.zəm/ US /pɚˈfek.ʃən.ɪ.zəm/

The wish for everything to be correct or perfect

And now the Merriam-Webster Dictionary:

A disposition to regard anything short of perfection as unacceptable

I have added another few possible definitions of perfectionism of my own that might lean more towards the sport and performance context:

Not satisfied until certain things can no longer be improved and/or
Unhappy and unsatisfied with anything short of the perceived best and/or
Obsessed with the improvement of something, often to the detriment of everything else.

Not All Bad

Perfectionism, as is the case with anxiety in my last article, often gets a bad rap. But as is the case with anxiety, I will argue below that there are actually some aspects of perfectionism that we want. As some of my clients will know, I often talk about keeping the beneficial aspects of wanting to be perfect but moving away from the negatives.

This is easier said than done. What helps a lot is when you have used the methods on yourself. Yes, that’s right. Yours truly is correctly labelled by many as a perfectionist. But I have learned, via decades of self-reflection and hard work, to manage it in a way in which it’s mostly useful. I have tamed the tiger. 99% of my perfectionistic traits benefit myself, my family, clients, colleagues and my endeavours. The final one per cent still ruffles a few feathers!

Most Of Our Clients Are Perfectionists

It should come as no surprise that many sporting and non-sporting performers who consult with sport psychologists are chasing improvement. For a start, many of our clients are amongst the most successful at what they do in their particular domain. We are blessed to work with some of the best golfers, tennis players, motorsport drivers, MMA fighters, and cricketers – you name it – in the world.

Occasionally, we are part of their journey from wannabe to world record holder. Or we join them when they have already reached the top 1% of their performance domain. But this is still far from where they would like to be.

Many of our clients are typically already very good at something but are remarkably unhappy about how good they are compared to where they want to be. Our clients, therefore, range from extreme and obsessive perfectionists right through to mid-range type of perfectionists.

I would find working with somebody at the opposite end of the spectrum much harder. Somebody who did not give two hoots about their performance, equipment, training environment, nutrition, etc. Wow, that’s a tough case.

Origins of Perfectionism

According to this excellent article by licensed psychotherapist Sharon Martin, ‘the root of perfectionism is believing your self-worth is based on your achievements’. Wow, that’s a big clue. Guess whose achievements are more noticeable/visible than the everyday population? High-level performers and athletes, that’s who. The text below in green is a direct copy and paste from Sharon’s article and is in line with the reuse guidelines on her website.

“Perfectionism is often present when some combination of these factors exists:

Rigid, high parental expectations
Highly critical, shaming, or abusive parents
Excessive praise for your achievements
Low self-esteem or feeling inadequate
Believing your self-worth is determined by your achievements
Black-and-white thinking
Efforts to feel in control
Cultural expectations”

As you browse this list above, do any ring a bell for you? They certainly do for me.

How To Manage It

Often, one of the most useful ways to start looking at the solutions to something is first to examine the issues that can occur when it is left to be as it is. Basically, what might happen if you decide to do nothing at all?

Most of the issues are related to striving for the impeccability of something that is only partially under our influence. For example, the perfect lap time. Or the perfect round of golf or perfect race. Obviously, it depends on how the individual is defining these, but mostly, it is about some form of result. This is a very difficult position for anybody to find themselves in. Wanting certain combinations of results so much that anything short is a disaster, but only having some influence on whether or not the results actually happen. You can see why, for so many perfectionists, this combination can cause a lot of issues.

I often likened this to chasing the Loch Ness Monster. Many people will tell you it’s real, and you can buy a T-shirt with a picture of it and spend countless hours and dollars looking for it. But you ain’t gonna find it because it doesn’t exist.

This red flag can be extended to all important areas of performance that are not guaranteeable (most of them). Want the perfect equipment all the time? Sorry, sir, your bags did not get put on this flight. Feel like you play your best in perfect weather conditions. Oops, it rained too much last year and not enough this year. What are you gonna do about it? Do you believe you need to be feeling and thinking great to perform at your best? Good luck with that, pal.

The Clinical Underbelly

There is the clinical underbelly of an extreme quest to be perfect. Everything else important in your life often gets neglected and put to one side. Yes, as tragic as it is, there is a pile of divorced people out there because their spouse cared far more about what happened at the home ground (sporting venue) than at home (place of abode).

And with this example, we find our first clue to the first possible solution. More often than not, elite athletes and performers will define themselves far too much by what they do. Ask one of the world’s best surgeons who they are, and they’ll probably say, “I am a surgeon”.

Of course, the real question that would warrant this exact response is “What do you do?” and not “Who are you?”. So, one powerful psychological strategy is to help the person define the answer to these questions separately. “I would like you to tell me who you are without replying with any clues about what you do (for work, or school, etc).”

One Person But With Many Hats

When I do this, I often use the notion of humans having multiple hats they wear. Often, this will range between half a dozen to a dozen hats. Each hat represents one significant aspect of the person’s life. As is the case with actual hats, they can be taken off and put back on. And they can look nothing like one another.

For elite performers, two of these hats should be related to their sport or performance area. Not three, not one, not zero, but exactly two. One of these hats ought to be The Trainer. Obviously, depending on the domain, it might be more appropriate to use the word preparer. The second hat wants to be the Performer or Competitor.

Conclusion

In summary, trying to be perfect has some benefits, but like a runaway bull, it needs to be tamed to be useful. If you would like some professional help with this, flick a quick email to our Intake team below, and they’ll get back to you within a few days.

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Win At All Cost

In this recently updated sport psychology article we look at the pros and cons of having a Win At All Cost approach to your performance. After reading, join the conversation by adding a comment or a question below.

The ‘Win At All Cost’ Mindset

I know for a fact there are many athletes and coaches out there who still believe that having a “Win At All Cost” mindset is something to be admired and developed. For those who understand the downside of an obsession with winning (outcomes), it is far less appealing. The irony is that very few of the world’s best try to literally win at all costs. Most of the time, it’s more of a ‘win at some cost’ type of mentality.

It is more their obsession with effort and their training processes that got them to the top. We are much less likely to hear about the athletes, coaches and performers who had/have a Win At All Cost way of thinking. Why not? Most of them crumble under the weight of frustration, pressure and disappointment well before they become newsworthy.

For many years, when I thought about a well-known athlete who personified the ugly side of Win At All Cost, it was Lance Armstrong. He was so obsessed with winning that he was willing to use systematic doping to improve his results. I must admit, before he got caught, I was one of the many who loved Lance. Without knowing the full story, I thought he was the personification of mental toughness.

It’s Fine To Want To Win But …

There is nothing wrong at all about wanting to win. In fact, there is little wrong with always wanting to win. But there is when it comes at the cost (detriment) to others and yourself. So it’s really the ‘At ALL Cost’ aspect of trying to Win At All Cost that is the central issue. All cost, think about it. Is the amount you have to spend more significant than what you can get back? What is the cost to your mental health and your relationships? How many failed marriages are worth an Olympic medal?

At Condor Performance, we encourage those we work with to push this obsession with winning towards their preparation and their processes. Why?

For a start, we have a much greater influence over our processes compared with outcomes. This is a really key concept. Let me generalise. In individual sports, like motor racing and badminton, for example, an athlete has some influence on whether they win or not. It cannot be more than that because there are a whole bunch of other people who are also trying to win. When we consider a result such as who wins a tournament, there can only be one winner, so your result is highly dependent on what the other people do. For team sport athletes, the amount of influence an individual has on winning is even less. Why? More people are involved in the outcome.

A recent example is the goalkeeper of the England Women’s Football (soccer) team. Mary Earps basically did not put a foot wrong in the final of the women’s FIFA World Cup versus Spain – which included saving a penalty – but she still ended up on the losing side.

Spectrum of Influence

With this in mind, one very beneficial exercise is to do the following. Grab a blank piece of paper and draw a line in the middle. On the far left-hand side of this line, write the words ‘zero influence’. On the opposite side, jot down the words ‘maximum influence’. If you want to, you can write ‘some influence’ in the middle. Now brainstorm all the different types of results and training sessions you can come up with for your sport/performance area. Try and write them roughly in the correct position on this Spectrum of Influence. Less influence to the left, more influence to the right.

Notice anything? If you did, add your observations to the comment section below.

Improvanism As A Solution

One way to find the correct balance between winning and everything else is to become an improvanist. What on earth is an improvanist, I hear you ask? An improvanist is basically more interested in constant, slow improvements than bigger-picture outcomes. These improvements are ideally measurable subcomponents of their sport or performance area. For example, maybe a gymnast is trying to become more physically flexible. So he puts more emphasis on the quality and quantity of his weekly stretching sessions compared to how many points he accrues on the weekend. In other words, his main goal (where his energy goes) is to improve a bunch of stuff that he had a lot of influence on. But in the end, he is hyper-aware that his chances of a medal depend hugely on the happenings of his competitors.

The Japanese even have a word for this. Kaizen, roughly translated, means constant improvement. Improvanism will be the topic of a future Mental Toughness Digest article, so if you have yet to sign up for our email notifications, you can do so here. This way, as soon as this and future articles are ready to be read you’ll get an email direct to your inbox.

As always, if you feel like you’d benefit from a professional helping hand, then get in touch. You can either complete the Contact Us form here or just send an email to [email protected]. We will try to respond in less than 48 hours.

The Upside of Anxiety

Why does anxiety have such a bad reputation – especially when it comes to the impact on sport and performance? Our Founding Sport Psychologist addresses this question and many more in this brand-new feature article.

Focus for Sport and Performance — The Upside of Anxiety

What … There Is An Upside of Anxiety?

Not too long ago, I was pulled into the General Manager’s office of one of the sporting teams that I’ve been working with for the last two years. I was told that my intensity was creating some anxiety for the players, especially before matches. He asked me, “Isn’t a sport psychologist supposed to reduce anxiety rather than increase it?”

My answer was simple … “no”.

What this short conversation made me realise is just what a bad reputation poor old anxiety still has. And how the general appraisal of anxiety is far, far worse than this very normal, common, sometimes helpful human emotion.

The concept that anxiety is bad and that eliminating it or reducing it is good for performance is arguably one of the most damaging myths floating around out there.

A Neurochemical Look At Anxiety

Let’s take a neurochemical look at anxiety first and foremost. Obviously, with full appreciation of individual differences, most people’s experience of anxiety is generally an increase in arousal (not that type 🤦). Not always, but often, this takes place before or during an important event or moment. Due to this, our bodies try to help us by releasing hormones like norepinephrine, adrenaline and dopamine. These hormones are typically very beneficial, but they do often feel unsettling. So, in many ways, anxiety is an umbrella term used to describe some of these many internal sensations:

Thoughts related to appropriate worrying. “I really hope I don’t stuff up in tomorrow’s final”.
Bodily Sensations – Feeling nervous, restless or tense. Having an increased heart rate. Breathing rapidly (hyperventilation), sweating, trembling. Having trouble sleeping. Experiencing gastrointestinal (GI) problems (butterflies). Wanting to go to the toilet more than normal (for both numbers ones and number twos).

You will see that I have not listed the word ’emotions’ above, as typically, this refers to an individual’s unique experience. For example, when I am nervous, I tend never to sweat, but for others, this is the very first thing that might happen.

Misinterpretations Galore

Where many people go wrong is that they essentially misinterpret the above internal stimuli. Instead of seeing them as either very normal in the lead-up to something important (or even useful), they see them as a problem. They drastically misread these sensations as being an impediment to optimal performance.

So they don’t just worry; they worry about worrying. Or worse, they panic about the worry. This is called metacognitive worry. Sometimes, it can be useful to break down an individual’s experience of anxiety and just determine whether or not it’s actually possible to perform competently.

For example, lack of sleep. Next time you have a poor night’s sleep, go out and train and see what happens. The scientific evidence on sleep deprivation is incredibly clear now. Individuals would need to experience five or six consecutive nights of very poor sleep before it started to have a dramatic impact on anything that they were highly skilled at. One night of prank calls from the team’s practical joker isn’t going to do much.

Some of these misinterpreted reactions of anxiety are actually very beneficial. Look at how the body generally will increase our need to go to the toilet before an important event. Particularly in sports, it is obviously better if you have “emptied” your bladder and bowels well before the gun goes off. That’s all your body is trying to do. To help you. And yes, the fact that you have to go to the loo more often than normal is just a natural consequence of this.

And an increase in breathing rate …. fairly obvious, right? You get the picture.

Not All Anxiety Is The Same

I want to be absolutely clear here that I’m not suggesting that all forms of anxiety are harmless and/or beneficial. Clearly, there are some situations where the original experiences of nervous energy are so powerful that they genuinely block other homeostatic processes. Such as breathing, for example. However, even in these extreme clinical situations, a portion of the problem is caused by the misjudgement of the original internal stimulus.

But the vast majority of ‘anxiety situations’ that come across our desks as sport and performance psychologists are not these extreme types. It’s the normal kind, the healthy kind. It’s the upside of anxiety because the client is invariably involved in some fairly important stuff. Think Olympic Games and/or performing open heart surgery on a toddler. That kind of stuff.

The Inverted U Hypothesis

A large part of anxiety’s poor reputation can be traced back to a theory that is often called the Inverted U hypothesis. In summary, it suggests that too little or too much anxiety is bad for performance. As per the above graph, an upside U or inverted U. I remember very clearly being taken through this theory during my Masters of Sport and Exercise Psychology at Western Sydney University back in 2004. Back then, I did not question it for a nanosecond. Even worse, it was a significant part of my consulting in the first years of Condor Performance. I organically moved away from using it when I realised that the frameworks related to Psychological Flexibility were far more effective.

But it was only earlier this year, when we had the pleasure of having legendary sport psychologist Jonah Oliver attend our annual Condor Performance Summit, that I realised just how ridiculous this theory was.

You see, the theory is one of the most flimsy ever from a scientific point of view. The Yerkes-Dodson Law’s original formulation derives from a 1908 paper on experiments in Japanese dancing mice learning to discriminate between white and black boxes using electric shocks. This research was largely ignored until the 1950s when Donald O. Hebb’s concept of arousal led to renewed interest in the Yerkes-Dodson law’s general applications in human arousal and performance. But virtually no thorough investigation was ever done to prove that elite human performance depended on some anxiety and suffered from too little or too much. Yet, it was assumed to be true and still is in most circles.

So I Leave You With Some Facts …

Well-rehearsed gross motor skills are incredibly independent and stable of whatever emotions are being experienced at that time. But as long as these emotions are allowed to exist in their natural state. Anxiety is just one of the many different emotions we experience. In brief, you can perform optimally whilst you are very, very nervous.
Fine motor skills and/or novice motor skills are more vulnerable to some common byproducts of anxiety (e.g. shaking), but even in these situations, it’s still the misjudgement of the anxiety that is the greater threat to performance.
Anxiety, as with all emotions and many thoughts, is an outcome. It’s a consequence, a result of something. And therefore, we only have a small amount of influence on it.
The best way to manage anxiety is to accept it as a normal, healthy part of the human experience. It is even better to see it as an indication that something important is on the horizon. Notice it and commit to the actions/processes of the task at hand.
Trying to reduce anxiety is an example of experiential avoidance. Below is a great 4-minute video on experiential avoidance that is worth watching.

And As Always, If You Need A Hand …

Then get in touch via one of these methods: ⏩ Email us directly at [email protected] and let us know more about you and how we can help. ⏩ Fill in one of our four Mental Toughness Questionnaires and tick the box at the end when it asks if you’d like to receive info about our services. We typically respond within 48 hours.

Ted Lasso Sport Psychology

What happens when one of our sport psychs sorts through the facts from the fiction of the immensely popular Apple TV series, Ted Lasso?

LOS ANGELES – JUL 15: *Ted Lesso Cast at the Ted Lasso Season 2 Premiere Screening at the Pacific Design Center Rooftop on July 15, 2021, in Los Angeles, CA*

Ted Lasso Is A Brilliant TV Show But …

Let me just start by saying I’m a massive fan of the show, Ted Lasso.

For those who haven’t seen the miniseries on Apple TV, it’s well worth watching. The premise is a little bit far-fetched but highly entertaining. On top of the fun factor, there are some fantastic sport psychology concepts and messages contained throughout the seasons. But hidden subtly between the laughs and the logic are some lies. Due mainly to the popularity of the show I felt compelled to point out some of the aspects that are either inaccurate or unhelpful or even both.

I want to be absolutely clear that this is not a criticism of the storyline, acting, writing or premise of the show. But as an applied sport psychologist who has been working in elite sport for the better part of 15 years, there are just some things that are easier for me to spot compared with the layperson.

Ted Lasso Sport Psychology – Possibles

Before I get to the inaccuracies, I thought it would be sensible to point out a few aspects of the show that are totally possible and/or useful.

For those who have not seen it the main character Ted Lasso is an American football coach brought in to be the head coach of an English Premier League (football/soccer) team. It is entirely possible for an elite coach from one sport to pivot and apply his or her expertise in another sport. The reason for this is very simple. When we break down sporting performance into the five most important subcomponents, only two of these are highly sports-specific. Meaning three of the five parts are not. Using this logic it means that the majority of the work required at the pointy end of sport is very psychological in nature. This is the case with Ted Lasso, who is mainly operating as the team’s mental coach.

Yes in 2023 it’s still rare for a head coach to come from a sport other than the one he or she is known for but this is no reflection of the plausibility. The rarity is more a result of some uncreative decision-making at the Board and CEO level.

More Coaches Swapping Sports

This will eventually change. As will the frequency whereby qualified sport psychologists start becoming assistant coaches and head coaches. I talked through this latter prediction during my chat with fellow sport psychologist Dan Abrahams on Episode 103 of The Sport Psych show.

The second aspect of the Ted Lasso show that is realistic is the American’s coaching style. Again without wanting to spoil it for anybody who is yet to watch it, it would be fair to describe Lasso’s coaching style as laid-back and consultative. There is a lot of literature on the standard coaching styles in sports, but there is no doubt that fewer and fewer elite sportsmen and women benefit from a benevolent dictator. The players of the fictitious Richmond FC are not scared of their coach. They want to play well, in part, because they like him.

There are lots of other aspects of the show that real-life sporting teams would benefit from borrowing, such as:

Training is a healthy mix of fun and bloody hard work.
Players and coaches are encouraged to be vulnerable (I’m currently working on an article entirely dedicated towards this topic. If you are yet to subscribe to our notifications, you can do so here).
Good mental health underpins good everything else.

Ted Lasso Sport Psychology – Near Misses!

Let’s start with the sport psychologist that appears from time to time in the show. The character’s name is Dr Sharon Fieldstone played excellently by actor Sarah Niles. It is possible due to the popularity of the show that this depiction of this particular sport psychologist is the most visible since the professional was first conceived more than 100 years ago.

However …

Is the work that she appears to be doing in the show an accurate portrayal of what real sport psychologists do? Well, not the one writing this article I am afraid.

In most of the scenes in which we can get some sense of the topics discussed between Dr Sharon and the members of the club, she appears to be operating more as a therapist than a sport psychologist. Is there a difference, I hear some of you ask?

If not universally, there ought to be.

The majority of the work carried out by sport psychologists would ideally want to be around mental aspects of performance. At least 60% but possibly more. Sometimes the remaining work can and should be around general mental health, depending on which other qualified professionals might be available to the players and staff. Not on a single occasion can Dr Sharon be seen to be targeting an improvement in football (soccer) specific mental skills.

The Ideal

Given the budget at this level of sport, every club should have a minimum of at least two full-time psychologists working side-by-side. The first wants to be a qualified performance psychologist to predominantly target performance consistency through mental skills training. Working alongside this individual should be a non-sport psychologist who is in charge of the players’ mental health. There are dozens of recognised professions that – on paper – are able to do this role. These include but are not limited to:

Clinical psychologists
All other types of psychologists
Psychiatrists

So, despite Dr Sharon using the title of ‘sport psychologist’ she is not really carrying out the role of one. This is confusing and unhelpful for anyone trying to get a clearer picture of what we actually do.

In other words, the work that she is shown to be doing on screen – which is very much around mental health – does not have a direct link with winning more football matches.

Note above I use the word direct very intentionally. There is now absolutely no doubt that good mental health underpins sporting mental toughness. In other words, there is a robust indirect link between the two. In the same way, good physical health underpins excellent physical capabilities such as fitness and strength. But working on mental health does not automatically guarantee sporting mental toughness. Because the latter is a separate layer of the pyramid and needs to be targeted directly by different processes.

Get Out Of The Consulting Room

One reasonable way to get a quick idea of what the psychologist is working on is where the sessions are taking place. When I am physically in the same location as my clients very little of the work is occurring in a consulting room. It’s mainly in the locker room or on the training ground (see picture to the left).

When we see Dr Fieldstone doing her stuff in the Ted Lasso show it’s taking place in a consulting room. Highly valuable, but not typical sport psychology work as per the title on the door of the room.

Ted Lasso’s Four Keys To Success

Throughout the episodes, there is a crescendo towards the completion of a very special list. This list is basically the four key ingredients that Ted Lasso regards are the most important for success.

Spoiler alert!

The fourth one below is only revealed at the very end of the last episode of the third season so if you are yet to get to that part, then you may want to stop reading now.

Conditioning.
Versatility.
Awareness.
Self-belief.

I don’t have an issue with the first three of these. They might be fairly obvious to most operating in professional sports, but that doesn’t mean they can’t be added to a list. I love the second and third ones, but I wonder what processes need to be implemented to approve them. Not only in soccer/football but any sport where they could be regarded as performance benefits. But I do have an issue with the fourth one.

Self Belief Is Overrated

Self-belief is a controversial concept in modern-day sport and performance psychology. Self-belief is predominantly a collection of thoughts that revolve around how competent somebody feels they are at something.

The issue is when there is an implication that these actions need this self-assuredness. In other words, without a certain level of self-belief, the motor skills are in jeopardy … even if they themselves are highly proficient.

This is not true. Certain thoughts and feelings are (at best) a bonus to performance consistency but not a requirement. In other words, Ted, you don’t need self-belief to play good football.

Given this, to improve The Ted Lasso Sport Psychology list from above I would replace the fourth item with Psychological Flexibility. And if you want a hand in improving yours then get in touch by completing the form on our Contact Us page. We will try to get back to you within two business days.

Mental Skills Etc.

Mental Skills are often confused with the methods aimed to help improve mental toughness. One of our sport psychologists sets the record straight.

Mental skills play a monumental part in sporting success.

Mental Skills Are… umm … Skills

The term mental skill (or mental skills) is one of the most misused in elite sporting circles. In fact, it’s used incorrectly almost everywhere in my experience. And here’s why.

The skills are the outcomes, not the processes yet most people accidentally refer to them as the latter.

When we talk about an athlete who is technically skilful we are referring to the amount of technical skill (ability) they already have. We are not referring to how they became skilful only that they are skilful. So with the technical side, it’s quite easy to separate the outcomes (ability) from the processes (how).

Let’s take a soccer (football) player as an example and consider the skill of dribbling the ball. Because the most common way to become better at dribbling is by actually dribbling a ball then the skill and the process got mixed up along the way.

But actually dribbling is NOT the only way to become better at dribbling.

As I explain in this 2020 visualisation video imagining yourself dribbling can be just as effective. So what we end up with is a variety of “methods” that can be used to become more skilful. And these skills are not limited to technical skills. They can and should include physical skills, tactical skills and of course mental skills.

The main reason that the term mental skills is used incorrectly is it is often used to describe the methods when it should be describing the outcomes.

Let’s All Use The Correct Terms

If I were in charge of the “sports science dictionary” so to speak I would insist on the following. All processes (activities) should contain the word ‘method’ or ‘process’ and all outcomes (abilities) should use the word ‘skill’. So for example catching a baseball is regarded as one of the technical skills of baseball. But there might be dozens of processes that coaches use to help their players hone this particular skill.

How This Plays Out For Mental Skills

There are two main reasons why this doesn’t happen for mental methods and mental skills as much at the moment. First, the mental side is less visible and less tangible than say the physical and technical aspects of performance. Secondly, there is very little agreement within the sport psychology community pertaining to exactly what are the most significant mental skills for optimal performance. How many are there? What are they called?

At Condor Performance, we have been diligently working away behind the scenes to come up with our own consensus. It is still too early for us to publish these findings, but I am happy to reveal exclusively to the subscribers and readers of the Mental Toughness Digest that we believe there are, in fact, six primary mental skills. And these six in actual fact all contribute to a seventh, the mother of all mental skills … consistency.

Inspired By Physical Skills

The area of sports science that does the best job of separating methods from intended outcomes is the physical side. Try to finish these sentences off by just using what comes to mind …

I could improve my flexibility by …
To improve my cardio fitness I could …
A great way to improve your upper body strength is by …

In these three examples, the word in bold is the skill – the thing you’re aiming to improve. Therefore the processes need to be added at the end. For example:

I could improve my cardio fitness by running, skipping, rowing, walking, cycling and/or swimming.

One physical with many physical methods. Probably hundreds if we really did some thorough brainstorming.

Now let’s see how you go with the mental side of performance by me revealing two of the six mental skills I alluded to above.

I could improve my composure by …
A great way to boost concentration is to …

Not Quite So Easy Is It?

Remember composure and concentration are the mental skills here. So the question is what processes might help improve them? Or maintain them if they are already excellent?

For composure (“the feeling of being calm, confident, and in control“) it would appear as if Psychological Flexibility is key.

For the mental skill of concentration, it seems as if sport-specific routines play a major role. Both routines for before you start competing or performing as well the those for whilst you are competing or performing.

What About The Other Four Mental Skills?

All in good time my friends, all in good time. As many of you may know in the past we have attempted to put some of our core ideas online for anybody to access. Imagine the explanation part of sport psychology consulting only, without the conversation part or the individualisation aspect. We are on track to replace all of these self-guided courses with updated ones by the end of 2024 and our followers will get first access when they are ready. In the meantime, the old version of Metuf is still available to trial for free online via this link here.

And if you want to access the full course you can do so via a whopping 60% discount using this code until the new versions become available:

newmetufcoming2024

Just copy and paste the above at the checkout where it says “Have coupon?” and away you go.

Metuf – online mental toughness training