Sport Psychologists – Applied and International Since 2005
Category: Mental Toughness Digest
The Mental Toughness Digest is a weekly email sent by the sport and performance psychologists from Condor Performance. It’s our way of staying in touch with the thousands of people who have contacted us since it all started in 2005.
The Digest doesn’t pretend to be a source of scientific facts that might be found in a peer-reviewed journal. Instead, it aims to promote thoughts and discussions about the important role that psychology plays in sport and performance.
Chris Pomfret, a performance psychologist based in Queensland (Australia), looks at the fascinating concept of performance momentum.
‘Momentum in Sport’ is a fascinating concept, but with very little research
Performance Momentum: The Basics
As with many phenomena in the world of sports psychology, it’s interesting to observe people talking about momentum. If you listen closely, it’s almost as if they’re chatting about something tangible, something real.
Listening to commentators, it seems beyond question that there is a mysterious yet unmistakable energy. Something that ebbs and flows through each match like a tide. There is an energy that has the potential to sweep a player towards glory or to leave them stranded. But in truth, things aren’t that straightforward.
As most of our sporting clients will know, we often stress the importance of clear and workable definitions for all performance components. If we can quantify something, we can understand it and, therefore, improve it.
Momentum can be defined as changes to cognition, feelings and behaviour as an athlete moves towards a goal.
Positive and Negative Momentum for Performance
Positive momentum is typically described in physics-related terms such as ‘surging’ towards victory within a single contest. Or ‘riding the wave’ across multiple contests towards an end-of-season championship.
Negative momentum is often described as a ‘tide-turning’ against an athlete. Some resistance is experienced or of a ‘pendulum swinging’ against them and energy being ‘lost’.
Momentum Is Not The ‘Hot Hand’
Note that momentum differs from the ‘hot hand’ effect often described in basketball. This represents those freak moments when it suddenly seems a player can’t miss a shot. Their teammates start to desperately feed them the ball before this shooting streak suddenly vanishes. As much as the hot hand effect captures our imagination, there doesn’t seem to be much evidence to back it up. Making a successful shot does not appear to increase the chances of making the next shot.
The fascinating thing about the concept of momentum is that it is almost universally accepted as fact. Research into the topic shows that people perceive momentum as real. They act based on this perception and past experiences supporting it. Simply put, athletes genuinely believe in momentum. When they think positive momentum has occurred, they see it as a direct cause of their success. However, there is surprisingly little evidence to justify this belief.
But Perception Is Reality
If researchers question the existence of performance momentum and the everyday sportsperson struggles to express in words what momentum even means to them, why is the concept so popular? One explanation is that for most human beings, perception is reality. We want the world to seem as structured and predictable as possible. We find it hard to accept the idea of randomness. It’s hard for us to realise that our thinking is biased and that these biases impact how we process information. We look for explanations in events, particularly where underlying meanings might help us in the future. Plus, we are just very poor at calculating probability.
There is a certain appeal to the idea that with some luck and hard work, one small action we take can trigger a chain reaction that will sweep us towards glory. On the other hand, perhaps there is also some small comfort in the idea that sometimes we are faced with forces working against us that can’t be controlled, and we simply have no choice but to hang in there, do our best, and then see what happens.
Performance Momentum: The Downside
The most apparent issue with believing in the concept of performance momentum is when you feel like you lack some. Mentally, if you think some past success had much to do with any success before that, you have a mental weak point. Let me explain more.
Let’s say you are a golfer who has started to believe that birdies and bogeys come in groups. Now let’s imagine you need to par the final three holes to make the cut, but you bogey the 16th hole. Instead of moving on and trying to play the best possible golf for the final two holes, you might feel that the bogey on 16 has set the tone.
“Perhaps there is something to those old clichés about taking things one play at a time or week-to-week?“
In Summary
Please be clear that I am not saying momentum is a myth. Various studies support the existence of momentum in sports. Not surprisingly, positive momentum plays a role in performing at one’s best. However, some findings suggest that negative momentum is, in many ways, ‘stronger’ than positive momentum. It seems to be triggered faster and more quickly and is more challenging to escape. Is this due to the sense of helplessness it can provoke?
In the case of positive momentum, there is a suggestion that athletes may occasionally ‘coast’ or ‘ease up’, which can, in turn, actually impair their performance. In the case of negative momentum, athletes may use this to force themselves to improve focus and boost motivation.
When momentum comes up in the one-on-one work I do with my sporting clients, this is how I approach it. I liken it to an emotion or physical sensation—like frustration or hunger. I then encourage them to notice it and move on, as per the A.C.T model.
We love getting comments. If you have any anecdotes related to Performance Momentum, please add them to the comments section below. Exclude your details if you’re not keen on people knowing it’s you. Can you recall when your best performances seemed to all be clumped together? That you could do no wrong. Or the opposite? No matter how hard you tried, you couldn’t get any momentum going.
What exactly is willpower? More importantly, can it be improved and if so, what does the sports psychology research say about how? Condor Performance Stalwart Chris Pomfret looks at these key performance psychology questions and more.
Did you have the willpower to keep going through all the obstacles?
Willpower: What Exactly Is It?
Willpower is not an uncommon word in the English language. A quick Google search produces roughly 76,300,000 results. However, as is the case with so many concepts in psychology, there is not a tremendous amount of clarity about precisely what willpower is.
Articles discussing its usefulness and ways to enhance it are even less common. So, I will try to remedy that with this thought piece.
There are some attempts to clarify willpower in this excellent article on the American Psychological Association website, but I like this clue the most:
The ability to delay gratification, resisting short-term temptations in order to meet long-term goals
Let’s Run Some Examples
Although technically, willpower is not considered a mostly sport psychology concept (not in the same way, for example, goal setting and visualisation are), maybe it should be. I struggle to think of any other sub-discipline of psychology where the above definition is so relevant. Below, I will use two fictitious athletes as examples to get my points across.
Meet Larry
Larry (not a real person) is a talented Division Two college baseball pitcher. When he was younger, he was the standout player in the Little League. Where he grew up in a remote part of Louisiana, baseball was all the town seemed to care about. And there were few distractions, so Larry would spend hours and hours after school and on weekends throwing his dishevelled bag of balls at a graffitied rectangle on an old gymnastics propped up against the garage wall.
Larry (not a real person) is a talented Division Two college baseball pitcher. When he was younger, he was the standout player in the Little League. Where he grew up in a remote part of Louisiana, baseball was all the town seemed to care about. And there were few distractions, so Larry would spend hours and hours after school and on weekends throwing his dishevelled bag of balls at a graffitied rectangle on an old gymnastics propped up against the garage wall.
He wouldn’t have known if Larry had been asked why he spends so much time working on his pitching. He wouldn’t have heard about willpower. Instead, he was simply a living, breathing example of it.
A Change In Environment
Things changed once Larry moved across State lines to Texas to start college. For a start, he was older now. He became interested in girls, but maybe more significantly, from a willpower perspective, there were plenty around for him to be interested in!
Due to his upbringing and the importance of work ethic imposed on him from a young age, he still found it relatively easy to attend compulsory team practice. But suddenly, even this had a slightly different motive. You see, a handful of young ladies at Larry’s college would always watch the baseballers in training. This was a far cry from the Larry of a decade earlier, who would thunder his Rawlings into the dusty gym mat with an audience of zero or one. (Sometimes, his neighbour would watch from across the fence).
Not All Practice Is The Same
Larry’s baseball team coach clarified that additional practice was entirely voluntary. However, all the players would have access to the facilities should they want to do some extras. At first, Larry did some extra pitching after training, but soon, this stopped when he worked out that it would start to encroach on his social life.
Little did Larry know that the baseball coach was psychologically very astute. Despite saying it was voluntary, he would ask one of the assistant coaches to track which players would do additional training and how much. He would classify those who did as being more internally motivated. Due to this invaluable psychological trait, he predicted more extraordinary things for these athletes and, in turn, tried to give them more opportunities during games.
Larry would tell himself that part of the college experience was to have fun. Indeed, science now is unequivocal in that neglecting a social life entirely to support excellence is a terrible idea. However, he failed to realise that with a little bit of time management, he could bake his cake and eat it. In other words, he could easily have squeezed in 2 to 3 hours of additional non-team practice (early mornings, for example) while having a rich and fulfilling social life as well.
Like hundreds of thousands of elite college athletes, Larry never quite fulfilled his dream of playing in the big leagues. His diminishing willpower during his teenage years ultimately got in the way.
A Different Example
Wendy (a made-up person, too) came to squash late and by pure luck. When she was 14, her family moved from the South Island of New Zealand to the North Island. By pure coincidence, the house that they rented was a four-minute walk to the local squash courts. Wendy had not been an especially sporty kid before the family moved, but the squash club seemed to provide the best opportunity for meeting new people. So, they signed Wendy up for some group classes.
Wendy quickly realised that she enjoyed most of the elements of this sport. She loved that it did not depend on certain weather conditions, which in New Zealand can cause havoc with the more popular outdoor sports such as rugby union and cricket. She also loved the decision-making aspect of squash and the speed of play.
There was no easy way to take extra classes, as private tuition was too expensive for Wendy’s family. So, instead, she asked the court manager if she could help clean them in exchange for after-hours access. She was allowed to do this, so she went to work.
During most mornings, before school, Wendy would get up at 5 am and walk to the courts. For the first hour, she’d sweep and mop the four courts. For the second hour, she’d practice. Sometimes, this was alone; Wendy would creatively devise drills that would allow for solo practice. Occasionally, one of the older male players would join her for the second hour and play practice matches.
Then, She Started Competing
At age 16, a sport psychologist came to run a Mental Toughness workshop at the club and suggested that those “interested in getting to the very top” should at least keep some form of performance journal. Wendy did not need a second prompt and started reflecting after each training session and her growing number of squash competitions.
A massive feature of her journaling was willpower-related. When her motivation to train dropped, she’d write about this and remind herself that some of the growing number of distractions—such as the two (not one, but two) fast food joints in town—would make her feel good for a few minutes, but what she was working towards would be far more satisfying for a much more extended period.
Obstacles
When obstacles got in the way of her improvement endeavours—for example, the entire squash club was closed for three months for refurbishment purposes—she would always creatively work around them. She set up a home gym to ensure she stayed in top physical condition and would gorge on YouTube videos of the world’s best to solidify technical and technical brilliance in her mind’s eye.
When Wendy started playing squash professionally, her willpower was second nature. She did not need to work on it. Unlike in Larry’s case, where a lack of willpower ultimately got between him and his potential for Wendy, it was her secret weapon. It was the difference between her becoming great as opposed to just good.
7 Ways To Boost Your Willpower
Read this article a second time 😃!
Keep a reflection/performance journal of some sort.
Set some long-term goals – but at the same time, remind yourself you’ll only ever have some influence over these.
Design ready-to-go backups for your most common training sessions before they’re needed.
Accept that external motivators such as prize money and trophies are fragile. Willpower and internal motivation are “best mates”, so if you improve the latter, the former should also benefit.
Vary your practice as much as possible, as monotony will lead to boredom, and boredom is the biggest threat to willpower by far,
Baseball Psychology Is A Ten Minute Read by Performance Psychologist David Barracosa On The Mental Aspects Of Baseball
There Is A Lot Of Psychology In The Sport Of Baseball
Introduction
This article will focus on the mental side of baseball (or Baseball Psychology) by exploring its mental challenges. I will also take a deep dive into some of the different approaches that we, as performance psychologists, tend to use a lot when working with our growing number of baseball clients. As with all of our articles, if you have any comments or questions, please add them at the bottom. I will endeavour to reply to every single one within a few days.
Why Is Baseball So Psychologically Challenging?
Since joining Condor Performance, I have worked with hundreds of baseball players at all levels of the sport. This has allowed me to see how individuals react to the challenges thrown their way (literally and metaphorically) and determine what works and does not work in strengthening performance.
Analysing baseball performance and determining player strength is a big deal in baseball, maybe more so than any other sport. If you have already seen the movie Moneyball, you’ll know exactly what I’m talking about. If you have not seen it, you should.
Through these practices, baseball has become obsessed with statistics. This obsession has filtered down into the mindset of the players. These stats, as important as they are, are outcomes, and the players only have some influence over them. As explained in far more detail in this article by my colleague Gareth, an ‘outcome focus’ can and usually does distract from the process.
The other aspect of baseball that makes it so tricky psychologically is how much time the players have to think. Of course, there are other sports similar to this—think golf—but baseball’s relatively slow pace compared to many sports is a massive hurdle from a mental point of view.
Process, Process and Process
This means a significant part of improving any baseball player’s mindset is shifting their attention away from being statistically motivated to being process-orientated. Statistics muddy the waters. Focusing on them means trying to control too much of what happens in the game.
This generally leads to overthinking, concentrating on the wrong stuff and a drop in motivation. All of these factors are the kryptonite to consistency, which wants to be the goal that we are all striving for. Of course, this is true for many sports, but baseball is particularly susceptible to an obsession with outcomes (both large and small).
It’s How You Handle The Stats!
Many people might be reading this and thinking that statistics are crucial. To an extent, this can be true. They should be seen as clues to potential improvement.
Most stats assume too much and don’t represent the cog in the machine that we have the most influence over. Statistics are the taste of your favourite meal, whereas processes are the recipe that allows you to reproduce that taste repeatedly. I am much more interested in knowing whether we executed the recipe correctly.
In baseball psychology terms, I’m more interested in knowing that you approached the plate aggressively and followed your pre-pitch routine.
In a statistics-only (mostly) frame of mind, we can get distracted from the essence of baseball: skill execution and enjoyment. To put our best foot forward in the contest, we want to be focused on the present moment, routine-based, and active with our processes. Strengthening these three mental skills will help take any baseball player’s performance to the next level.
Focusing on the past can generate an internal experience of frustration, disappointment and regret. The future can provoke stress, anxiety, and worry.
These can distract or cause an individual to rush, which is not the mindset we want to have. Baseball is a stop-start sport, which means there is a clear distinction between the present moment and this pitch.
This pitch is the only one from a mental toughness point of view. As a pitcher, it’s the only one I have influence over throwing. As a hitter, it’s the only one I can look to hit. And as a fielder, it is the only one I can make a play on.
All the previously thrown pitches are done and cannot be changed. All future pitches are irrelevant because we have no idea what will happen. It’s this pitch (and only this pitch) that matters.
Repeatable Routines Are Key
We can increase that present-moment focus by making it routine-based. When the play pauses, there is a small window for all players to reset. Having repeatable routines can help by ensuring the players use actions to ready themselves for the next play.
Think of David Ortiz at the plate or Craig Kimbrel on the mound as exaggerated but practical examples of having a routine before every pitch.
Irrespective of what has happened, the routine is roughly the same and ensures a mental state of readiness.
Once we have readied ourselves and locked in that focus, we give ourselves a better opportunity to land a punch in this contest. Baseball comprises split-second decisions and moments, so being primed for these moments is a core aspect of mentally strong baseballers.
I see players who often alter their intentions based on previous events. The most common is a tendency to play conservatively when things have not gone their way. Here are a few classic examples:
Let a ball drop in the field instead of laying out for it.
Not throwing an off-speed pitch when there’s a runner on third.
Waiting for the pitch rather than looking to attack it at the plate.
In these situations, we have drastically reduced our chances of showcasing our strengths and skills. If this sounds like you, get in touch, and we’ll see if we can help you through one of our 1-on-1 sport psychology monthly options.
Staying True To Our Processes
Staying true to our processes is designed to help us be aggressive and look to command the moment. Getting caught focusing on something else means we lose that command. We begin to play like we have something to lose instead of playing like we have something to win. Playing to avoid mistakes instead of creating success becomes a habit. We catch ourselves worrying more about the opinions of others than the pride we have in ourselves.
The strength of our processes ultimately comes down to how we practice. If we reinforce our processes and routines in that space, they will appear in a game. Think about throwing a bullpen or taking batting practice; often, it’s about volume and repetition. Make sure your routines are embedded in your preparation.
As one scrolls the internet, one sees numerous definitions of diversity. The Oxford English Dictionary defines diversity as the ‘practice or quality of including or involving people from a range of social and ethnic backgrounds and of different genders, sexual orientations, etc.’
Down the road, Cambridge defines diversity as a ‘situation in which many different types of things or people are included in something.’
My favourite definition, however, is from Ferris University in Michigan, United States. They state that diversity is ‘the range of human differences, including but not limited to race, ethnicity, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, age, social class, physical ability or attributes, religious or ethical values system, national origin, and political beliefs.’
The point is that diversity is multifaceted. It’s both visible and invisible. Michigan and the others could also have added personality, values, interests, and other attributes.
Why Embrace Diversity in Team Sports
Diversity is about the visible and invisible characteristics that make us different. These differences allow us to see the world differently from the others in the locker room. Handled correctly and professionally, these various perspectives are highly advantageous.
The NSW Government and the international consulting firm McKinsey found that diverse workplaces produce better outcomes across many areas. The Journal of Science and Medicine in Sport also found that diversity in team sports enhances performance. In addition to improving performance, diverse teams lead to the following:
Increased productivity.
Better decision-making.
Improved team member well-being by ensuring everyone ‘fits in’.
Greater innovation.
Creative problem-solving.
Healthy and constructive conflict
Sports teams that embrace diversity enable a wide range of perspectives and experiences. When individuals from different backgrounds come together, they bring unique ideas and approaches to training, strategy and problem-solving. This can lead to more creative solutions and innovative tactics and give the team a competitive advantage. But it’s not just diverse backgrounds. Diverse sports teams value the contributions and differences of everyone, from the most junior rookie to the seasoned campaigner; they respect each other, see differences as strengths, and challenge biases.
Bringing Unity To The Sports Team And Community
We live in an increasingly global community. Play by the Rules, developed by the South Australian government, highlights that 25% of the Australian sporting population is born overseas. 50% have one parent from another country, 260 languages are spoken across sports teams, one in five has a disability, and over 50% are women and girls. The sporting landscape is extraordinarily gender, culturally, and linguistically diverse.
Diversity in team sports fosters a sense of unity and mutual respect among team members. By working alongside individuals from different cultures, races and genders, athletes can learn to appreciate and celebrate differences rather than letting them create barriers. This can improve team communication and foster a more cohesive unit. Enhancing diversity within the team enables the team to more broadly reflect the community it represents, increasing engagement and buy-in of fans. Diverse sports teams can become role models for inclusivity and acceptance. Athletes from under-represented groups can inspire others to pursue their dreams and break down stereotypes.
Diverse Teams And The Neuroscience
Embracing diversity does not come naturally. While our conscious brain knows its importance, our unconscious brain quickly categorises input to avoid mindful thinking, save energy, and increase efficiency. Our brain prefers the familiar and has an unconscious bias to like individuals who look, sound, and act like us. Those who are not like us can be registered as a threat. This happens within 200 milliseconds of meeting someone.
Our unconscious bias significantly limits our ability to empathise with others and embrace diversity. The good news is that self-awareness, education and curiosity can counter this pre-encoded condition of our brain and challenge our predisposition.
To overcome cultural differences, language barriers, and unconscious biases, sports organisations must prioritise education, communication and training programs that promote diversity and inclusion.
Being Excluded From The Team
Dr Kipling Williams from Purdue University, Indiana, highlights that being excluded threatens our fundamental human needs, such as belonging and self-esteem. Being excluded activates our pain system, and the pain we feel is experienced in the same part of the brain as physical pain. While physical pain feels different, the networks processing it in the brain are the same. Feelings of exclusion from the team are likely to cause performance to suffer, impacting well-being, engagement, feelings of worthiness, and even our immune system.
Diversity on the world sporting stage (using gender as an example)
A great example of diversity in world sport is provided by looking at gender differentials. In 2019, European Parliament research found that 85% of sports media coverage was devoted to male athletes. At the same time, men wrote 90% of sports articles. But is the tide changing in terms of public and, by association, media interest?
In 2014, the Matildas (Australia’s Women’s Soccer Team) drew 2,583 fans against Brazil. Fast-forward less than ten years, and at the 2023 World Cup, the Matildas drew 75,784 at Sydney’s Stadium Australia—a far cry from the 2500-odd who showed up to watch them a decade earlier.
In 1991, about 500,000 watched the Women’s World Cup matches live. That number grew to 2 million in 2023. The men’s World Cup attracted 3.4 million in 2022. The women are catching up. Disappointingly, women’s prize money for the cup is still a quarter of men’s.
In Conclusion
Diversity in team sports is a powerful force that can drive success, unity and positive change. It also reflects the increasingly diverse community we all live in. By embracing differences and creating an environment where all athletes feel valued and respected, sports teams can unlock their full potential and achieve greatness on and off the field. Embracing diversity and a more inclusive sporting culture can lead to a brighter future for all sporting codes and the communities they represent.
Diversity At Condor Performance
Huge credit needs to go to our General Manager, David, and Founder, Gareth, for insisting on diversity as they have slowly added to the team of sport and performance psychologists here at Condor Performance. We have the broadest range of genders, locations, ages, sporting knowledge, and ethnic backgrounds of any sports psychology consultancy we know.
The advantages of this are both internal and external. Within the team, these differences allow for some fantastic brainstorming and professional development. Externally, those contacting us to work on their mindset and mental toughness have many options when considering which type of psychologist they may want to work with. If you’d like to chat with someone about how one of our diverse team members could help you with your performance, get in touch via this form.
Self-compassion is understanding our pain and demonstrating kindness and care towards ourselves. It involves accepting our flaws and shortcomings. Self-compassion in competitive sport is not the same as complacency. Athletes may worry that demonstrating self-kindness following a mistake may make them complacent or lazy. However, research has shown that self-compassion usually does the opposite. It makes us more honest with ourselves and more motivated to follow our goals. Self-compassion involves having an inner voice that resembles a blend of a kindly coach and your closest teammate.
What is Self-Criticism?
Self-criticism involves an inner voice that evaluates and scrutinizes oneself harshly and punitively. A tendency toward self-criticism can result from strict parents, peer pressure at school, and demanding authoritative figures. Self-criticism can result in strained relationships, as people who are highly self-critical may withdraw from connections or constantly voice their inner harsh critiques, which can be taxing for the receiving person. Self-criticism can also distract individuals from progress and self-improvement. Research has demonstrated that self-criticism reduces athletes’ self-regulation, emotional recovery, stress management, and performance.
Is Self-Compassion In Competitive Sport Common?
Athletes frequently believe that self-criticism is required to prevent complacency. There is an expectation of toughness and a common belief that harsh criticism is vital to motivate improvement. Self-compassion is growing in momentum as an empirically based mental skill. Since 2004, growing research studies have demonstrated that self-compassion in sports leads to better outcomes and psychologically healthier athletes.
Is Self-Compassion In Competitive Sport Beneficial?
Athletes constantly put themselves in physically and emotionally demanding situations. They regularly experience setbacks, whether it’s a missed goal in a penalty shootout or an extra second in a 200-meter sprint. If athletes treat themselves less punitively and put mistakes in perspective, they can experience adaptive coping and a healthier stress response.
Research has demonstrated that individuals who are kinder to themselves have less fear of failure. When an error does occur, they are more likely to try again. Athletes who demonstrate self-compassion have more adaptive thoughts, emotions, and behavioural responses to stress. Self-compassion has also been found to increase athlete’s motivation to learn and grow.
What Does Self-Compassion Look Like?
Self-compassion involves three main facets:
Self-kindness,
Common humanity and
Mindfulness.
Self-kindness involves treating yourself as you would a good friend. Self-kindness encourages self-warmth and acceptance rather than a critical or disparaging inner dialogue.
Common humanity involves the recognition that mistakes are a common part of human life. This helps us acknowledge that everyone is in the same boat and that life’s challenges and personal failures are all part of what it means to be human.
Mindfulness is about being present in the moment and not letting our thoughts drift off to the future or the past. It involves a curious, nonjudgmental stance.
Techniques for Greater Self-Compassion
Several techniques can help athletes to develop their self-compassion. These include compassionate letter writing, compassionate imagery, self-compassionate thought records and encouraging self-compassionate behaviours. These practices involve expressing concern, non-judgement and genuine caring towards the self. It requires sensitivity to one’s pain and suffering. It includes sympathy for one’s struggle. Thought processes may shift from “I always make mistakes, I’m a terrible athlete”to “everyone makes mistakes, I work so hard, and my mistakes are an opportunity for me to learn”.
Acceptance Commitment Therapy techniques can also help people let go of self-criticism. Athletes who fuse with a harsh inner dialogue can be so focused on their thought patterns that they make even more mistakes. This often facilitates a nasty cycle of distraction and continued errors.
Defusion is a process that allows individuals to see thoughts for what they are, a string of words that we can choose to pay attention to or not. Thoughts do not have to be necessary or accurate, nor do they need to be threatening. They cannot boss us around, and they are not reality. When one recognizes this, one can get some distance from one’s thoughts and be present in the moment, which leads to improvement in one’s chosen sport.
Athletes can insert “I notice I’m having the thought that” in front of their self-critique. Or they can sing their self-critique to a catchy tune. They can imagine their harsh judgement being spoken by a funny cartoon character like Sponge Bob Square Pants!
How Can Coaches Help?
It should come as no surprise that sporting coaches are best placed to foster self-compassion in athletes or prevent it. And guess which coaches tend to be better at the former? Yes, those who practice S-C on themselves. If you are a sporting coach and want to learn how to do this, amongst other mental skills, fill in this quick 10-minute questionnaire. One of our team will be in touch with your results and basic details about how you can start working with one of our performance psychologists/sport psychologists.
Chris Pomfret, Senior Performance Psychologist from Condor Performance looks at the pros and cons of Post Competition Reviews.
“Oh Boy, I bet coach is going to show the mistakes I made on the big screen.”
What Are Post Competition Reviews?
Recently, I received an excellent question from one of our monthly clients regarding post-competition reviews. This person competes in an individual sport and has just finished a big weekend of racing… living the dream. A disappointing overall result was causing great frustration, and they were second-guessing themselves as a racer and wondering exactly where all the hard work this season was leading them.
They realised this was in complete contrast to a competition only one week before, where a strong result prompted positive emotions and had them feeling optimistic about the future. Many of our discussions had been about taking a consistent approach before every competition, and their question was how they should approach the hours and days following a competition – win, lose, or draw.
The first thing we reflected on was enjoyment and ensuring that they did not lose sight of what drew them into the sport in the first place. These things have kept them participating and want to maintain this in the long run. Given that they compete in a physically brutal sport, we distinguished between the fun elements (e.g., the things that elicit a big smile) and the deeper, more meaningful elements (e.g., the things that make them proud and challenge them).
Self-Reflection Is Key
Next, we reflected on the nature of the results themselves. No matter how easy or difficult, we can only influence results to a certain degree. We can impact the various outcomes in our chosen sport (a fast lap time, winning a heat, making a podium, being selected in a representative team), but we can never guarantee them. This isn’t to give ourselves an excuse for a disappointing performance or pretend that it doesn’t matter to us but to bring our focus back to our weekly effort so that we can keep improving and ultimately shift results in our favour.
We then spoke about strategies for emotional release. Emotions are neither good nor bad – they are a primitive way of understanding our experiences. Of course, I would rather feel happy than sad, but that doesn’t make happy ‘better’ than sad. The key thing is the intensity of the emotion and how we manage it. Most athletes do think about – and practice – regulating their emotions in the lead-up to a competition or when performing. Most athletes don’t consider how to handle intense emotions (desirable or unwanted) once they have finished competing.
Whatever works for you in the lead-up to a competition is probably a good place to start in learning to handle yourself post-competition. As a general rule, feelings are expressed through the body, so often the quickest and easiest way to release that emotional ‘steam out of the kettle’ is by physical means such as deep breathing, movement, warm-downs, physical focus points such as stretching, or sensory stimulation such as showering. No matter the emotion you are experiencing, work on empowering yourself by releasing the emotion on your terms. Unreleased emotions can be problematic in the long term.
A Possible Framework for The Analysis Of Performances
Next, we discussed a specific framework for reviewing competitions mentally. We put aside important physical considerations such as fitness, strength and conditioning, training loads, flexibility, amount and quality of sleep the night before performing. Then, we set aside non-sporting factors such as family, friendships, school, work, finances and life stressors. We also put aside technical aspects of the performance (the biomechanics and tangible skill execution within races). Finally, we also set aside tactical considerations (decision-making) as these are issues that are constantly being reviewed by the coaching staff. This left us with the following categories, to which I posed the following questions:
Commitment:
How strong was your desire to perform well in this competition? How much importance did you place on this weekend’s events? Looking back, what signs tell you that your heart was really in it? If we were to say this was just another set of races in a long career, why did you push yourself to do your best again? How are you rewarding yourself for putting in so much hard work? Can you put into words what makes weekends like this so special, especially when things do go to plan?
Concentration:
How well could you focus on what you wanted to focus on? What things captured your attention before, during and post-race? Were you aware of this happening? Have you practised dealing with distractions? What are a few simple but relevant things you can focus on when next competing?
Confidence:
If confidence is knowing that you can do something before you try, where is the evidence (e.g. through practice and past competitions) that tells you what is possible? How well can you feel what you want to before and during races? Do you have a Plan B for when you don’t feel confident just before the green light?
Communication:
What messages were you sending yourself? What messages were you sending other people (verbally and non-verbally)? Were these deliberate? Have you practised them? Do you have a sense of how effective they are?
Consistency:
Were your thought processes systematic, simple, clear and well-rehearsed? Were you viewing external factors such as opponents, officials, weather conditions, equipment, facilities and spectators in a manner that suits you and your individual needs?
Culture:
How were you viewing your coaching staff, support crew, team members, and the wider group of athletes coming together? What was your sense of connection and belonging like? Are you feeling part of a broader community, and does this need to be worked on somehow?
Summary
Like so much in elite and competitive sports, Post Competition Reviews can only really be considered useful or not when we look at how they’re done. In my experience, these reviews are too often used for the coaching staff to vent about poor results and performances. The Monday morning horror show of the weekend’s mistakes being edited and spliced together. Why? To show the players how they f*%$ed up so they won’t do it again 🤬.
I hope this short article gives readers insight into a potentially better way.
If you’d like one of our psychologists’ assistance with your performance, complete one of our four Mental Toughness Questionnaires here. A member of our team will be in touch with you to discuss options normally within two or three business days.
Pre Shot Routines might be the most common of the short routines used before closed sporting skills, but they’re not the only type of short routine.
A good pre-shot routine can be half the battle with improving the mental side of target-based sports such as shooting, lawn bowls, golf, etc.
What Are Pre Shot Routines (PSRs)?
Pre Shot Routines are the most common short-performance routines, but they are not the only type. Any closed motor skill required constantly during a sporting context could and should have a routine beforehand. A closed motor skill is an action or series of actions typically ‘performed in a stationary environment, where the performer chooses when to start the skill’.
If we did some brainstorming, we could probably come up with dozens of labels suited to different sports, but in my work as a sport psychologist, these six are the most common:
Pre Shot Routines for Golf, shooting sports, table sports, lawn bowls.
Pre-Point Routines (or you can have Pre-Serve Routines and Pre-Receive Routines) for all racquet sports, such as tennis, squash, table tennis, badminton, and paddleball (pickleball), to name the most common.
For AFL, soccer/football (set shot takers), rugby league, rugby union and American football (kickers), we’d use the term Pre Kick Routine.
The term Pre Start Routines is probably best for most racing sports, from swimming to motorsports to track and field.
Pre-Ball Routine … you guessed it – cricket and baseball.
What Is The Generic Term?
To my knowledge, no agreed term describes all of these mental skills. Probably because Pre-Shot Routines tend to be the most common, they are often used to describe most others. This is reasonable for all of the above examples other than racing sports. Most tennis players will instinctively know what you’re referring to if you use the term pre-shot routine instead of pre-point routine. But I suspect you might not get a great response if you tell a 200-meter sprinter that you’ll be working on their pre-shot routine during the sessions.
Pre Shot Routines Before Closed Motor Skills
For all closed motor skills, the athletes will always have at least a few seconds before attempting the action. Left ‘to wing it on the day,’ these few seconds (or few minutes) can often become fertile grounds for overthinking. This tends to lead to underperforming in high-pressure situations.
There is one main rule for constructing or improving any pre-shot routine. Only include easily repeatable actions. In other words, the only premeditated aspects of the routines are body movements. Thoughts and feelings are left to occur naturally at the time. You have too little influence on them to ensure you can “do them” when it counts.
Intended actions are far more reliable than thoughts and feelings. Indeed, they are so reliable that we can (with a lot of practice) virtually guarantee them. We can never guarantee that we will be able to think a certain way in certain situations. So, trying to do so is fraught with danger from a psychological point of view.
The Classic ‘Pre Shot Routine’
Start with this question. Is one Pre Shot Routine enough, or do I need several? For most sports, one is normally sufficient. Attempting a 3-foot putt versus a long drive in sports like golf might seem too different to justify having two different PSRs ready to go. For racquet sports, starting the point or receiving the ball from the server is very different, so I would encourage at least two.
The start of the Pre Shot Routine benefits from ‘a trigger action’. This helps us switch it on at that moment. For a sport like lawn bowls, maybe this is wiping your hand on your pant leg.
After this initial action, add three to five other steps that naturally lead to the “shot”. Any more than this, and you run the risk of overcomplicating it.
For example, one of these steps in clay target shooting is to shout ‘pull’. A baseball pitcher and a cricket bowler have no choice but to include correctly gripping the ball during their pre-ball routines.
Pre Point Routines
Of course, we have all seen Rafa going through his pre-point rituals. It might seem more like a set of ticks to the untrained eye. But Rafa’s Pre Point Routines are amongst the many aspects of his tennis that make him so good.
Racquet sports are interesting as only the serve is a closed skill because the receiver doesn’t decide when to receive the ball. However, I have always found that having a Pre-Serve Routine and a Pre-Receive Routine is a good plan in my work with tennis players.
The good old face clean with a towel is hard to beat as a starting trigger for both the server and the receiver. The rest of the routine needs to be aligned with what is required in a few seconds. If you’re about to receive the ball, walking to the right spot and taking the right body position might want to be included. If you’re serving, bouncing the ball, pausing, and slowly looking up can be great inclusions.
Ball Bouncing
Ball bouncing (waggling the golf club, same as) is a double-edged sword. Most players do it “until they feel right,” but this assumes you’ll always feel right at some point. I am in favour of picking a range of bounces. For example, 2 or 3 and then sticking to this 100% of the time. Yes, even in practice and when doing it as part of your visualisation.
If decision-making is taken seriously as part of the practice, this will become as automatic as the skills developed around them. In other words, choosing where to serve only becomes cognitively demanding if you have excluded tactical preparation as part of your practice.
Pre-Kick and Throw Routines
Because these actions are part of fast-flowing sports, they are often not considered in the same group of closed skills as the previous examples. In my opinion, this is a huge missed opportunity for the kickers and free throwers of these sports.
In the 1-on-1 work we do with kickers and throwers, I treat them like golfers. But instead of a golf club and ball, they have their leg, feet, arms, hands, and an inflated ball.
First, as with golfers, we agree on the ideal number of routines after going through the pros and cons of one versus several. For example, a rugby union player may need one for set shots and another for kickoffs.
After this, we follow the same rules as before. Only use actions to build the Pre Kick/Throw Routine. If you must include a thought, keep it as simple as possible.
Is It A Good Idea To Visualise As Part Of My Routine?
I have received criticism for my lack of enthusiasm about including imagery in routines 😬. Some of this comes from the famous Jack Nicklaus quote about visualisation. “I never hit a shot, not even in practice, without having a very sharp, in-focus picture of it in my head,”Nicklaus said.
Here is the issue, Jack. We can’t guarantee cognitive processes such as imagining the path of a ball. Even with repetition, it will be very vulnerable under pressure or high levels of distraction.
The solution to this conflict is two-fold. First, practice the visualisation part as part of your PKR in practice 100% of the time so it feels automatic (second nature). Second, don’t stress if it’s hard or impossible come game time. It’s not that you are weak, it’s the thoughts are weak. Your action-based Pre Shot Routines will get the job done regardless of your thoughts or feelings.
If you’d like the assistance of one of our psychologists with your short routines, then complete one of our four Mental Toughness Questionnaires here. A member of our team will be in touch with you to discuss options normally within two or three business days.
This 10 minute read and ‘must share’ feature article by our founding performance psychologist Gareth is on the topic of Vulnerability And Emotional Courage and how these misunderstood concepts relate to team cohesion.
Vulnerability And Team Cohesion Go Hand In Hand
How Important Are Words?
I have often pondered how important it is to use the correct word. Both in professional situations as well as personal ones. Yes, maybe it’s the flight of an overthinker, but the fact is that words matter.
As a sports psychologist, does it go against the Psychological Flexibility framework that underpins all of my consulting to insist that certain words are better than others in specific situations?
Let me use an example before diving into the main dish of vulnerability and team cohesion. Some clients will know I’m not a huge fan of the word ‘mistake’. From time to time, I have suggested that we even consider replacing this loaded term with the far more accurate and potentially beneficial phrase of ‘unfortunate occurrence’.
I will endeavour to write an entire article on this subject in due course, but here is the gist. Too many athletes take too much blame when something unfortunate happens during competition(s).
Imagine a team sport like volleyball where serving is a significant deal. Let’s consider a scenario in which one of the players cannot find any rhythm when starting the points. Are these mistakes? Or are they simply unfortunate occurrences? For me, to use a word like mistake (and the potential shame that comes with it) when the volleyball player – in this example – is trying her best seems wrong. Maybe a mistake is when the error was made on purpose. Very, very rare, but not unheard of, think of a tennis player tanking the rest of a game or set. If you are not stuffing up on purpose, then it’s not a mistake. It’s an unfortunate occurrence.
Back To Vulnerability
But I digress. The word vulnerability wasn’t used much in applied or academic sport psychology until recently.
So, let’s look at the actual word itself. According to the Cambridge Dictionary, the word vulnerability means ‘able to be easily hurt, influenced, or attacked’. Hmm, that doesn’t sound that great! The Merriam-Webster free online dictionary isn’t much better with ‘capable of being physically or emotionally wounded’.
The appeal to want to become more vulnerable takes an even bigger blow when you look at the origins of the via Etymonline (below) 😬.
Brené Brown’s Work
Due to the smallness of performance psychology as a profession, more often than not, the research needs to come from a more generic source. And this is certainly the case here where the work by the legendary Brené Brown put vulnerability and related concepts on the map.
Before I stumbled across the work of Brené Brown, I must admit that I was guilty of not seeing the hidden benefits of learning to be vulnerable. Maybe it’s like sport itself. Maybe you need to do it to have an idea of what it’s really like. So this I did.
The Bridge in Kentucky, USA
Partially for personal reasons and partially for professional reasons, earlier this year, I spent two weeks at a facility in Kentucky, USA, called The Bridge. For those who follow the work of Dr Peter Attia, it’s the same Bridge he attended and mentions in his highly recommended book Outlive.
I will not include a full breakdown of my experience in The Woods of Kentucky, mostly because a thorough account of the entire program would be a far more appropriate subject for an entire book, not a 1000-word blog article. However, I’m happy to disclose that one of the most significant inclusions of the process was learning to be vulnerable in a group setting.
And when it’s done properly and professionally (and boy, was it), there is no substitute from a team cohesion and togetherness point of view. In 14 days, we went from a group of complete strangers to people who feel more like family than friends.
Emotional Courage
I know that for some reading this, it’s just semantics, but in 2024, before the world catches up, maybe what I was taught at The Bridge is better described as emotional courage. And I couldn’t help but notice when Googling Brené’s website to link it above the blurb in the search results puts the word courage first: Brené Brown is a researcher and storyteller who’s spent two decades studying courage, vulnerability, shame, and empathy.
The courage to let down the walls and let your real feelings come out. Brené correctly describes doing this type of work properly is messy. And messy it is, but necessarily messy. Unavoidably messy if you want the benefits on the other side.
Team sports athletes – especially the men 😬 – are typically not very emotionally courageous with each other, and maybe this is necessary if the facilitator is not trained and experienced. Like dentistry, if it is not done properly, it can backfire and be disastrous.
Are you still trying to feel a certain way in order to perform at your best? Madalyn explains why you might want to consider another approach.
THE HAGUE, NETHERLANDS – JUNE 14 2014: Dutch team captain Maartje Paumen can’t suppress her emotions after winning the World Championships Hockey 2014.
Through variations of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, we can learn to manage our emotions in more helpful ways.
At Condor Performance the goal of our emotions work is mainly to teach clients how to perform at the highest possible level whilst experiencing the full range of emotions. It is not about helping them feel better or a certain way.
If you’d like more information about our performance psychology services, complete the form on our Contact Us page.
Please Make Me Feel Better!
In our profession, we deal with emotions every single day. Athletes and performers often ask us how they can learn to feel better. Most of the time, this is a desire to feel a certain way on competition day. A day that is often riddled with a whirlwind of emotions from excitement to anxiety and everything in between. Our work around emotions often begins with a deep dive into reality.
We’re probably never going to feel great on these highly meaningful days. And we will certainly never feel great before and during all competitive situations. As fellow psychologist Peter Clarke mentions in this Podcast interview, “We have this thing in our mind of I gotta feel perfect, calm and confident and THEN I’ll perform well. Mate, if that’s the case, you’re going to perform well for a very small portion of the time.”
Our first job as Psychologists is to help our clients let go of the idea of wanting to control how they feel. Emotions aren’t something we have a huge amount of influence over. Athletes and performers often come to us to learn how to eliminate the “negative” emotions and replace them with positive ones.
In their defence, this is often what is taught to us from a very young age. Remember this from the movie A League of Their Own?“There’s No Crying in Baseball.” Great film but awful advice.
Emotions And Performance
During the initial Kick Start Session with new clients, we often hear stories of emotional struggles on game day. Performers often describe the many ways in which they try to control these uncomfortable feelings. We get remarkable insight into how much impact feelings seem to have on their performance. To understand how to manage emotions, we must first understand exactly what they are.
Why Do We Feel Things?
Athletes and performers need to understand why humans experience emotions. In short, they play a very important role in our survival. There are countless examples, but the classic is the natural human feeling of fear. Being afraid of snakes, for example, is jolly useful. This fear is a major deterrent to going anywhere near anything resembling a snake. Even though most snakes are nonvenomous, we typically leave them alone, mostly thanks to fear.
The Amygdala (the brain’s emotional centre) produces emotions mainly to warn or reward us. The well-known fight or flight response is basically about our internal warning system. It’s hugely beneficial in survival situations but not so much in most performance scenarios.
Survival vs Performance
So, what we know about emotions is that within a survival framework, they’re great at keeping us alive. However, emotions in the performance domain have a habit of getting in the way of us doing the things we already know how to do well. Our job as psychologists is to challenge the consensus that emotions directly impact our performance. That is, to challenge the idea if I feel “bad” (i.e. nervous, anxious, doubtful) on game day, I’ll inevitably perform “poorly”. One of the first questions we will often ask a new client is this one.
“How do you view the relationship between emotions and performance? If I were to draw an arrow between the two, which direction would the arrow be pointing, and what would this mean?”
Nine times out of ten, the response I get is something like this. “How I feel usually determines how I perform”. But if we rarely feel fantastic come performance day due to our Amygdala, then we’re in trouble, no?
The Reality Of Emotions in Sport
Little do most people know that the power we attribute to emotions makes them so problematic. We assume greats like Roger Federer are all calm before and during matches. The fact is that even the best athletes in the world feel the full range of emotions we experience before an important event. Sometimes, we forget they are humans with a pumping amygdala like you and I.
Their ability to welcome and embrace these emotions and perform at a high level with them present has made them so good in their performance domain. The ability to do this is a skill that can be developed by anyone. And just like learning the right [biomechanical] technique, the earlier this becomes a habit, the better.
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy
The main coaching framework we work within at Condor Performance is known as Acceptance and Commitment Therapy or ACT (pronounced “act”) for short. This approach suggests that trying to get rid of unwanted emotions creates a lot of psychological distress. This psychological distress is almost always worse than the original feeling.
This often has a maladaptive impact on our behaviour (or, in this case, a negative impact on our performance). This is because we are trying to fight something we don’t have a lot of influence over. Attention is then taken away from basic muscle memory. Suddenly, a 4-foot put isn’t as easy as it was on the practice green earlier that day.
Through the mindful nature of ACT, we can learn to reduce the impact of emotions. How? By building awareness, making room for them, and learning to let these feelings come and go without a struggle.
Acceptance
ACT is an umbrella term for a range of mindfulness-based skills, with acceptance being one of the most useful and important. Through the skill of acceptance, our goal for athletes and performers is to help them open up to the uncomfortable feelings they experience as part of the human condition before accepting their presence and allowing them to be there rather than trying to avoid them. The idea behind acceptance is that if we learn to make room for emotions in our lives (without trying to fight them off), their power is ultimately diminished. ACT assumes that the struggle with and fighting off these emotions gives them their power over our actions.
The “Noticing Self”
There is a part of us that feels, and then there is a part that notices that we feel a certain way. Performers need to learn to notice their emotions as they arise and build more awareness of them – why? Because our default response to uncomfortable feelings is to turn away from them – try to suppress, avoid or escape them, or distract ourselves from them. This is problematic regarding the motor skills required in most sports. It stops you from doing what you are naturally very good at (e.g. kicking a soccer ball, etc).
A trap we often fall into in performance settings is getting sucked into this default response. Eventually, we become so caught up in getting rid of uncomfortable emotions (an impossible task) that we can’t be intensity aware, present and focused on what we must be doing.
To help athletes and performers develop the noticing skill, we ask them to practice intentionally and consciously noticing and acknowledging uncomfortable feelings. We might ask them to tell themselves what they feel silently. For example, “I’m noticing anxiety”, or “I notice I’m feeling worried”. Through accepting and noticing emotions, we can learn to sit with the discomfort and reduce its impact on our actions (motor skills).
Emotion Validation and Commitment
Without acknowledging the presence of uncomfortable emotions, we can invalidate our own experiences. When our most inner and private emotional experiences feel invalid, we risk falling victim to that unhelpful emotion default response (suppress, avoid, escape, distract). Following this, our default cognitive response is often “I shouldn’t feel this way” or “I should be able to handle this better”.
But at the end of the day, a choice must be made. The athlete or performer can choose to:
Feel uncomfortable emotions and choose not to commit to their actions or
Feel these uncomfortable emotions and commit to their actions despite them.
Through mental toughness training, we aim to empower individuals to choose the latter. With the help of skills such as acceptance, noticing and validation, the decision to commit becomes much easier.
Learning to Embrace Emotion
At Condor Performance, we aim to guide athletes and performers towards a healthier relationship with emotions. Think about how boring life would be without them!
We know happiness only because we’ve experienced sadness, so it is important as part of the human condition that we choose to welcome all emotions, pleasant and unpleasant. In the performance domain, we often view emotion negatively, but rather than looking at it as a sign of weakness, we can see it as a sign that we’re living. If you need help in doing this, then get in touch.
“Mental Skills For Younger Performers” is the transcription of a 2024 Radio Interview that Darren Godwin did with Radio New Zealand.
Are Mental Skills For Younger Performers Different?
Our very own Darren Godwin recently interviewed with Radio New Zealand, and his advice was so beneficial we decided to transcribe it and convert it into this brand-new feature article entitled Mental Skills For Younger Performers. Please add any and all questions and comments at the bottom, and Darren will endeavour to reply to each and every one. Note some edits have been made to the original to make it easy to read.
Catherine [The Interviewer]:
In parenting, we’re talking about how to help sporty kids deal with the psychological impact of winning, losing, and the pressures of competition.
Melbourne-based provisional psychologist Darren Godwin works with Australia’s largest sport and performance psychology practice, Condor Performance. Professional sports teams have the services of psychologists to help players navigate the ups and downs of competition and their own doubts and motivation. Darren says tween and teen athletes and their parents can benefit from the same assistance. Thanks for being with us.
Darren Godwin [The Interviewee]:
Hi, Catherine. Thanks for having me. How are you doing?
Catherine:
Really good. I want to make an observation at the outset, and that is what we’ve seen, and it’s become a source of some angst and debate about what seems like a growing kind of professionalisation of high school sports in particular. We’ve got schools with academies and kids in training programs. I have spoken to some physiologists worried about the level of training that some are going through while their bodies are still growing. What’s your starting point, and what’s happening in Australia concerning the sorts of quasi-professional sports that kids are coming up against quite young?
Darren:
I think there are probably a couple of factors that can contribute to that, and one might be just that our world is more connected than ever before, so we can access and see people who do incredible things more easily. There are a lot of people who do incredible things around the world. So perhaps that pushes or incentivises us to start introducing that earlier and earlier into some of these education systems.
Catherine:
Some schools compete on this basis, and it’s not like, in our case, rugby and rowing and whatever haven’t always been sports where schools have prided themselves or built their reputation. Still, this idea of academies and quasi-professional training does seem to have spread. It’s just an observation. Is this what is on your mind, or is it more just in general for any young person playing competitive sport they’re going to come up against those highs and lows?
Darren:
I think it’s more just a general sense of it. Sport offers some unique experiences that I think can provide a lot of areas to grow and develop as a person, and I think there are a lot of parallels between just some of the nature of things that happen within sports. How can we develop skills that support and enhance people to learn, grow, and handle those challenges life will throw our way, too?
Catherine:
Another general observation. You’ve gone there already in some ways. We seem to be having a generation that, for various reasons, is dealing with rising anxiety or has to manage anxiety. Your reference to how interlinked everything is and the overload that can be put on young brains and nervous systems is one factor. A pandemic interrupting their schooling and regular routine is another. But in general, is that on your mind also that resilience is something we need to work on with a generation of young people?
Darren:
Yeah, absolutely. I think it’s helpful to acknowledge a mental skills component that we culturally don’t introduce to our younger audiences. We look at the systems and the education systems, facilities, things we’ve got set up there, there’s more of an emphasis on the knowledge, the learning and the connectivity, but not so much on the mental skills development. So, we are trying to build the capacity to learn how to handle those challenges and build resilience.
Catherine:
So, where do you begin? Let’s get some parameters around the kind of ages that we’re talking about, what’s appropriate, and what’s helpful at different ages and/or stages of development.
Darren:
Sure. In my experience, at least, we work with anyone between the ages of ten, and maybe the oldest I’ve worked with is sixty-eight. So it can be for a variety of things. It could just be someone who is looking to be highly competitive. It could be someone just looking to enjoy their weekend competition more. A lot of what we do to support them is to help them with things like confidence in their skills and abilities, the confidence to execute what they’ve practised in any given conditions, the composure to manage their emotions under stressful situations and the commitment to trade-off, I guess, what might seem like something hard in the short term, but it’s going to provide a long-term benefit.
So when we look at those age brackets, the developmental brackets we’re talking about, young kids, we try to accentuate the fun and keep them involved.
Catherine:
We want them to have fun, right?
Darren:
Exactly.
Catherine:
We don’t want to stress them out.
Darren:
Social development, it is a highly social period for youngsters. They’re trying to connect with themselves in the world, so at a young age, we’re saying, “Hey, let’s look at the fun side of things a little bit more.”
Teenage years, it’s becoming a lot more social, but they’re becoming a lot more independent. They’re trying to figure out who they are and what they want to be in this world. So that is typically when we start to see more competitive things show up and still the same thing. It’s trying to help them understand what they want to do that’s going to help benefit them in the long run.
Catherine:
Let’s come back to those three points you’ve already touched on that are all interrelated. Let’s break them down. Let’s start with confidence. It’s about doing what you’re trained to do, but many things can get in the way, right?
But I wonder if we should start with number two, managing emotions and stressful situations. You’ll often see this in young kids, you’ll spot probably the champion at a very young age because they seem to manage to be calm. They seem to focus on fixing a mistake or concentrating on what they will do next. Then there’s someone else who’s angry, frustrated and throwing the tennis racket. So how do we begin to introduce and help kids with the skill to manage their emotions and the stress of competition? What sorts of things would you do?
Darren:
When we’re talking about emotions, I always try to explain there are two components. One is the internal experience that’s happening with that emotion, what do we feel and the other is the expression of that emotion, what do we do?
So we try to separate the two so we can acknowledge and accept that you’re a human being and it’s okay to have all these emotions. They show up because it’s helpful for our survival and/or something matters to us in that moment. We don’t get emotional about things we don’t care about, so something matters to us at that moment.
So it’s building those mental skills to acknowledge, understand, and accept what emotion is showing up for me now, as well as how I express what I want to express. If we want to go one step further (what you said is I’m here with a task in front of me), how do I shift my focus to the task in front of me if that’s what’s most important?
Catherine:
So first of all, it’s that old thing as always with young people – validate what they’re feeling.
Darren:
Absolutely.
Catherine:
There’s also the … it’s dubbed red to blue, right? Athletes learn this at all levels. There’s your immediate rage reaction, stress reaction, or worry reaction, and you want to get to the calm blue ocean part of the brain to deal with the issue. In what ways would you deal with, say, an early teen or a mid-teen on the emotion in the moment? Is it a simple breathing skill or a calming skill? Is it self-talk? What kinds of skills can they add to their repertoire quite young?
Darren:
Oh, I think maybe a mindfulness practice is probably something that they can start to do. Mindfulness is defined by two main points. One is contact with the present moment. And two is a reduced judgment of what’s happening in their current experience.
Like with all things, preparation is going to benefit this the most. So it’s trying to help and guide athletes to practice these things in advance so they’re not left in a situation where they must scramble and work out something on the fly. I guess a mindfulness practice is something that can be helpful. It can just start with a minute or two minutes of just observing and watching different experiences that are happening, tuning into one or some of our senses, what we see, smell, taste, touch or hear, and that can often be a good way to recenter us back into this moment right now.
Catherine:
Let’s work through perhaps the anticipation of a big event and the nerves and anxiety that can build over the days ahead. Is mental rehearsal still a big thing? Does it help to visualise where you’ll be, what you’ll be feeling, what you’ll be doing, where your locker will be, and where your gear will go? Is that something you can help develop as a skill as well?
Darren:
Absolutely. Yes. Mental imagery, visualisation, and mental rehearsal are fantastic skills to help with our preparation. These mental skills have many benefits. First, you’re repeatedly putting yourself in that situation and becoming more familiar with it. Trying to recall with detail the things that you want to focus on, where you want to be, what you want to do and how it’s going to go, and that it’d be deeply connected to what you’ve trained and what you’ve practised.
Visualisation is also very accessible. If you can’t make training that day for whatever reason, it can be done in your home. It can be done alongside your training. Some good research shows the benefits of doing it alongside training, and it can be done when you’re injured. So it keeps you connected with the task and what you need to do.
Catherine:
It could also be very basic. I mean, it’s not necessarily just about the skills that you want to rehearse mentally. It can be like, “Okay, I’ve got a stressful day tomorrow. I’ve got to be ready to go at this time. What time am I getting up? I’m going to shower. I’m going to have my breakfast. I’m going to pack my bag, or I’ve got my bag packed.” Walking through all the steps that can cause stress and pressure. Right? It’s the anticipation of practising what you will go through.
Darren:
Yes, absolutely. Another point to what you said is that it’s an acceptance or a connection. We’re not trying to avoid the stress that’s happening the next day.
Catherine:
We’re walking into it.
Darren:
We’re walking into it.
Catherine:
So, with nerves and anxiety, what ways do you talk this through with young people? They are here to help us, that they can feel unpleasant, but that they serve a purpose? How do you help them harness them rather than be overrun by them?
Darren:
I think just a little bit of education comes along with that. For example, just trying to understand the physiology, the biology that we have and how our body works, and these things are ultimately here to help us.
Then, if you break down the actual things that are happening physiologically for us, things like our heart rate going up, meaning we’ve got more blood going to our muscles, which means we’re going to be more ready to use those muscles with strength, power, and flexibility. Our pupils are dilating, and we can see things more clearly and easily identify moving objects. Usually, that alertness, that energy in our body, means that our reaction time is consistently sharp. So when you go through all of these things, and you ask an athlete this kind of things that benefit your sport, almost all the time, they’re going to benefit their performance or their sport in some way.
Catherine:
It will also benefit school work, exams, and other things that cause stress. How do you approach negative self-talk? Some people seem to have a natural talent for turning things around, and others, it’s always, “I won’t win this. I’ll get this far. I’m ahead, but I’m going to muck it up.” How do you talk through that self-talk intervention with people at this age?
Darren:
I think it’s interesting at a young age because they haven’t necessarily had as much time to go further down that self-talk route and develop a habit or relationship with that self-talk.
So I might say something like if we’re going to cross a busy intersection and there are four lanes of traffic with cars and there are no lights and they’re all going very quickly, we’re going to think about … probably what we would say is negative things. “Oh, I might get hit by a car.” It’s not a pleasant thing to think about, but it’s a very helpful thing to think about.
So it’s just trying to build this relationship that sometimes, as these negative things arise, can we practice identifying the context? What’s this situation? What’s happening right now? What’s important to me right now? Then, if it is important, let’s pay some attention to it. And if it’s not, we can practice letting go, and it’s that letting go part that I think is important in some sporting contexts because the sporting context triggers some of those things quite a lot.
Catherine:
Here’s a really good point actually to this point. “Like many kids his age, my 14-year-old dreams of a career in professional football. The chance of that working out is minuscule, but it’s all he wants to do. He detests the idea of doing anything else. He puts so much pressure on himself to perform and is crushed if he doesn’t shine on the park. Should I encourage him to chase his dream or be realistic? I’m torn.”
Darren:
That’s a great question. It’s tough, and I think for parents out there, it’s just trying to guide them and go along with your child and help them discover it for themselves. It’s not to say that they can’t go down that path and then later find out that it’s not something meaningful for them. But it’s worth also just continually having conversations with them. “What’s important to you? What are you willing to try to do to see how this goes?” And try to be a supportive and open person who walks them along that journey with them. There will be moments where it’s hard, and I think we’re trying to be there for them in all moments, not just moments of success.
Catherine:
What happens over time, of course, and a lot of athletes (most athletes) find this out is they want to be this or that, but they’re not going to make the professional league. Still, they may have a very rewarding emitter or quasi-professional role. They may become sports psychologists or trainers or whatever.
It’s about focusing on the joy of participating in the sport. Hard, I know, when they’ve got very specific dreams, but ultimately, that’s what you want to be doing. Also, what do you learn in chasing a goal, whether or not it’s achieved?
I guess that’s another point to discuss. Setting goals can come to ones that you know you will tick off: “I’ve done my training this week, I’ve done this, I’ve done that. I’ve done the next thing, ” and those beyond your control. It is really important to teach kids about effort in any area. You focus on what you can do and reach for what’s beyond your control, but you accept it’s ultimately beyond your control. Yeah?
Darren:
Yes, absolutely. That’s another great mental skill to start learning early, and they work well through the life cycle. It is the ability to identify what we can and can’t control. The tricky part happens when we think we have more control over something than we do. It’s often the case in sports, but yes, it can be as simple as writing things down on paper and trying to gauge yourself, maybe out of ten. Ten is for anything that I think I can guarantee. One, it’s a complete fluke that it happens. How much influence do I think I have over these things?
Catherine:
So, you can have a goal of winning the tennis tournament, but what you need is the mental attitude that what you can do is all your preparation, all your training, all your readiness, your best performance. The goal of winning is what you are reaching for, but you can’t control that. That is a skill that great performers will learn somewhere along the line. And this is arguably one of the most invaluable mental skills for younger performers, correct?
Darren:
100%.
Catherine:
Darren, thanks very, very much. Darren Godwin is with Condor Performance. He’s a performance psychologist with Condor Performance in Australia.
