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, 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.
Sport psychologist Gareth J. Mole muses about where sport psychology is headed and guesses what the field will look like in 2050.
What will sport psychology look like in the year 2050?
Back From The Future
Ok, readers, I borrowed a time machine and just returned from the year 2050. And you will not believe what I saw. Doncaster Rovers F.C. won the English Premier League yet gain. And sport psychology is nothing like it is in 2024. It’s mainstream, normal, and regarded as the most important part of competitive sports.
Forecasting the future is one of the most remarkable aspects of being human. No other species can do it quite like we can. But it’s both a blessing and a curse. The upside is our ability to plan and do things three moves ahead of our opponents. The downside is wasting mental energy, such as “I just know I am going to play poorly tomorrow”.
Sport Psychology In 2050?
During several interviews between UK sport psychologist Dan Abrahams and his guests on the highly recommended The Sport Psych Show, he asked them to imagine using a time machine to go back in time. I thought it might be fun and thought-provoking to use it to go into the future instead!
In this article, I will predict what the sport psychology landscape will look like 25 years from now. Like Robert Zemeckis and Bob Gale (creators of the Back To The Future Trilogy), I will make some educated guesses. Feel free to save a copy and then get in touch in 2050. This might be hard as I plan to be fully retired by then.
Let me know how accurate or inaccurate they turn out to be. I will not, in this article, focus on the problematic aspects of future-based thinking. But I will say this. We now know that one of the key aspects of sporting mental toughness is being able to focus at will on the present moment. In other words, there are many occasions in a competitive sporting situation in which we literally want to ‘turn off’ our ability to think about the future. More on this will be discussed in another article (which, when written, I will link here).
3 Majors Changes To Sport Psychology Are Coming
I hypothesise three major changes in the coming decades to dramatically change what sport psychology looks like. My predication is that the following will occur or have happened by the middle of this century.
The phasing out of generic (non-sport specific) sport psychology.
The phasing in of much greater checks about qualifications (or lack thereof).
A spike in sporting coaches working 1-on-1 with sport psychologists/performance psychologists. And the first few head coaches are, in fact, sports psychologists themselves.
I will now go into more detail about each of the above.
Phasing Out of Generic Sport Psychology
By the end of this decade, it will be universally accepted that the ‘interventions’ used to help someone with clinical depression are different from ‘the mental tools’ used to motivate a mentally well athlete whose training enthusiasm has dropped. For those who are reading this who think this has already happened, trust me, it hasn’t. But we are getting there.
This move towards more specificity will continue past 2030. More and more people will accept that snooker and boxing are too different to be aided by the same psychological tools. There are so many sports now, and we can’t pretend they all have the same mental requirements and solutions.
Let’s Consider A Couple Of Key Questions
How much do the general strategies used by most (non-sport) psychologists apply to athletes and coaches who are trying to improve the mental aspects of their performance or coaching abilities?
How ‘transferable’ are various mental skills from one performance area to another? Or even from one specific sport to a different sport?
When trying to answer the first question, we must be careful not to imply that all psychologists use the same models. However, some well-established frameworks are likely to be more prevalent than others. That is for sure. So, how easily do these methods apply to sport and performance? The simple answer, in my opinion, is ‘about one-third’.
For example, if the athlete is functionally well (without a recognised mental illness) then at Condor Performance we would not focus significant attention on a long and detailed history of the client’s mental health and wellbeing. We would most likely measure it via the Depression, Anxiety and Stress Scale every couple of months to keep an eye on it. However, most sports psychology sessions would be related to the mental aspects of the client’s sport.
This is not to say that some mental methods we often use from the get-go don’t have clinical origins. But the final versions presented to our clients would be largely unrecognisable to our non-performance colleagues.
Examples
A great example of this would be our approach to goal setting. When we help our clients set goals, we often introduce a level of accountability to these targets that some mental health practitioners might find objectionable.
But from our standpoint, this level of accountability is a key ingredient in helping them get to the next level. It can be confronting for the client (‘You committed to 5 hours of practice a week, this didn’t occur, what happened?’), and we will use that to further the discussion by asking lots of ‘why’ questions.
A practitioner with more of a mental health angle might default to just making the client feel better about this type of non-compliance. (‘You committed to 5 hours of practice a week; this didn’t occur, totally understandable given the current challenges’).
Another example might be mindfulness. Mindfulness looks rather different when doing something at home with few outside distractions than the version you might use in the arena. And the version you might use on the golf course is hopefully only partially the same as what a competitive tennis player might adopt.
How Transferable
So, how ‘transferable’ are mental skills from one performance area to another? Or even from one specific sport to another? In answering this question, I often use the rule of thirds. About one-third of the mental ideas are due to generic sport psychology principles. Another third wants to acknowledge that although Olympic Bob-sleighing and Clay Target Shooting are both sports, they are vastly different pursuits. And the final third is further adapting the mental training program to that individual. To that person’s personality and learning styles. Two clay target shooters should never be treated the same.
In other words, the sports psychology services we’d deliver to a competitive pro golfer with a drinking problem and a rugby league coach looking to improve their coaching abilities might only have a 15 to 20% crossover. One of the commonalities between these very different hypothetical clients might be the use of some key aspects of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy.
For example, educational processes around “we are not our thoughts” might be useful for both. I have found a Behaviour-first approach universally beneficial in my sports psychology work regardless of who I am sitting in front of.
Some Sports Are Mentally Very Similar
Although I predict a phasing out of generic sport psychology, we need to remember that some sports are psychologically very similar. When you put the technical and tactical aspects to one side, the same mental tools should work for certain sports. The best example that comes to mind is the work we do around Short Performance Routines to aid concentration and execution under pressure. In helping a golfer create or improve his or her Pre Shot Routine(s) the principles will be almost identical in working a snooker player on their PSR.
Greater Checks about Qualifications
This is how I think it will work in 2050. If you want to charge a fee for advice on X then you need some approved qualification in X. No exceptions. So, if you want to be a personal trainer who goes to people’s houses and gives fitness advice in exchange for a fee, you’ll need to be genuinely qualified. I gather the whole physical conditioning industry is trying to make this happen.
Psychology for elite sports is years behind our S&C friends, but we will catch up. Over the next 30 years, there will be a gradual phasing out of entities charging a fee for psychological advice (even if they call it something else) who don’t have some kind of approved training in psychology.
This is a very difficult area, and I suspect that more than a few tears will be shed along the way. The hardest part will be to get everyone to agree on what ‘approved training in psychology’ means. And then afterwards, educating the public in such a way as to reduce assumptions that Mindset Coach and a Sport Psychologist are one and the same.
More Coaches Working 1-on-1 With Sport Psychologists
This has already started to happen. In 2005, I worked with no sporting coaches. In 202,4 roughly a third of all my monthly clients are coaches. The premise is very simple. Coaching education programs worldwide lack highly effective mental toughness training elements. We could try and improve all of these coach ed programs or even ask the coaches to do ‘approved training in psychology’, but there is an easier and better way. All sporting coaches, especially at the elite level, will be working behind the scenes with a genuine expert in sporting mental toughness.
This coach-sport psychologist collaboration will eventually result in sport psychologists taking up positions as assistant coaches. Then eventually getting the ‘top job’ themselves. When this happens, and these professionals are successful, and stick with the title of sport psychologist over Head Coach or Manager whilst in the top job, we can then say we’ve made it.
If you are a sporting coach and want to get ahead of the curve, then start by completing this questionnaire. This questionnaire will assess, amongst other factors, your current mental coaching abilities. One of our team will then contact you within a day or two with details about how to work alongside of of our team of sport/performance psychologists.
I am guessing that when you think of sport psychology books, you imagine publications by academics that have sold a few thousand copies. The issue is that most of these books are designed to be for practitioners and not the performers. There are books written with athletes and performers in mind, but typically, they are limited in their scope. So we asked our growing team of sport and performance psychologists about what books they suggest to their clients.
Below, in no particular order, are these publications. As you can see many of them are not sport psychology books per se, but together they form a handy toolkit for anyone interested in the mental aspects of human performance. If you think we are missing one (or more), please add the details to the comments section at the very bottle of the list.
This 300-page book highlights that we tend to carry our mindset from one task to the next, which impacts our capacity to focus on the ensuing task. This book focuses on The Third Space, the transition between the first activity and the second, to enable us to “show up” for whatever comes next.
Using the example of tennis players and discussing the 3 Rs, Reflect Rest Reset – talks about how very little separates the top tennis players in terms of skill, ability and fitness. However, research has found that what separates the greats from the rest is, regardless of a good shot or bad shot or a good match, bad match, the ability to reflect (and learn) on what just happened, Rest (be it through breathing, mindfulness, etc) and then Reset for the next point, match or game.
This work uses neuroscience and research to explain that our brain is plastic, malleable and changeable. And the massive benefit to us as humans of it being that way.
We are never too old to learn new tricks. We can build our resilience and develop new skills and ways of looking at the world throughout our lives and for as long as we are alive.
If you watch the Olympics or any high-profile sport, you notice that most athletes breathe more purposefully.
There is possibly no more important action to prepare the body and mind for performance than breathing. This book highlights that even minor adjustments to breathing practices can positively impact performance and have a myriad of impacts on overall health and immunity, sleep and general well-being.
This fantastic read contains incredible insights into creating long-lasting changes to human habits. James Clear has presented both his personal experiences and scientific research in a way that’s very practical to accomplish.
We often believe that habitual changes must be drastic; however, the book highlights that this does not need to be the case. There is a focus on making tiny and very doable actions on an ongoing basis that, if maintained, can make fabulous improvements to our lives.
The book summarises one of our favourite mantras at Condor Performance: “Trust the process and let the results take care of themselves.”
Without a doubt, Dr Steven C. Hayes has made a considerable contribution to psychology with his research on Acceptance and Commitment Therapy and the development of Psychological Flexibility.
Dr Hayes takes you through the six core processes that help build psychological flexibility and is packed with diverse examples of their application. It is well supported by research, but you do not have to be an academic to understand it. It is very digestible to all audiences, and very importantly, it contains practical exercises that you can take away and use immediately. This book supports many life and performance-enhancement strategies. It’s a game-changer.
This powerful book is centred around ‘Psychological Flexibility’, a term referring to being open and willing to engage with uncomfortable internal experiences (thoughts, feelings, memories) so that they no longer stop us from committing to the actions that are important to us.
This book contains excellent insight into the evidence-based practice of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), a framework the Condor Performance team use to help their sporting and non-sporting clients lean into discomfort and not struggle with it. ACT is based on the premise that our problem-solving mind is hardwired to avoid, suppress and fight off uncomfortable internal experiences. To live a full and meaningful life, we need to have a more ‘flexible’ relationship with our mind where we notice, observe and accept these experiences, reflect on our values and focus on committed action towards our long-term goals. Much of our work at Condor Performance is about our clients’ relationships with internal experiences. Therefore, I highly recommend this book to anyone who wants to learn more about our work or is looking to improve their performance.
The First Rule of Mastery: Stop Worrying About What People Think of You by Dr Michael Gervais
Fear of judgment and what people think of us (recently defined as “FOPO” – fear of people’s opinions) is a common theme that many of our clients struggle with, and often, FOPO can constrain or limit our capacity to realise our full potential. In The First Rule of Mastery, Michael Gervais outlines exactly what FOPO is, what causes FOPO, and, most importantly, what we can do to overcome FOPO.
This is helpful reading for all performers but especially valuable for those involved in team sports.
Based on his experience teaching in India, The Resilience Project details a framework for developing skills and behaviours to help us live more fulfilling lives. Gratitude, empathy, and mindfulness are desirable behaviours and traits we can all benefit from incorporating into our daily lives.
They can help us with our mental health, mental aspects of performance, and associated performance outcomes. Being resilient is a crucial attribute of high performers, and The Resilience Project is an excellent introduction to those looking to learn more about it.
Legacy: What The All Blacks Can Teach Us About The Business of Life by James Kerr
One of my all-time favourite books and the book I recommend the most to my clients. Based on the esteemed culture of one of the most successful sporting teams in history, Legacy provides outstanding lessons in culture and leadership that can benefit individuals, teams, athletes, coaches, and other leaders. If you want to be a high performer and/or succeed in your chosen endeavour, the insights from this book will benefit you enormously.
It is a terrific book that redefines what toughness is.
Combining a great blend of the latest scientific knowledge about psychology and human performance with real-world experience from athletes and coaches, Do Hard Things is a roadmap for overcoming hardships, facing challenges, and striving to succeed. Informative, practical, and accessible, this book will help you build real toughness.
This excellent book explores many of the themes I would use regularly with my clients and encourages all high performers to practice.
These key themes include being present, focusing on processes over outcomes, being patient, connecting with your values, and cultivating a sustainable approach to high performance. Combining the latest scientific knowledge with ancient wisdom, The Practice of Groundness will provide you with critical techniques and practical skills to help you on your journey towards success.
It is one of the most powerful and influential books I have read. Viktor Frankl’s lessons about his experience in concentration camps in WWII are incredibly insightful. Whether we are chasing big or little wins, all of us will benefit from these observations.
While suffering may be inevitable, we can choose how we respond and find meaning in the suffering that allows us to find and pursue purpose. Ultimately, pursuing what matters to us (i.e., our purpose) is our most important human driver.
It is an excellent book for athletes committed to training their minds. So often, it is the internal chatter that prevents athletes from being present in the moment.
This book guides the reader through many psychological skills that encourage them to let go of their internal chatter and focus on the moment. I appreciate the book’s clear descriptions of each skill and opportunities for practice and reflection. This ensures the skills are correctly learnt and can be accessed quicker in heightened emotions.
An excellent book for sporting and non-sporting performers, The Happiness Trap provides a user-friendly introduction to Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT). Some of the critical components of ACT that are covered in depth and apply to performance enhancement include:
(1) Mindfulness. Being aware of the present moment without judgment helps us recognise how we respond to situations and redirect ourselves to practical actions.
(2) Acceptance. Acknowledging unwanted thoughts and emotions helps reduce our natural internal struggle with them.
(3) Commitment. By identifying our values (things that give us a sense of meaning), we can become more purposeful in our behaviours. In other words, deliberately acting aligns with what is important to us.
Written by the mindfulness expert trainer for Google executives. I recommend this book as it’s a great guide on “how to” learn to practise mindfulness for those interested.
Many books and authors will tell you that mindfulness is terrific and benefits life, business, health and performance. But this book gives practical processes on how to start and exercises to try and practice to become more adept at mindfulness. On top of that, it’s written in a simple and conversational style that I find more casual than many books.
‘The Coaches’ is a collection of interviews with twelve high-profile sporting coaches across various sports in Australia. It skillfully brings together hundreds of little pieces of advice and wisdom through many years of coaching at the elite level.
If you’re an aspiring athlete or coach, it’s always worth knowing what the top coaches look for in their athletes, what they feel brings success and what they see as pathways to failure through their time at the top.
This semi-autobiographical account of Bill Walsh’s work with the San Francisco 49ers is arguably one of the most beneficial when learning why a process focus is far more effective than an outcome orientation.
As the book suggests, Bill and his coaching staff did not do a lot of goal-setting for the outcomes. Instead, they went through every single aspect of the organisation and tried to improve it. In doing this, there was a reduced need to obsess about sporting results. These took care of themselves. And the consequence is that they became one of the most successful teams in the history of the NFL.
‘Stolen Focus’ is a slightly different book to be included in this select list of sport psychology books. Given the importance of focus in modern-day performance psychology, it would be remiss not to include at least one book that explains why focusing is so hard for so many people nowadays.
This book, by one of my favourite authors, is a must-read for anyone who assumes that time spent stuck to their smartphone is normal and healthy. Yes, that’s right, performance enhancement is sometimes just doing the simple things. Like turning off your phone at meal times!
If you feel like this list of sports psychology books is missing any that you have read and would recommend, please add the details to the comments section below. Ideally, include the title, author, and WHY you would suggest to anyone looking to further their performance psychology knowledge. After more than one individual has mentioned the same publication, we will consider moving it up to the official list above.
You’ve heard of physical flexibility right? But what about Psychological flexibility? In this article two of our performance psychologists Lauren Bischoff and Gareth J. Mole take a closer look at this ‘game changing’ mental skill.
Psychological Flexibility plays a significant role in developing mental toughness …
What Is Psychological Flexibility?
Psychological flexibility – heard of it? Don’t worry if you haven’t. Many qualified psychologists would struggle if you asked them what psychological flexibility is. And maybe just as important, what it is not.
early 15c., “capable of being bent; mentally or spiritually pliant,” from Old French flexible or directly from Latin flexibilis “that may be bent, pliant, flexible, yielding;” figuratively “tractable, inconstant,” from flex-, past participle stem of flectere “to bend,”
The two words that jump out from this are yielding and bend. We’ll come back to these.
Of course, the word flexibility is much more commonly associated with physical flexibility from a human point of view. So much so that if you booked in to see an exercise physiologist and asked him or her to help you design a program to boost flexibility, they’re unlikely to ask whether you mean mental or physical.
Flexibility in terms of the human body means that there is a far greater range of possible movements. This is, of course, most beneficial in an injury prevention scenario. Two similar athletes who endure the same brutal rugby league tackle are most likely impacted not by how strong they are but by how flexible they are.
It goes without saying that there are sports in which physical flexibility is arguably the number one priority. Gymnastics and many dancing pursuits emphasise the importance of suppleness. It is the same for psychological flexibility. It’s beneficial for all performance areas but absolutely critical for a few.
Outcomes vs Processes
It’s impossible to overemphasise the usefulness of separating processes from outcomes. Why? To realise how much more influence you have on processes.
So, what do physical and psychological flexibility have in common? Both types of flexibility are outcomes. They are the possible consequences of the things we do. If these processes are sound (sufficiently scientific), then the consequence may result in some improvement.
There is nothing wrong with aiming for outcomes as long as you know they are outcomes. They often make for an invaluable starting point. For example, it’s far more helpful to want to improve your physical flexibility than your overall physical health. In the same way, it is better to want to improve your psychological flexibility than your “mindset.”
Psychological Rigidity
Sometimes, when trying to understand a concept, it can be helpful to know the opposite. For example, when learning about good manners, it can be helpful to know what poor manners look like.
The opposite of psychological flexibility is psychological rigidity. It is interesting how obvious it is that physical rigidity is not desirable. But in some circles, psychological rigidity can be regarded as beneficial. For example, certain aspects of the military might believe this.
I am about a four on a scale of one to ten between rigidity and flexibility, where zero represents maximum rigidity. But I used to be a one, maybe even a zero. Certain traits of psychological rigidity are extreme rule-following and stubbornness. “It’s my way or the highway”. This is fine if you live by yourself on a desert island, but in the real world, it causes issues. Over time, I have moved from a one to a four through the core practices below. Thank you to my colleague Lauren Bischoff on the research put into the below, which she wrote.
1. Cognitive Defusion
Have you ever been distracted by unhelpful thoughts while training or competing? It is more common than you’d imagine and can make focusing on your processes ten times harder. Thoughts such as “I’m not good enough” or “I am too anxious to perform at my best” tend to be automatic thoughts. The issue is we have very little influence on these thoughts.
The good news is that we can learn to make room or unhook from these thoughts with a bit of practice. This process frees up mental space to focus on what is essential: our actions. This concept of ‘making room’ is really important. Basically, the human mind only has the ability to deal with so much at any given time. This process leaves little room for anything else when we argue with our own thoughts. But when we accept and notice them, we can use the rest of the room to focus on skill execution. To get on with the job at hand, so to speak.
Although this might sound easy in theory, it takes practice. Let’s take a basketball player who is fixated on the consequences of missing the next shot. In this situation, they can get unstuck from these thoughts by acknowledging that “I’m having the thought that I might miss the next shot”. Did you notice any difference in the meaning between these two statements? The second thought allows us not to be as controlled by the thought of missing the shot. She makes the next attempt despite the thought.
Next time you get caught up in your thoughts, try noticing that your thoughts are just thoughts.
2. Acceptance
Acceptance plays a big part in learning to open up to and learn from our experiences. This involves acknowledging our thoughts and emotions and letting go of what is getting in the way. We can acknowledge our thoughts and learn to accept them for what they are: just thoughts.
It is natural to want to fight our thoughts or feelings, but this makes us focus on them more. I use the purple elephant example when explaining acceptance.
I want you to stop thinking about a purple elephant!
The harder we try to stop having a thought, the more likely we will experience or focus on it. Therefore, let’s accept that we are having this thought in the first place without fighting it.
Often, we focus on avoiding a feeling or experience that makes us uncomfortable, such as anxiety or pressure. However, you might be surprised that anxiety and pressure are a normal part of the human experience. And especially when those humans are trying to achieve something hard yet meaningful.
I will not detail the fight and flight response here, as other Mental Toughness Digest articles have covered this concept well.
When we accept our life experiences, we can learn from them and move to the decision-making part faster. If you got an opportunity to compete for your country at the Olympics (for example), and the experience came with lots of pressure, would you still want to go? I know that I would still want to take up that opportunity, but at the same time, I accept that pressure and anxiety will likely show up.
3. Committed Action
Committed action involves taking responsibility for our actions and moving towards who we want to be and what we want to do. This is almost always challenging. Our uncomfortable thoughts and feelings often pull us away from what we truly want to achieve.
Committed action refers to sticking to our processes, regardless of our thoughts or feelings. Remember that we have a lot of influence on our actions, much less on our thoughts and even less on our feelings.
Let’s take a gymnast by way of an example. Committed action on the beam would involve completing each skill despite fearing falling. Or a soccer goalkeeper during a penalty shootout. Usually, anyone would be nervous in that situation. However, it is more effective for the goalkeeper to go about their job rather than trying to calm themselves down.
A key aspect of committing to our actions is building competence in the actual skills before we start feeling confident. Imagine trying to build a new habit. It would be nice to see change overnight, but it takes practice. As we know, practice makes permanent. Competencies are well-rehearsed actions that can be relied upon. Confidence is a feeling and is inherently very unreliable.
4. Values
Think about an athlete that you look up to. What values or qualities do you admire about that person? Maybe they are a good team player or have excellent body language under pressure.
As athletes start competing at a higher or more competitive level, they can forget about why they fell in love with the sport in the first place. I highly encourage you to reflect on why you play your sport. No, not just one now, but every month.
It’s important to highlight that our values and goals are different. Goals help us to stay on course with our values. For example, if our goal is to be the best hockey player, we might value stamina and being a good team player. This brilliant video below by Dr Russ Harris explains more on this:
5. Staying In The Moment
It is natural to get distracted by the world around us, which pulls us away from what we are doing. Our mind is designed to keep us safe, and it does this, in part, by predicting the future. Millions of years ago, this was quite adaptive as there were many more sabertooth tigers around and fewer professional golf tournaments 😛!
The workaround is through regular mindfulness and paying attention to the present moment with less judgment. There are many ways to do this. One way is for you to try to notice internal and external stimuli. What can you hear right now if you pause and focus solely on the sounds around you?
If you need a helping hand, the below 12-minute Really Simple Mindfulness guide created by Condor Performance’s first-ever sport psychologist, Gareth J. Mole, is a great tool. Unlike the many guided meditation and mindfulness apps available, the below are free.
6. Self As Context
Lastly, self as context allows us to observe our experiences without getting caught up in them as much. We often refer to this as our “observing self”, meaning we become better at seeing the world in a way that’s less about us.
Being human with higher cognitive abilities than most animals is a very unusual experience. We live on a planet with approximately eight billion people, but we are only aware of the thoughts and feelings of one of these people.
For this reason, it’s essential to see ourselves as separate from our thoughts or emotions and remember that we are not our thoughts. Another video by Dr Harris below uses ‘stageshows’ to explain this in more depth:
Conculsion
The term ‘psychological flexibility’ is used only slightly compared to terms such as mental toughness. However, psychological flexibility and the above six core practices are at the heart of improving mental toughness. It’s worth concluding that working on one of these in isolation from the others can be helpful; the actual “lift-off” occurs when all six practices are prioritised simultaneously. It works in a very similar way to physical flexibility. Stretching at home and regular yoga can be done in isolation, but I guess it’s better if you do both.
Quite understandably, many people would benefit from having a guide or a coach when trying to get started on the strategies covered in this article. If this is you, please don’t hesitate to contact us and ask about our one-on-one psychology services. We constantly endeavour to reply to all genuine enquiries within two or three working days.
Sport Psychologist Gareth J. Mole looks at the history of sport psychology and points out a few missed opportunities from the 100 year story so far.
Coleman Griffith (right) put sport psychology on the map. His two classic publications in the 1920s are ‘must reads’ for anyone interested in History of Sport Psychology.
I like my history; I always have. One of the most exciting modules I did during my psychology undergraduate degree at The University of Leeds in the late 90s was ‘The History of Psychotherapy’. From memory, this course didn’t look back at different types of psychology. Instead, it just covered general trends from the past. This led me to research the history of sport psychology as we know it today.
The Pioneers of Sport Psychology
The actual origins of sport psychology had little to do with traditional psychotherapy. In the early days, sport psychology was almost entirely about performance enhancement and building on existing strengths.
The actual start of sport psychology as a specialisation was over a hundred years ago. In 1921, baseballer Babe Ruth was tested at Columbia University to discover what made him so good. Many of the findings proved that his excellence boiled down to mental superiorities more than technical or physical ones. Sport psychology as a field, a specialty was born, when the below article was published.
A few years later, psychologist Walter Miles conducted several studies that focused on optimising American footballers’ performance during training.
The Psychology of Coaching
In 1928 the Psychology of Athletics was published and two years later Griffith wrote The Psychology of Coaching. For good reason he’s regarded as the father of modern sport psychology. I own a first-edition copy of the ‘Psychology of Coaching: a Study of Coaching Methods From the Point of Psychology’. I stumbled across a copy in an antique store about 25 years ago. This book is one of the reasons why I am so passionate about working one-on-one with sporting coaches.
There is still a lot of hesitation amongst sporting coaches about working directly with a psychologist. Yet those who ‘give it a crack’ tend to be richly rewarded. If you are a sporting coach, an excellent way to ‘dip your toes in the water’ is to complete our MTQ-C online.
‘Exercise’ Psychology Wants In
It should be noted that a close look at the History of Sport Psychology shows very little interest in exercise psychology.
Pioneers of sport psychology were mainly focused on performance. From their point of view, their population of interest was already very physically active. Any ‘advice’ about physical training should come from experts in exercise physiology and related fields.
All this changed between 1930 and 1960 when exercise and physical activity were formally added to the definition of sport psychology. Hence, the standard modern description of ‘sport and exercise psychology’.
With the benefit of hindsight, I believe this was the profession’s first collective error. I will explain by way of some examples.
Exercise psychology is essentially (should be) a branch of health psychology. It’s all about using psychological methods to increase physical activity. The typical client of an exercise psychologist might be a sedentary adult. Someone who has failed to become active after seeing an exercise physiologist.
Sport psychology has little to do with this kind of mental challenge. Our clients are already physical very active, they are anything but sedentary.
The Importance of The Right Labels
For a long time, I have argued that performance psychology is the ideal label for the profession. Sport psychology would then become a subdiscipline of performance psychology. Subcategories of sport psychology would then be Sport-Specific Sport Psychology (SSSP). Listen to my conversation with English sport psychologist Dan Abrahams on his Podcast The Sport Psych Show for a more extensive deep dive into this argument.
Remember that “performance” and “performing” semantically extend well beyond elite sport. Unsurprisingly, a healthy chunk of our clients are non sporting performers from sectors such as the performing art, medicine and the military.
Sport and performance psychology/psychologists are terms getting more use nowadays. But for me, this is just repeating. Sport is a type of performance, so the word performance alone should be enough.
One of the most awkward facts about the profession from a historical perspective is that we have never attempted to agree on the correct spelling of the first word. We are trying to do something about this via the below open poll. If you have yet to vote, please do so now.
More Recent History
From 1970 to the early 2000s, the professional enjoyed increasing recognition and growth across most of the developed world. Australia saw an all-time high of four Master Programs in ‘Sport and Exercise Psychology’. Boosted by the Sydney Olympics 2000, Australia was an excellent place to study sport psychology 20 years ago.
The Decline
Nowadays there are only two Sport and Exercise Psychology masters program remaining in Australia. So it begs the question, what happened? More importantly, what can we learn from the decline?
One big ‘dropped ball’ was spreading ourselves too thinly to bring exercise and physical activity into the fold.
In 2006, Medicare introduced a two-tier system for psychologists. The policy implies that clinical psychologists were better a psychology work. The out-of-pocket costs to see a clinical psychologist became significantly less than all other psychologists.
This legislation resulted in an explosion of applicants for clinical psychology masters to the detriment of all the other programs. A shout-out to our colleagues at AAPI who are trying to fix this.
The Recent Wellbeing Movement
In recent years sport psychology has embraced the importance of mental health and wellbeing. I am glad about this, but we must be cautious.
The risk of the recent wellbeing movement is that sport psychology might lose its performance enhancement origins. These include mental skills training and coaching psychology.
In 50 years from now, what will the answers to these questions be? What do sport psychologists do? And what are sport psychologists best known for?
Will the answers be …
They help athletes with mental health and well-being challenges and the odd bit of mental skills training, or will it be
They mainly help sporting and non-sporting performers improve in their chosen sport or performance area and introduce mental health interventions for non-critical issues if required.
This particular sport psychologist hopes it’s the latter.
Is It Possible For Us To Bounce Back?
Will we learn from our mistakes and bounce back? Can we learn from the History of Sport Psychology to improve the future of the profession? I think we can, but only with some major structural changes.
Natural talent is a vastly overrated part of human excellence, as argued by sport psychologist Gareth J. Mole from Condor Performance.
What Exactly Is Natural Talent?
I recently wrote the below feature on the topic of Natural Talent, and when I went to add it to the website, I realised that I’d written an article on the same subject many years ago. So, instead of deleting the old one, I have added the new one above it. So, below, enjoy not one but two different essays on this fascinating concept of sports psychology.
What Exactly Is Natural Talent?
For as long as I can remember, I have been interested in concepts related to natural talent. How significant is nature (genetics) regarding human excellence versus nurture (lived experience)? While researching this article, I thought I would try to see if there is an agreed definition of natural talent and what it’s not. Surprise, surprise, I could not find a standard clarification, but this was my favourite:
“Natural talent is an innate or inborn gift for a specific activity, either allowing one to demonstrate some immediate skill without practice or to gain skill rapidly with minimal practice.“
Full credit to Blue Print Tennis for this definition contained within this fascinating article on the same topic.
Natural Talent Vs. Natural Ability
It’s important to emphasise the context in which we tend to come across the concept of natural talent in our work here at Condor Performance. Virtually everybody that we work with has one thing in common. They want to get better at something … or a bunch of things.
Sometimes, this performance area is evident and tangible. They want to improve their golfing consistency because they won’t be able to secure their tour card for next year without it. A surgeon gets nervous before surgery and needs to improve her composure to be the best possible surgeon she can be.
Other times, this performance area is far less obvious but still a performance area. The athlete who wants to be a better husband struggles due to the sheer amount of time they spend training. A soldier desires to be a better father by not allowing traumatic and recurring memories of the battlefield to impact his time with his young children.
Each of these examples, along with many others, has an element of talent or ability. The last example is probably the best to emphasise this. We know from the research that, for some reason, specific soldiers who return from the battlefield seem to cope very well with adapting to everyday life. On the other hand, some military personnel who experience precisely the same situations return home and have their functioning compromised by their experiences. What is going on here?
Earned and Unearned Competence
Sometimes, I think it might be better to think of the Natural Talent debate in terms of earned and unearned competence at something.
Earned competence is essentially the most common type of competence whereby you are good at something because you have spent a lot of time becoming good at it. However, not all competence is a direct result of hard work.
Unearned competence is when you are good at something without having spent hours and hours honing that skill. Why? How? We are not sure. Genetics undoubtedly plays a part. But maybe there are also many environmental factors that we are entirely unaware of. Perhaps the soil in the country in which you live is much richer in nutrients than in other countries. So without you having to do anything, the quality of the vegetables you’re putting into your body is slightly better.
Undoubtedly, at the end of the day, how good you are is a combination of the two types of talent/ability/competency. It’s also worth pointing out that some performance areas are arguably more susceptible to one than the other. In other words, it’s incorrect to say that ability is 50% natural and 50% nurture.
Let’s Look At A Few Examples
First and foremost, the more complex and challenging the performance area, the less likely experts will be as such because of inherited advantages. Let’s look at a sport like the decathlon.
The vast amount of different motor skills, physical, psychological and technical requirements needed to be an excellent decathlete means that it would need to be more influenced by hard work and less by Mum and Dad’s genetic offerings.
Maybe the opposite example also comes from track and field. If we look at sprinting, it is easy to see that there appears to be a more significant genetic predisposition to running incredibly fast.
I am not taking anything away from the hard work of the world’s fastest men, women, boys and girls. But here is a fact: if you were born into a family of Caucasian shorties, good luck trying to win a 100m or 200 m Olympic medal.
Fortunately, due to advances in sports science, we don’t need to guess these things any more. There now appears to be universal agreement amongst the academic community that in the case of sprinting, fast-twitch fibres (which are entirely genetic and cannot be increased post-birth) play a significant role in how quick you will be. Of course, you still need to put in the training, BUT the training seems to pay much more dividends to those with more fast-twitch fibres.
How Much Influence?
As is often the case, it can be beneficial to consider how much influence we have on all of this. For virtually every performance area, a certain percentage of how good you can get will result from inherited elements. A better question should be, “How much influence do we have on our natural abilities or lack thereof?”.
The answer is simple. None, nada, zilch!
So because we have no influence on these, I suggest you accept and ignore them equally. Instead, focus on aspects of improving that you have the most influence over.
What’s that? I hear you shouting.
The answer is simple. The quality and quantity of improvement endeavours. This might be called training, practice, preparation, or something else depending on your performance area.
A Personal Example
I have two children. One finds most sports far more straightforward than the other. During Covid, when they were homeschooled, we spent a lot of time just working on basic physical literacy. Throwing, catching and kicking basics. One of our favourite activities was throwing tennis balls between one another and trying to catch them with a baseball glove.
Because of natural gifts, one of my children spent no extra time trying to learn how to catch the ball better. The time the three of us spent outside was all the practice they got.
But my other child, who, for some reason, even though they have the same mother and father, found catching a much trickier proposition. So this child, without being prompted, spent far longer in the backyard trying to improve by themselves. What was the result? Two children who are exceptionally good at catching a baseball.
But What If …
I sometimes ponder how good the first child would be if they had/have the same work ethic as the second child. In most cases, this never happens. The natural talents work less because they can get away with it. The less naturally gifted try harder because they have to.
And every once in a blue moon, you get someone who combines extraordinary natural liabilities with exceptional quality and quantity of practice. These rare individuals are already mentally very healthy yet go out of their way to further improve the mental aspects of what they do. They choose to work with sports psychologists (like the ones at Condor Performance) not for a couple of months but for a couple of decades in the knowledge that there is never an end to improving.
We have names for these unique creatures. They are the top 0.1%. Some are called GOATS. They are the Hall of Famers, world champions.
Suppose you are following the logic of this theory. In that case, you might realise that, unfortunately, for some people, their genetics will mean they will not be able to reach the summit, irrespective of the quality and quantity of practice. Maybe you are one of these people. If you are, then I would suggest this mindset. Let’s see how far we can get without the biological head start.
If you need a hand, please don’t hesitate to get in touch.
Natural Talent – Previous Article
Words or combinations of words, primarily when spoken, are powerful and need to be treated delicately. As a general rule, I try hard not to dislike certain words. Instead, I choose not to use specific combinations myself. For example, the word control is used prolifically in performance psychology circles. As my colleagues and clients know, I prefer to use the word influence. In my opinion, it’s just a much better word for exerting an impact on something.
As a sport psychologist who doesn’t use direct cognitive therapy techniques, I try not to correct my sporting clients when they use the word control. Instead, I just choose not to use it myself. I refer to our varying degrees of influence on different aspects of our life and performance.
Two Words Not One: Natural + Talent
But I am particularly offended by one pair of words: natural talent. Before pulling it apart and explaining why I feel these words should be banned, let’s look at each word by itself.
The ‘natural’ part refers to genetics, what we’re born with, and our DNA. In other words, it is the former in the Nature Versus Nurtureconcept/debate. Like most scientists, I believe most of our abilities are made up of a combination of nature and nurture.
Most experts now believe it’s a fairly even contest between genetics and environment. And this may well be the case in many areas I know little about. However, in sports, I firmly believe that genetics is vastly overplayed as a determinant of success. Let me be 100% clear here. I am not dismissing the role of genetics. I am simply saying that factors such as height and hand size play a much smaller part than many people believe they do.
Not All Performance Areas Are The Same
As performance psychologists, we work right across a multitude of performance domains. Some of the most exciting work I have done is with male and female professional models. By models, I’m referring to men, women, boys, and girls who make a living by doing catwalks and photoshoots. Imagining a performance domain with a more significant genetic component to professional modelling is hard. After all, height is considered critical for most adult models.
And the last time I checked, it didn’t matter how hard you tried, but you couldn’t make yourself taller. Yet even in this cutthroat industry, I still assert that success is more than 50% about non-genetic factors. Chief amongst these uninherited factors is effort, or how you apply yourself. Suddenly, natural talent doesn’t feel that natural.
What About Sports?
Not too far behind professional modelling are sports that benefit from particular physical attributes. Height is useful for basketballers, netballers, and high jumpers.
But what about sports which are much less physical? Sports such as golf, lawn bowls and figure skating. Are there some genetically predetermined characteristics that allow some people to have an advantage in these psychologically brutal sports? Instead of sharing my views, I invite you to add your thoughts to the comments section below.
