Sport Psychologists – Applied and International Since 2005
Category: Sports Science Stuff
From time to time some of our articles will look more it should have been appeared in a peer reviewed journal. Such feature articles will follow the same structure of a scientific paper – but without the politics of getting it published.
Sport psychologist Gareth J. Mole outlines the eight most common sport psychology barriers and how to overcome a few of them!
There are many barriers to fully embracing sport psychology. One of them is what you imagine it to be like. Something like the above? Not even close …
The 8 Biggest Sport Psychology Barriers
At Condor Performance we speak to a lot of people who make enquiries about our sport psychology services. Since we have been operating we would have spoken to approximately ten thousand parents, coaches, athletes, performers, and sporting administrators. In doing so we have learned a lot about the reasons why many performers still don’t bother to include bonafide sport psychology as part of their plans.
With this in mind below we will outline the eight most common of these barriers and where possible help you to put a step ladder up against a few of them. As always we welcome your comments and questions either publicly (via the comments box below) or privately (via [email protected]).
Sport Psychology Barrier #1: No Idea There is A Mental Side of Sport / Performance
Mental Toughness is not as tangible (visible, obvious) as the other performance areas. Consequently, it’s not targeted for improvement because many athletes have no idea their mental performance can be developed and strengthened just like other more obvious areas such as skills and fitness.
The only way around this barrier is through some kind of education so that an awareness of the mental side takes place. This will happen automatically if working with a qualified sport psychologist or performance psychologist but there are other ways too. One such way is to invest in your sports science knowledge via videos such as the one below.
This video runs for 11 minutes.
Sport Psychology Barrier #2: Confusing Mental Training with Something Else
Similar to the above but arguably worse. It’s very common for athletes to fall into the trap of thinking that working on the physical, technical, and tactical aspects of their sport will naturally result in greater mental toughness. So for example, because it took commitment to get up at 6 am to go for a run in winter, it will automatically result in an improvement in your overall commitment.
Although this might happen, it also might not. Sport psychology, as with all types of psychology, wants to be and should be heavily evidence-based. What this means is that the mental skills (or methods) used to improve mental toughness have been tried, tested, and approved. For example, sitting down and writing a Why Statement may well be a better motivator for most people.
Even those who are aware of the importance of the mental side, and are motivated to try and improve it, can be left really struggling to find genuine, dependable ways to actually work on it. Most resort to Googling questions like ‘how to improve my concentration’ which results in millions of websites full of contradictory ideas.
Sport Psychology Barrier #3: Hoping For A Magic Bullet
By “magic bullet” we mean those who expect that a single session with a sport psychologist will suddenly make them mentally tough. That all of a sudden their nerves will vanish. And they’ll be able to motivate themselves at will and focus like a fighter pilot. When this doesn’t happen, they bail well before the sport psychology process starts to bear fruit.
The only way to overcome this barrier is to trust in the process and be patient. There are many ways to help with this. One is to remember that improving the mind is a lot like improving the body. No one ever expects to go to the gym and have a 6-pack after one session with the exercise physiologist. Not even a dozen sessions. It works the same with sport psychology. If you want results fast, fine, listen hard, and apply the mental skills but don’t expect miracles.
Sport Psychology Barrier #4: Confusing Mental Toughness with Mental Health
Unfortunately, the words ‘psychology’ and ‘psychologist’ still evoke thoughts of mental illness and disorders. Therefore, a large number of athletes incorrectly feel that seeking the assistance of a sport psychologist or performance psychologist is a sign of mental weakness. A few years ago I wrote an entire blog post on this which you can read in full here.
Sport Psychology Barrier #5: It’s Too Expensive
Even when none of the above barriers apply, often cost gets in the way. The current recommended hourly rate for psychologists is over $250 an hour. This is the most awkward of the sport psychology barriers as it’s relative to your own income/wealth. For some people, $250 an hour is loose change but for others, it’s a fortune.
At Condor Performance, instead of reducing our rates and cheapening what we do, we add extra value to our 1-on-1 sport psychology services instead. How? Our rates are per month not per session so we allow and encourage email/text communication between sessions. Furthermore, the first session is not charged for, it’s free. For a more in-depth understanding of our monthly approach browse the answers to our FAQs here.
Sport Psychology Barrier #6: There Are No Sport Psychologists Near Me
The Corona Virus was a terrible thing but there were some benefits. Suddenly, the whole world realised that a sport psychology session via video call is just as good as one where the sport psychologist and client are in the same room. We knew this early on and started delivering sport psychology sessions this way as early as 2008. So maybe this barrier is not really a barrier nowadays but we’ll still keep it here anyway.
We’re almost at the point now where we could say that sessions via Zoom, FaceTime video, Google Meets and Microsoft Teams, and other platforms are better than what we call Same Place Sessions. Why? For a start, they are a lot more convenient with no travel time required. Athletes and performers can and do have sessions just before practice, competitions, and sometimes – where allowed – during both of these.
In 2023, our current team of psychologists delivers roughly 400 sessions per month between them. Of these, 380 would be via webcam.
Sport Psychology Barrier #7:I already tried seeing a psychologist and it was not effective …
This is a tough one. First, make sure the previous profession was actually qualified. The qualified ones, such as our whole team, are still outnumbered by the unqualified ones and the underqualified ones. In Australia, you can check to see if someone is a registered psychologist here.
But even if they do have the right credentials that is no guarantee of their effectiveness. Sometimes there are simple personality clashes. Other times, they are just not trained in the right area of psychology. This has always been one of the biggest advantages of choosing Condor Performance as your provider in the space. In the unlikely event that you don’t click with one of our team, we can simply transition you to another.
Sport Psychology Barrier #8: Now Is Not The Right Time ...
Tricky, tricky, tricky. If your Granny passed away so you had to postpone your start then this sounds like a sensible option rather than a barrier. But most of the time when we hear this it’s for other stuff. I am too busy. I’m in my off-season. I have just picked up an injury so need to focus on that. I have too much going on. I’m playing really well, will get in touch when I am in a slump.
Trust me on this, the best time to start improving mental aspects is and always will be now. How? Easy, fill in the contact form here, and one of our team will be in touch as soon as possible.
This blog has some of the best sport psychology quotes. It’s a smörgåsbord of quotes from coaches, athletes and psychologists.
There are millions of sports psychology quotes; we have sorted through as many as possible and only added the “best ones” to this page.
50 of The Best Sports Psychology Quotes
The right kinds of quotes punch well above their weight. For such short sentences, they can change our perspective. The challenge is picking through them all to find the best one. So we have decided to put on plastic gloves and sort through the trash (rubbish). Below are some of our favourite sports psychology quotes. As you’ll see, it’s a smörgåsbord of quotes from coaches, athletes, and psychologists. Furthermore, we have unpacked each quote a little. Essentially, providing a quick explanation about why it has been included in this ‘best sport psychology quotes’ blog. A number of these quotes are from our very own team of psychologists.
If you would like us to add your favourite sports psychology quotes, paste them into the comments section below. Enjoy, and please share with your networks. You have our full permission to copy and paste any of these to inspire, motivate, or whatever.
Comment: This is arguably the number one sports psychology quote of all time. It is universally applicable. Of course, if you want to tweak it from a psychological flexibility standpoint, it would become “whilst being bitter, try and get better.”
“There’s no way around hard work. Embrace it. You have to put in the hours because there is always something you can improve on”
Comment: If you want to pursue something in life and explore your full potential as an athlete or performer, you must do the work. Accepting the difficulty that comes from doing hard work is essential. As one of the greatest tennis players ever highlighted here, we can all learn from Roger Federer by believing that we can constantly improve in some capacity. A concept that is known in Japanese as “kaizen”.
“Gold medals aren’t really made of gold. They’re made of sweat, determination, and a hard-to-find alloy called guts.”
Comment: This is such a great sports psychology quote. So true. The medal, the trophy, and the prize money are just symbols. The real reward is the actual hard work. To this end, I know many medal winners who don’t even bother to display them. They are in boxes collecting dust somewhere.
“It’s not who’s put up the fastest time in the world that year, or who’s put up the fastest time in the previous four years, but who can get their hand on the wall first today.”
Comment: This quote perfectly sums up many of our early conversations with athletes. We have this idea that on game day, we need to be feeling great and thinking positively and that we won’t perform well if we aren’t. The reality is that no one feels great on game day. The athletes who come out on top are those who can put together the best performance despite how nervous they feel and how unhelpful their thoughts are.
“You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take” and “A good hockey player plays where the puck is. A great hockey player plays where the puck is going to be.”
Comment: This could be the most famous sports psychology quote ever. Why? Because it’s one of the best from one of the best.
“Pressure is something you feel when you don’t know what the hell you’re doing.”
~ Peyton Manning
“Pressure is a privilege”
~ Virgil van Dijk
“People say to me all the time, ‘You have no fear.’ I tell them, ‘No, that’s not true. I’m scared all the time. You have to have fear in order to have courage. I’m a courageous person because I’m a scared person.”
Comment: We have this idea that athletes are superhuman. They don’t feel nervous or fearful and never doubt their ability. This isn’t the case. The top athletes in the world feel all the same things we feel before a critical moment, but through years of experience, they have just become good at performing with all of those unhelpful thoughts and feelings present.
“Champions aren’t made in gyms. Champions are made from something they have deep inside of them; a desire, a dream, a vision.”
Comment: I’m not sure ‘the greatest’ meant to infer the following, but anyway. Far too many of the sporting pathways overemphasise physical and technical aspects. There is far too little mental, tactical, and personal information.
“Dreams are free. Goals have a cost. While you can daydream for free, goals don’t come without a price. Time, Effort, Sacrifice, and Sweat. How will you pay for your goals?“
Comment: This great quote gives us a possible sneak peek into why UB was one of the greatest of all time. He worked very hard in practice. He then relaxed (or tried to, at least) on race day, allowing that Time, Effort, Sacrifice, and Sweat to bubble to the surface.
“I can only control my performance. If I do my best, then I can feel good at the end of the day”
Comment: One of the greatest Olympians of all time emphasized the importance of focusing on one’s own performance and effort. At Condor Performance, we believe in the importance of focusing on process over outcome, a sentiment echoed by Michael Phelps.
“I think that everything is possible as long as you put your mind to it and you put the work and time into it. I think your mind really controls everything.”
Comment: Michael Phelps on understanding the mind and how we can train it to help ourselves perform better. Phelps has always given significant credit to his mental conditioning as an overall factor for his success in competitive swimming.
“I was forced to learn a lot about psychology as a player, and as a captain to get the best out of others. There’s still a lot of scepticism about it in sport and the workplace, but dealing with fluctuations of form, and pressure, and being away from home is more important than your cover drive.”
Comment: This quote is not something we had encountered before researching this blog. It comes from one of the great thinkers of English cricket. It accurately explains that technical abilities (such as hitting a cover drive) don’t mean much without the mental side.
“Preparation is everything and focus is the key. It’s easy to say you gave it your all out on the pitch. But the point is if you’d prepared you’d have had more to give and you’ve played better”.
Comment: This is such a great point from the Manchester United legend. It sounds like he’s saying there is only so much you can do on match day. Performers who take shortcuts in training hoping to “bring it” on match day will likely be found wanting.
Comment: This quote was initially linked with Samuel Goldwyn but was later popularised by Gary Player. What he/they are saying is 100% accurate. If luck is the random stuff in sports we have no influence over; then we can reduce its role in terms of results by ensuring high-quality effort. You can read more on the psychology of luck in sports here.
“I got more bruises, grass-burns and cuts in practice than in match play.”
Comment: This quote is from legendary South African cricketer Jonty Rhodes. Despite retiring more than 15 years ago, he is still considered one of the best fielders ever to play the game.
“Hard work beats talent when talent fails to work hard.”
Comment: Click here to read a full article on the concept of natural talent.
Some Sport Psychology Quotes By The G.O.A.T:
These seven quotes by legendary sports psychologist Jonah Oliver are all taken from his Podcast Interview with John O’Sullivan. Listen to the full interview here: Episode 272 of Way of Champions.
“Our brain craves reducing uncertainty. Uncertainty is the hardest human emotion.”
Comment: I love this. Nerves are so misunderstood. They are just your body preparing you for something important.
“It’s not about positive thinking it’s about taking positive action, no matter what you feel. There are no gold medals for the best positive self talk at the Olympics. Sport is a behaviour.”
Comment: This is one of the top three sports psychology quotes of all time, in my view.
“One of the biggest errors we have made in elite sport is we use the word confident when we actually mean competent. I can’t sing. I am not competent at singing. Put six beers in me in a karaoke bar and now I’m confident … but I am still terrible at singing.”
Comment: In your attempt to perform better under pressure, do you spend most of your time just trying to reduce the actual pressure? If so, you may want to rethink your strategy.
“It’s not about motivation, it’s about connecting to what matters.”
Comment: In other words, stop trying to boost your motivation. Instead, consider your values and connect to what matters to you.
The Michael Jordan Section:
“I’ve missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. 26 times, I’ve been trusted to take the game-winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.”
Comment: This is arguably one of the best sports psychology quotes ever. It helps us understand that performances at all levels and types are full of errors. Knowing that processes (effort) and outcomes (results, such as winning) are separate is vital here. Knowing we have much more influence over the former as performers also helps.
“I can accept failure, everyone fails at something. But I can’t accept not trying.”
Comment: Again, Jordan shows us that it was his mindset that made him so special. Being able to distinguish between effort (“trying”) and results (“failure”) is so very important. One way to do this is to forget about being able to control anything. Instead, consider the amount of influence you have. The more influence, the more mental value you might put on those areas.
“Obstacles don’t have to stop you. If you run into a wall, don’t turn around and give up. Figure out how to climb it, go through it, or work around it.”
Comment: This quote is all about creativity. For example, did you stop during the coronavirus, which was full of obstacles? Or did you find another way to do the tasks you value?
More Quotes From MJ …
“Some people want it to happen, some wish it would happen, and others make it happen.”
Comment: Actions and desires are not as linked as you might think. As sports psychologists and performance psychologists, we don’t do as much work on thoughts and emotions as you might imagine. Why? At the end of the day, especially in sports, it all comes back to actions. Would you rather kick the ball in the right way while thinking negatively or kick it incorrectly while thinking positively?
“The minute you get away from fundamentals – whether its proper technique, work ethic or mental preparation – the bottom can fall out of your game, your schoolwork, your job, whatever you’re doing.”
Comment: As knowledge of sports psychology and sports science explodes, we are at significant risk of getting away from the fundamentals. In other words, it is becoming harder and harder for athletes to stick to the basics. Great coaches can have it both ways. Their sports psychology knowledge can grow without letting this overcomplicate their coaching. Do you know what your fundamentals are?
Sport Psychology Quotes By Coaches
“It’s what you learn after you think you know it all that really counts.”
Comment: John Wooden is considered by many as the first real mental coach in sports. He was either the first or one of the first to take the mental side of performance seriously. In this sports psychology quote, he highlights the importance of never-ending learning.
“Good teams become great ones when the members trust each other enough to surrender the Me for the We.”
Comment: Phil is most known for how we managed the tricky team dynamics of the Chicago Bulls team from the 1990s. We highly suggest you watch The Last Dance documentary if you are yet to do so.
“Comfort the challenged, and challenge the comfortable”
Comment: This quote is more or less about the concept of flow. Flow is trying to find the sweet spot between too easy and too hard. As coaches or psychologists, we’re trying to help those we work with not only find this middle ground. But we also want them to have the skills to thrive once they find them.
Comment: I’m not sure whether Gary considers himself a coach, but this feels like the most appropriate section for his two quotes—the above and the below. I came across these two quotes while doing one of his online hot yoga sessions, and I instantly loved them.
Sports Psychology Quotes By Other Famous People
“Don’t wait until everything is just right. It will never be perfect. There will always be challenges, obstacles, and less-than-perfect conditions. So what? Get started now. With each step you take, you will grow stronger and stronger, more and more skilled, more and more self-confident, and more and more successful.”
Comment: Perfectionism is a common mental block in sports. A simple reframe can remove some of its motivational qualities without its ugly side. Instead of striving to be perfect, aim to just be better, and do this through the right quantity of high-quality preparation.
“If you hear a voice within you say ‘you cannot paint,’ then by all means paint, and that voice will be silenced.”
Comment: You might now sense a theme from some of these great quotes. Doing and thinking are not the same. Focus more on doing and less on thinking. Would you rather be the best thinker or the doer in your sport or performance area?
Some Less Famous Ones …
“Confidence is a habit that can be developed by acting as if you already had the confidence you desire to have.”
Comment: Have you ever heard ‘fake it til you make it’? Maybe a better version for sports psychology consulting is ‘fake it til you feel it’. This is so powerful. Waiting until you feel a certain way before you act that way is very limiting. If you don’t know how, hire an acting coach and ask them to help you. Or get in touch with us, and we can include this as part of a larger mental training plan.
“Adversity causes some men to break; others to break records.”
Comment: It’s hard to be sure about this one. Does it mean that challenges in life are invaluable mental training? What is undoubtedly clear is the proposition that there is a choice about how we respond to adversity.
“Successful people have fear, successful people have doubts, and successful people have worries. They just don’t let these feelings stop them.”
Comment: This is a similar message. Thoughts and feelings are not fused with behaviours. You can still do remarkable things regardless of how you thought and felt at the time.
“The way to develop self-confidence is to do the thing you fear and get a record of successful experiences behind you.”
Comment: In other words, separate feelings from actions. Accept the feelings but commit the actions. Then, remember you did this so you can repeat the process later. For a lot more on confidence, read this blog post by Harley de Vos.
Still More Quotes …
“Twenty years from now, you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbour. Catch the trade winds in your sail. Explore. Dream. Discover.”
Comment: This is a great quote. In sports, worrying about what others (teammates, coaches) think of you is common. Yet, it happens much less than we realise. Furthermore, this has been confirmed via some lab experiments.
Sport Psychology Quotes By Psychologists
“Multitasking is seriously overrated. Try to do one task at a time and learn to do it with more purpose. “
Comment: I could write a whole book on this subject. Maybe I will one day! By multitasking, I am not referring to doing more than one thing at a time. After all, breathing is doing. It’s about trying to complete more than one non-automatic task at a time. For example, eating your lunch and typing an email. In my view, these kinds of tasks are always best of being done separately. There are many reasons, but the main one is that this kind of multitasking compromises the quality of both tasks.
“They don’t hand out winner’s medals to those who were feeling the best on the day, nor to those who were thinking clearly and positively. The medals only go to those who did the best.”
Comment: This sounds similar to one of Jonah Oliver’s quotes above, so I will give him credit for it. But I like my version, too.
“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 a very, very small portion of the time.”
Comment: This quote is taken from the first few seconds of Peter Clarke’s interview on the podcast Under The Lid with Scolls, Buck, and Burkey. Once again, it points out that we don’t need to feel a certain way to execute our motor skills under pressure. In fact, waiting to feel that way will limit the number of chances you give yourself.
“Listen to everyone because even an idiot will have a good idea once or twice in their life. Then evaluate and pick out what works for you and commit to it.”
Comment: Our own James Kneller reminds us about the importance of listening. In sports, we often talk about the importance of experience. Well, that experience is comprised if you repeatedly listen to the same people all the time.
Sport Psychology Quotes By Unknowns or Those Who Wish To Remain Anonymous
“You are NOT your thoughts.”
Unknown
Comment: This quote might not even qualify as a quote. Maybe it’s just a fact. And indeed, in the work we do as sport and performance psychologists, it’s a fact worth remembering. These five words are so powerful that they are the ideal final sentiment of this extensive list of quotes on sports psychology.
“Ambition beyond ability is almost as bad as having no ambition at all.”
Former TV Sports Broadcaster
“Leave while they still want you”.
Former TV Sports Broadcaster
“Champions have their triumphs before millions and their failures, the later is the real test of character.“
Former TV Sports Broadcaster
Comment: One of Australia’s best-known and loved television sports broadcasters kindly submitted these three quotes. Understandably, he has requested that we do not use his name.
If you know of a quote that does appear above but feels it should, please add it to the comments section below, and we’ll add it next time we update this page.
Sport Psychology Is Vulnerable to Over Complication. Let’s Get Back To Basics
Sport Psychology Basics
I am a big fan of keeping things as simple as possible at any time, but especially at the start of a new year. With this in mind, this first blog post of 2023 is a shorter one and is designed to remind all of us – practitioners as well as clients – of some of the fundamentals that can be forgotten.
There are three fundamental questions that arguably once answered can summarise any profession. Why do you choose to do what you do? Who do you work with? What do you actually do with them?
Below, I will endeavor to address each of these questions and finish up with some very simple sport psychology tips. As always comments and questions are welcomed via the section at the bottom of this article.
Sport Psychology Basics; Why Do You Choose To Do What You Do?
Firstly I appreciate that many people don’t actually choose to do the work that they do. I’m thinking about the single parent who takes on a second job packing shelves to make ends meet. But certainly, I choose to do the work that I do. My experience and training would now allow me to pick from a considerable number of jobs. And it is not uncommon for me to be contacted by recruitment agencies asking if I would be interested in work related to psychology.
So what is it about my role at Condor Performance that means that I don’t even take a look at the details of these kinds of offers? One of the biggest reasons is that it feels like we are really making a difference now. Not only in terms of the quality of our consulting but also the sheer amount we are doing now. The current size of our team allows us to get a lot more work done compared with most of our competitors.
With our friend and colleague David Barracosa in charge of the smooth running of the day-to-day operations, it allows me much greater flexibility. I can now focus on building new relationships and content clarification in a way that would have been impossible a few years ago.
The Second Reason …
The second reason why I continue to choose my work at Condor Performance over other jobs is that I still love the vast majority of my working time. Maybe it’s because of how important I know the fun factor to be. I always ensure that the work that I am doing a Condor Performance is highly motivating. Writing this blog post and the vast majority that are published through the Mental Toughness Digest might not be many sport psychologists’ cup of tea. But I love it. Writing really lends itself to my strengths. I have unlimited ideas and passion when it comes to sport psychology. From sport psychology basics to the most complicated aspects of the profession.
Work-Life Balance
It also helps me tremendously with the all-important work-life balance. I can tap away – as I’m doing now – at any time of day or night. This flexibility is key when you have bitten off more than you can chew. Furthermore, it acts as practice for one of our most exciting future projects. A number of sport-specific mental toughness training guides are in the pipeline, most of which will have a written version initially. Watch this space.
Sport Psychology Basics; Who Do You Work With?
When answering this question it might be better for me to answer on behalf of the entire Condor Performance team. For I myself now work with only a very small percentage of our overall clients. Still to this day, the majority of our one-on-one clients are athletes. This should come as no surprise when the first word of the profession is the word ‘sport’. Non-sporting performers, sporting coaches, and sporting officials make up the rest. By non-sporting performers, I’m referring to students, medical personnel as well as those in the military for example. These non-sporting performers have correctly worked out that the mental skills required by an elite athlete to perform consistently at the top are very much the same as would help them in their profession.
Probably the most exciting group of individuals who have shown real interest in what we do over the last few years are sporting coaches. These are often highly qualified and highly motivated individuals who have identified that their training was potentially lacking in evidence-based applied psychology. Much of the work we do with sporting coaches is as a mentor with little or no direct involvement with their athletes. If you are a sporting coach, and you’d like to learn more about having a qualified sport psychologist or performance psychologist in your corner then start by completing our MTQ-C here.
In terms of the athletes that we work with individual sports still dominate over team sports. In other words, we are more likely to be contacted by a golfer than a water polo player. The range in ages and professional levels is truly vast. We work with 8-year-olds through to 80-year-olds. We work with athletes ranked inside of the Top 10 of their sport right through to the amateurs who just want to win their club championship.
Sport Psychology Basics – What Do You Do With Them?
Again I am answering this question on behalf of the team rather than just myself. Despite the fact that our methodology has evolved over the past 20 years there are still some very common core ingredients. I have listed these below in bullet point form and I invite you to consider the benefits if you were guided by a professional in adopting all or some of them. If you think you would be then get in touch and request info about our 1-on-1 sport psychology services.
1. Focus mainly on the process (effort) and let the results (outcomes) take care of themselves.
2. Try to concern yourself much more with anything you have a lot of influence over – such as your actions – rather than factors you have little or no influence over – such as thoughts.
3. Avoid only working on your weaknesses. Improve your strengths as well.
4. Don’t underestimate the impact that overall mental health can have on performance. But also don’t confuse mental health with the mental aspects of your sport or performance area.
5. The number of ways to improve is unlimited, but the time you have to improve is very limited. So learn to prioritise.
6.Fake It Til You Feel It. Basically, work on your body language regardless of how you’re feeling. Try and look confident more so than trying to feel confident.
7.“Be careful whose advice you buy but be patient with those who supply it”. Quote borrowed from Baz Luhrmann.
9. If you don’t already, start a training diary/journal.
10. Learn to breathe properly. An entire blog post is currently being written on this topic. If you don’t already get notifications when new articles are added to our website then add your details here.
“I’m fantastic in training but I fall apart during matches. Can you coach me on how to perform better under pressure?” These are amongst the most common reasons that performers first reach out to us as sport psychologists and performance psychologists. This article provides a few tips on how we help these athletes and non-sporting performers.
Performing Under Pressure: Hugo Lloris of France dives as Harry Kane of England misses a penalty during the FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022, Qatar. Photo by David Niviere/ABACAPRESS.COM
Note this article was originally published in June 2021 but has recently been updated in Dec 2022 – days after France beat England in the quarter-final of the FIFA World Cup. I wanted to take the opportunity to make a quick comment on the penalty miss pictured above. I do not believe that the main reason Mr. Kane missed was due to pressure. His body language, unlike the Spaniards who missed in the shootout a week before, seemed to be calm and composed. Also, I am aware that Gareth Southgate (coach) is a huge fan of sport psychologists and I am sure the players would have been mentally prepared. A much better explanation for the miss is technical and tactical. I assume he picked the wrong spot (high and middle) and then didn’t use the correct technique to execute this.
Introduction
It’s important to start an article entitled ‘Performing under Pressure’ by clarifying the key terms. What do we mean by both performing and pressure?
In some circles, performing is regarded as almost any action. This can range from really obvious actions, like playing a sport, to less obvious ones such as running a business. For others, the word performance is and should be much more limiting. It only applies to competitive sports and a few other areas such as the performing arts.
At Condor Performance we sit somewhere between these two extremes. For us performing is essentially just the execution of skills. With the majority of these skills being motor skills. So of course this covers all traditional sports. But our definition also includes the performing arts, military activity, and most medical and emergency procedures. And even competitive games such as chess and eSports despite the fact that there is less human movement involved in these.
Practice vs Competition
Performing really includes both the preparation and competitive sides of the equation. This is important because in many sports the word performing gets mostly used as a synonym for competing. For example, in a post-match press conference, a coach may say that she was happy with the performance. Or that the performance wasn’t quite what they were looking for. The issue with using the term performance as a synonym for on-the-day competitive outcomes is that it forgets about the performance element of preparation. As you’ll see below it is actually what you do in preparation that ultimately allows us to perform better under pressure.
In my work as a sport psychologist, I often simplify and separate everything into thoughts feelings, and actions. Those who are familiar with my particular style will know that I am a big believer in predominantly learning to accept thoughts and feelings whilst still committing to our actions. When breaking down the human experience like this it can be useful to try and consider if pressure is more of an emotion or a thought or a combination.
For most performers, it will be a combination of thoughts and feelings. Consider the typical signs of experiencing extreme pressure. In terms of emotions tensing up, tightening of the muscles and nerves might be common. The thoughts that often present themselves when pressure is experienced are often predictive and negative. For example, cognitions such as “what if I mess up today” or “I just know I am going to play badly”.
Arguably the most important starting point when it comes to helping performers to be more consistent under pressure is for them to learn unequivocally that pressure is neither good nor bad. All too often athletes and non-sporting performers will regard pressure as negative. They frame it as something that will get in the way of them performing at their best. Interestingly there’s actually a small percentage who believe the exact opposite! This minority holds the view that they need some pressure to produce the goods! Do any of you want to guess why neither is true? If you do, add a comment below.
The Pressure Is Real, Just Accept It
The mindset that we are looking to help our clients develop is one whereby pressure is just pressure. It’s neither good nor bad. It can be useful for you to consider the variations in pressure as similar to other variables. Such as the weather or the colour of the opposition’s kit (shirts). These are just natural variations common in sport. It’s unhelpful to think of warmer days as being good and cooler days as being bad for example. The same applies to pressure vs. no pressure.
The most effective way of learning to perform better under pressure is by learning to accept your thoughts and feelings rather than getting into a fight with them. There are multiple ways of doing this but some of the most useful would be via these five mindfulness apps which have been approved by psychologists.
Once the process of learning to observe thoughts and emotions is underway we can move on to the next stage. That is, learning they needn’t have any impact on your desired actions. In other words, the goal is to learn to execute your skills irrespective of the thoughts and emotions you may be experiencing at the time.
This is easier said than done of course. Often experiences of pressure are much less common in training. This reduces the opportunities whereby we can prove to ourselves that we can take a penalty under the most intense pressure imaginable (below).
Mentally Harder Practice
The concept of mentally harder practice addresses this issue some of the time. MHP attempts to replicate pressure-related feelings and thoughts in training situations. The logic behind this is sound. Doing MHP in training will make it much easier to ride the pressure wave when it happens organically in competitive situations.
A nice analogy for mentally harder practice is lifting weights. If you want to be able to flip a truck tire over a dozen times then you’re gonna need to slowly increase your muscle strength in practice. The same logic applies to performing under pressure using mentally harder practice. You need to be able to slowly increase the mental demands of certain aspects of your training so when they occur in competitive situations that they are not so different from the training challenges you set up.
The weight training analogy is so useful because it quickly allows you to see the risks of overdoing it. So if you make your training psychologically too difficult, it will have the opposite effect and potentially cause some kind of psychological injury. By psychological injuries, we could be referring to genuine mental health impacts such as a trigger for depression or anxiety.
This 10 minute read is the debut article by Condor Performance’s brand new Intake Officer Sudhi. Comments and questions are welcome via the form at the bottom of the article.
Visualisation from the classic movie Cool Runnings(Turteltaub, Jon. Cool Runnings. Buena Vista Pictures Distribution, 1993).
Introduction To Visualisation
Visualisation, often used synonymously with mental rehearsal or imagery, is a mental training strategy that is implemented to achieve a range of positive performance outcomes. These outcomes include (but are not limited to) improved concentration, decreased anxiety, heightened self-confidence, and increased motivation. All of which ultimately endeavor to enhance performance in some way.
This technique started to attract widespread attention in the 1980s with its benefits being increasingly recognised amongst sport psychologists, coaches, athletes, as well as those from a non-athletic background.
Visualisation is better thought of as a process, rather than merely a concept. Embodying the mental practice of applying the senses to stimulate an image of something sums up this process rather well. This recreation can be done by either picturing specific skills or can also involve rehearsing a performance from the beginning to the end.
Examples Of Visualisation
Most competitive skiers make use of visualisation to run through their performance on the piste and acquaint themselves with its various elements such as the presence of slopes or slants in the trail, and the placement of turns. Skiers can also visualise their execution of particular skills such as their turns, jumps, or specific sections they need to control their speed.
Competitive skiers use visualisation more than most …
On the other hand in team sports such as soccer, visualisation can be implemented to run through various game scenarios and solidify team strategies and tactics. As such this technique is beneficial in reducing the degree of unfamiliarity.
Another strength of this tool is its flexibility in the sense that it does not require any external prompts. It can be executed at any time, at any location, and still produce beneficial outcomes for performance. Can you think of a recent scenario in which this flexibility is especially useful? Clue, cough … cough.
Athletes can also use visualisation during a period of injury or rehabilitation as it allows them to train safely without adversely affecting their condition. In sport psychology, this technique is also used in conjunction with other forms of mental strategies or physical training to enhance positive outcomes.
The Psychological Science Behind Visualisation
Recent research has examined the science behind this technique to understand its popularity and effectiveness amongst athletes of all ages and levels.
Neurons in the motor cortex of the brain that are stimulated when physically executing an action, are also activated when athletes picture this during visualisation. This subconscious process of rehearsing performance fires neural patterns similar to those that are created when the target muscles are physically performing the movements. This becomes crucial in adapting an athlete’s body to key movements specific to their sport, consequently speeding up the learning process and enhancing skill acquisition.
Referring back to the sport of skiing, a ski coach can encourage the practice of visualisation for their athlete when demonstrating a new skill such as jumping. As touched upon previously, pairing visualisation with the physical rehearsal of the skill enhances the effectiveness of the technique and boosts learning.
A study at the University of Chicago by Dr. Blaslotto further demonstrates the positive impact of mental rehearsal. He measured the improvement of free throws amongst three groups of randomly selected individuals. This experiment ran over a period of one month where one group spent half an hour daily visualising successful free throws, one group practiced free throws for half an hour a day, and the other group did not practice at all.
It was found that the group who practiced free throws daily improved by 24%, no improvement was observed amongst the group with no practice, and the group who had simply practiced visualization without touching a basketball had improved by 23%.
The Downside Of Visualisation
As with any sport or performance area, it may not be possible to accurately recreate the entire experience due to the presence of external influences that are out of our control.
Whilst the many benefits of visualisation have been established including its ability to enhance motivation, boost confidence, and sharpen concentration, there is a gap that this technique cannot fill. No matter how well, or how much time an athlete invests in rehearsing mentally, it must be recognised that there remains a range of factors in competitive sport that are determined and controlled by factors external to the athletes themselves. Some of the most obvious are the spectators, the opponent’s behaviour as well as environmental conditions.
With reference to the prior example of a skier, environmental factors such as wind speed, visibility, quality of snow, and temperature are all externally determined. These factors can be influential in defining crucial aspects of the athlete’s performance such as their speed, as well as their ability to manoeuvre and control their movements.
Practice Is Key!
As with most processes practice makes permanent. Visualisation is easier to execute when a goal has been established. A good way for an athlete to establish purpose is to consider their current training and competition schedule and determine aspects that they feel will be challenging. For example:
A cricket bowler who is considering how they might go during their first over of a match.
A golfer who is predicting the challenge of playing the last two holes, whilst protecting a one-shot lead.
A race car driver who is looking for an edge in tomorrow’s race where the forecast is for wet conditions.
Once this step has been cleared, the individual is ready to practice visualisation. Finding a silent space without distractions, and ensuring the eyes are closed will assist with this experience. Then, they may take a few deep breaths to connect with and be aware of the body at that present moment. This technique is most effective when as many of the fundamental senses are engaged. For any athlete rehearsing for an upcoming game or competition, visualisation may look something like this.
Starting with some deep breaths, they can then begin to immerse themselves in the experience of being present at the site of the competition. They may prompt imagery by asking themselves questions. What sounds are audible? Is there a large audience presence? What does the weather look like? Do I feel a breeze across my face? What smells can be sensed? Do I feel nervous? Do I feel my heart rate increasing?
Mindset To Be Included
Imagining the mindset under which an athlete performs can be useful in making the experience more realistic and can help train the mind and body to reduce any negative emotions or sensations.
Following this process of engaging as many of the senses as possible, the athlete can begin to feel the motions of the body as they run through their performance. For a basketball player, this may involve running through any pre-game routines, team strategies, and gameplay from beginning to end. They may also focus on visualising their execution of skills such as passing, or a different technique for three-pointers. This mental rehearsal would then be used as a guide for the athlete to perform and physically engage their body in the movements. In the case of basketball players, they can then practice shooting on the court.
Whilst performing these skills, it is beneficial for the athlete to pay attention to the senses again, as well as their body. This includes the way the ball feels against their palms, the stimulation of muscles on their legs and hands as they follow through with the shot, and the movement of the ball in the air. This is then repeated for the duration of the training.
Conclusion
It should be acknowledged that the mind is susceptible to distractions and may wander at times, but it is useful to accept this and be able to reset or restart. Thus, visualisation cannot be mastered in the first go and results will take time to show, however maintaining consistency will support this process and contribute to positive outcomes overall. If you need a hand, give us a shout.
“Team Unity” works the same as all the other mental skills. They don’t become excellent accidentally. What are you and your teammates doing to intentionally improve this essential performance ingredient?
Team Unity. In team sports, we often talk about team unity as playing a vital role in success. But how important is team unity to sporting success? And how do we go about developing it?
Creating a Winning Culture
In this article, I will mainly use the term team unity. But as is often the case in psychology there are often multiple terms to refer to the same thing. Other common ways to describe team unity include team cohesion, togetherness, chemistry as well as team culture. Note this article was originally written in 2021 but recently updated.
Coaches often talk about creating a “Winning Culture” as one of the keys to success. When we talk about a winning culture, we’re usually referring to a team environment that helps its individuals thrive. So what does the training environment of a team with consistent success look like?
You would likely see a group of individuals with shared values (despite varying individual values). A group working towards a common goal and supporting each other to flourish in their own individual roles. Characteristics such as work ethic, honesty, constructive feedback, and having a positive influence on the people around them would likely be commonplace. If team unity is not a priority then that team limits its opportunity to improve. The unavoidable nature of team sport is that it requires individuals to work together towards a common goal.
Process Goals In Team Settings
In an effort to develop team unity, it is important firstly to separate outcome-based goals from process-based goals.
Sure, working towards establishing a ‘winning culture’ sounds good and might motivate players (initially), but placing such a large focus on results is not that useful. With every outcome goal, we want process goals as well – preferably a whole bunch of them. We want to place more focus on how we plan to improve compared to how we want to end up.
We have a lot of influence over our processes. Not only the planning of these processes but carrying them out as well. Outcomes on the other hand, not so much. Why? Because there are a lot of other contributing factors to results. The most obvious and common of these include other people, varying weather conditions, officials, and equipment.
Process goals might include communicating in a compassionate way, showing support for team members through verbal (spoken words) or physical (handshake, pat on the back) signs of support, and being authentic, genuine, and respectful in your interactions with others (through tone of voice, choice of words, body language and eye contact).
Understanding Your Role
One of the trickiest aspects about working in a team setting is that you basically have a group of individuals with different experiences and roles trying to work together. In a team setting it is vital each member understands their own ability, role, and expectations. Team members need to be able to make judgments about when to rely on others and when to step up and perform. Without an understanding of these fundamentals, you’ll have multiple individuals trying to do the same thing. Or worse, nobody there at all.
For the team to progress individual players need to progress. So it is important for players to recognise any progress they have made, examine how they contributed to the team outcome, and highlight areas that need to be improved on an individual level.
For example, how was your footwork, passing, and communication regardless of the fact that we won/lost the game? The team outcome is not a reliable indicator of their individual performance. It is important for individuals to reflect on their own performance as well as that of the team. Remember there are many things outside of their influence that may have contributed to the outcome.
Culture, Atmosphere, and Communication
For team unity to flourish then the group atmosphere needs to be a positive and cohesive one. Positive and cohesive team cultures are made up of a whole range of factors but here are the most common:
Player attitudes
team motivation
Individual empowerment
Team identity
Team identity refers to the distinct characteristics of the team that make it unique. It is strongest when each team member takes pride in their membership in the group. Individuals also need to place the values of their team above their own. Easier said than done, right?
Effective communication is also a huge part of establishing that positive team atmosphere. Open communication needs to be able to occur without fear of disrupting the relationship between coaches and players or the players themselves.
One way individuals can provide feedback in a group setting without damaging those important relationships is through solution-focused feedback, as opposed to problem-focused feedback.
Solution-based feedback involves highlighting what individuals could be doing instead, or should start doing differently. Problem-centered feedback on the other hand is where the problem is highlighted, and individuals are told not to do those things again.
Pointing out what players have done wrong and asking them not to do it again might seem helpful, but in actual fact, this can lead to a lot of overthinking on their end around NOT making the same mistake. Keeping the feedback solution-focused helps guide their thinking towards how they can do that skill better, which indirectly prevents them from making the same error again.
Helping players solve the problem rather than just highlighting the problem is one way of making them feel supported in their development, and this kind of feedback should extend between players to foster an environment of camaraderie and ensure team members feel supported by each other.
Respect
It is important to distinguish liking our team members from respecting them. In the sport and performance domains, respect plays a huge role in fostering an environment where team unity can flourish. Individuals might differ in their approach to the work and what they value, but agreeing with or liking the approaches and values of everyone we work with isn’t necessarily required for unity to thrive. Respecting them, however, is.
Respect is defined as demonstrating a high regard for someone or their ideas regardless of their differences and in order to create an environment where individuals push themselves beyond their limits each day they need to feel valued and respected by others around them. We can choose to communicate with others whose ideas we don’t like with complete disregard, or we can choose to show our appreciation for the strengths of those ideas and offer alternative ones. The team environment needs to foster non-judgment to allow individuals to take risks and step outside their comfort zones on an individual level as they work towards that common goal.
Let The Score Take Care Of Itself
The take-home message from this piece is that in order to establish a winning culture, we might want to focus less on winning. Rather the focus should be on establishing supportive environments for team members where they feel valued and empowered to achieve their individual best for the good of the team. And the goal of their work should be more centered around the journey rather than the destination. That is, focusing on the here and now, what we can be working on that is within our influence to give ourselves the best chance of success later on, rather than working with success at the forefront of our minds. In the performance world, we often see the best results achieved by those who don’t focus on results at all. As legendary NFL coach Bill Walsh famously said “The score takes care of itself” (see right).
Get In Touch
Has this article piqued your interest in improving either your mental health or mental aspects of your sport/performance? Then get in touch via one of these methods: ⏩ Email us directly at [email protected] and let us know more about you and how we can help. ⏩ Fill in one of our four Mental Toughness Questionnaires and tick the box at the end when it asks if you’d like to receive info about our services. We typically respond within 48 hours.
References
Yukelson, D. (1997). Principles of effective team building interventions in sport: A direct services approach at Penn State University. Journal of applied sport psychology, 9(1), 73-96.
Sporting Superstitions Versus Performance Routines. In this article Sport Psychologist Gareth J. Mole from Condor Performance looks at both.
And How They Differ From Routines
Sporting superstitions are surprisingly common. But do they cause more harm than good?
One of the lawn bowlers I work with recently asked me this question during a session. “What is the difference between a pre-performance routine and having some superstitions?” So good was the question that I decided to expand the answer that I gave her into this feature article on Sporting Superstitions.
Sporting Superstitions Versus Routines
In the work we do as sport psychologists and performance psychologists, we use routines frequently. I suspect I use them more often than my colleagues at Condor Performance due to my extreme “you can’t control your feelings/thoughts” approach to consulting.
For a much deeper dive into routines it’s probably better if you read these articles here and here but here is a quick summary. Routines are basically just premeditated series of actions. I tend to leave thoughts out of the equation. These action sequences vary mostly in terms of duration and timing. Some routines are very short (a few seconds) whilst others can take hours.
And we try to name them accordingly. For example, the routine that tennis players might use to get themselves mentally ready to receive the ball might be labelled a Pre-Point Routine or Pre-Receiving Routine. However, the longer routine before the start of the competition might be called a Pre-Match Routine. The middle part of this can be changed depending on the sport. For example combat sports athletes might have a Pre-Fight Routine.
Guaranteeableness (Made Up Word)
But despite these differences, good routines have one thing in common. They are built around actions that are intended to be guaranteeable. I typically prefer the word guaranteeable to controllable. Because the actions are guaranteeable then they can be entirely relied upon in any and all situations.
This is especially true when they are practised frequently and become automatic. And it is here that the majority of the benefit is found for this particular mental skill. In highly pressurised situations knowing that you can execute these predetermined actions amidst the chaos is the biggest contributor to composure. And composure is the biggest contributor to consistency. And consistency is the biggest contributor to sustained excellence.
Whether or not to include premeditated thoughts such as cue words in these routines is a contentious issue at the moment in international sport psychology circles. My issue with including any cognitive steps in these routines is that they simply are not guaranteeable. It’s all good and well in the calmness of practice to say to yourself “watch the ball”. But can you guarantee to remember to think this when you are feeling nauseous from nerves?
Actions Are Far More Reliable Than Thoughts
Instead, I’d rather my clients include the more reliable step of “widening their eyelids” (not saying to themselves ‘widen eyelids’, actually completing this micro action) in this example.
This way the cue word “watch the ball” becomes a bonus and not a requirement. If it’s used then great. If it’s not used then no biggie.
In doing this, we avoid what is known as metacognition. Metacognition is the process whereby you start thinking about your thoughts. Basically worrying about being worried. And it can snowball. Worrying about worrying about being worried etc.
So for the above example metacognitive worry might look like this. “Oh bugger I forgot to think to myself watch the ball”. And suddenly attention for simply completing the actions is diverted to a cognitive process that is completely unnecessary in order to complete the motor skill. You don’t need to have any dental-related thoughts before, during or after brushing your teeth. You just need to complete the action.
A Difference In Flexibility
One of the major differences between sporting routines and sporting superstitions is flexibility.
Most sporting superstitions are concerningly inflexible. Because good routines are designed (not accidental) flexibility can be embedded from the very start. For example in the longer Pre-Performance Routines there will not be a set order for the actions. So they may have a checklist of several activities they want (not need to, want to) to complete. For example, listening to some music, or maybe doing mindfulness. But the duration and order of these can change if required.
For sporting superstitions, not so much. If an athlete feels like they need to put the left sock on before the right sock to play well then there’s not a lot of wiggle room in that. In this example lies another clue about the difference between sporting superstitions and routines. Although routines are certainly designed as a performance optimiser we are quick to point out that they’re not magic. In other words, the routine doesn’t cause a good performance – there is simple a correlation. The difference between correlation and causation is brilliantly explained in this four minute video. Most athletes who use sporting superstitions do so because they actually believe it will result in a better performance. This is mentally damaging on all sorts of levels. If you are one of these performers then it might worth getting in touch with us.
Famous Sporting Superstitions
I thought it might be nice to wrap up this article with some of the most famous sporting superstitions of all time. These two Bleacher Reports articles go through 25 famous and 50 famous Sporting Superstitions. My favourites from these lists are:
Richie Ashburn Slept with Baseball Bats
Hall of Fame slugger Richie Ashburn had his own way of keeping a hot streak hot. Anytime he had a particularly good day at the plate, he would be sure to use the same bat for as long as the success would last. And Ashburn went to extraordinary lengths to remain in possession of his lucky bats. Concerned that equipment managers couldn’t be trusted to keep his bat separate from all the other bats, Ashburn would take his bat of the moment with him each night. He even made room in his own bed for his lucky bats.
Wade Boggs Pre-Game Chicken.
If you want to know the secret to making it into the Baseball Hall of Fame, 2005 inductee Wade Boggs might tell you it has something to do with poultry. In 1999 he revealed his entire career had been fuelled not by steroids, but by chicken! Legend has it that during his rookie season Boggs recognised some kind of correlation between his chowing down on chicken and games with multiple hits. He stuck to his superstitious diet religiously and his wife accumulated more than 40 chicken recipes for the 3,000 chicken meals she was tasked with producing each season.
Are You Curious About Our 1-on-1 Psychology Services?
Has this article piqued your interest in improving either your mental health or mental aspects of your sport/performance? Then Get In Touch via one of these methods: ⏩ Email us directly at [email protected] and let us know more about you and how we can help. ⏩ Fill in one of our four Mental Toughness Questionnaires and tick the box at the end when it asks if you’d like to receive info about our services.
One of our Senior Sport Psychologists, Gareth J. Mole, takes a look at the concept of “Fake It Till You Make It” in this brand new feature article.
Elite poker players are particularly good at the skill of “Fake It Till You Make It”.
Fake It Till You Make It … or Till You Feel It!
As many of my clients and colleagues will know I’m a big fan of the concept of ‘fake it till you make it’. However, potentially due to the word fake, and what it implies, this catchphrase is often misunderstood. So am I glad that I have finally had the time to write something on the subject. As always I welcome your questions and comments at the bottom of this page.
It is worth mentioning that in my consulting as a sport psychologist I typically use the term ‘fake it till you feel it’ rather than ‘fake it till you make it’. I do this intentionally. Making it implies the reaching of a goal and in much of the work that I do continual improvement is the main aim. You may be surprised to read that often I am unaware of the goals of my clients.
Fake it till you feel it gets to the very heart of the main model that my colleagues and I at Condor Performance use to assist our clients to improve. Namely, an adaptation of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) developed by Steven C. Hayes. The reason for the adaptation part is down to us wanting an even simpler framework. Below, is a Post It note drawing of what I would consider the bare bones of ACT.
“Fake It Till You Make It” when looking at just Actions, Thoughts and Feelings.
Human Thoughts, Feelings, and Actions
As you can see in the diagram our thoughts, feelings and actions are all separate from one another. The dotted line around actions is the key. Some of my clients will know this as a moat or a wall. We are trying to protect our actions from being railroaded by our very natural thoughts and feelings.
Note the varying amount of influence we have on each one. I’ve intentionally used the word influence rather than the word control as I find the word control can be very black or white. “I can control this but I can’t control that”, for example. In reality, we can’t really control much at all (maybe our effort but even then it depends on how you define effort) if the word control is used as a synonym for guarantee. We just have varying amounts of influence on stuff.
Quite simply, we have more influence on our actions than our thoughts.
In turn, we have more influence on our thoughts and our feelings.
Therefore logically we have much more influence over our actions compared to our feelings.
In other words, we have the least amount of influence over our feelings by far and by far the most amount of influence on our actions. And this is especially true when these same actions (e.g. a left jab in boxing) have been repeated a lot so that muscle memory takes care of the biomechanics. Basically, you don’t need to think about how to do it you just do it. Most adults who have been driving for a long time will be familiar with this feeling.
The Spectrum of Influence
Just to ram the point home, if we were to arrange thoughts, feelings, and actions into an influence ranking system actions would be at the top and feelings would be at the bottom. Thoughts would be in the middle, following?
So if we return to the fake it till you make it or fake it till you feel it concept this premise starts to become clearer as a form of psychological advice. The faking it part is actually all about body language. It is about portraying a certain emotion (or lack of) from the outside irrespective of what you’re actually feeling on the inside. Faking it, certainly by my interpretation, is not about pretending to feel something that you’re not.
So as explained in this previous article by my colleague Harley De Vos competence is far more valuable than confidence. Now in the work that we do this is most often in the context of the skill execution itself. But it can and should be extended to some of the less obvious actions pertaining to performance. One of these is body language. How competent are you at body language? Elite poker players seem to be the only performers who typically include working on this as part of their normal training. Maybe we all should?
Body Language Basics
One of the hidden bonuses about working on your body language is that you are effectively practicing one of the fundamental aspects of psychological flexibility. Because in working on your body language you will need to choose a way of looking – for example confident –and work out a way where your actual feeling – let’s say embarrassment – does not override your facial expressions, head position, posture, etc.
Often the most effective type of body language from a performance perspective is actually very neutral. I am not one for histrionics. Great body language should keep your opponents guessing. Hence the term ‘poker face’.
Conclusion
As I have become known for saying in recent years “they don’t hand out gold medals for who was thinking or feeling the best”. Very importantly thoughts and feelings needn’t have any impact on our actions. Especially if these actions are well rehearsed. However, it is quite acceptable and normal for our actions to have a one-way impact on our thoughts and feelings. And it is with this that the rest of that concept of fake it till you make it / feel it is complete. Basically, we fake it – we act confidently from the body language perspective without necessarily being confident and this often leads to increased feelings of confidence as a result.
Has this article piqued your interest in improving either your mental health or mental aspects of your sport/performance? Then get in touch via one of these methods: ⏩ Email us directly at [email protected] and let us know more about you and how we can help. ⏩ Fill in one of our four Mental Toughness Questionnaires and tick the box at the end when it asks if you’d like to receive info about our services.
Impulsivity Explored is a blog by leading sport psychologist Gareth J. Mole on the impact that impulsivity can have in performance situations.
Impulsivity Explored is all about brain explosions that take place in the heat of the sporting contest. This is potentially one of the least investigated areas of modern-day sport psychology.
Meaning of impulsive in English (Cambridge Dictionary)
How impulsive are you? Is impulsivity something you would benefit from working on? Would it have a direct benefit on your life or performance? When something happens to you, especially if it’s something that produces a lot of emotion, do you tend to react or respond?
Reacting and responding are slightly different from one another. One is impulsive the other isn’t. Can you guess which is which?
Reacting basically implies the resulting action was more automatic, less considered. In a nutshell, the brain was less involved. Responding on the other hand is suggestive of a much more considered action. One which was selected from a series of options. Due to this a response almost always takes longer than a reaction. In some cases much longer. Reactions are more impulsive, responses are less impulsive.
Impulsivity Can Be Useful … Sometimes!
It would be tempting to say that due to the above that responses are better than reactions. But this is not the case. Reactions serve a really important purpose in threatening or dangerous situations. Think about the benefit of your hand pulling away from a scolding hot object without you having to think about it. The speed of this reaction will, in many situations, reduce the amount of burning that occurs. This same reflex action allows a motorsport driver to react so fast that they appear to pull off the grid at the same time the lights go green.
But what if you are so good at reacting that you always react? And what if some of these situations would benefit more from a response.
In the work that we do as sport psychologists and performance psychologists this issue is most common under the general banner of helping our clients with what could be called ‘reducing unhelpful impulsivity’.
There are hundreds of examples where impulsivity can cause serious issues in competitive sports. Can’t think of any? Then take a look at this Bleacher Report blog of 25 of the most famous brain explosions in recent memory.
Think about the tennis player who can’t help but throw their racquet or abuse the umpire. How about the cricketer who is so upset about a catch being dropped off her bowling that she berates her poor teammate right there and then. ‘I couldn’t help it, my emotions got the better of me’. Really? Is that actually possible? I know it certainly feels like it but to reduce unhelpful impulsivity we first need to believe that our emotions have less power over our actions than they do.
But I Couldn’t Help It!
Blaming our emotions as if they are some invading alien life force that makes us act in a certain way is both inaccurate and very unhelpful. Just because it feels like we have no other option doesn’t make that true.
One of the best ways to start reducing unhelpful impulsivity is to establish if the person who did the reacting was still happy with their actions well after the fact. Ideally at least one full day later. Was Serena Williams still pleased with how she reacted in the 2018 US Open final? If Will Smith was given the chance to go back in time would he still decide that slapping Chris Rock across the face at this year’s Oscars to be the right call? I can’t be sure as I have not asked them but I suspect both would love a do-over.
The reason why we want to establish this is to try and get an idea if the issue is really about impulsivity rather than morals and values. And you can imagine, someone who 24 hours after the fact still thinks that keying up someone’s car who parked poorly was the best choice of action in that situation would be better off focusing on their morals and values instead of their impulsivity.
Most of the time, certainly in the work we do, the athletes or performers who reacted poorly realise this soon afterwards. Sometimes just seconds afterwards. Their morals and values are sound, they just need help converting certain reactions into more considered responses.
Fortunately, there are some tried and tested processes that when taken seriously can do just this. Here are three to whet your appetite.
Process A: Mindfulness
Regular Mindfulness helps reduce the overall power of thoughts and feelings. As some readers and many of my clients may know the best definition I have ever come across for Mindfulness is “increased awareness of the present moment with decreased judgement”.
One of the reasons why Mindfulness, if done regularly, is so effective in reducing unhelpful impulsivity is because it helps with both of these at the same time. When your awareness goes up you are basically using the information-gathering part of your brain and this shuts down the reacting part. By decreasing judgment, we are less likely to think that the umpire is doing a bad job and more likely to think he’s just doing his job.
“Which Mindfulness apps are the best” is a question we get a lot. The boring but honest answer to this is – it depends. Our advice would be to test out the five free apps listed here and pick your favourite. Feel free to use the comments section at the bottom of this blog to make other suggestions of Mindfulness apps you recommend or don’t and why.
Process B: Increase The Gap Between Stimulus And Response
This is not exactly the same as the above suggestion but is similar. The concept of there being a stimulus (for example, seeing someone take a parking spot you’d be indicating for) and then a gap and then the response was the brainchild of Viktor Frankl; the Austrian neurologist, psychiatrist, philosopher, writer, and Holocaust survivor. This approach, which I have always found is most effective when combined with the below process asks us to come up with methods to a) make sure there is a gap and b) increase the duration of the gap.
Classics examples include counting backwards from 10 to 1 or taking two big belly breaths or, where appropriate writing down the emotions.
Process C: Lists
The final process designed to help improve this particular type of decision making is to work out ahead of time which types of situations are most likely to produce a response versus a reaction. For example, I am typically calm when behind the wheel of the car so I would not include any driving related scenarios in my lists. But to this day, despite what I do for a living, I still struggle to respond ideally when I witness most forms of prejudice (sexism, racism etc) so it makes sense for me to have these kinds of situations/stimuli on my lists.
You can have different lists for different areas where you might be unhelpfully impulsive. Even better, clarify what your best response and most damaging reaction might be for each. Sometimes the mantra RESPOND DON’T REACT is the best way to increase the gap.
Keen But Need A Hand?
If this article has motivated you to improve either your mental health or mental aspects of your sport/performance but you feel like you’d benefit from an expert helping hand then Get In Touch via one of these methods: ⏩ Email us directly at [email protected] and let us know more about you and how we can help. ⏩ Fill in one of our four Mental Toughness Questionnaires and tick the box at the end when it asks if you’d like to receive info about our services.
As the 24th edition of the Winter Olympics draws to a close we felt compelled to rush through this special edition of The Mental Toughness Digest on the theme of Sport Psychology for Winter Sports / Snow Sports.
The Winter Sports require a very special kind of Sport Psychology
Introduction
As is the case with all previous additions where we focus on a particular sport we highly recommend that even if you’ve never even seen snow before that you make your way through the below article as you will be surprised at how many ideas might be applicable for your particular sport or performance area.
In the realm of Snow Sports, we see what can only be described as some of the most extreme, dangerous and downright fantastic sports of the modern era. From snowboarding and skiing, figure skating to luge and everything in between, Snow Sports athletes are the pros at defying gravity, making the ‘impossible’ look like a piece of cake and leaving us as spectators speechless.
Of course, with any sport comes a cocktail of physical and mental challenges. But in sports where sticking the landing is in some cases a matter of “life or extreme physical injury”, the mental barriers to performance are on a whole other level. On another note, some snow sports test a very broad range of physical capabilities under one event, requiring athletes to both master and be able to shift back and forth between contrasting physical skill sets.
In this article, we’ll explore three popular Snow Sports in detail, and explore their unique mental demands. I’ll also run you through how you might be able to overcome a few of these performance barriers through evidence-based mental skills, starting with an event that sits on the extreme end of the Snow Sports spectrum. My last article was on Figure Skating which you can read here which when combined with the below hopefully provides a reasonable conceptualisation of Sport Psychology for Winter Sports.
Skeleton
Sport Psychology for Winter Sports One – Skeleton
In addition to being one of the fastest sports on the planet, Skeleton is also considered the world’s first sliding sport. Riders travel at speeds of up to 130km/hour head-first on a small sled (known as a skeleton bobsled) with their face only centimetres off the ice. It is the job of the rider to steer using their entire body, which involves careful manoeuvring of the shoulders, legs and toes. It’s pretty obvious from the nature of this sport that the margin for error is extremely small, and fair to say that one wrong move could potentially result in disaster.
So in order to succeed in the Skeleton event, one must be able to execute precise movements whilst travelling at incredible speeds, and you could argue that in order to do this the rider needs to be completely focused and present. A lot of staying focused and present boils down to the athlete’s ability to manage their thoughts, in particular overthinking (e.g. planning, problem-solving) or what we might call “difficult” thoughts (e.g. thinking about the worst-case scenario, “what if” thinking). In terms of overcoming this mental barrier to performance, the first thing to acknowledge is that in any situation perceived as important or threatening our mind is always going to look for a way out of it. Our mind is likely to perceive travelling headfirst on ice at 130km/hour as extremely threatening, so you can imagine all the things it’ll try and say to us to talk us out of doing it.
“I can’t afford a single mistake?”
“What if I crash and all that hard work goes to waste?”
“This is too risky, I don’t want to be here?”.
So the question here is how do we go about changing this – how do we go about making our thinking more positive so that it doesn’t stop us from doing what we want to do? Well if you read my previous article on thoughts you’d know by now that the answer to this is “we don’t, because we can’t.”
If you think that elite athletes are the experts at thinking positive, we’re here to tell you that’s not really the case. It’s likely that the minds of the most elite Skeleton athletes are also trying to talk them out of doing what they love to do. Why? Because they’re human, just like you. And as humans, we have very limited influence over the things our mind tells us purely due to the fact that there is always some biological reason or survival instinct at play. The most elite athletes in the world don’t necessarily think the most positively, they’re just masters at not letting what they think impact what they do. Our job as Sport Psychologists and Performance Psychologists is therefore not to change the way athletes think, but to change the relationship athletes have with their thoughts and minimise the power their thoughts have over their actions. Please note that this might not be the approach of other sport psychologists but is certainly the case for our current team.
Noticing Thoughts, Making Room For Them And Coming Back To The Here And Now
So how exactly do we reduce the power thoughts have over our actions? Or in terms of Skeleton, how do commit to the slide when everything in our mind is telling us not to? At Condor Performance we take a mindfulness approach to this question, starting with the simple practice of bringing awareness to our mind and the way it speaks to us. One of the ways we can practice this is through a skill known as The Noticing-Self. When we tap into our noticing-self we ultimately ‘take a step back and observe’ what we are thinking and feeling in that moment. But the key here is to try to do this without judgement. That is, once we notice what our mind is telling us, the aim isn’t to argue whether or not the thought is true, false, right, wrong, positive or negative. All we want to do is notice the presence of this thought. For example, “I notice my mind is asking me what will happen if I crash.”
Once we have noticed our thought(s) without judgment, the next step is to make room for these thoughts in the sporting experience. Basically, we need to accept that this is what our mind is telling us. Part of this is appreciating the fact that our mind can have a mind of its own, and is hardwired to talk us out of engaging in dangerous or threatening behaviour. If we can learn to accept the way our mind speaks to us and acknowledge that it’s coming from a place of protection, we then have the power to choose whether or not we want to listen to it. To choose whether or not to let it influence what we then do next.
Last but not least, it is our job to redirect our focus back to the present. After bringing awareness to and accepting our thoughts, it’s useful we bring our attention back to what we need to be doing at this moment, right here, right now. If the Skeleton rider is getting ready to start then try to notice where their hands, arms and legs are, and where do they need to be. Bring awareness to what can you see, smell, hear, taste and feel in that moment, and remind yourself of what processes you need to be thinking about. Mindful (deep) breathing or action-based cues (e.g. adjusting equipment) can be used here to aid us in bringing our focus back to the present.
4-Person Bobsleigh
Sport Psychology for Winter Sports Two – Bobsleigh
On the topic of sliding events, I’ll now bring your attention to the 4-Person Bobsleigh, the fastest snow event with riders reaching speeds of up to 150km/hour. You can imagine it’d share some of the same mental challenges as Skeleton, but there is a whole other dynamic at play in this event. Throw in the fact that it’s you plus three other riders, and now you have the added pressure of not messing up because doing so doesn’t just affect you.
Unity in Bobsleigh
We can’t ignore the role cohesion plays in this sport. Team members have to work together to execute a seamless start (where they essentially run with the sled, jump in and sit down within only a few seconds) as well as the entire run itself despite the fact that most of the steering is done by the driver (the person in the front). What a lot of us don’t realise is that a lot of planning goes into preparing for a run. Teams will walk, slide, re-walk and re-slide, to familiarise themselves with the twists and turns of the course and plan the details of steering.
Sticking To The Processes
Again, for those of you who have read my previous article on Unity, you will know that team cohesion goes beyond having a shared vision. To increase the chances of success the team needs to be on the same page in terms of A) how they set expectations or ‘goals’ for their performances and B) the way they evaluate (judge) their performances afterwards. Part of creating a winning culture is placing less emphasis on ‘winning’ itself, and instead placing a higher emphasis on processes and how to increase the chances of getting those things right both at the individual and group level. In a sport like Bobsleigh where Team Unity is so integral to success, it is important for team members to acknowledge the amount of influence they have over the outcome (and how little this actually is). If we were to breakdown the amount each factor in the Bobsleigh event contributes to the outcome, it might look something like this:
The Team – 40%
The Sled – 20%
The Ice – 15%
The Course – 15%
= 100%
So we’re talking about an event where teams have less than 50% influence over the outcome as a result of all the other external factors at play (the sled, the ice, the course). If we break that down to the individual level, each team member is likely to contribute to about 10% to the outcome. That’s not a whole lot.
Processes, on the other hand, are all the actions that are performed out there on the ice that increase the chances of achieving that desired outcome (e.g. starting sprint, getting seated, steering, etc). It’s important for teams to not only have a shared vision but to share an understanding of the importance of setting process-based goals and essentially leaving the results to take care of themselves.
Note: In an attempt to get this article out before the Winter Olympics is over and forgotten we did not have time to consult bobsled contacts/athletes or coaches on whether the above breakdown of influence is correct. So if you are involved in the sport at any level and would like to share your thoughts on the accuracy of these numbers please do so by using the comment section at the bottom of this article.
Biathlon
Sport Psychology for Winter Sports Part 3 – Biathlon
Moving away from the sliding sports and onto something a little bit different. The Biathlon event is both unique and incredibly fascinating; a combination of Cross Country Skiing and Rifle Shooting. The cross-country ski of up to 20km for men and 15km for women are interspersed with shooting ranges in which biathletes have 5 targets and 5 attempts, with time penalties added for missed shots. The very nature of the event in that athletes are required to shift back and forth between contrasting physical capabilities creates some pretty significant mental barriers to overcome, the most obvious being the need to go from one physical extreme to another with efficiency. More specifically, to be still enough in the shooting section coming off the back of intensive cross country skiing that’ll inevitably elevate the heart rate.
Replicating Competition Stressors at Training
Only through physical conditioning can we increase the rate at which our heart rate returns to resting after intensive physical activity, but other than this we don’t have a whole lot of influence over this kind of thing as it’s physiological. However, this doesn’t mean we can’t use mental hacks to increase the likelihood we’ll be able to cope with this stressor come competition day. In order to cope with the stressor of an elevated heart rate during a time where stillness is required for accuracy, we need to practice doing so under exact or similar conditions. Replicating the competition environment (e.g. shooting practice with an elevated heart rate) or increasing the difficulty of practice through other means (e.g. increasing the shooting range, reducing the shooting target at resting heart rate) are some of the ways athletes can train to be more comfortable with these physiological and psychological stressors.
One Common Challenge…The Snow Itself
But although these sports have a series of unique mental barriers that separate them from one another, there is one thing they all have in common that separates Snow from non-Snow sports. That is – access to the right conditions. Snow is typically seasonal, and therefore present for only a portion of the year – and that’s just in the places where it does snow. One of the biggest barriers to Snow Sports preparation is snow itself. Its relative unreliability and short-lived lifespan often produce a whole bunch of challenges that we hear back from athletes of these sports during sessions. So how do Snow Sports athletes train and prepare all year round, even in places where there is little to no access to the good stuff?
Organic Versus Synthetic Practice
The concepts of Organic and Synthetic Practice become particularly important here. When we talk about Organic Practice, we’re referring to training that takes place in competition form (or as close as possible). For Skeleton and Bobsleigh, this would be sliding a course, and for Biathlon this would be sprint skiing interspersed with shooting practice. Synthetic Practice on the other hand includes all the practice that takes place in a modified competition environment (e.g. smaller/larger game environments, smaller/larger teams, artificial rules that raise the margin for success), any drills that are aimed at specific competitive techniques or tactics or any other training that takes place outside of Organic Practice.
It’s quite common for Snow Sports athletes to train without snow, during the warmer months of the year or for some pretty much all year round (in places without much snow). Synthetic practice is therefore a huge part of their preparation as access to organic practice in some cases is very limited. A lot of this takes place in the form of strength and conditioning training targeted to the specific demands of the sport, track and fieldwork, and using non-snow equipment replicas to get as close to organic practice as possible (as seen in the below videos). The same rules apply to Mental Training as per Physical Training. In other words in the absence of the ability to work on mindset in an organic fashion – in winter conditions – rather than throwing up your hands in frustration and not bothering try and see how you might be able to replicate some of the mental demands away from the conditions. If you have no idea where to start, get in touch as we can help.
Mental Rehearsal
However, one of the greatest things about the world of Sport and Performance Psychology is the fact that in order to enhance performance, all you need is your mind. One way Snow Sports athletes can rehearse their competition-day processes is through Visualisation or ‘Mental Rehearsal’. This type of practice can take place in various forms (with equipment, without equipment, video-assisted or pure mental rehearsal), and it works through firing the same kinds of neurons that would fire if we were to physically perform those actions leading to practice effects. In other words, no snow is needed!
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