A re-post from Spencer Davey Whenever I interview sportsmen and women before they start training at Storm I always ask, “what are the three main factors that determine your success or failure?” Without fail one thing always comes up. Mental preparation. Athletes will often say, “I need to be in the right state of mind”or something to that effect. But what is that “state of mind, and how do top sports people get into the zone time and time again? I was a professional rugby player for some 10 years so have a good understanding of how sportsmens’s minds work.I now split my time between working as a strength coach and performance coach. Any free time I’ll be found doing nothing at all! (Meditating usually!) This article is not intended to get you to sell all of your possessions, turn vegetarian and follow the path to enlightenment. It’s intended to show you how training your mind will make you more successful in your sport or event – and anything else you want to achieve in lifefor that matter. In all sports there’s always a winner and a loser. It’s clear that there are a lot of factors involved in becoming a winner,but, when all things are equal, one thing is certain – the person with the greater mental focus, the mentally tough individual, will pretty much always come out on top. In a conversation I had yesterday with Toulon and All Black prop/ rhythm guitarist Carl Hayman, Carl spoke about how to maintain mental focus during sport: “The first thing you need to do is to separate the things you can control from the things you can’t. There’s no point in worrying about things you have no control over – it’sjust a waste of energy. “Even the best players in their sport are sometimes guilty of losing mental focus. When a team is performing badly as a whole you will sometimes hear the commentator say “he’s trying to do too much”. Key players are often guilty of trying to have an effect on things they have no control over. So is “trying to do too much”a technical error? Or is the player just focusing on things he can’t control and becoming less effective in what he can? Carl would argue that one can be guilty of looking too far into the future or thinking about past events. “During a game of rugby, if you spend too much time thinking about events that took place earlier in the game, or spend time thinking about what might happen later in the game, you’ll just increase your anxiety.” In summary, his advice is to separate the things you can control from the things you can’t, forget the past, don’t worry about the future and focus on the here and now. In any given second in any game there may be ten different events taking place – you only need to focus on one. And it’s not the event that took place five minutes ago! Carl also spoke about positive imagery. He clearly visualises, in his mind’s eye, technical points that he needs to execute going exactly to plan. Carl does this prior to games and I am sure this single minded focus has a lot to do with the consistently high level of performance that he produces. In a separate conversation I had whilst coaching, Newcastle Falcons winger Charlie Amesbury, he spoke about his mental approach: “I always break the game up into quarters. After the first 20 minutes I’ll ask myself how I felt I performed on a scale of one to ten. If I had, let’s say, a seven out of ten, I would then ask myself what I can do to improve in the second quarter.” Charlie tries to keep his performances as close to a ten as possible and I have to say he usually does a good job of it.Charlie then presented a problem to me: “What can a player’s approach be if the opposition kick you a high ball and you’ve dropped the previous two high balls in a row?” In hindsight I would use a technique Nick, a golfer I train, swears by:- “If in practice I hit 19 out of 20 putts and was then to have missed two in a row in a game, I’d tell myself that the chances of missing three in a row is very,very low. Stats don’t lie! I can then confidently make the putt.” Nick also spoke about a technique used by Nick Faldo. Faldo would in practice, and in games, go through the same ritual for taking a shot. He would simply count to sevenand whenever he got to seven he would hit the ball. This might sound like the counting is distraction but in actual fact this gave Faldo only one thing to focus on when there was a thousand other distractions – a ritual that stays the same whether he’s par or 10 under, come rain or shine. Giving yourself just a few technical points to focus on can be very advantageous in any sport. In another in-depth conversation I had With Carl whilst driving to Twickenham to hang out with the guys from Optimum Nutrition, we spoke at length about the perils and pitfalls of the athlete who relies on atmosphere and / or aggression to perform at high level. (I must confess I think I used to do exactly that!) The first thing I must point out here is that getting too fired up will force you into a sympathetic nervous state (fight or flight mode) your vision becomes narrow, motor control is limited, and through muscular function diminishing, familiar movement patterns begin to feel alien and you now breathe using pec minor instead of your diaphragm. On the opposite side of this coin is the athlete who remains in the parasympathetic state when performing. Think Ronaldinho, Lance Armstrong (this was written prior to discovery of cheating to provide context), Usain Bolt. Each of these athletes look so relaxed during an event that they look in danger of falling asleep!! Yet their performance speaks for itself. Athletes who rely on passion or the thrill of the big game to perform are reliant on so many external circumstances to be at their best that if one of those things ceases to be, their whole preparation can be thrown out. Let’s take the word atmosphere. What makes for a good atmosphere? For me a good atmosphere is a full stadium making a lot of noise because they are excited about an important sporting event that is about to take place. What if the stadium is near empty? What if the crowd are quiet? What if the event ceases to be important, if your team can’t get into the play-offs but can’t be relegated? If you rely on atmosphere to get into the mental state to perform to your best in your sport you are reliant on too many external circumstances, and to perform optimally you will require all of the above circumstances to be present before you can perform. Michael Schumacher, Muhammad Ali and many other great sports men would spend time before their event mentally rehearsing. “He’ll go down in the sixth” said Ali. Michael Schumacher claimed to be able to “slow the race down” in his mind “when I am on the straight I can see the face of the same pretty girl lap after lap”. If you were to speak to a car crash victim they would often describe the event as seeming to take place in “slow motion”. Does the event actually happen in slow motion? Does time physically slow? Or might it be that the victim’s ability to process the information on their surroundings becomes greatly improved immediately prior to their accident? Would it be beneficial for the athlete to be able to “slow down” the events that take place in their sport? Would it be beneficial to be able to avoid the reverse of this, where everything seems to happen too quickly for you to have any effect? In my view the answer is undoubtedly yes,and from the experience I’ve had personally I believe it is very possible. So you heard it from the guys who turn up and perform week in week out: • Focus only on the things you can controland you will be as effective in them as possible • Focus on the here and now to remain in a mood of relatively low anxiety • Focus on a small number of key technical points If you follow these 3 simple points I’m certain you will improve your performance and probably lose a little less sleep in doing it! However if you want to really “slow things down” and improve your focus beyond recognition you will need to look out for the next Article entitled “Winning”…
Posted on: Mon, 25 Nov 2013 14:32:15 +0000
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