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1. Sports psychology: Mental toughness: Do you have what it takes to maintain focus, motivation and selfbelief when the going gets hard? - Lee Crust 2. Sports coaching: Jaccuse! A noted coaching guru launches a broadside at outmoded thinking and models John Whitmore 3. Thought Suppression: A Paradoxical Effect - Lee Crust 4. Sports Psychology: Thought Control - Lee Crust 5. Encouragement: How It Boosts Performance 6. Mental strength: When you can manage your emotions, you can perform at your best - George Karseras 7. Sports Psychology: Why 'good enough' is actually better than perfect (and a lot more fun, too) 8. Mental Strength: To improve your performance, you have to start by fortifying your mind - Frank Horwill 9. Visual Training Programmes for Sport: Why they don't work - Isabel Walker 10. Winning: The relevant question is not "Did you win?" but "Did you come up to your expectations?" Bruce Tulloh 11. The Majestic Self-confidence of Jonny Wilkinson: How expectations can make or break your performance - Lee Crust 12. Goal Setting: One step at a time How to raise your game through effective goal-setting - Lee Crust
1. Sports psychology:
Mental toughness: Do you have what it takes to maintain focus, motivation and self-belief when the going gets hard? - Lee Crust
There are certain moments during competition that appear to carry great psychological significance, when the momentum starts to shift in one direction or another. These situations require athletes to remain completely focused and calm in the face of difficult circumstances. Tennis players talk of the big points during a tight match, such as a fleeting chance to break serve; for an athlete, it could be the final triple-jump in the competition after seriously under-performing; for a footballer, it could be how you react to a perceived bad refereeing decision or to going behind in a match your team are expected to win. Think about times when things have not gone quite to plan and how you reacted. The journey towards peak performance is rarely a perfectly smooth road and we learn from our mistakes or should do. Do setbacks shake your self-belief and lower your motivation or act as a catalyst for even greater effort? Even great athletes and teams suffer setbacks. Olympic athlete Steve Backley is a prime example. In his book The Winning Mind, Backley cites his psychological strengths and, at times, his weaknesses as major determinants of whether he performed near to or below his own strict targets in competition. He talks of the transition from young up-and-coming javelin thrower to major international competitor when, after experiencing success so often as a junior, he found himself under-prepared for the mental hurdles and barriers created by higher-level competition. Backley says psychological strategies were the key to helping him to deal with this competitive stress. Most top athletes and coaches believe that psychological factors play as crucial a role as physical attributes and learned skills in the make-up of champions. When physical skills are evenly matched as they tend to be in competitive sport the competitor with greater control over his or her mind will usually emerge as the victor. Mental strength is not going to compensate for lack of skill, but in close contests it can make the difference between winning and losing. A key question for sport and exercise psychologists is whether champions have simply inherited the dominant psychological traits necessary for success or whether mental toughness can be acquired through training and experience. Recent research has attempted to explore the concept of mental toughness in sport more thoroughly, and it appears that, while some people are naturally more tough-minded than others, people can be toughened-up with the correct approach to training. What do we mean by mental toughness? It is probably easiest to define in terms of how it affects behaviour and performance. A mentally tough athlete is likely to: 1. achieve relatively consistent performances regardless of situational factors; 2. retain a confident, positive, optimistic outlook, even when things are not going well, and not choke under pressure; 3. deal with distractions without letting them interfere with optimal focus; 4. tolerate pain and discomfort; 5. remain persistent when the going gets tough; 6. have the resilience to bounce back from disappointments.
performance in basketball showed that seven out of eight season-long performance indicators were significantly correlated with a total hardiness score. This finding needs to be interpreted with caution, however, since correlations do not necessarily reflect causation. More recently, a team of researchers at Hull University have taken the idea of hardiness a step further by proposing a model of mental toughness in sport. A key development has been the development of a questionnaire to assess mental toughness that can be used to assess its influence in experimental studies. The Hull researchers carried out two studies to show how mental toughness was related to performance and cognitive appraisal. In the first study, 23 volunteers performed 30-minute static cycling trials at three different intensities of 30, 50 and 70% of their maximum oxygen uptake, rating the physical demands of the trials at five-minute intervals. Participants were classified as having either high or low mental toughness based on their responses to the above-mentioned questionnaire and, as predicted, those with higher levels of mental toughness reported significantly lower perceived exertion at 70% of maximum. No significant differences were noted at lower levels of exertion which, as the researchers acknowledged, is consistent with the clich that when the going gets tough, the tough get going. The observed differences at higher levels of exertion could reflect a tendency of the more tough-minded to somehow act on the incoming stimuli before it reaches the level of perception, to reduce the perception of strain. Mentally tough exercisers might perceive themselves as having greater control during such conditions, or interpret the higher intensity as a challenge rather than a threat. The second study, on 79 participants, considered the influence of mental toughness on resilience in adverse situations. Participants were given either positive or negative feedback after completing a variety of motor tasks, and then asked to perform a planning task which was used as the objective performance measure. The key question for the researchers was how participants would respond to feedback that could alter their confidence. As predicted, mentally tough participants performed better on the planning task, delivering relatively consistent performances whether their feedback had been negative or positive. However, those with lower levels of mental toughness performed significantly worse after negative feedback, confirming the greater resilience of those with high levels of mental toughness.
Rod Laver, the Australian tennis legend, has described how he used practice sessions to simulate tough match conditions. Laver felt that fatigue placed great strain on the concentration which was crucial to success in long matches. To simulate these conditions, Laver forced himself to concentrate and work even harder during the latter stages of training sessions, when he was tired, so that he became used to the mental strain of such conditions. He has cited this as one of the key factors in his long-lasting success. Simulation training is a great way to prepare mentally for the challenges of competition, and this can include mental as well as physical stressors. For example, a tennis player could increase the mental pressures in a practice match by starting each service game 0-15 down, and thus getting used to rebounding after losing the first point. Alternatively a player with an over-reliance on his first serve could be restricted to one serve only and be forced to become extremely focused and accurate with what is, in effect, a second serve. To enhance the stress still further, players could practise by playing tiebreakers, or play practice matches in front of an audience. The coach might use bad line calls or spectator noise as a way of exposing players intermittently to distractions and giving them practice at dealing with them. Tennis is a game with plenty of breaks between play that allow time for dwelling on past events or self-doubting. Using imagery and positive self-talk during dead time in order to remain calm and in control can be an effective strategy. Mentally tough competitors are likely to use strategies that reinforce their self-belief at times of crisis. And these strategies can be rehearsed in practice situations. With a little invention, simulation training can be used for most athletes, and the opportunity to deal with mental stressors in controlled situations can be an invaluable way to toughen up in preparation for the very real challenges of competition.
2. Sports coaching:
Jaccuse! A noted coaching guru launches a broadside at outmoded thinking and models - John Whitmore
Sports coaching has for too long been based on the dominance of a reductionist approach the insistence on analysing everything down to its basic components and lines of authority between coaches in the know and those supposedly without knowledge. This approach goes hand in hand with the denial of the innate, the instinctual and the intuitive, and it has held back sports coaching in UK and elsewhere by 25 years. That is a large claim and a strong accusation to level at the sports establishment, but I will lay out the charge in this article and invite you in the process to question long-held beliefs, think for yourself, engage your emotions and make your own decision. In so doing, you will be putting into practice the very elements of good coaching that I contend are so undervalued and underused. The beliefs and assumptions that coaches grow up with are the very ones that undermine learning, performance and enjoyment. They can be illustrated by the following statements: A person cannot learn a new skill without being told and/or shown by an expert. If you try to learn something without expert help, you will develop bad habits. Errors and bad habits can only be recognised and corrected by an expert. There is a right technique for most activities, one that has to be taught. Intellectual understanding is a pre-requisite of learning good technique.
Coaches must be experts in the particular sport or activity that they coach. Of course, these are unlikely to be stated as absolutes in a debate, but it is in this absolute form that they underpin the position that the vast majority of coaches adopt, consciously or unconsciously. Though tempted by my emotions to scream that they are all wrong, to do so would be simply to fall into the authoritarian trap that I am challenging, so I will express it differently. It is my view that retaining such beliefs severely restricts our ability to be effective coaches. It follows, therefore, that most coaches and that includes many who are renowned for their expertise and achievements - are not nearly as effective as they could be. Nor are they as effective as they think they are, for they only have for comparison the results of other coaches practising along similar lines. Alternative approaches are not on their radar screens.
more sceptical, though, perhaps because the books message seemed to threaten their livelihood. Here I paraphrase Gallwey to summarise the Inner Game principles. You start to play the Inner Game when you realise that the opponent within your own head is more daunting than the one on the other side of the net. The outer game is played with a racket and a ball against another player; the Inner Game is played against anxiety, self-criticism, tension, frustration, a lack of self-belief, fear and anger. Your potential is your performance minus your internal obstacles. The Inner Game process aims to eliminate these internal obstacles to performance, learning and enjoyment and thereby liberate your potential. All sports people are familiar with such internal obstacles and keen to overcome them, but far fewer share Gallweys confidence that, as these obstacles recede, a natural, technically proficient player somehow emerges from within, without expert input. How does this happen? The best illustrations of this process come, in my experience, from skiing, because skiers of all standards are beset by fears. There is fear of falling, fear of getting hurt, fear of looking foolish, fear of loosing control, even fear of getting left behind or lost; and these fears generate huge amounts of muscular tension and inappropriate defensive body postures. Remove the fear and the posture becomes natural - in other words, it self-corrects.
Two years ago, the British Tennis Coaches Association asked me to set up Inner Tennis training for coaches; two years ago, a new coaching ski school started up in Zermatt and the old ski school is now struggling to survive as customers desert it for something better. Twenty-three years is a long time, but much of sports coaching still sleeps on.
4. Sports Psychology:
Thought Control - Lee Crust
When it comes to doing your best, its the thoughts that count. When it comes to running or any other endurance sport your mind can be your biggest asset or your worst enemy. Enjoying your training and achieving your best performances is not simply down to physical conditioning: your mental states and, particularly, the thoughts that run through your mind can affect the way you feel during exercise. It is normal for athletes to plan their race strategy in minute detail, but how many systematically plan what they are going to think about during training or competition? Having worked with and questioned athletes on their thoughts over a number of years, I can tell you that the number who do plan their thoughts is surprisingly small. I say surprising because, as a sport psychologist, I am aware of what scientific research has been showing for a number of years: that thoughts do matter. In fact the nature and quality of your thoughts can make the difference between winning or losing, enjoying or hating your training, and may impact on your decision to stay with an exercise programme. Much of this scientific evidence comes from studies of marathon runners. Neuroscientists have shown that we have thousands of thoughts running through our minds each and every day. Athletes spend a large percentage of their time thinking sport-related thoughts, but most of these are unplanned and random. The first step towards becoming more organised and purposeful in your thinking is to become more aware of them. So when you next go for a training run, cycle or swim, try to become more aware of what you are thinking about.
Association involves entering a more concentrated state when you can react to changes within your body. And focusing on internal states like rhythmical breathing can help you feel more relaxed during physical activity (see table 2). But, on the down side, there is some evidence of a link between association and injury; some athletes, it appears, choose to associate with pain and fatigue-related symptoms and end up pushing themselves too hard. Most successful elite marathon runners have been shown to combine associative and dissociative strategies when planning their thoughts. There are times, especially in races, when you need to be very aware of your own physical state and of events in the external environment. However, there are also times when you can plan to switch off and give yourself a break from the mental demands of competition or training. The best thing is to construct a plan with your coach, exercise leader or even a more experienced fellow athlete. Try to decide between you what is the best approach for you, and plan what you will be thinking about during the race or training sessions. For a 30-minute training run you might decide on cyclic phases of thinking- e.g. 10 minutes of body monitoring, 10 minutes of alphabet game, then more body monitoring to the end. Its all perfectly logical once you get started: you wouldnt leave your physical preparations to chance, so why allow your thoughts to crop up in random fashion.
Table 2 techniques for associative body monitoring Follow this three-stage plan:
Focus on your breathing: controlled, relatively deep rhythmic breathing is the key to relaxation. When you breathe out, try to imagine the tension leaving your body; 2. Try to remain relaxed while running (or cycling or swimming), but be aware of tension and fatigue in your muscles. Its often a good idea to start from the head and work down, giving each area or group of muscles your attention. If you notice tension, try to focus on a cue word, such as relax or easy and try to let the tension flow out of the muscles; 3. Keep your pace in line with the information you gain from body monitoring. You might, for example, increase the pace if you feel very positive. Repeat the monitoring constantly or, alternatively, take some time out for dissociation. You might also reinforce your mood by telling yourself how well you are doing and that you need to keep working hard and remain focused. 1.
Self-talk
When running, cycling or swimming for long periods of time, the mind can wander freely, if you let it. When this happens, your natural internal dialogue or self-talk becomes important. If your concentration does stray or your body monitoring detects fatigue, it is vital that your self-talk remains positive. The best thing is to avoid over-emotional self-talk and focus on selfinstructing, motivational content. To this end, you can plan and even rehearse what you are going to say to yourself beforehand, just like your might rehearse an important telephone call or lecture. The key is to stay positive even when the situation is less than ideal. This is not an easy feat to pull off and will take some time to master. The first step in this process is to become more aware of your thoughts during training and competition. If you want to gain more control over your thoughts, try to formulate a simple plan and try it out over a number of weeks during training. If you notice any undesirable patterns in your thinking, such as negative self-talk or loss of focus, you can try to combat these by planning more positive alternative thoughts. You can, for example, frame positive statements that you repeat to yourself regularly. Ideally, write these statements down and place them in prominent positions where you cant avoid seeing them. Work on recalling these statements when you become aware of negative thoughts or feelings. This might seem a little strange at first, but you are actually programming your brain to notice more positives and, over time, with will become a habit. Athletes often recall that their very best performances are accompanied by few thoughts, a feeling of complete control, effortless movements and a sense of being on automatic pilot. Sport psychologists often refer to this as a state of flow. The aspects of positive thinking and focus discussed in this article have been shown to increase the likelihood of achieving flow, although environmental factors can also be important. Dont leave your psychological preparation to chances. Remember that you control your thoughts, not the other way round. The way you think is strongly linked to the way you perform. So if you want to perform better, gain greater control and enjoy your sport more, start planning today because in this sphere the thoughts really do count.
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5. Encouragement:
How It Boosts Performance
Offering verbal encouragement to athletes attempting maximal effort is entirely instinctive. Indeed it is almost impossible to imagine a situation in which coaches, parents, fellow athletes and friends would stand silent on the sidelines, instead of shouting out such original motivators as: keep it going, go for it, push it and other such statements. But what evidence do we have that this form of verbal encouragement actually works? Very little, according to a team of US researchers, who decided to test the value of verbal encouragement in a controlled study. They explain: Although the use of encouraging statements is a ubiquitous feature of maximal exercise testing, few studies have examined the effects of frequency of encouragement on exercise performance. Those that havehave not provided sufficient procedural details to evaluate these effects. Furthermore, no study has systematically varied the frequency of verbal encouragement. The aim of this study was to determine the effects of frequency of verbal encouragement on exercise performance. A group of 28 students from Bloomsburg University of Pennsylvania (12 men and 16 women) performed a treadmill test designed to elicit a maximal effort in less than 12 minutes without any verbal encouragement. At the end of each three-minute exercise stage, ratings of perceived exertion (RPE) were recorded and blood samples taken. The test ended when the participant either attained V02max or became exhausted. The participants were then placed into one of four experimental groups, each matched for overall fitness, and performed a second exercise one week later. During this test, the control group received no verbal encouragement at all, while the other three groups received verbal encouragement ever 20, 60 and 180 seconds respectively, beginning with stage 3 of the exercise test i.e. after six minutes. Verbal encouragement consisted of a set of encouraging statement read from a prepared text. These statements, including Way to go!, Come on!, Good job!, Excellent!, Come on, push it!, Keep it up! and Lets go!, were rehearsed by the investigators beforehand, kept at a constant volume and accompanied by hand clapping. For each group, comparisons were made between the two tests for key variables, including relative VO2max, exercise time, blood lactate concentration, respiratory exchange ratio (RER) and ratings of perceived exertion (RPE), with the following results: 1. There were no significant differences between one test and the other for the control group (no verbal encouragement) and the 180E group (infrequent encouragement); 2. The second test values of the 60E group were significantly higher than their first test values for relative VO2max, blood lactate concentration, RER and RPE; 3. The second test values of the 20E group were significantly higher on all these measures and also for exercise time. The results suggest, conclude the researchers, that frequent verbal encouragement (every 20s and 60s in the present study) leads to significantly greater maximum effort in a treadmill test than when no encouragement is given or when the encouragement is infrequent Our results clearly show that verbal encouragement intended to increase a persons maximal effort has profound effects on performance. But what were the psychological mechanisms behind this increased maximal effort. The researchers, who can only speculate, offer several possible explanations: 1. Talking to the participants might have distracted them from the discomfort of the test and made it less aversive (the so-called dissociative strategy); 2. Some of the encouragement statements (e.g. Excellent! and Good job! can be seen as positive reinforcers, helping to maintain the running response; 3. Others (e.g. Come on!, Keep it up! and Lets go! resembled instructional commands, which might lead to greater response effort since most people have a history of following instructions; 4. Some of the statements might have acted as establishing operations, increasing the value of the stimuli that reinforce running on the treadmill (i.e. achieving a competitive goal, looking good, avoiding failure). The mechanisms by which these effects are mediated are clearly complex and should be addressed in future research, the researchers acknowledge.
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6. Mental strength:
When you can manage your emotions, you can perform at your best - George
Karseras, senior consultant at Sporting Bodymind, the UK's first sports psychology consultancy
At Sporting Bodymind we help our clients develop mental fitness. At the top level it is not your physical or technical expertise which separates you from the competition but your mental toughness. To be outstanding you have to hold your nerve, perform under the most intense pressure, and consistently turn it on even when you don't feel at your best. Mental toughness is what makes Michael Jordan and Pete Sampras so special. These athletes know their real battle is not so much on the court, but inside their heads. You absolutely must manage your mental side if you want to be the best. Given that mental strength is so vital, I find it truly amazing that it is so neglected in training routines. If you are one of those athletes who spends all your training time on technique and fitness while paying no attention to your mental side, you are doing yourself a serious disservice. We know from countless studies that mental skills are acquirable and you can, with practice, learn to perform mentally. You can improve your confidence, concentration, motivation and anxiety levels if you chose to. At Sporting Bodymind we show you how.
Individual work
You would go through three phases. First. you and I would gain as much of an understanding as possible of your situation by me asking you questions. I would need to know your goals, skills, experience, resources, background, any factors which are constraining you and any factors which are supporting you. My aim is to increase your self-awareness during this process, so that wherever possible you find the solutions and suggest changes yourself. The second phase is the strategy or intervention stage. Here, together, we formulate a strategy to reduce your constraints and increase your resources. This is a joint process, so that rather than me telling you what to do, we move forward together. Without buying into a programme you would be far less likely to stick to it. The interventions I would use would fall into two types, associative and analytic. Associative interventions such as visualisations and relaxation exercises use the right-hand side of the brain. Analytic interventions such as goal-setting and selftalk exercises use the left-hand side of the brain . We like to use a combination of both but we pay particular attention to associative exercises because more right-brain activity has been recorded in athletes during peak performances. The final phase is for me to provide you with support as you progress through your programme. In some situations such as you being irrational I would challenge you as well as offering you continuous encouragement.
Team approach
We start a team workshop with a "warm-up". We ask the team members to arrange themselves so that their "place" suits the purpose of our meeting. Usually we ask the team to sit in a circle of chairs so that the whole team can see each other, rather than focussing on us or the coach. Before discussing the purpose and agenda, team members would pay attention to themselves, then another person in the team, and then the team would perform some kind of team activity. At the end of the warm-up, the team has tuned into its team identity (what it is and what it can be) and is ready to achieve its potential.
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Our approach to teambuilding is based on our early work with Tottenham Football Club during the early 80's. We focus on the relationships which exist within the team system. A football team of 11 players has 55 different relationships. Any one of these relationships can affect someone else's performance. Our work increases team members' understanding of what they need from each other to perform at their best. We aim to increase team members self-awareness, their awareness of others, their awareness of how other members are different to them and their appreciation of these differences. Only when they have gone through these phases can they see their team colleagues as they really are are and not as they imagine them to be. Communication and change then become easier. We also teach team members the communication skills which enhance trust and respect. These are typically speaking, listening, questioning and feedback skills. The latter are probably the most important. We teach descriptive rather than evaluative feedback. This means that instead of saying something like, "you're a selfish player, you never pass the ball to me", we would ask Garth Crooks to say to Steve Archibald ,"during the last game I was in a scoring situation three times and each time you failed to pass to me. I get really frustrated when that happens". We encourage the latter way of talking because descriptions provide far more information than opinions. Also, Steve Archibald could not have argued that he did not pass the ball three times, but he could have argued that he was not a selfish player. Nor could he argue with the impact of frustration he had on his team-mate. Both events really happened. After receiving this type of feedback, Steve was more likely to change his behaviour. Whether you compete as an individual or as part of a team, your performance can be improved by practising your mental skills. If you do not work on your mental side, isn't it about time you started ?
Case study
Billy was a junior county rugby player who had tried several times to get into the England team without success. He came to see me with six weeks to go before a trial for the Under-18 team.
2 - Strategy
Billy's main constraints were his self-perception of his fitness, the exaggerated emphasis he was placing on the fitness test, his tendency to judge his own performance by the standards of his peers, the priority he was attaching to the physical and technical aspects of his game at the expense of the mental side, and the critical way he spoke to himself during his performances (which was draining his confidence). Supporting him was his commitment, his technical and physical skills, his experience of being in the trial situations and the supportive resources he had around him (parents, club and peers). Working together, we minimised his constraints. By conducting a self-assessment of the most important criteria required for trial success (physical, technical and mental) we developed a training strategy which realigned his training time more appropriately. This also served to put his fitness test into perspective as it was only one of17 criteria he had to satisfy. By increasing his fitness preparation Billy was able to improve his self confidence. By visually re editing past fitness failures with pictures of himself performing well in the test, Billy was also able to increase his fitness confidence. By mentally rehearsing the whole trial performance, Billy was able to increase his general levels of confidence. Together we conducted the gestalt therapy technique of the empty chair', which involved literally having a conversation with himself. As a result, Billy increased his selfawareness, becoming more conscious of his internal dialogue. Practising giving descriptive feedback in the moment (saying only how he was feeling or what he could see or hear) allowed him to move from imagining the future (which usually made him feel anxious) to paying attention to the present and with it what he needed to do in the moment (thereby increasing his efficacy). Billy also recorded insights and learning experiences in a journal which further increased his self-awareness. Billy began to maximise his resources by choosing to spend his time only with people who were supportive of him, and by channelling his drive and energy into our mental skills programme.
3 - Support
Billy saw me six times and worked extremely hard in between our sessions. I gave him encouragement to persevere with the programme as well as challenging him whenever appropriate. For example, when he said things like "everyone else is so relaxed and confident" I would say, "you imagine they are confident, but what exactly do you see or hear which suggests that they are?". Billy soon began to recognise the difference between reality and his interpretation of reality. With this followed a different emotional response and with it a different, more supportive behavioural response.
Outcome
Billy's ratings in seven out of his 17 criteria improved, with none decreasing. He reported feeling less anxious about his trial and more confident in his ability to perform well. At the trial itself he did exactly that. He even put himself forward to demonstrate a few skills which is something he has never done before. Ultimately Billy was successful in getting through to a core England team for the first time ever.
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7. Sports Psychology:
Why 'good enough' is actually better than perfect (and a lot more fun, too)
Child psychologist Bruno Bettelheim wrote an acclaimed book called A Good Enough Parent which stressed that in the age of fantasy concepts such as 'Superwoman', parents should concentrate on reality: they should accept that perfection in relationships within the family just doesn't exist and concentrate instead on being - well, good enough. It's a theme echoed by many sports psychologists and one of the most cogent expositions of the theme that we've come across recently is from Dr Patrick J Cohn. He works predominantly with golfers, but his comments apply to sportspeople of all disciplines. Many perfectionists I work with get stuck in a so-called practice or training mindset and find it difficult to develop 'game selfconfidence'. They are more comfortable in practice than in competition. When performing, expectations are so high that they become easily frustrated and can't have fun. If you are a perfectionist, here are my tips for playing with greater confidence.
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8. Mental Strength:
To improve your performance, you have to start by fortifying your mind Frank Horwill
A friend was in a cancer ward and his treatment involved going without food and water for eight weeks. He survived on a drip and lost three stone in weight. Around him other patients frequently died. It was a depressing period. Asked how he coped with tubes into and out of his stomach and down his throat he, replied: 'I start each day by saying 'I'm going to enjoy this day' and then I ask myself 'Whom can I help today?'' This is a good philosophy for all sportspeople to adopt. Nearly 40 years ago the great Australian runner Ron Clarke broke world records for two miles, three miles and six miles, and 3000 and 5000m, as well as the distance run in one hour. The 10,000m world record, however, had eluded him many times, and on one of his training runs by the sea, he was pondering why this was so when, in the distance, he heard much squealing and splashing coming from a rocky alcove. Out of curiosity he ran towards the scene and discovered a group of children lying on their backs in the shallow water and throwing a ball to each other. Then he noticed a row of collapsible wheel chairs. The children were all paralysed. He turned away from the scene and muttered to himself: 'What am I bothering about the 10,000m world record for?' Sporting performance should always be put into perspective. The word 'recreation' literally means recreating our mind and body. Because we can, we should. If we enjoy sport we will enjoy it more if we get better at it. Improving involves the allocation of time. Our lives revolve around the three eights - eight hours work, eight hours sleep, eight hours free time. Some of the free time is required for taking meals and for travelling to and from work. At the very least we can find one hour a day to practise our sport. When we choose that hour is our prerogative. The world's first sub-four-minute miler, Roger Bannister, was a medical student at St Mary's Hospital, Paddington. He chose to use his lunch hour for a 10-minute jog to Paddington track. There he ran 10 x 440yds in about 60secs with two minutes rest, then he ran back to work. The whole procedure took exactly 48 minutes, leaving him time for lunch. If you want to train for sport you can always fit it in somehow. We are at our physical peak in sport for about five years, although we may compete in one way or another for 25 years. This means that you should regard every training session - like every day - as a precious piece of your time. Regard it as an investment which will pay dividends in the future. The more we invest, the better our return.
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Derek Ibbotson disliked sprinting, and consequently he was outsprinted in many races. He decided to spend a winter with his club's sprint group in addition to maintaining his normal cross-country training. He became one of the fastest finishers ever in mile races. He also broke the world record for the mile.
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10. Winning:
The relevant question is not "Did you win?" but "Did you come up to your expectations?" - Bruce Tulloh
The greater the prizes in sport, the more emphasis there is on winning. The greater the emphasis on winning, the harder it is to be a loser. However, there is only one winner in, say, the Open golf championship or the Wimbledon men's singles. Does this mean that all the others are losers? Certainly not. Before we analyse the reasons for success and failure, we must define the terms. I will deal with distance running because that is the only sport in which I can claim detailed knowledge, but I am sure that my conclusions can be applied across the range of individual sports. Running is easier to analyse because performances are measurable and the sport itself is pretty simple. There is not a lot of skill in running it is mostly a matter of fitness and character. Losers and winners The loser is the person who produces great training performances but does not live up to them in races. The winner is the one whose performance under pressure is greater than you would expect from his training. The loser is the person who develops injuries and minor illnesses just before the big events. The winner is the person who copes with minor setbacks and still performs to his best when it matters. The loser is the person who looks very impressive when against familiar, weaker opposition but who cannot cope with the challenge of competing against those who are apparently better than him. The winner is the person who is not overawed by better opposition but rises to the challenge. The patterns can be seen more clearly in running than in almost any other sport because we have the times to go by. A few years ago I was running in a road race in Devon against a local athlete, let us call him Shanks, who was a little older than me and had always beaten me in my early years. On this occasion he had heard that I was off form, whereas in fact I had just been going through a hard training period. We had a really hard race and I broke my own course record, but he beat me by half a minute because he believed that he was better than me on that day. When it came to the next national event, I won and he was nowhere because he did not believe that he could perform well at that level. Shanks obviously had the physical ability but lacked the right mental approach.
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If the runner is worried about lack of endurance, the coach simply has to increase the volume of training and, in particular, the length of the longest run. When I was moving up from 5000m to 10,000m, I increased my long Sunday runs to 1820 miles, instead of 10-12, and I even ran in a 20mile race in April, so that when it came to running a mere six miles I knew that I could handle the distance.
Increasing aggression...
Man is a tribal animal. He is used to hierarchies or 'pecking orders'. Runners, like hens, tend to settle into accepted places within a group. If you are used to being in front and winning races, you will not be happy with anything else. If you have always been at the tail-end of a bunch of good runners, you may be improving physically but you will not have experienced the feeling of being in front, dominating the race. It is a good thing to run in fast races against better people to try to extend your limits, but it is also good to run in minor races which you can win, to get that winning feeling. It has been shown that testosterone levels rise after winning a race, so the 'winning streak' may become easier to maintain as it gets longer, and I would certainly advise a carefully chosen race programme before a championship event.
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Unfortunately, the flip side of this principle is that repeated failures can give rise to a downward performance spiral and a snowball effect whereby a performer starts to believe that success is unattainable. Of course, such an athlete does not mysteriously lose his or her physical skills and talents, but without confidence in these abilities high-level performance is rarely achieved. The implication of Banduras work for coaches is that it is vital for them to make sure their athletes achieve success, even if this means renegotiating overly ambitious goals. The athletes perceptions are of overriding importance. Research has suggested that athletes can also gain confidence from viewing the successful performances of others at a similar level. This second source of information is known as modelling or vicarious experience. For example, a tennis player lacking confidence in her volleying might find it useful to have a peer who has overcome similar difficulties demonstrate the skill. By viewing others, we begin to see that, with effort, success is attainable. The very common use of celebrities in fitness videos is an example of modelling.
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A third way for coaches to help build confidence is through verbal persuasion. By means of careful reasoning, athletes can be shown that other people (ie the coach) have confidence in their abilities and believe they can achieve set goals. Coaches may even use deception to persuade their athletes that goals can be achieved of which more later. Verbal persuasion can also take the form of self-talk, whereby the athlete convinces himself that success will follow. Finally, Bandura suggest that emotional arousal can influence confidence. Although this is the least influential factor, it is important that physiological symptoms are perceived positively rather than negatively. Confidence can be enhanced by perceiving increases in heart and respiration rate as the bodys natural preparation for top performance rather than as triggers for anxiety. Clearly, confidence is enhanced by good preparation, planning and a sense of optimism. Conversely, negative thinking and pessimism can undermine performance and limit progress. By expecting failure, we set our belief system to a negative channel and start favouring information that is consistent with these beliefs. During a training session we may have done some things well and struggled with others. When we have a negative mind-set we tend to focus only on the things that went badly, leading to what psychologists call negative self-fulfilling prophecies and psychological barriers. The four-minute mile was the classic example of a psychological barrier; runners were consistently achieving times of 4:03, 4:02 and 4:01, but no one could apparently run under four minutes. This led to a common perception that running a mile in less than four minutes was physically impossible. Remarkably, though, within 18 months of Roger Bannisters famous breakthrough 16 other athletes had managed the feat. Did these athletes suddenly get faster and train harder? No: the floodgates opened because Bannister had breached the psychological barrier and demonstrated what was possible, so athletes were no longer limited by their beliefs.
The power of hypnosis how thoughts can spur you on or hold you back
Often we are capable of far more than we do, but we restrict ourselves by our beliefs. Can you identify any thoughts that are holding you back? Hypnotists work with this system by planting beliefs in our minds which our bodies will automatically follow. In one study, hypnotised participants were unable to lift a pen after being told it was too heavy to be lifted. Clearly they were physically capable of lifting the pen but for some reason were unable to perform the task. Psychologists studying electrical activity in their biceps and triceps found that the participants were unconsciously contracting their triceps muscles and working against the biceps to restrict movement. It appears that there is a strong unconscious drive for our bodies to react consistently with our beliefs. The question most interesting to sport psychologists is whether beliefs can be positively manipulated to enhance performance. The fact that expectations influence performance has been demonstrated in controlled experiments and case studies. In medical settings, giving patients a sugar pill (placebo) and telling them it is morphine has been found, in some cases, to produce as much pain relief as the real thing. Deception has been used in similar ways in sporting studies. In one, 24 participants had their arms strength-tested and were then asked to arm-wrestle an opponent. Before each match, the researchers deceived both participants into believing that the objectively weaker participant was actually the stronger and in 10 out of 12 contests, the weakest link actually won! Clearly, the outcomes were not predicted by physical strength but by belief. Similar results were obtained from three experiments that manipulated the beliefs of weight-lifters (6,7,8). In each study, researchers first ascertained participants one repetition-maximum (1RM) for the bench press. After a rest period, the participants performed further lifts when they were deceived into thinking the weights were either heavier or lighter than they actually were. Remarkably, in all three studies participants lifted more weight when they thought they were lifting less. Deception allowed the participants to improve their 1RMs an effect that was probably due to their (false) belief that they had already lifted the weight in question. Although deception appeared less effective with experienced weight-lifters, performance increases were still noted. Another interesting study showed that expectations could influence perceptions of effort . Forty female participants performed a cycle ride at 80% of their maximum oxygen consumption after viewing one of two videos depicting similar others performing the task. One depicted the task as strenuous but involved a woman who was coping; the other showed a woman who was clearly finding the task difficult and distressing. Participants who viewed the distressed subject gave significantly higher ratings of perceived exertion (RPE) during the ensuing ride. It is likely that viewing the distressing images made these participants expect the task to be harder and selectively attend to physiological cues (ie fatigue) that were consistent with these beliefs. So how can coaches and athletes use this information to expect success and build confidence? I am not suggesting that coaches should deceive their athletes in pursuit of this goal, as this can backfire and damage trust, but Banduras model (see Figure 1) does provide many other answers to this question. Nothing breeds confidence like success (performance accomplishments), so
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coaches must nurture their athletes by ensuring success in training and competition, which in some cases may mean redefining success or making it more achievable. Success can be defined in two ways: in relation to others or in relation to an athletes own past performance. If a marathon runner, for example, measures success only in terms of objective outcome, coming third may be perceived as failure and so damage confidence. But if the same runner measures success in relation to his own performance and notes that his finish time was over a minute faster than his PB, the perception is quite different. Athletes have more control over performance goals than outcome goals. During training, coaches may need to work with their athletes on perceived weaknesses. To ensure success and build confidence they might simplify the skill or skills in question. Think about a person who decides she cannot do press-ups after a negative circuit training experience. To build confidence, the instructor may show the participant a simpler form of the activity (eg pressups on knees) and allow strength (and success) to be built up over the next few weeks. As the athlete gains confidence, the instructor can work towards introducing the full press-up into the circuit. As a series of goals are steadily accomplished, performance and confidence are built. Simulated practice conditions can also be used to boost confidence by exposing the participant to performance conditions. In this way an athlete can develop confidence from the knowledge that he has overcome problems in practice. Mental preparation via competitive situation imagery is a particularly useful technique. It is vital for athletes to know that their coaches believe in them. Although coaching often involves correcting mistakes and giving constructive criticism, it is important to give positive feedback and praise where appropriate in order to create a positive pre-competition environment. Confidence does not always mean you will perform at your best, but it certainly increases the likelihood of reaching your potential. Remember that confidence can be nurtured. Outstanding performers like Jonny Wilkinson are not simply born with confidence; they develop it through hard work and effective training. The start point is challenging yourself to think confidently. If you believe you can win, you become a very difficult person to beat.
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12. Goal setting: One step at a time: How to raise your game through effective goal-setting - Lee
Crust Anyone interested in athletics will be aware of the achievements of the US 200m and 400m sprinter Michael Johnson. In the course of a spectacular career, Johnson rewrote the record books when he became the only man ever to win both 200m and 400m Olympic gold medals, at the 1996 Olympics. At times he was, quite literally, in a class of his own. However, according to the man himself, his achievements were based not purely on talent but on hard physical conditioning, mental strength, a clear vision of where he wanted to go, and a plan of how to get there. Michael Johnsons book Slaying the Dragon is not just a record of his achievements but an insight into how one man mobilised his extraordinary talent through effective goal-setting. Not everyone has the talent to be a Michael Johnson, but anyone can achieve significant improvements in performance by means of effective goal-setting. Many people associate goal-setting with new year resolutions, and are quick to dismiss goal-setting as ineffective, since most well-intentioned, if vague, resolutions have failed before the end of January. Lets get one thing clear straight away: most such resolutions are perfect examples of how not to set goals! Research on goal-setting in the worlds of business and in sport and exercise has consistently shown that it can lead to enhanced performance. In fact, a recent meta-analysis (statistical technique used to evaluate the data from a whole series of experiments) showed that goal-setting led to performance enhancement in 78% of sport and exercise research studies, with moderate to strong effects. Goal-setting is a powerful technique that appears to work by providing a direction for our efforts, focusing our attention, promoting persistence and increasing our confidence (providing we achieve the goals we set ourselves). But, while goal-setting is an easy concept to understand, its application needs more thought and planning than most people realise. One of the main problems is that not all coaches are aware of the principles of goal-setting and how to apply them effectively. So a key purpose of this article is to give coaches and athletes a better understanding of how to use goal-setting to enhance performance and avoid disappointments. Its always good to have a vision of what you want to achieve whether this is related to fitness, weight loss, winning an Olympic medal or achieving a set standard of performance; but you also need a plan for how you are going to attain this goal. Dream goals inspire us and give us a target to aim for, but in order to deliver the goods they must be specific and realistic. Most new year resolutions are dream goals that will never be realised because people fail to plan realistically the day-to-day process required to make such dreams into reality. If you only focus on your dream goal, you can easily become overwhelmed when you think about what its going to take to achieve it. Research suggests that focusing only on long-term dream goals does not lead to enhanced performances.
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In the planning stages of a goal-setting programme, you should think carefully about factors that may hinder your progress. For example, most people set goals that are too difficult rather than too easy, which commonly leads to the rejection of those goals. Once rejected, the goals no longer direct our efforts or our focus. It is also important to avoid setting too many goals. Instead, focus on one dream goal, perhaps two or three intermediate targets and two short-term goals for todays session. Thats enough to start with, but be sure to give your short-term goals the highest priority. Through achieving these you will naturally progress towards the intermediate targets. I recently set myself a goal of reducing my resting heart-rate from 75 to 65 bpm. In order to achieve this, I decided to chose an exercise mode that I enjoy (jogging) and to exercise three times per week over the next six months. As my fitness increases and my resting heart rate becomes lower, I will adjust the frequency, intensity and duration of training to suit my needs. However, I initially identified one major barrier to the achievement of my goal time. My work schedule means that I have little time to spare during the day, while in the evening I often feel tired and want to relax. Because I value my fitness goal, the way around this problem has been to get up early on two days a week and to run before my working day starts. At the weekend I am more flexible and can make time for exercise during the day. The point is clear: you must consider potential barriers to your goals and plan around them if possible. If you can see no way around your barriers, your targets may be unrealistic. You should always evaluate your goals, and charting your progress can be an effective way to do this and to boost your confidence and motivation as you see progress being made. Goal-setting is a smart move for athletes who want to develop their self-confidence, increase their levels of motivation and achieve higher standards of performance. Remember that time spent in preparation is worth it and can prevent disappointments. Take the advice of athletes like Michael Johnson and use goal-setting to change small steps into great feats. To help remember the key principles of goal-setting you need to think SMARTER. That is, your goals should be: Specific - Indicate precisely what is to be done. Avoid vague alternatives; Measurable - You should be able to quantify your goal; Accepted - Goals must be accepted as worthwhile, realistic and attainable; Recorded - Write your goals down. This is the basis of a contract with yourself; Time-constrained - Set specific time-limits; Evaluated - Monitor your progress regularly; Reversible - In the event of injury, or failure to achieve over-difficult goals, reset your goals accordingly.
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