Many athletes incorporate visualisation (imagery) into their training programs and their preparation for competition.

Usually visualisation involves athletes using their minds to “imagine” (visualise) situations and how they would or should manage those situations when faced with them in real life.

For example, an athlete training for the Olympic Games might visualise the sights and sounds of the Olympic final so that they become familiar with that performance setting.

Visualisation can be a powerful tool in athlete preparation but what about using Visualisation to improve your coaching?

Coaching and Visualisation….See the Coach You Want to Be.

So what is Visualisation (or Imagery)?

Every body dreams.

Everyone has an imagination.

Everyone has laid back in their bed and dreamed about becoming a “Jedi-Knight” or a Formula One racing driver or a world famous actor or of scoring the winning goal in the World Cup Final or winning the lottery. Dreaming and imagining what could be is something all us humans do.

Visualisation is using the power of your own imagination to see, feel and experience something in your mind without actually experiencing it.

So why is this important?

Success or failure in sport is often determined by experience.

Experience is prized above all other things by recruitment agencies, HR departments and other sporting leaders who hire and fire coaches.

Experience, i.e. having proven that you can do the job is what job interviews, job descriptions and sports recruitment is all about.

The problem is that often you don’t get the actual experience you need until after you need it!

How many times have you coached athletes who have failed at their first attempt to win an important race due to their lack of experience at that level of competition?

How many times have you seen teams fall at the final hurdle due to a lack of experience of performing at their best in important games.

Experience is a determining factor of success in every sport and every field of endeavour.

Yet, for many athletes, coaches and teams, you only get one chance: only one opportunity to realise your dreams.

What is needed is a way to live the experience, to feel the experience, to “see” the experience without actually doing it so that you are prepared to manage the emotion of moment when it comes for real.

And that’s where visualisation comes in. You can see it before you have to be it.

Visualisation – how to do it: Making it real.

First of all, learning to visualise is not a big deal. You don’t need to spend a lot of time and money learning how to do it: after all, it is just tapping into the power of imagination that we all have but have lost touch with.

But, the key to doing it effectively is making it real, i.e. making it seem and feel real.

Mastering visualisation means arriving at the big game or the big race or the major event with the calm, composed, confidence that only experience can provide.

Before you commence your visualisation session, do your homework. Talk to people who have experienced the event or game you are targeting and which will be the focus of your visualisation practice.

If possible, get a video of other games, other races and other events held in the competition venue where you and your athletes will be performing. If you can, go to the competition venue, look around, sit in the change-rooms, walk around the warm-up area etc. Take some deep breaths and immerse yourself in the environment where you and your athletes will be facing the mental skill to learn and master.

Find a nice quiet place and relax. A simple way to relax is to concentrate on deep, slow breathing. A great guide for relaxing breathing is to aim for 5 breaths in one minute by breathing in for a four count, breathing out for a four count and just remaining still and relaxed for a four count before breathing in again (i.e. 12 seconds per breath cycle).

After one minute (i.e. 5 in and an out breaths), begin imagining the situation, the settings, the sights, the sounds and the smells of the target of your visualisation.

Imagine every aspect of the event. The noise. The competition arena. The crowd. Experience the entire experience in your mind.

Here are some practical Coaching Visualisation Exercises for you to try:

1. If you are in a competition with a “finals” series and your team is knocked out and doesn’t make the finals, use Coaching Visualisation to imagine what you would do if your team had actually made the finals. How would you plan your week ? How would you select your players? How would prepare for each training session? How would you address the players before they run out for the big game? Spend time visualising how you would coach at your best during the finals series and then next season, when you have to do it for real, you will have no surprises and perform magnificently;
2. If you have a big event coming up and you need to be calm, composed, clear and confident for your athletes, try some visualisation. Imagine yourself on the sideline or in the coaching box. See yourself as being calm and composed. Feel your body language as being positive and powerful. See your athletes performing and imagine how you will respond, i.e. with clarity and confidence.

Summary:

1. Experience is such a precious commodity in sport, that it make sense to try and find ways of fast tracking it and gaining the experience you need before you actually need it;
2. Visualisation (imagery) has long been a tool that athletes have used to help them see and feel the competition environment prior to the actual competition to help them deal with the stress and anxiety which often undermines successful performance;
3. However, visualisation (imagery) is just as effective with coaches who, with a little patience and a little practice can use visualisation techniques and their imaginations to learn, grow and win when they need to win.

So give Coaching by Visualisation a Try: See the Coach You Want to Be.

Wayne Goldsmith

© 2011, Wayne Goldsmith. All rights reserved.

Related posts:

1. Sports Psychology: Integrating Mental Skills Training in Effective Coaching. We all agree that developing mental skills is an essential...

Motivation is something many coaches talk about.

Some read about it and try to learn the secrets of motivation in a bid to help their athletes achieve the impossible.

Others spend money on motivational speakers to try and motivate their athletes through a passionate team talk or an explosive, emotional pre-performance presentation.

Others attend courses, go to workshops and enrol in mental skills programs to learn the mysteries of motivation.

Coaches….don’t waste your time and money.

No one can motivate anyone to do anything.

You need to understand Motivation and Coaching.

Motivation and Coaching: Understanding Motivation.

Motivation is desire. It is the “fire” that fuels great performances, outstanding victories, persistence, perseverance, determination and drive.

It is the explanation for why some athletes have a winning “attitude”.

It is the rationale behind “mental-toughness”.

It is the strength and the character that allows athletes to overcome adversity, setbacks, disappointments, injuries and non-selections.

It is the seemingly endless energy driving athletes to complete even the toughest, most challenging and most exhausting workouts.

Motivation is the cornerstone of success for every great athlete and every great athletic achievement.

Coaches constantly seek the magic pill or the miracle ingredient or the breakthrough technique to motivate their athletes and it is all a waste of time: you can’t motivate anyone to do anything. And besides….motivation is not your job.

Motivation and Inspiration: There is a difference.

What most people think is motivation, i.e. the motivational speaker talking about money, power, success and glory is actually inspiration.

The two can work together, i.e. you can be inspired to change your behaviours to help you realise a dream, but there is a difference.

Inspiration is something that comes the outside: from listening to another person or being involved in an event or through observing something which triggers an emotional response.

Motivation, however, comes from within. Motivation is a fire: a fire which is ignited by a dream and discover their own motivation: to find their “fire”.

It is the coach’s role to inspire athletes to feel confident in themselves and to feel empowered to let their “fire” free.

Motivation is a powerful ally for coaches and an important aspect of successful coaching.

How do you help athletes find their Motivation?

Simply: do nothing.

Just watch. And listen. And observe.

Motivated athletes stand out like a street light at midnight in winter.

The athlete who arrives early to help set up the training environment.

The football player who stays behind to help clean up the gym.

The swimmer who, at the end of a hard training set asks the coach for more.

The field hockey player who encourages her team mates every time they try something new.

The basketballer who asks the facility manager to leave the lights on for another five minutes so they can practice 20 more free throws before they leave.

Motivation will, given the opportunity, express itself….if you allow it to.

Subtle Coaching: The path to Motivation.

Too many coaches over-coach in a bid to motivate their team. They believe that the key to motivation lies in constantly talking, “psyching-up” and providing a high energy, high enthusiasm coaching environment.

Motivation does not work like that: in fact, it’s just the opposite.

Try, giving your athletes some free time. Tell them, “Hey guys, you can do whatever you like for the next 30 minutes. Work on an aspect of your performance that you enjoy”. Then stand back and watch them.

People, by their nature, given free time, will do the things they love to do, which are for the most part, the things they are also good at: their strengths.

Watch what your athletes do during their free time. Chances are, they will go straight to their strengths and in doing so provide you with a doorway to their dreams and a window to their motivations.

Know thy Athletes.

Every coach needs to get to know his / her athletes.

Try scheduling a five minute one on one session with a member of your team before each training session and another five minute “one on one” with another athlete after each training session. Over a few weeks, you can arrange to spend some quality one on one time with everyone in your team. Talk with them about school, family, their life, their dreams, their concerns, their favourite movies – anything – just get to know them and to understand what it is that fuels their preparation and performance.

Because motivation comes from the inside, it is by nature a personal thing.

The key to better understanding what motivates your athletes is to get to know them as human beings.

Summary:

Motivation is like digging for gold: it can be difficult to find but if you persevere and persist until you find it, the rewards are immeasurable.

Coaches cannot motivate athletes: rather coaches must seek to provide the environment and opportunity for athletes to discover what it is that motivates them as individuals.

However, if coaches understand their athletes and what it is that motivates their athletes, great things are possible.

Wayne Goldsmith

© 2011, Wayne Goldsmith. All rights reserved.

Related posts:

1. Motivation….aint no such thing By Wayne Goldsmith Coaches are always talking about motivation and some...
2. Engagement and Coaching: The Key to Success Engagement is the key to creating and sustaining a winning...
3. The Magic Moment: When a Coach makes a Difference. “We do not remember days, we remember moments.” (Cesare Pavese)...

“We do not remember days, we remember moments.”

(Cesare Pavese)

Do you remember the moment when you were a teenager and Dad or Mom told you to “save money and think about your future”?

You didn’t listen did you.

And remember the moment when you were 18 and some relative told you to “work hard and make something of yourself”?

Ignored them didn’t you.

Life is full of these moments when people, with all good intentions, give you some advice which they think will inspire you to change your life and become all you can be.

And how many times have you told an athlete “make the most of every training session and make the most of your opportunities”?

And they didn’t listen.

So, what makes people listen to the right advice? How do you engage and inspire the hearts and minds of athletes and have them grasp every session, every minute, every moment as if it was their last?

The Magic Moment: When a Coach makes a Difference.

Frustration!

Without doubt the most frustrating times for a coach are when talented athletes, or any athletes for that matter, do not perform to their full potential.

Even worse, is when the coach knows, or at least believes, that the reason why the athlete has not performed to their full potential is due to an error or mistake or flaw in their own coaching. That somehow there was some way to have touched the heart of the athlete, inspired their mind and challenged their soul and magically, miraculously the athlete turned it all around to become all they could be.

The Magic Moment – it was never yours to begin with!

As a coach you are looking to deliver the right information to the right athlete at the right moment: the Magic Moment. The moment when the athlete is as ready to hear the message as you are to give it. That moment when you and your coaching made all the difference.

Knowing coaches the world over, you are always ready for the moment. You live for those moments.

And that’s the problem.

Its not your moment – it never was: it’s the athlete’s.

You can’t hurry magic.

Ever heard the song, “You can’t hurry love?”.

It goes:

You can’t hurry love.

You just have to wait.

You know love don’t come easy.

It’s a game of give and take.

The Magic Moment is like this. You can’t hurry athletes to be ready to listen to the message any more than your parents or relatives could have forced you to save money or study hard or believe in yourself: you have to be ready to deliver the message when the athlete is ready to hear it.

The Motivation Myth

Motivational speaking is a thriving business. And most of it is a waste of time and money.

Motivation is a myth: or at least the belief that someone with big teeth, a nice suit and some snappy sayings like “If you believe you can or believe you can’t, you are right” can walk into a room and motivate people to do something is a myth….that is unless the people in the room were ready to be motivated.

You can yell, you can scream, you can threaten, you can bribe, you can jump up and down wearing a clown suit, you can come up with all the slogans and sayings known to mankind, you can do whatever you want to but a motivation talk without the Magic Moment is just hot air.

So how do you know when the Magic Moment has arrived?

Sometimes the Magic Moment comes like a bolt of lightning. An athlete will walk up to you and say, “Coach, I want to be the best. Can you help me get to the top?”.

Sometimes it is a subtle thing and the Magic Moment evolves out of series of little changes in behaviour. The athlete arrives early for training and starts warming up without any instructions. Or they stay back to do a little extra training without being asked to. Or they do 11 repetitions in the gym when they were supposed to be doing 10.

And sometimes the Magic Moment just emerges in an unexpected situation like sitting next to an athlete on the bus and in the course of conversation they say, “I would like to break the world record coach. I dream about it sometimes. But I have never felt able to talk to you about it”.

No matter when, where, why or how the Magic Moment presents itself….be ready for it.

Coaches don’t get older…..they just get better at knowing when to use the Magic Wand!

I recently had breakfast with two of the greatest coaches I have ever known with over 80 years collective experience at international level coaching. We were discussing – you guessed it – coaching and I asked one of them why they had been so successful for so long.

He replied, “I believe you take out of coaching what you took into it. You have a box of tricks, skills and abilities that are part of who you are and what you believe. When you begin coaching, you throw everything you have at every athlete every day the same way. It’s tiring. It’s frustrating and it just does not work. 

After a while you learn that by saying or doing the right thing at the right moment, you can make a real difference to the life of an athlete. As you get more experienced you just get better at identifying that moment”.

So here’s a challenge.

Look at your own athletes.

Write down their names.

And write next to their names two things:

1. How will you recognise when their “Magic Moment” has arrived and:
2. What will you say and do when it does?

Share your Magic Moments with us here at the ‘Brain.

Wayne Goldsmith

© 2011, Wayne Goldsmith. All rights reserved.

Related posts:

1. Coaching and Visualisation (Imagery): See the Coach You Want to Be. Visualisation (imagery) is a technique which many high performance athletes...

We all agree that developing mental skills is an essential part of being a successful athlete.

The ability to perform under pressure, the capacity to remain confident and resilient when competition conditions get tough, the skill to be able to relax and stay focused when feeling pain and fatigue in competition, concentration, visualization……coaches and athletes are unanimous that spending time developing mental skills is time well spent.

However, figuring out the best way to develop mental skills – particularly mental skills which can directly enhance the competition performance of athletes is another matter.

We all think working with a Sports Psychologist is a good idea but Sports Psychologists are like life partners……we know that having one is probably a good idea but it is next to impossible to find a good one.

Psychology is a relatively young profession and sports psychology is even more in its relative infancy. However, the potential impact of working with a mental skills professional who can successfully integrate a winning mind with a winning body is enormous.

Now let’s be honest. The relationship between coaches and sports psychologists has been as bumpy as an old country dirt road. There is fault on both sides.

Coaches have believed that the development of mental skills has been their exclusive domain and that they are responsible for enhancing the mental skills of their athletes.

Sports psychologist in general, until recently, also feel they have the exclusive rights to mental skills development.

And to make matters worse, sports psychologists have often operated behind closed doors (understandable considering the need for privacy, confidentiality and professional ethical behaviour standards) which has led to coaches mistrusting sports psychologists.

Clearly, the smartest thing to do is to look at the overall performance environment and create an integrated, cohesive, open, transparent partnership between the athlete, the coach and the sports psychologist.

In recent years, there has been an emergence of life coaches, performance coaches and others who offer their services to athletes and coaches promising improved performance through enhanced mental skills.

Without getting into a debate on semantics with the sports psychology professional membership associations, let’s refer to anyone who works with athletes to enhance their mental skills to improve their performance as a mental skills professional.

So where is this heading? How can coaches and athletes best utilise the knowledge, skills and experience of mental skills professionals to enhance the performance of athletes in training and competition?

1. Get them off “the couch”- Whilst there are no doubt times where the need for privacy and confidentiality is critical, most of the time, mental skills professionals - like all sports scientists who want to make an impact on performance - need to be at the coal face working with athletes and coaches at training. Get them off the couch, get them out of the office and get them down to the court, the gym, the pool and the track;
2. No secrets: it’s a performance partnership - there is no room for ego in high performance sport. Everyone needs to be working together as equals in a performance partnership with a common goal: to help each athlete realise their full potential;
3. Think differently about thinking differently – change the way you think about integrating a mental skills professional into your program. Only a small percentage of the mental skills industry is dealing with mental illness – the vast majority of the industry is about enhancing performance, improving thinking processes and maximising potential. The only thing crazy about mental skills and sport is not using someone to help you enhance them!
4. Work side by side: be inclusive – What’s stopping a tennis coach from hitting balls from one end of the court, while a mental skills professional works with the athlete at the other end of the court? Think of the benefits of having a mental skills professional out on the field with a football coach suggesting ways of enhancing the learning environment of players executing drills and skills? Imagine the advantages of incorporating a mental skills professional in gym work to help athletes with focus, concentration and visualisation techniques during actual training sessions? To get the best out of mental skills professionals….Integrate – Incorporate – Include.
5. Coaches need coaches - there is no doubt that the faster coaches can accelerate their own rate of learning and development, the faster they can accelerate the rate of learning and development of their athletes. Having a mental skills professional working alongside coaches and helping to understand coaching, communication and themselves is a brilliant way to learn, grow and improve.

The smart integration of a mental skills professional into your coaching program can give both coaches and athletes a real performance edge.

Find someone who is well trained, experienced and qualified to do the job you want them to do but most importantly, find someone who can work as a partner in your performance program, someone who will respect the coach as a fellow sports performance professional and someone who is prepared to learn as much as they are prepared to teach.

Wayne Goldsmith

© 2011, Wayne Goldsmith. All rights reserved.

Related posts:

1. Sports Skills: The 7 Skills Steps You Must Master in Every Sport. Every coach, every athlete, every media commentator and every fan...
2. Coaching and Mental Toughness There have been many attempts to define and measure mental...
3. Teaching Skills – A Performance Focused Approach to Teaching Skills. What’s the difference between learning sports skills to play sport...

Want to know about the latest breakthrough in thinking in sport?

Want to learn about how to coach more effectively and get more out of every training session?

Want to hear how to enhance the performance of your athletes?

Here it is: the latest thing – Psycho-physiology (more specifically sports psycho-physiology): The way forward in successful coaching and sports performance.

And guess what?

This revolutionary breakthrough in sports performance is so new that it has only been around for 5000 years…..

What is Sports Psycho-Physiology?

Sports Psycho-physiology (and let me be the first to introduce the inevitable acronym SPP) is a fancy name for the integration of mind and body in the effective training, preparation and performance strategies of athletes. It is about helping athletes to perform better through using their mind and body in harmony in training and competition.

Everything old is new again: Psycho-physiology through the ages.

Before someone steps up and writes a book claiming to be the guru of sports psycho-physiology and that they invented it, this stuff has been around for a long, long time. The Ancient Greeks, the Romans, the Chinese and many other great civilizations all have written about, spoken about and lived the integrated mind-body philosophy.

So it has been around for a long time, but only now are coaches and athletes starting to think about how to apply psycho-physiology to enhancing the effectiveness of training and preparation for sports competition.

The only three really new things about (sports) psycho-physiology are:

1. Sports scientists and coaches are finally waking up to the understanding that you can’t train the body without simultaneously training the mind IF you want to achieve optimal results;
2. We now have the techniques and the technologies where we can measure the changes in the brain that occur through the introduction of mind-body integration techniques, e.g. CBT, mindfulness, meditation;
3. We have finally got to the point where we can integrate (sports) psycho-physiology in the Daily Athlete Training Environment (D.A.T.E.) through smart coaching.

What is being done in (Sports) Psycho-Physiology?

There is a lot of exciting work being done around the world in this “new” breakthrough area: here are just three examples:

1. In the field of cardio-vascular disease, researchers are looking more and more at the physiological impact of mental and emotional stresses and mental illness, e.g. anxiety, bi-polar disorder and depression. As a result, we now better understand how mental and emotional states can effect the body (e.g. changes in heart rate, blood pressure, adrenalin levels and platelet formation) all of which has enormous implications for competitive sport;
2. Researchers are looking closely at the impact of introducing mental skills training techniques like “mindfulness”into training programs including measuring pre (mindfulness) / post (mindfulness) performance of athletes with fMRI technology;
3. Many professional teams are using psycho-physiology by measuring brain wave activity as one indicator of over-training, over-reaching and fatigue.

It all adds to up to one thing…………Sports Psycho-Physiology is here and it promises to be bigger (and better) than Pilates, Swiss Balls and Creatine Supplements - the difference being….psycho-physiology actually works!!!

So What does this mean to Athletes.

For athletes, SPP offers unlimited potential for enhanced performance. Traditionally we have prepared athletes for the most part from a physiological standpoint: speed, strength, endurance, power, agility, flexibility…..and then sent them out to “battle” in great physical shape. The “mental” side of preparation we have left to a few war crys, the pre-match psyche up and the ubiquitous (but generally useless) motivation speech. We have laboured under the misguided view that getting the body ready is enough.

However, this is the equivalent of strapping a Ferrari engine to a bicycle frame! An athlete who is well prepared physically but who does not possess an understanding of how to integrate their mind and their “Ferrari engine” together in training and competition can not realise their full potential.

So for athletes…..you have the best ever opportunity to see your dreams become reality.

What does it mean for Coaches.

The key for coaches is to integrate SPP into their training and preparation environments by the addition of a mental component in their planning, periodisation and exercise prescription.

So, in practical terms, it means adding a mental element to every training set, every skill practice routine, every fitness activity: to change your programming tools from just volume, intensity and frequency to volume, intensity, frequency AND a mental factor.

Once you make this fundamental philosophical step of incorporating a mental aspect into your physical training routines and practices your coaching will achieve new heights. 

(Watch for a future post: Programming with Sports Psycho-physiology).

What does it mean for Sporting Institutions, Universities, Academies, Coach Educators etc. 

 For sporting institutions, the Sports Psycho-physiology revolution means four things:

1. Integration- of physiology and psychology resources, staff, research and departments;
2. Innovation - solving performance problems which incorporate mind / body solutions;
3. Inspiration – seeing this new direction as a limitless opportunity to find performance breakthroughs through integrated research, different thinking and as an incredible opportunity to help athletes and coaches achieve new levels of excellence;
4. Illumination - changing the way we educate coaches about sports science right from their first day in the coach education system.

The Silo System is Dead.

Now that the “silo” (i.e. single discipline, reductionist) approach to applying sports science to athlete and coach performance is finally being seriously challenged around the world, more and more of these “inter-disciplinary” breakthroughs will emerge….

So what’s the next inter-disciplinary breakthrough likely to be?

Bio-physiology:(i.e. bio-mechanics and physiology): Imagine what we could achieve by integrating the fields of bio-mechanics and physiology so that when we make a change to an athlete’s technique or skills, we simultaneously consider the impact on physiological efficiency, energy cost, oxygen dynamics etc. 

Psycho-mechanics: (i.e. psychology and bio-mechanics): Imagine what we could achieve if we incorporated a mental component into bio-mechanics so that when we work on improving, changing and enhancing an athlete’s technique, we also include things like relaxation, flow, feeling, focus, concentration and mindfulness. 

Now that the shackles of the single discipline silo approach to sports science have been removed, so too have the limits to human performance.

Question….Where will it end?

Answer….It wont!

Wayne Goldsmith

© 2011, Wayne Goldsmith. All rights reserved.

Related posts:

1. Coaching and Mental Toughness There have been many attempts to define and measure mental...
2. Coaching and Visualisation (Imagery): See the Coach You Want to Be. Visualisation (imagery) is a technique which many high performance athletes...
3. Coaching the Uncoachables Coaching the Un-coachables is what coaching is really all about....

World Cup Final Day.

The team gathers in the locker room.

This is an intense, high pressure environment that few experience and even fewer survive.

A former player – one of the nation’s greatest – walks into the change room. There is a respectful hush as he starts to speak.

He talks about pride.

He talks about spirit.

He talks about commitment – about attitude.

He talks about winning - the history of the nation at the world cup.

With tears in his eyes he begins to recite the names of the great players who have gone before.

He asks players to stand and link arms and to join him in the national anthem.

He has done a great motivational talk.

This is the perception many people have about the word motivation as it applies to high performance sport: a one off emotion charged lecture from a professional speaker or motivator or sports psychologist.

Effective motivation is not a one off talk by a high powered speaker.

It is not the promise of a present or gift or bag of money.

It is not a single temporary burst of emotion.

Effective Motivation is a lifestyle. Motivated people live a lifestyle where they are motivated to achieve excellence in everything they do. Every task, every activity, every challenge is an opportunity to set a goal, to try something new and to achieve.

Try this simple exercise.

Have several athletes sit together before their next training session. Ask them to perform a simple task – making a paper plane. Demonstrate how you would like them to make the plane.

Now give them three minutes to perform the task and observe the athletes performing their task.

Some athletes will fold the paper so that it looks roughly like the demonstration version. Others will fold and bend the paper so that it is identical in most ways to the demonstration version but with small variations in the shape and size of the folds here and there.

Perhaps one athlete will ensure that every fold is even and smooth. They will make certain that the left and right sides of the plane are balanced and symmetrical. They may even put in a couple of extra folds on the wing to try and make a more advanced design.

And that’s the attitude coaches and athletes should aim to foster – the attitude to do every task – regardless of its nature – to the best of their own ability.

Where the other athletes have asked of themselves “Can I do this” or “How can I do this”, one athlete has asked “How can I do this well and maybe even do it better than expected”. The athlete has challenged him/herself and been motivated to complete a relatively simple task to the best of his ability.

Consider the above example in terms of a training activity.

The coach asks the team to perform a drill – in this case dribbling a ball through a set of “cones”.

The coach demonstrates the skill, discusses the aim of the activity, asks for questions, demonstrates again and then steps back to allow the players to try the activity.

As with the paper plane, the coach observes a range of behaviours from his players as they try the drill several times.

Player one performs the drill correctly.

Player two also performs the drill correctly but adds an element of speed into the activity to test their skill level when moving faster.

Player three also performs the drill correctly. He also tries to perform the drill at speed but adds an element of practical and applied thinking by shooting at a nearby goal at the completion of the drill.

This is the challenge for coaches. There is nothing wrong with what Player one did. He followed the instructions of the coach and performed the activity as required. However, Player two and Player three challenged themselves to perform the task to a higher standard than what was required.

For some reason they were motivated to perform a simple task given to them by their coach to the best of their ability. They decided to set a more challenging goal and then worked to achieve it.

Player one was involved in the activity. Players two and three were committed to the activity. They approached a relatively simple task with the commitment to do it well.

How do coaches turn this involvement into commitment?

Much of the success of these motivated athletes comes from their ability to set challenging goals and to manage the process of achieving their goals.

The great news is that goal setting and goal management is a simple concept for athletes to learn because that is the way we all work every day in everything we do.

For example.

Goal: I want a cup of tea.

Solution: I will make one.

Goal: I would like to earn some money.

Solution: I will apply for a job.

Our brains work in terms of setting goals and achieving them. Goal setting is a very natural process and humans are by nature very goal orientated.

In high performance sport, the challenge for coaches and athletes is to set high performance goals and to achieve them through high performance practices and attitudes.

It has been said that the key to success is to develop “the will to win”. However, the will to win is not worth anything without the daily commitment to do what it takes to prepare to win. It is common for athletes to want to win – but how many support this desire to win with focus and concentration and determination in everything they do?

There is a sign on the door of the United States Olympic Training Centre dining room. The same sign is on the gym doors and on the doors to other training venues in the Olympic Training Centre. It is all over the Centre so that athletes, coaches, sports scientists and administrators can see it and be reminded of it constantly. It says:

Not Every Four Years, Every Day

This simple sign reminds every individual involved in high performance sport that excellence comes from things practiced and mastered in every training session, every day: that Olympic success every four years comes from the little successes achieved every time an athlete runs, swims, lifts weights, stretches etc etc.

Group training activities by their nature often mean that individualised training is difficult for the coach to establish. Different levels of fitness, maybe different ages, different levels of ability and so on mean that often training activities can not be set precisely for each athlete.

Most commonly in these situations, the coach prescribes training activities at an “average level”. That is the training tasks are not too demanding for the players of lower ability nor are they too easy for the talented players.

However, it is not the task, but how the players attack the task that makes all the difference.

It is not what you do, but HOW you do it that matters.

Discussions on the topic of training programs, of variations in volume and intensity, of percentage of training done in the various training zones, of the types of exercises to do etc are important. Coaches, athletes and sports scientists regularly debate the positives and negatives of what to do.

However, it is the how they (the athletes) do it that is vital to the success of the training program.

Leading USA Swimming Coach Mark Schubert said recently, “A coach told me that he had a poor taper and subsequently his swimmers had performed poorly at their state championships. I replied, “You didn’t have a poor taper – you had a poor season of training”. “It’s the little things your athletes do everyday in training, their attitude to every training session and their commitment to every task they attempt in their program that determines how well they do in competition. A great taper will not save you from a poor training effort”.

Successful people (and athletes) rely heavily on setting and achieving goals – little targets to achieve in their daily lives that provide focus and motivation. The cumulative effect of setting and achieving these small daily goals can be enormous and lead to success at the highest levels.

For example in soccer drills:

Coaches instruction: Perform the drill correctly.

The players then interpret the coaches instructions in one of several different ways:

Player one – Goal: Perform the drill correctly.

Player two – Goal: Perform the drill correctly as fast as I can.

Player three – Goal: Perform the drill correctly as fast as I can without making any errors and shoot for goal at the end.

Each player has set a goal and aimed to achieve it. However, each player has set different goals based on their level of ability, confidence, past experience and other factors.

Make it Happen: Let it Happen

Many athletes suffer from “nerves” – being anxious and nervous on the day of competition.

This is because 90% of all STRESS comes from not doing things when they were supposed to be done!

One of the great challenges coaches and athletes face is allowing training to be completed at a standard lower than their expected competition performance.

Many athletes muddle through training doing the minimum standard of effort and application only to find that their competition performances are also lack lustre.

Why? In training they have let it happen – they have allowed training to become a place where sub standard skills and poor habits become acceptable practices. Then when they go to the competition and try to make it happen (i.e. force a successful performance to occur) they find they lack the skills, fitness and abilities to produce a winning effort.

Conversely, successful athletes have an attitude that makes it happen in training. They apply the same focus and intensity in training that they apply in competition. As a result, on competition day, they can relax knowing that they can let it happen – success is more likely to occur because of their attitude in training.

Leading Australian Coach Lawrie Lawrence once said of confidence in competition, “Nothing gives an athlete confidence like knowing they have done everything they possibly could have done to their best of their ability in training and preparation”.

The key to this approach is: Train as you would compete.

If athletes learn to commit to achieving excellence in everything they do in training and to apply the same focus and determination to training well as they do to competing, they create an environment of excellence in their club or training group. This attitude can make a significant difference to all the athletes in the group or squad.

As a wise coach once said, “Attitudes are contagious – is yours worth catching?”

Summary

Successful training programs help athletes develop a wide range of skills and abilities. Over a training season, athletes develop the characteristics they require to achieve their best in competition through a logical sequence of periodized training activities.

It would not make sense for a sprinter to wait until the morning of their first race of the season to start practicing speed development techniques.

It is not logical for a soccer player to start practicing kicking techniques on the morning of the first game of the year.

It therefore is not sensible to wait until the day of the big race or big game to try and develop mental skills. Mental skills need to be developed in every session, every day and in every training activity. By establishing and reaching training goals every day in practice, athletes develop the confidence and belief that anything is possible in competition.

If success in High Performance sport is as many people suggest, “99% mental”, then neglecting daily mental skills training is to neglect the key to competition success.

In many ways success is a choice – as it comes from the decisions and choices athletes make in every training and competition situation.

Wayne Goldsmith

© 2010 – 2011, Wayne Goldsmith. All rights reserved.

Related posts:

1. Can You Guarantee Winning in High Performance Sport? In high performance sport we have a saying...."nothing can guarantee...
2. The Culture Combination: 5 People and Positions You Must Get Right to Build a Winning High Performance Culture in Your Sporting Organisation There is no one thing that you can do which will guarantee success:...
3. Sports Psychology: Integrating Mental Skills Training in Effective Coaching. We all agree that developing mental skills is an essential...