How many times have you sat in the stands at an athletic event, wondering how one particular competitor could match up against his opponents? He may have been shorter than the rest of his competitors on the basketball court or track. He may not have had a football player’s physique. What about the 41-year-old swimmer who just completed her fifth Olympics? How did the baseball player working on a 0-28 streak of no-hits at-bat come up to the plate the next time to hit a homerun? How do all successful athletes or everyday people overcome physical or competitive challenges?
They all set aside past failures and negative thoughts. They look to the future and envision success. That’s the essence of mental skills training. It’s just as important, if not more important, than the physical training. Professionals call it sports psychology.
“Sports psychology just tries to help you live up to your potential and enjoy it more,” said Dr. Mick Mack, University of Northern Iowa associate professor in the Physical Education Division. “There are two basic things in sports psychology – performance enhancement, and improving the quality of experience.”
Mack and his colleagues have developed a tool for measuring mental toughness. The 43-item questionnaire asks such questions as does a bad referee call bother you? Do you get enough rest? Does it bother you when things don’t go your way? If coaches yell at you, does that bother you? When you make a mistake, do you get distracted?
The Philippine sports community recently requested permission to use the questionnaire in order to compare medalist to non-medalist athletes at the Southeast Asian Games.
“We found the people that won medals were much more mentally tough, almost 55 percent mentally tougher, than non-medalists,” Mack said. “Athletes often start ‘what ifing?’ They think about the past rather than the future. Then they don’t perform as well, and they’re distracted by other things. Mental toughness means coping with adversity and handling distractions. Everyone has setbacks, but what do you do about it?”
Mack says studies have found that when bad things happen to you while you’re on a positive roll, the bad things don’t bother you as much. “But if you have negative momentum and you have another bad thing happen to you, it’s like ‘why bother?’ If it’s positive momentum, it’s ‘okay, I just threw the ball out of bounds.’ Psychological momentum does make a difference in our perception of how confident we are, and how much more likely we are to take chances.
“Seventy percent of our thoughts are negative. That’s a natural self-defense. But that doesn’t help you in sports. You have to train to think positive thoughts.”
Mack has worked with a full range of ages and skill levels in helping people change their mindset and improve their production, whether it be a competitive athlete, a “weekend warrior” or a non-athlete in another professional life. “You would be amazed,” he said. “It makes no difference if they are a high school or collegiate athlete, or pro. They can be elite athletes and still recognize what their particular weakness is. But the person should initiate the conversation. They have to want to improve.
“Most of the time, the difficulties are with concentration and paying attention,” Mack said. “Awareness is always the key to fixing anything. We sit down and discuss what issues they are having. Why are they losing their temper? I know if I strike out one time, it’s going to bother me the next two times. I know if I have a poor race, it’s going to bother me the next three races. So what’s the plan? Most of the time it’s handling anxiety, giving them coping strategies. ”
Mack says younger ages often feel stress from parents. At the older ages, stress is internal. However, coping mechanisms can be the same, whether it be relaxation techniques or thinking about something other than what is bothering them. “Some people have to be mad to play, other people have to be very calm to play,” he said. “You just have to find out what works for you. The beauty of sports psychology is there is no blanket statement for anyone.”
Turning a Team Around
A perfect example of an athletic season going awry and the ensuing turnaround was written about in Athletic Management magazine. Midway through the 2004 season, Cal State Fullerton head baseball coach George Horton was at his wits end. His team began the year ranked fourth in the country but had gone on to finish the first half of the season 15-16 overall, dropping out of the Top 25. He realized something was getting in the way.
The coach called upon a sports psychologist, who assessed the holes in the team’s mental game, finding the players were insecure, had lost their confidence, some couldn’t focus and others were trying too hard without getting results. His solution was to work on confidence and focus, and help players separate the factors they could control from the ones they couldn’t. They needed to stop trying to win, but to play the game one pitch at a time.
Many people, including coaches, believe that practice prepares athletes for competition mentally as well as physically. But many mental challenges faced during competition don’t come up during practice. “Mental training anticipates the mental challenges of actual competition – what we call ‘mental moments’”, said Craig Wrisberg, professor of Sports Psychology at the University of Tennessee.
Some techniques used with the Cal State team included placing a small toilet in the dugout. As a reminder to let go of bad at-bats, players pushed the handle on the toilet and “the memory is gone”. It was on to the next at-bat. It replaced slamming the helmet against the wall. If an entire game went bad, players stood in a circle, took off their jerseys and crumpled them together in the dirt. The game was over and done with.
Cal State went on to win a national championship.
Back to Form
Sarah Gall, co-owner of The Runner’s Flat in downtown Cedar Falls, has been an athlete since she was about two years old. She settled on running in seventh grade. Today, she competes in marathons, triathlons and snowshoeing.
Her first time working with a sports psychologist was when she was a sophomore at North Carolina State University. After having a motivated freshman season, she battled through numerous injuries her sophomore year. Her coach had her speak with a sports psychologist from Colorado Springs, Colo., primarily through email.
“I just needed a little bit of a lift to get motivated at the time,” Gall said. “With the injuries, I had difficulty focusing and was down a lot. Personal interaction would have been nice, but at that point, I decided to transfer (to University of Colorado) anyway.”
Gall went on to become an all-American in the steeplechase in 2001, the same year she was a USATF qualifier. After graduating, she competed in the 2004 Olympic Trials, and placed 1st in the steeplechase at the Sea Ray Relays, among other competitions. She currently is a licensed Pro Triathlon Off-Road racer and is a member of USA Team Snowshoeing.
Two years ago she found the need for extra help again and met with Dr. Mack. “I just couldn’t get over what was wrong with me at the time,” Gall said. “I needed some practice tools and since I didn’t have a coach, I needed help with visualization and preparing for events. I needed that boost again. I was getting over a bout of chronic fatigue and had some specific issues going on with my body that I believed were more mental than physical.”
Mack suggested Gall keep a journal each day. She wrote down how she felt after each run. She also posted affirmations on her mirror and had to repeat them out loud each day.
“I had done that before in high school,” Gall said. “If I was frightened of the start line, I would say I love the start line. Anything I felt negative about I needed to put in a positive way and say out loud for at least 21 days. Twenty-one days makes a habit. At the time I didn’t like running on pavement, I liked running on dirt, so I’d say I loved pavement.”
Mack also had her record her experiences with great races. She would listen to those recordings each night.
Gall said she felt the benefits of the mental training within a couple weeks. She felt more positive about things in general, though it did take longer to regain confidence and become comfortable in other areas. She still uses affirmations today.
“I don’t necessarily hang them on my mirror all the time, but when I’m running I’ll say those in my head all the time.”
Mind Over Matter
Jed Smith, UNI’s Strength and Conditioning Coach and president of United Sport and Athlete, Inc., in Waterloo believes more than in just beef and brawn. In fact, he spends at least a portion of each day on the mental component of training, something he calls “mind candy”. With one degree also in psychology, he develops elaborate slide shows and power point presentations for UNI’s football team and other sports.
“As a strength coach, we stress so much on the physical,” he said. “The mental component is real important to get (athletes’) minds to play at a higher level. Often times we neglect the mental training and discipline. Both are in our control. What the lion can’t manage to do, the fox can.”
Smith provided the example of the 2006 UNI football team that fell short of players’ and fans’ expectations following the 2005 run to the national championship. He put together a power point presentation entitled “Interference”. “We had too much clutter in the mind, and mistrust and skepticism. I talked to the guys about how important the mind is. Guys weren’t focused on their diets, guys were skipping workouts, not getting enough rest, skipping class. If grades are bad, now we’re worrying about them being able to play. Coach (Mark) Farley is having all the coaches tracking down guys making sure they’re going to class, not focusing on game plans. Everything creates doubt. We talked about making a commitment for the long haul, respecting each other, and the prize being ours.
“The opposite of interference is focus. A clear mind and sharp focus brings our best talents to the most challenging situations.”
Smith gives about three major presentations to the football team each year – one to bring closure to a season to introduce new training and to get the minds ready to come back, one at the beginning of fall camp, and one after spring ball to help the players get focused for the summer.
A recent presentation involved Samurai wisdom. He encourages the athletes to read “The Book of Five Rings”, written by a former samurai warrior named Miyamoto Musashi around 1645 upon his retirement. It’s a book on strategy and mental strategy. The book is mandatory reading even today for all Japanese business students.
“In his book, he talks about the principle of the Empty Sword,” Smith said. “What that means is, people fail because there’s something in the mind that stops them. Doubt clouds that are clouding their vision. Empty sword, empty your mind so there’s nothing in your mind, so you’re free to move as fast as you can. You train to the point of perfection. Everything is second nature. If you have to think about it, you’re lost. The best athletes think about nothing because they’re so good. They’re going to react to what happens.”
This past summer’s “mind candy” was “what motivates me?” Smith told the players what motivates him. The players then have to email him what motivates them. Each day a player gives a speech in front of the team. “This builds leadership,” Smith said. Then a book is put together.
One of Musashi’s quotes is: “As one man can defeat ten men, so can one thousand men defeat ten thousand.”
“(The idea is to) make our guys so highly skilled that it doesn’t matter who we put on the field,” Smith said. “Our guys are better than other guys. The team has to buy into this. You can use this to run a business. It works well in life as well. If you do all these things, attack our weaknesses, make them our strengths, evolve as people and do the best we can be, we’ll win the prize.”
Positive Stress
Mack says there is such a thing as positive stress, called EU Stress. “Making the Olympics is stressful, but it’s positive stress,” he said. “Getting married is stressful, but it’s positive stress.
“Athletes have to learn, ‘okay, I’m going to be stressed, I’m going to have stress symptoms, and my heart should be pounding, I should be nervous’. Why do we feel that upset stomach? The body is smart enough to know when it’s stressed. It shuts down the digestive system, so all that acid just sits in your stomach. It’s normal. If you don’t have butterflies in your stomach, you don’t care. We just want the butterflies to fly in formation.”
Mack says there are some general things all teams can do, but sports psychology is much more individualized. Goal-setting is number 1.
“People with goals are happier in life,” he said. “They live longer, they’re happier, they’re passionate and optimistic. Goals, however, have to be reasonable. If goals are way too difficult, you may say ‘good-bye’. If things are too easy, you get bored. Too hard, you get frustrated.
“Does that mean you can’t look at the negatives? No, but you have to look at the negatives after you’re done performing. There are times to look at your mistakes and learn from them. Visualization and day-dreaming are big plusses. Everyone has to be able to calm themselves down with coping strategies.”
Musashi also wrote “Both in fighting and in everyday life you should be determined though calm.” And, “…a perfectly balanced spirit is also a perfectly balanced physical presence, and neither creates weakness nor reveals it to your enemy.”
|
