NINE MENTAL SKILLS OF SUCCESFUL ATHLETES

NINE MENTAL SKILLS OF SUCCESFUL ATHLETES

“Whether you think you can, or you think you can't--you're right.” –Henry Ford

I have trained for sports my entire life, but it wasn’t until my college years that I realized the importance of mentality. Once I began developing my mental game, I elevated my success on the field. There is a direct correlation to mentality and success. If you are interested in becoming the best athlete you can be; here are some skills, by Jack J. Lesyk, Ph.D., which can be developed to elevate your game.

Source: Ohio Center for Sports Psychology 

Detailed Descriptions of the Nine Mental Skills

Attitude

Successful athletes:

• Realize that attitude is a choice.
• Choose an attitude that is predominately positive.
• View their sport as an opportunity to compete against themselves and learn from their successes and failures.
• Pursue excellence, not perfection, and realize that they, as well as their coaches, teammates, officials, and others are not perfect.
• Maintain balance and perspective between their sport and the rest of their lives.
• Respect their sport, other participants, coaches, officials, and themselves.

Motivation

Successful athletes:

• Are aware of the rewards and benefits that they expect to experience through their sports participation.
• Are able to persist through difficult tasks and difficult times, even when these rewards and benefits are not immediately forthcoming.
• Realize that many of the benefits come from their participation, not the outcome.

Goals and Commitment

Successful athletes:

• Set long-term and short-term goals that are realistic, measurable, and time-oriented.
• Are aware of their current performance levels and are able to develop specific, detailed plans for attaining their goals.
• Are highly committed to their goals and to carrying out the daily demands of their training programs.

People Skills

Successful athletes:

• Realize that they are part of a larger system that includes their families, friends, teammates, coaches, and others.
• When appropriate, communicate their thoughts, feelings, and needs to these people and listen to them as well.
• Have learned effective skills for dealing with conflict, difficult opponents, and other people when they are negative or oppositional.

Self-Talk

Successful athletes:

• Maintain their self-confidence during difficult times with realistic, positive self-talk.
• Talk to themselves the way they would talk to their own best friend
• Use self-talk to regulate thoughts, feelings and behaviors during competition.

Mental Imagery

Successful athletes:

• Prepare themselves for competition by imagining themselves performing well in competition.
• Create and use mental images that are detailed, specific, and realistic.
• Use imagery during competition to prepare for action and recover from errors and poor performances.

Dealing Effectively with Anxiety

Successful athletes:

• Accept anxiety as part of sport.
• Realize that some degree of anxiety can help them perform well.
• Know how to reduce anxiety when it becomes too strong, without losing their intensity.

Dealing Effectively with Emotions

Successful athletes:

• Accept strong emotions such as excitement, anger, and disappointment as part of the sport experience.
• Are able to use these emotions to improve, rather than interfere with high level performance

Concentration

Successful athletes:

• Know what they must pay attention to during each game or sport situation.
• Have learned how to maintain focus and resist distractions, whether they come from the environment or from within themselves.
• Are able to regain their focus when concentration is lost during competition.
• Have learned how to play in the “here-and-now”, without regard to either past or anticipated future events.

If you are interested in reading more information on mental skills, click on the link of the cited source above. Jack J. Lesyk, Ph.D, offers a pyramid representing the relationship between the nine skills and how they build on each other (also seen below).

"What the mind can conceive and believe, it can achieve." -Napoleon Hill

 By: Matt Lindamood

Creating a Culture of Confidence: Part 3

Developing a Culture of Hard Work

• Provide structure for programs – workout times and training plans
• I will role model the work ethic I want in my own training habits and work habits
• Develop leaders and teammates - prepare fill both roles everyday
• I will praise effort over results and avoid false praise
• Encourage players to develop a growth mindset that you can’t always control outcomes, but you can always control effort and preparation

“Sometimes it is not the ability to want to work hard that stops us. It is the inability to stay focused that impairs us to work hard.” -Unknown

Leaders and Teammates

     Leaders:

• Guides the team toward achieving team goals
• The team’s best interest guides every single decision by the team leader
• Serves as a liaison between coaches and players - keep a constant flow of information
• Act as a leader during all team activities – early to trainings, provide proper effort, encourage teammates, and help younger players

3 leadership roles:

• Confronter- has no problem vocalizing problems within the team
• Inspirer- mentally tough, never quits, provides motivation to the team
• Nurturer- able to help teammates with issues on and off the field

Teammates:

• Hold themselves to the set values of the program, hold their teammates to that same standard
• Provide an environment that can help leaders succeed
• Are coachable- teammates can take correction without turning that into resentment
• Keep the program goals as their focus before individual success

The Spiral of Mastery

In Mastering the Skills you Demonstrate Ability.

Demonstrated ability breeds Confidence.

Confidence allows you to stay Calm Under Pressure.

Calmness leads to Concentration or the ability to Focus.

Concentration leads to Proper Decision Making.

(Proper Decision Making is defined as accessing the correct skills and strategy learned in practice)

Proper Decision Making leads to

Effective Execution of the Skills.

Effective execution of the skills leads to success!

By Jerry Meyer

By: Steve Breitenstein 

Creating a Culture of Confidence Part 2

How to Develop a Culture of Confidence

• Form trust
• Coaches present complete understanding of movements and training plans
• Create vision for program including values, expectations, and short term and long term goals
• Explain plan to achieve goals
• Set certain goals that are quickly obtainable to establish early success
• Develop relationships with athletes by communicating often in a variety of settings and about a variety of topics
• Encourage athletes to keep positive imagery in their minds - visualize success
• Form an environment of learning with feedback, personal accomplishment, and physical change

Characteristics of Confidence in Athletes

Self-Confident:

• Doing what you believe to be right, even if others mock or criticize you for it.
• Being willing to take risks and go the extra mile to achieve better things.
• Mistakes: takes ownership, learns from it, makes corrections, and forgets about it
• Waiting for others to congratulate you on your accomplishments.
• Accepting accomplishments graciously. “Thank you. I worked very hard on that. I appreciate your recognizing my efforts.”

Low Self-Confidence:

• Governing your behavior based on what other people think.
• Staying in your comfort zone, fearing failure and in doing so, avoid taking risks.
• Working hard to cover up mistakes and hoping that you can fix the problem before anyone notices.
• Extolling your own virtues as often as possible to as many people as possible.
• Dismissing compliments offhandedly. “Oh that was nothing really. Anyone could have done it.”

Creating a Culture of Confidence: Part 1

I was very fortunate as a 20-year-old kid to have a former high school basketball coach ask me to join his staff. I began coaching and immediately started to picture how down the road I would be known as one the greats. I had it all figured it out. Luckily for me, I started at the freshman B level and was humbled immediately by what it really takes to be great.

Working with young men at the freshman level through the varsity level is more mental than anything else. These young athletes have more going on in their lives than anyone realizes and as a coach you serve the role of father, friend, advisor, and confidant to name just a few.  It is an honor to have a young man come to you for help because it shows they have a confidence that you have their best interest at heart.  My former head coach showed me that honor by giving me my coaching opportunity. He wanted to instill confidence in each of his players.

There is energy in the room before a game where players wait for the coaches. Each game has a different feel. There are no guaranteed wins, but some games hold more meaning than others. Often times in those pre-game speeches before important games he would ask the players, “Do you feel that energy inside of you. Do you feel that inside of your stomach? That’s not nervousness. Nervousness means that you are unprepared for the task at hand. That is excitement! You are full of excited energy because you have practiced smart and hard and you are fully prepared for the challenge tonight!” It was such a simple thing to say, but I can still see the confidence and focus the players exuded after he would say it.

My final project as an undergrad was to create a coaching portfolio. At that point, I had shifted my focus to training athletes instead of coaching a specific sport. My mentor encouraged me to make it my own and reflect on what I truly believed was most important. I would discuss strength programs and specific lifts with him, but in the end it always came back to caring for the athletes and wanting them to succeed. The head coach understood that confident players succeed, but how do we create confident athletes. I created my coaching portfolio not with x’s and o’s but, how I want to develop a culture of confidence in a program to help young athletes in sport and beyond….to be continued

By: Steve Breitenstein