A Monthly Publication of Peak Performance Sports
Issue 108 ................................................................................. May 3, 2010
Welcome to Sports Insights Magazine
Welcome to Sports Insights Magazine! Learn practical, cutting-edge sports psychology and mental training tips to improve mental toughness in sports.
If you enjoy our free mental toughness newsletter, please click here to forward it to other athletes and coaches.
Parents and Coaches: Help Kids Cope with Mistakes! NEW! Help your athletes deal better with setbacks and errors with The Composed Sports Kid! Available Now! Preview Dr. Cohn's new sports psychology program for parents, coaches, and their athletes!
Golfers: Improve Your Golf Confidence for 2010! Dr. Cohn's new CD and workbook program teaches you the top eight lessons to play with mental toughness on the course. Read more about how to improve confidence in golf...
Tennis Players: Boost Confidence for Tournament Tennis! Learn how to boost your tennis confidence with Dr. Cohn's unique 8-week mental training course for tournament tennis players!
Parents and Coaches: Improve Sports Kids' Success with Kids' Sports Psychology! Kids' Sports Psychology is a one-stop, exclusive 10-step plan for boosting confidence and cultivating positive mental game skills in young athletes! Download age-specific confidence-boosting mental game e-books for young athletes. Learn how to boost sports kids' sports success...
FREE MENTAL TOUGHNESS REPORTS!
- Golfers and Instructors: Improve Preshot Routines.
- Baseball and Softball Players and Coaches: Improve At-Bat Routines!
- Tennis Players and Coaches: Improve Between Point Mental Toughness!
- Hockey Players and Coaches: Improve your Pregame Mindset!
- Equestrians and trainers: Improve Rider's Preshow Mindset!
- Parents and Youth Coaches: Boost Kids' Confidence and Success!
Locker Room Talk
"Mental Coaching Has Helped Me Immensely"
“I think Dr. Cohn’s mental coaching has helped me immensely. It has taught me what to focus on in and out of the racecar. How to stay calm and focused have been key skills that I have learned which are important in helping me be a better and more confident racecar driver.”
~AJ Allmendinger, NASCAR Driver
Feature Mental Game Article
Five Keys to Pregame Mental Preparation
By Patrick J. Cohn, Ph.D.
Your goal every time you step on the field, court, arena, track, or course is to be mentally ready to compete, not just physically ready. For some athletes, this means performing without the mental handcuffs of worry, anxiety, lack of confidence, or self-doubt!
Mental preparation prior to competition should be a goal for every athlete. I'm referring to a specific type of mental preparation; the mental preparation you or your athletes do just prior to competition. The warm-up period before you compete is much more than just a physical warm-up. You also want to use this time to get your game face on and embrace a focused and confident state of mind.
Many of the athletes I work with sabotage themselves with an ineffective mindset prior to competition. But this is the exact time that athletes need to be mentally ready to compete. Some athletes focus too much on having the perfect performance or fixate on how they will appear to others (such as teammates, parents, coaches) when performing. Their need to execute flawlessly or to look good in competition undermines performance in competition.
Other athletes are ridden with anxiety, tension, fear, fear of failure, and worry about what others think prior to competition. Some of my students don't have a full tank of confidence before competition. Somehow, their confidence dwindles from practice to competition. They don't have the same level of self-confidence in competition as they did during practice.
I could go on and on about the mental game challenges that athletes have prior to competition. But the main point I'm trying to make is that athletes get in their own way with lack of confidence, distraction, and anxiety and tension--just at the wrong time. All of these mental game no-no's don't allow you or your athletes to perform well at the start of competition.
In this issue of Sports Insights Magazine, I'll discuss five keys to your pregame mental preparation. You'll learn how to tune up your mental game as well as your physical game prior to competition.
First, how might you (or your athletes) worry or have excess tension prior to competition? Each athlete has their own source of stress or anxiety prior to competition. Below is a list of the top six sources of tension or anxiety for athletes:
- Focus on outcomes
- Excess mental chatter
- Fear of failing
- Worrying about what others think
- Not feeling fully confident
- Worrying about the quality of one’s warm up
______________________________________________________
Want to Become a Mental Game Coach to Athletes? Enroll in Our Unique
Mental Game Coaching Professional Certification Program!
Apply for the 2010 Summer Course Today!
______________________________________________________If you identify with any of these mental game challenges, you would benefit from better mental preparation during your pregame warm-up routine. Your warm-up routine prior to competition is the perfect time to expel doubt, anxiety, tension, and bolster your confidence, composure, and trust in your skills.
Five Mental Keys to Warm Up Your Mental Game
1. Expel pressure-packed expectations - I've written a lot about how expectations can be your undoing. Expectations you have toward your game and expectations you feel from others often cause you to feel more pressure on your shoulders when you compete. One goal for my students is to help them manage these expectations so that they don't turn in to pressure. How do you manage your expectations? Expectations are usually about results, such as scoring a specific number or obtaining specific statistics. Most expectations cause you to focus on results, judge your performance, and become frustrated when you don't reach your expectations. You have to identify the expectations that cause you to lose confidence or become frustrated when not met. Then, you want to replace your strict expectations with simple objectives you can accomplish readily, such as picking a target before you serve.
2. Don't leave confidence for chance - many athletes don't manage or control their level of confidence prior to competition. They are more reactive with their confidence instead of proactive. They leave confidence to chance and can only feel confident when performing well. One goal of your pregame warm-up routine is to take full responsibility for your level of confidence. Also, as mentioned previously, many athletes lose confidence when they don't perform well in their pregame warm-up. Do not allow the quality of your pregame warm-up to influence your confidence, which is based upon years and years of practice and play.
3. Focus your mind in the now - as stated previously, a lot of the tension that athletes feel prior to competition comes from focusing on negative outcomes or worrying about what others will say or think if they lose. For this reason, it's extremely important for athletes to focus only on the process and their preparation prior to competition. You don't want to get too far ahead of yourself. For example, I instruct golfers to only think about how they're going to prepare for that first tee shot and not worry about the score they want to shoot that day.
4. Prepare to trust in your skills - another mental key to good preparation is to prepare yourself to trust in your skills. Trusting your skills means that you're going to rely on your practice. You should let go of technique, how to perform, and rely on your athletic abilities -- the abilities that you have to train in practice for months if not years. When you prepare yourself to trusting your skills, you're in a mindset to react and let it happen rather than over control your performance.
5. Embrace the pregame butterflies - pregame can be a tense moment for some athletes. When the pregame jitters or butterflies strike, they assume that something is wrong with them. If you do this, you become stressed over what might be just a normal reaction to competition. I do believe that there are two types of pregame jitters -- positive and negative or helpful and harmful. You want to embrace the positive pregame jitters because they indicate that you're psyched or excited to perform. Some athletes who have positive pregame jitters don't understand that these jitters are helpful to their performance and thus become more anxious prior to a game. Embrace the butterflies because they are telling you that you have the proper level of intensity to perform well.
This article was based on Dr. Cohn's popular CD and workbook program titled "The Relaxed Athlete." For more information, visit The Relaxed Athlete CD and workbook program.
Sports Specific Mental Training Tip
"She's doesn't set her own goals..."
Many athletes focus too much on what they think others expect them to do in sports. The classic example is an athlete who strives to meet parental expectations. These athletes failed to focus on their personal goals and instead spend most of their energy trying to meet others' expectations. This is very common in my work, but not helpful for an athlete's performance. You have to let go of the expectations others have for you and instead give more mental energy to your own goals.
“My daughter creates her own perceptions about what others expect rather than setting her own goals.”
~ Sports Parent
Podcasts of the Month
The Tennis Psychology Podcast of the Month!
In this week’s tennis psychology session, Dr. Cohn answers a question from a tennis player who serves better in practice than in matches. Many tennis players have trouble serving their best in matches due to tension or over control. Listen to this mental game of tennis podcast to learn how to serve your best in matches.
- Show me the Tennis Psychology Podcast of the Month!
- Watch the Tennis Confidence Video series!
- Tennis Players & Coaches: Improve your mental game between points with this free report!
- Subscribe to the Tennis Psychology Podcast at iTunes!
The Golf Psychology Podcast of the Month!
Dr. Patrick Cohn, golf psychology expert and author of the "Golfer's Mental Edge" CD program, teaches amateur to tour professional golfers how to improve their mental game of golf. In this week's golf psychology session, mental game of golf expert and author of The Mental Game of Golf, Dr. Cohn, helps a parent of a golfer who becomes frustrated after mistakes. Many young golfers unravel after mistakes.
Pro Athlete Quote of the Month
"You try not to get too frustrated..."
“Sometimes you hit a spurt where no matter where you hit it, it ends up being an out. But that ends eventually. You try not to get too frustrated with things. I felt it was a matter of time. I needed to relax.”
~Brandon Inge, Tigers
Ask Doc Cohn
"He knows he has anger issues..."
Lacrosse Coach:
"I have a player who gets emotionally charged, and then becomes angry and has trouble controlling himself. He knows he has anger issues but just cannot control himself. We play lacrosse and he also has quit hockey because he cannot control himself. How do we help him with his anger issues?"
Most Valuable Product (MVP)
The Composed Sports Kid: A 7-Day Plan for Helping Young Athletes Cope with Frustration NEW!
Do you feel sick and tired of or even embarrassed about your athletes' tantrums, crying, and lack of emotional control in competition? Do you scratch your head and wonder why your kids shut down or act like The Incredible Hulk after they make just one mistake that no one notices? The Composed Sports Kid system is really two programs in one--one program to train parents and coaches how to help their kids practice composure, and one program that teaches young athletes--ages 8 to 18--how to improve composure, let go of mistakes quickly, have more self-acceptance, and enjoy sports more!
Read more about The Composed Sports Kid CD program at Peaksports.com
Peaksports Members get 30% off! Not a peaksports member yet? Go demo our Online Mental Training System at Peaksports Network!
Dr. Patrick J. Cohn
Master Mental Game Coach
Boost Your Success with The Confident Athlete Series!
|
|||||
The
Confident Athlete Series by Peak Performance Sports brings
you the latest cutting-edge mental training strategies
in a practical step-by-step 14-day achievement plan. Each
program consists of 2 Audio CDs and an easy to
follow workbook to help you apply the mental strategies.
Perfect for any competitive athlete or team coach! Buy
All 4 Programs and Get "The Relaxed Athlete" FREE! |
Peaksports.com Quick Links
|
|
teamwork
:: confidence :: focus :: composure |
|
©
2010 Peak Performance Sports, LLC 7380 Sand Lake Rd. PMB 5012,
Orlando, Florida 32819. You
are receiving this email because you have requested Sports
Insights Magazine at Peaksports.com. |
|
