Sport psychology is without a doubt one of the most important areas in athletic success. Elite, championship-caliber athletes have been shown time and time again to exhibit psychological traits that are different from those at levels below them.
And yet, sport psychology, generally speaking, remains useless for actually developing those traits that make an athlete successful. Is it a coincidence that many elite athletes turn to the likes of Tony Robbins?
The secret to the paradox of sport psychology lies directly in front of our face: As athletes, we are humans first. Sport psychology cannot be separated from human psychology. Remember this the next time you try to boil down your psyche into an inverted U.
The application of psychology to sport runs extremely deep, and there is a certain framework that needs to be established if you want to have any hopes of reaching the highest level of competition.
With that being said, there are a number of clichés floating around in the world of applied psychology/personal development that are questionable not only in terms of athletic success, but also for the carryover to life as happy, healthy, functioning human beings. (And if that idea is repulsive to you as a coach or an athlete, you are missing the point of all of this completely).
Forget Motivation, Passion, Confidence, Optimism
Every time we hear about what makes an elite athlete great, it always comes back to the same old answers: They wanted it more. They had undying belief in themselves. They knew the hard work and sacrifice would pay off.
Maybe it’s just my disdain for banality but I don’t think these answers really help.
Tons of people want to be the best. Tons of people believe in themselves. Tons of people are optimistic. Tons of people have all three, plus talent, and then some, and tons of people fail anyway.
Tons of people want to be the best
The truth lies a lot deeper than a checklist of psychological traits, probably a lot deeper than you’re comfortable going.
The first step in getting to the core of what really matters is to break apart and let go of what we think we know.
You don’t need motivation.
We get hammered with ideas like finding your inner drive and knowing your Capital W “Why,” to the point that motivation has been put on a pedestal.
Our overly keen awareness into personal motivation is a double-edged sword: How are we supposed to go crush a workout if we know we’re just not feeling it that day?
We’ve boiled down this massive, overarching principle of decision making into a 10-letter word that, at best, represents an emotion. A rather fickle and insipid one at that.
Emotions are fleeting. Go two nights back to back without any sleep and see if you’re motivated to do anything. Spend enough time with toxic people telling you to “be realistic,” or develop knee pain so bad you can barely stand to walk and see where your motivation stands.
Negative emotions exist. Training can be an excruciatingly individual endeavor with a lot of pain, sacrifice, and failure involved. If you let your emotions drive your decision making process you will be incredibly inconsistent to say the least.
Speaking of emotions…
Passion will own you.
The definition of passion is “a strong and barely controllable emotion.” It comes from the Latin root meaning “to suffer for.”
If we don’t clearly define it, and see it for what it is, passion will destroy you, especially in track and field where overuse, injury, and burnout make the stakes extremely high.
Passion cannot interfere with the process. “The Grind” is incredibly toxic. Some people think there is a correlation between suffering and success. There isn’t.
Some people think there is a correlation between suffering and success; the “grind” is toxic
Passion doesn’t give you some extra physiological capacity to beat yourself up. You need time away from training and sport. You need time away from heavy lifting. You need sleep. You need rest.
If you aren’t careful passion will own you.
And ultimately, this raises an important question:
Are you willing to do whatever it takes?
Are you willing to rest? Are you willing to not run/jump/throw for a while? Are you willing to sleep more? Oh, you don’t have time to sleep? Are you willing to work on time management?
Or are you just addicted to the grind? Do you need to be busy? And if so, why?
This is serious stuff, and you might not like some of your answers.
The Confidence Paradox:
“Fake it ‘til you make it.”
“If you believe it, you can achieve it.”
“Keep your goals realistic and achievable!”
You’ve probably heard all of these at some point in your athletic career as advice for keeping anxiety at bay.
Not only have I never found this advice helpful, but isn’t this way of looking at confidence fundamentally flawed to begin with?
If you have to lie to yourself, or make a task easier to accommodate your emotional state, isn’t that already an admission of self-defeat? Self-patronization at the deepest level?
And if you really think about it, confidence is a bit of a manufactured construct to begin with: Is it not just an absence of anxiety?
It’s a bit funny looking at it in this light: We get anxious because of our anxiety, which then makes us incredibly anxious. Anyone who’s ever had a pre-competition anxiety attack understands this vicious feedback cycle incredibly well. So here’s a better thought:
You don’t need confidence. Nobody on the face of this earth knows what the heck they’re doing. We’re all just faking it ‘til we make it to some degree or another.
It’s a fine line between self-awareness and self-consciousness. But the greatest realization you’ll ever have is that everybody else, including the best of the best, gets nerves and feels exactly the same as you. It’s a level playing field in this regard.
With that being said, preparation is the ultimate equalizer. If you’re anxious because you know you are truly unprepared, then remember this feeling. Adjust your training accordingly.
Optimism vs. Pessimism vs. Honesty
First, let me just say: There is always a positive to take away from any given situation. There is also always a negative.
The toxicity that comes from optimism often comes from the same place as the toxicity that can come from confidence. Covering negative emotions with forced positivity leads to nothing more than neuroticism.
We cannot let emotions be a part of the process of athletic development. What you need instead is a cold, hard, dry, and entirely complete perspective of your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and obstacles. You have to be willing to drop all personal bias and preconceived thoughts and notions you have about yourself, your performance, and your path to improvement.
This goes so much deeper than just “good” and “bad.” Looking beyond optimism and pessimism means you are going to have dig deeper than your initial thoughts and emotions.
This is where you’ll have to question deep truths about your identity and beliefs towards life. You might feel embarrassed or uncomfortable that you were so glaringly wrong about something.
Good. Keep digging.
This is where you can pamper yourself with optimism, abuse yourself with pessimism, or acknowledge your shortcomings and work on fixing them. There is a truth out there that is entirely separate from your own perspective, emotions, and biases.
Find it.
There is a common theme running through all of these ideas: We have a massive tendency to let our emotions govern our thoughts, actions, and decisions, and that makes our choices extremely unreliable and inconsistent.
But just like any area of sports performance, you can improve. It’s just a matter of managing the mess of cerebral circuiting that paints our picture of performance.
What stories are you telling yourself?
Behind every action and decision we make are our beliefs about the world. This shouldn’t be that surprising: If we believe a certain training methodology is going to take us to the next level, of course we are going to do it.
But what about when we start getting into bigger ideas?
The athlete that thinks they are strong enough won’t lift as hard to get stronger. The athlete who thinks their coach is dumb is not going to buy in to the program they’re given. The athlete who thinks that they are genetically inferior will use that to write off their lack of athletic success.
We all know the guy or gal who thinks they fart rainbows and could beat Usain Bolt in a 1 v 1 race, when in reality they’re running in the JV heat and still getting smoked and then have some excuse like “my shoes weren’t tied quite tight enough” and that’s why they lost, just watch out Usain for when they really pull it all together.
The truth is we are all this person on some level. These people are just the most extreme example of not letting go of toxic beliefs.
As humans, we need identity. Our identity is made up of the hundreds and thousands of beliefs we have about ourselves and the world around us. When we let go of a belief or a piece of our story, there suddenly becomes a gaping hole, a glitch in our own personal matrix. It’s why failure hurts so badly: everything you did suddenly feels wrong. And that makes you wrong. Our excuses for failure help to fill in these gaps.
These are the stories you’re telling yourself. The truth is that they are holding you back.
Beyond Genetic Potential
“Genetics” is the most useless, toxic, limiting word in all of sports performance.
Your genetics are NOT your destiny.
Yes, of course we all have individual starting points. But we all grow and adapt in the same exact manner. We all have the same general template of bones, muscle, and tendon. We all have the same system of biochemical reactions that drive our internal state of life. We’re playing the same game, with the same rules.
So screw genetic potential. I’m much more interested in human potential.
If a human has done something, there is a very good chance you can too. We’re all more similar than different. You’re not special. The laws of physics are not conspiring against you. You don’t suck because you have bad genetics. And elite athletes aren’t elite because of good genetics. Let go of these toxic beliefs and see the bigger picture.
Personal Responsibility
The person who blames their genetics will also likely be the person who says their coach just doesn’t get it, that their training equipment isn’t good enough, and that they didn’t tie their shoes quite tight enough and that’s why they got smoked in the JV heat.
Playing the blame game is entirely pointless. Ultimately your athletic career is your own. You are the only one who has to live with the outcome of your race/meet/season/career. Take ownership of this responsibility.
This can manifest in so many different ways, but ultimately it comes down to this: Whatever your goal is, find a way to get it done.
I don’t care what your coach says. I don’t care what your parents want. I don’t care what kind of equipment you have. I don’t care what your schedule looks like. I don’t care if it requires difficult conversations. I don’t care if it requires waking up/going to bed early. I don’t care if it requires eating alone at the dining hall sometimes. I don’t care if people are going to think you’re weird, obsessive, crazy, or antisocial.
I also don’t care if you actually follow through. It’s your career after all.
But you have to understand, there is always a way. And before you say you can’t, it might just be worth it to try.
In the end, it’s the effort, discipline, and intentionality that you put into your training, lifestyle, and recovery that will be the correlating factor into your growth and success.
Intentionality
“The really important kind of freedom involves attention and awareness and discipline and effort.” David Foster Wallace, This is Water
Do you know why you train the way you do? Do you understand the impact of lifestyle, sleep, nutrition, and stress management on recovery and performance? Do you know the demands of your sport? Or the specific adaptations you’re seeking to improve? Do your training methodologies and drills and recovery reflect this? Does every rep you perform reflect this? Are you sure?
Training for athletic performance is a lot like baking a cake. There’s a very specific recipe you’ve got to follow where every ingredient, every measurement, every temperature, and timing all play critical roles.
You don’t just throw a bunch of ingredients into a bowl and get a cake.
You don’t just throw a bunch of exercises into a program and get an athlete.
There are two big issues that pop up in this regard:
First is that you don’t know how you need to train. Luckily there are some amazing resources online (looks like you already found one of them, good job!) to help you out, as well as some good ol’ fashioned outcome-based decision-making.
Second issue is when athletes try to add their own ingredients into the mix. Don’t stay after practice to run bleachers just to say you “put in the work.”
Sprinters who do extra running on top of track practice “to feel like they did enough” rarely, if ever, run better, and usually run worse!
On a very similar note to the cake analogy, I once overheard a very wise, mildly intoxicated man ordering a subway grinder drop a gem of a quote for sports performance specialists:
“You can’t put the wrong sauce on the right sandwich.”
Going home after practice to crush a chest workout, or sneaking off to test you 1-rep max on deadlifts can absolutely ruin your training week. All it takes is one bad ingredient. You wouldn’t put ranch dressing on a taco.
Know what you’re adding to the mix.
Embrace the Sucking
The last big point with all of this is really the “secret” to becoming the best:
You have to suck before you are great.
This applies to everything. You have to be weak before you are strong. You have to be wrong before you’re right. You have to throw a javelin 50 meters before 60 meters and triple jump 14 meters before 15 meters before 16 meters.
In fact this is such an obvious point, that the only reason it’s a “secret,” is because we spend so much time trying to suppress it. Stop. Sucking at something is great news.
Because when you suck at something, it’s really an opportunity in disguise. It’s your next step towards improvement. You just have to take it. Embrace the suckage.
And if we’re really being honest, there’s plenty that you suck at. You just have to find these areas. Get good at sucking.
And please, for the love of all good things in this world, leave your ego at the door. Trust me, you suck. And I suck too. He/she/we all suck. You’re not special. We can suck together if you want.
There’s plenty of sucking to go around in the world of sports performance. In fact, I’ve probably already mentioned a few psychological/emotional suckage points that you can work on starting right now. The key is to find as many things, in as many different areas of your life as you can, to suck a little less at. That is what improvement is all about.
Tying it All Together
Remember this: Your mind is what you feed it. You only know what you know, and ultimately that will always be your limiting factor.
I truly think that the best summary of everything within this article comes back to the David Foster Wallace quote from earlier: Awareness, attention, discipline, and effort will free you from whatever box you’ve put yourself in.
You need self awareness so you can be as honest with yourself as possible. Honesty is the only path to growth.
You need the awareness that this whole athlete thing you’re doing is entirely your responsibility. No one can hold you accountable except yourself.
You need awareness of the process that will get you from each successive point in your journey. A to B is not the same as B to C.
You need awareness of the people around you too: Don’t be the person who delays action out of fear of judgment.
You need to pay attention to what your body tells you. Pay attention to patterns and outcomes and behaviors. You need to be the driver of your mindfulness. Don’t get lost in the six-second attention span culture of social media and television. Pay attention to the fact that most people are, in fact, lost in the six-second attention span culture of social media and television. Pay attention to the fact that this means no one will ever be able to judge you for more than six seconds, making your fear of judgment from others entirely invalid.
Have the discipline to do what you need to do, when it needs to be done. To take action even when motivation fizzles out. To wake up and go to bed early, and find alternative means, and to have the hard conversations that sit in between you and the podium.
And please, if you follow all of the above, put the effort in. You only get what you give. Do not let your talent go to waste. Do not flush your potential down the toilet. Your human potential.
Effort can be the great equalizer. Work hard. Work smart. Remember that it’s hard work to learn enough to work smart. Read, listen to podcasts, question everything, experiment, and adapt accordingly. Remember to put effort into the other 23 hours of the day.
Becoming an elite athlete is a crazy process. There will be pain. There will be loneliness. There will be self-doubt and questioning, highs and lows, successes and failures. You have to be the driver of the craziness that is bound to ensue.
This is why psychology of elite athletes is truly so fascinating: There is something unapologetically human through the athletic journey.
Grow as a human, grow as an athlete.
Keep reading:
Tennis, Music, and the Human Brain: A Closer Look at the Role of Flow in Human Movement
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