Sport Psychology 101: Building Blocks of an Unbreakable Mind

Why is it that so many people ignore sport psychology when it comes to training? Go in the weight room this year and only do half of the workout. If I told this to any serious athlete, they would be baffled and maybe even a little angry. You can’t expect optimal performance and improvement from only doing part of your training. However, what if I said that you already were guilty of that very thing almost every day? There is much more to athletics than just the physical aspect.

Whether you are a coach or an athlete, at some point in your athletic career you have seen the effects of psychology on athletic performance. However, taking the time to find out more about the mental aspect of sports is something I feel most coaches and athletes do not place as a top priority. By learning the mental aspect of sports, we can push our abilities to their fullest potential. The psychology of performance can be a very complex and overwhelming subject to dissect, so below I have composed a list of what I consider the basics.

Key points in Sport Psychology

Positive thinking should start with your training program, not just competition
Self doubt starts a chain reaction of a cluttered mind, tense body, and poor performance
The subconscious mind knows what it’s doing, so don’t over think things
Simplify your focus
Visualization is a double edge sword against failure

The Good: Confidence

The summer prior to my first season coaching, I worked in car sales. The first thing I learned on the job was that confidence is key. Sales are a cutthroat, testosterone filled career field, and if you lack confidence, you will be eaten alive by the other salesman and lose most of -if not all of your commission. Confidence is your best friend when it comes to optimal personal performance, and athletics are no different.

Many people only start to consider positive thinking when a competition rolls around; however, those constructive thoughts should begin with your training program. This goes for coaches who are writing programs and athletes who are then following them. If you do not have confidence in your training program, you cannot have confidence in its outcome. Every day you show up to practice, you should have the attitude that the workout you have written or are doing is the best way to become the greatest.

When competition comes around, confidence can start to take on other identities. One of the biggest is mental toughness. This is often a phrase you will hear people talk about when referring to an athlete’s ability to push themselves. In reality, confidence and mental toughness are intertwined. It is close to impossible to have one without the other. Having confidence is what allows an athlete to believe they can push their limits further and gain an edge.

During the pinnacle of my throwers’ toughest workouts, when my athletes began to question how much more they could take, I made sure they kept one thing in mind. It was because of our hard training that we could go to meets as the undersized, runts, and underdogs that most other colleges considered us, and know that when we stepped off the bus none of the competition had the mental or physical toughness we had. Was this true? There is no way of telling, but I do know as long as my athletes felt as if they had the competitive edge, they did. Once you have the “edge,” you have already started defeating the competition without even starting the contest. There are many ways to get a mental edge over competition, but what is the best way? The edge is not something you get five minutes before competition, rather something that is built up slowly from hours of purposeful practice.

The Bad: Self Doubt

With confidence being an athlete or coach’s best weapon, self doubt will always be the biggest opponent. Self doubt creates a tense mind and as a result, a tense body. The same thing can happen in reverse as well. I have seen an athlete show up to an event with a knot in their shoulder, and as the competition drew closer, the acidic thoughts kept building. I could tell the athlete started thinking they were not going to perform well, and the competition was very good and would be hard to beat. However, as soon as the athletic trainer was able to start working on the tight muscle things turned around. The athlete became so relaxed I almost became worried. He was hopping around and joking with the other athletes, seemingly not taking anything serious. Very similar to how he would be at an easy practice on a sunny day. By the time he warmed up and started throwing, he was launching his throws and eventually set the school record.

The second you let the possibility of losing or failing into your head, you probably will. Now don’t get me wrong, every athlete will doubt themselves at some point. After all, confidence is not all-or-nothing. It comes and goes and in different intensities. What makes elite athletes different from the rest is their ability to motivate themselves and block out the corrosive thoughts.

Sport psychology methods to beat self doubt

Remember why you spend countless hours training for your sport…you enjoy it. You and your coach, teammates, fans, and family may have expectations for you, but expectations are not why you do what you do. Living up to those expectations (where self doubt spawns) should always remain second to your love of your sport.

The Ugly: Choking (Conscious/ Subconscious Relationship)

This is a subject that a book could be written on, but I’m just going to touch on the basics. We have all experienced or seen an athlete who was seemingly fine, and then all at once their performance fell apart. Choking can make professionals start making mistakes that athletes in high school wouldn’t make. No matter how hard they try to recover, they keep spiraling out of control. Well, that is where the problem lies.

Frequently we hear people talk about an athlete who looked like he was playing unconscious, or was so sick that they seemed borderline delusional off the court, but somehow pulled of an amazing performance. Most of the actions in sport come from the subconscious mind. All those hours spent at practice have trained the mind to make specific movements second nature, or things we don’t have to worry about consciously.

So what is happening in the mind when athletic performance falls apart? The answer is too much thinking. It usually starts with a little self doubt or an error in competition that makes an athlete try to overcompensate. Instead of relying on the hours of practice that have been stored up in the subconscious, the athlete begins to rely fully on conscious thought, which results in over thinking things. The conscious mind has its role in performance, but is much slower and is liable to make more mistakes than the subconscious. The moral of the story, just let things flow naturally and don’t hold onto mistakes. Once you try to force performance, or keep a tally of mistakes, things it can get rough.

If negative thoughts do start to grow in your mind, consider one thing: Just because you have a thought or emotion, it does not have to influence you unless you allow it to. You are in control of your thoughts and emotions. Separate yourself from the words and images that pop into your mind, acknowledge them, and then decide whether to ignore them or embrace them. This practice is known as non-judgmental awareness, and can be a great tool for stress management in both sports and life.

Best Practices: Focus and Relaxation

So how do you gain and keep confidence? How do you keep your mind clean of acidic thoughts? How do you keep from choking in competition? By staying focused and relaxed. Sounds simple, right? It can be if you work at it. You have to practice these things like you would any other aspect of your sport.

Focus

Again, you don’t have to over complicate things. Simplify what you need to focus on to one or two things. Viewing all the defects of your performance prior to competition, or even practice, is a sure way to overwhelm yourself and set up for self doubt and possibly choking.

We can simplify things even further from here by using cue words. Cue words act as triggers for subconscious responses and help athletes remain focused. Hours of repetition paired with cue words can make a powerful fix for the biggest flaws in competition. In athletic movements that are extremely fast, such as a high jump takeoff, there is little time to think of all the actions the body needs to make for optimal results.

For example, when I threw javelin in college, one thing I often tried to improve was the explosiveness of my block and throw. I regularly used “Tick-Tock Boom” (shorter than the reality of right foot, left foot, throw) as my cue words to help keep my focus on a fast final two steps and an explosive throw prior to my approach. Sometimes my cue words were not words at all. Occasionally I would rapidly clap twice to focus on keeping my last two steps fast.

What makes cue words such an effective method for focus is actually the brain’s inability to focus on two things at the same time. While focusing on a cue word, it is impossible for a person to doubt their self or to be distracted by a crowd.

Relaxation

Focus alone is not enough to enhance performance. It is still possible to be tense physically and/or mentally while remaining focused. The second piece to the puzzle is relaxation. Relaxation is both a byproduct of confidence and a conductor of confidence. When Joel Smith coached me in javelin, he would say that my throws should look effortless. When you watch professionals in any sport, they tend to make things look easy. Their performance flows smoothly and falls into a rhythm. They do not achieve this by tensing their muscles or being strung out on pre-workout drinks. In fact, many athletes who use pre-competition music will listen to classical or relaxing music, to keep adrenaline low up until competition.

One of the best, and most common, routines before a competition or practice is meditation and visualization. Clearing the mind of everything except your upcoming performance and visualizing possible scenarios and outcomes has a two-fold effect. In this meditative state, an athlete is relaxing themselves and gaining focus at the same time, which makes it one of the most beneficial pre-competition habits. Everyone’s pre-competition rituals are different, and you have to find what works best for you. I guarantee that adding visualization to your routine will not hurt your performance, but rather enhance it.

Conclusion

You would never show up to a competition without training physically, so why would you show up without first training mentally as well? Go workout with confidence. Battle against self doubt like you would against a stubborn barbell. Analyze your negative thoughts and emotions as close as you would the movements of your competition. Stay focused on your goals, and enjoy the process of pursuing them as much as the sense of accomplishment you get when you reach them. Do these things on a daily basis and you will find yourself performing on level you never thought possible.

By Jake Clark