The Sports Doc Chalk Talk

While watching Barry Melrose talk about the Penguins – Flyers NHL playoff match-up yesterday, he used the expression “will beats skill” when describing Philadelphia’s surprising 3-0 playoff lead over Pittsburgh.  While the Penguins were the heavy favorite going into the series, it is the Flyers — playing with more heart and intensity — who are about to advance to the next round of the NHL playoffs.

Breaking down the Melrose expression, he is really talking about mental toughness and the degree in which players display confidence, focus, motivation, intensity, and the ability to develop the resiliency needed to “play up” and beat an opponent that seems to be the better team (Pittsburgh).  In sports, it is often “who wants it more” that ends up beating otherwise better talented athletes and teams.

While most coaches and athletes agree that “will beats skill” when it comes to the outcome of many sporting events, it’s still a tough sell — especially when trying to convince kids that they can beat state-caliber teams and athletes.  In these instances, kids are so intimidated that they either forget (or don’t believe) that their mental toughness can make a huge difference in the outcome of a game, and often the result of the game is fairly predictable (the more skilled athlete/team wins).

Great coaches and parents are able to connect with kids and “sell” the message that will beats skill, and when this occurs the athlete begins to “play to win” as opposed to “playing to avoid losing.”  When kids buy-in to this approach, they begin to pay more attention to positive cues (the good block, tackle, or pitch they just made), while overlooking or dismissing negative cues (their missed tackle, strike out, etc.).  What we pay attention to in life in large part dictates what we will do next — play harder or give up.

Will, motivation, perseverance, and resiliency are all things we can develop, and are independent traits from our physical abilities.  Do your part to “sell” this message to a young person today!

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Go to Advanced Human Performance Systems to check out our product line to help with developing WILL!

Attention wrestlers – our new DVD designed to assist wrestlers with improving mental toughness (Wrestling Your Best: Developing a Mind of Steel for Mental Toughness) was just released on New Years Day.  This exciting sport psychology training video is ideal for wrestlers of all ages and skill levels and helps wrestlers with the following:

• Confidence development
• Focus
• Resiliency
• Pre-match routines
• Imagery
• Goal setting
• Cue words & self talk
• Overcoming anxiety
• Beating the bracket sheets
• Plus much more!!

Wrestling is one of the toughest individual sports going today, as wrestlers regularly battle nerves and anxiety while trying to master synchronized muscle movements.  Unfortunately, there have been few professionally developed resources for wrestlers to turn to…until now!

If you are a wrestler or a wrestling coach (or know a wrestler), make sure to check out Wrestling Your Best. For more information about this DVD please visit www.drstankovich.com

“Consistently performing at your best is a mental challenge and there is no one better in the mental game than Dr. Chris Stankovich. He understands the power of mind and is a master at providing the tools we need to have as athletes seeking top performance.”

Joe Heskett
NCAA Champion and U.S. World Team Member

The Philadelphia Eagles are this football season’s self-acclaimed “Dream Team,” a moniker previously used by the NBA’s Miami Heat.  Unfortunately, the Eagles are 1-3 right now, looking nothing like one of the leagues elite teams.  The Eagles are learning that in sports games are never won “on paper,” and similar to the Miami Heat they appear to be having great difficulty living up to their boastful claims (Advanced Human Performance Systems).

In sports, there are a number of variables that impact the success of a team, including the physical abilities of players, position fit, mental toughness, and team leadership.  Interestingly, confidence (self-efficacy) is a really big piece to athletic success and research has supported this in countless studies.  Unfortunately, over-confidence can work in the opposite direction, and lead to otherwise talented and able teams to perform far below their expectations and capabilities.  Over-confidence can impact pro, college, high school, and youth sport teams, as self-proclaimed “Dream Teams” exist at all levels.

Teams that refer to themselves as “Dream Teams” essentially put a huge “X” on their back, inviting their opponents to play their best game of the year and knock the over-confident dream teamers on their butts.  The Miami Heat struggled early last season living up to their self-proclaimed title, and the Philadelphia Eagles are replicating the same struggles right now.  And while the Heat did eventually make it to the NBA Finals last year, hardly anyone then (or now) is referring to them as a “Dream Team.”

Over-confident teams need to remember that regardless of the names of the players on the team, a team’s level of success is always fluid and prone to experience events that can quickly change the outcomes on the field or court.  In addition to regularly playing teams who bring their “A” game to knock off the Dream Team, there are other land mines the team must avoid throughout the season, including player injuries/suspensions, team in-fighting, poor team leadership, and poor coping skills to deal with resiliency issues.

Confidence is a great thing for a team to develop, but over-confidence will kill you every time.  No games have ever been “won on paper,” and while some athletes talk about enjoying the “X” on their back, the reality is that eventually another team’s “A game” is going to catch the favorite off-guard at some point.  Sports are tough enough – who needs that extra pressure?!

If you are a parent or coach, make it a point to talk about teams like the Heat and Eagles and how over-confidence can lead to unexpected team problems.  Help young athletes stay focused on reaching their individual goals, which will lead to team success.  Using this approach, not only will they develop self-confidence, but will also learn the importance of focus — another variable closely associated with athletic success.  As far as “Dream Teams” go, you will always have the Heat and Eagles to point to when you need examples of how over-confidence can negatively impact team success.

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The levee is finally breaking down in college sports.  The current model, where the NCAA, schools, AD’s, coaches, and all the ancillary people around sports financially profit like never before while the “amateur” athletes receive free schooling (that many hardly value) in trade has clearly become antiquated.  The model is breaking down as it inevitably would, as today’s college athletes have witnessed all the people involved in college sports become super rich while they put their bodies on the line each week parading around for the universities who hold their hands out for the riches they bring in to the schools.  The result is a growing number of college athletes who have seemingly said the hell with it and taken things into their own hands through countless money-making and/or profitable ventures — all banned by the NCAA.

The original “trade” in college athletics actually used to be fairly even – college athletes got a free education, while the colleges made marginal profits by fielding college athletics.  Over the years things got completely out of whack, evidenced by the windfalls of money colleges made, while only offering the same “trade” of an athletic scholarship to the very athletes who produce the boatloads of money.

While some may still argue that the athletes who receive full-rides to college are getting a great deal, the reality is the colleges have found a way to capitalize and monetize their part of the trade in tremendous ways.  Student athletes have no voice or recourse to change things, and colleges know this.  As a result, colleges continue to line their pockets while hanging onto this silly idea that the student athletes are getting a fair shake in return.  They’re not.

If all these recent violations had not been found, it’s almost certain that schools would have continued to go about “business as usual.”  After all, why change?  Its an unbelievable fiscal model to offer a free education in exchange for making mountains of cash profit in return for putting out “amateur” athletes to entertain the masses.

Even with all the violations of late, it’s still unlikely much will change, unfortunately.  Student athletes – especially those from tough backgrounds – will continue to jump at the opportunity to play at a big name college with the hopes of an eventual professional athletic opportunity to follow.  Colleges have zero incentive to level the playing field as the money is so great it actually allows for them to pay college coaches millions of dollars and still swim in huge pools of money.  From a functionality stand point, the model works – even if its not at all fair.

Our Olympic teams finally caved in years ago and began using professional athletes as the amateur sham no longer worked.  The NCAA is currently being forced to revisit their original model as the levee is most definitely breaking, and it’s becoming impossible to sustain the head scratching model they have been able to successfully employ in recent years.  As administrators and coaches have lived lavish lifestyles, the student athletes who have made them their riches have been made to believe they should feel lucky that they are able to do all the heavy lifting for them!  It’s time for a major paradigm shift in college sports, one that lays all the pieces on the table and arrives at a truly fair and equitable system for all.

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The Basics

Goal setting is what allows you to specifically identify things in your life that you would like to change or improve upon.  Rather than vaguely stating “I would like to become a great player,” you will find that by setting specific, controllable, measurable goals will actually give you a path to follow and ultimately become “a great player!”

It is important that you set goals you can control (we call these ‘process’ goals), and try to limit the amount of goals that are ultimately beyond your control (these are known as ‘outcome’ goals).  For example, setting a goal to improve your bench press by 20lbs in one month is a controllable, effective, process-type goal.  Quite simply, if you put in the work you will likely see the results – it’s all up to you.

On the other hand, setting a goal to become “All-State” is an outcome goal – and also not under your complete control (you cannot control how many people will vote for you to win this award).  Of course you want to identify goals like this as being your ultimate achievement, but it is more important to develop the steps needed to put you in the best position to succeed - and then let the games play out.

Setting physical (i.e. strength, speed, etc.), technical (i.e. mastering your swing, learning passing skills, etc.), and mental goals (i.e., developing self-confidence, rebounding from adversity, etc.) will lead to athletic success!  Setting specific, measurable, controllable goals will help you beat your competition – and remember, “luck” is when preparation meets opportunity (setting goals are a big part of preparation).

Why goal setting works

Goals will mobilize and specifically direct your behaviors.  When you know what to do, you only need to follow the plan from that point and almost always success will follow.  Unfortunately, we sometimes set vague goals like “to get in better shape.”  The problem with this goal is that you will never know when you are in “better shape” since you really have not defined “better shape.”  Is “better shape” weight loss/gain?  Lower body fat percentage?  Improved strength?  Vague goals decrease personal motivation, and ultimately lead to mediocre athletic success.

Specific, controllable goals make playing sports fun! It’s a great feeling to check a goal off your to-do list and know that you have successfully accomplished a task.  It’s also rewarding to know that with each goal you reach, you are essentially improving your athletic skills and increasing the chances that you will become the greatest player you can be.  Rather than hope for athletic success to occur, be proactive and make your dreams become a reality!

How to use goal setting

Whether you are a professional, college, interscholastic, or youth-level athlete successful goal setting will help you improve your mental toughness, motivation, resiliency, and athletic success.  Listed below are a few tips to help you get started:

• Research consistently shows that athletes of roughly equal ability who set specific, controllable, measurable goals consistently outperform athletes who do not.  Play smarter, not harder, and get started writing your goals today!
• Brainstorm all the goals you want to achieve, then go back and develop each one into its own mini-goal.  As you make each goal specific, try to set timelines to measure your success.
• Set daily, short-term, mid-term, and long-term goals.  You decide the time period for each (obviously daily goals are self-explanatory)
• Write down all your goals and follow your success in a personal journal.
• When thinking about outcome goals (i.e. winning a state championship), try to develop as many process goals that will lead you to the outcome goal (i.e. knowing your plays, being focused in games, etc.).  Process goals actually lead to achieving outcome goals!

Get your summer sports season started on the right foot by checking out the Sport Performance Assessment for the iphone – get your copy here!

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Parents and coaches tune in —- if you want to help kids more quickly learn and master new sports skills, “shaping” may prove to be the answer (Sport Success 360).  Shaping is a conditioning technique first introduced by B.F. Skinner that uses reinforcement to increase the frequency of a behavior. Shaping is a great technique to help kids learn the sport skills necessary to excel and reach their full athletic potential – and the good news is the technique is relatively easy to learn and use.

B.F. Skinner is the founder of operant learning, a theoretical approach to learning that relies exclusively on patterns of reinforcement. In the most basic sense, Skinner would suggest that human beings do things that give them pleasure, and avoid things that produce pain (physical or emotional). Operant learning does not take into account a person’s inner psyche, bonding patterns, neuron activity, leadership style, or anything else — instead, it is an approach to learning that is simply about patterns of reinforcement.

Shaping is a simple technique, and begins with a target behavior identified. For example, lets say you wanted to teach your child to learn the art of bunting in baseball/softball. You might identify the end goal of being squared around, feet and shoulders set, bat in place, and a good bunt placed on the pitched ball. Assuming the child has never successfully bunted before, he or she will likely struggle with the first step to bunting – getting the body turned in to a “bunting” position.  This is where your overt reinforcement can make all the difference.

When using shaping, it is important to use hearty praise and reinforcement for each successive approximation toward the end goal. Using the bunting example, you might praise the child the first time he turns his or her body in the correct direction toward the pitcher – even if he misses the bunt. Remember, you are reinforcing successive approximations and not the overall mastering the goal.After the child begins to turn his body the correct way in order to successfully bunt, make sure to not praise any efforts that get worse from this point. For example, on the second pitch if the child forgets to turn his body simply say nothing (rather than reinforce – after all, there is nothing to reinforce). On the third pitch the child might turn in the correct position again, which of course would be reinforced.

As you continue with the drill you only want to reinforce (praise) each progressively more advanced skill. If the child stagnates and only continues to move his feet, simply say nothing and carry on with the drill — you can re-introduce praise once the child completes the next skill in the goal ladder (like getting the bat into the proper position).

Shaping, in its most basic sense, is an approach to teaching that only offers reinforcement with each successive step that gets closer to the end goal. When the child fails, there is no need to criticize or punish, but simply continue with the drill and praise when each step toward the end goal is accomplished.

Below is an example of a shaping hierarchy (listed from most basic to most advanced):

1. Turn feet into bunting position as pitcher is ready to make delivery

2. Square shoulders toward the pitcher

3. Get bat into appropriate bunting position4. Execute bunt successfully

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As spring sports get underway, parents and coaches can help athletes improve their sports performance by learning one simple – yet vitally important skill related to athletic success (Mind of Steel). What I am referring to is the ability for athletes to refine their focus and concentration by thinking about relevant cues, while at the same time ignoring irrelevant cues.When athletes focus solely on what is important (the next play), while ignoring unimportant factors (the fans), only then can they truly reach their full athletic potential.

Unfortunately, while it may seem easy to simply think only about things important to the game, personal insecurities and fear always seem to get in the way. For example, when an athlete makes a mistake, he knows that he should quickly forget about it, but heckles from the crowd can quickly divert attention.  The result is usually another bad play due to poor focus (not athletic abilities).

Before games, athletes know they should prepare by going over plays and drills relevant to the game. Unfortunately, many athletes struggle with their thoughts drifting toward their current slump, the opposing team, or worries about whether the coach will put them into the game.Parents and coaches can help athletes by completing the following exercise with athletes:

1.) List all of the relevant things you need to do in order to be successful.

2.) List all of the things that are irrelevant to your athletic success.

For question #1, helpful answers might include being well-rested, hydrated, stretched, and confident executing athletic skills. For question #2, irrelevant factors might include the weather, how many fans are in attendance, and yesterday’s game.Similar to muscle development, mental toughness can be improved by practicing specific skills — the sport psychology exercise above can help toward improving focus and concentration, similar to how bench pressing can improve chest, triceps, and back muscle development.

You can learn more about focus and concentration skills training by picking up a copy of the newly released Winning the Mental Moments DVD available at Championship Productions!

www.drstankovich.com

The Sports Performance Assessment (SPA) app has been helping athletes around the world reach their full athletic potential by improving their overall mental toughness.  The SPA was the first iphone app designed to help athletes self-test themselves to learn about their level of mental toughness, and provides unique insights to users to help them improve in their areas of deficiency.  The original SPA continues to help athletes from all sports quickly check their mental toughness, learn skills to improve, and follow their progress throughout the course of a season.  The SPA is a great teaching tool for kids of all ages, including varsity sports, pop warner, little league, and AAU!With the big news of Verizon soon carrying iphones, millions of new users can now pick up their copy of the SPA for just $3.99! In addition, an entire line of sport-specific SPA apps are now available, all designed to test, teach, and track your athletic progress!

Learn more about the SPA here!

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“The Zone”

As an athlete I’m sure you already know about being “in the zone” and how awesome your sports performance becomes when you are locked into that magical mindset that allows your mind and body to be in synchrony – often resulting in some of your best games (Sports Success 360). The “zone” is known by experts in the field of sports psychology as being in “flow,” or when you experience the optimal psychological mindset and highest level of mental toughness. Being in flow (or the zone) is when your focus is locked in, your attention span is directed and on-task, your motivation level is high, and your energy level is at a peak state.When athletes learn how to get their minds into the zone, the result is efficient, often effortless movement and play – resulting in fewer mistakes and more peak athletic performances. In fact, some athletes have even told me they felt like they “couldn’t miss even if they tried to!

The zone is not something magical, but instead comes about by taking control of your athletic training, being motivated to succeed, matching up against challenging competition (not too easy or too difficult), and perhaps most importantly moderating your arousal level while playing (i.e. calming down when you are nervous, and pumping up a little when you feel flat).

Why “The Zone” works

Quite simply, the zone works because it allows you to play the way you know how to and with a high level of intensity. Being in the zone also means you are “playing to win with great confidence, and are far less likely to “choke” during critical game situations! When you are not in the zone, it becomes much easier to get caught up in things that can beat up your confidence – like worrying about what people are thinking of you or even the bad game you had earlier in the week!

How to use “The Zone”

• First, it is vitally important that you compete against talent that is roughly the same as your own. Research studies show when we compete against easy competition we often get bored, and with too advanced competition we are likely to get overly-frustrated. The key is to play against challenging competition that will push you to become the best you can be!

• Journal notes about the times when you felt you were in the zone (the best time is immediately after a game or practice where this occurred). Try to look for patterns that are happening that may be helping you get in the zone – for example, maybe listening to that one favorite song moments before games has been helping put you in a really good emotional state and has helped get you in the zone.

• You must be focused on the task at-hand at all times and truly believe in yourself in order to get into the zone. Since it is quite likely you will sometimes get nervous during games, you must learn a skill (or two) that will help you relax when the pressure is high. Taking 2-3 really deep, cleansing breaths into your stomach is one sure-fire way to help!

• Love what you do! Research shows we are far more likely to get into the zone when we are intrinsically motivated (meaning we compete for the love of competing, not because somebody else wants us to).

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Please visit the following link to view all archived Sports Doc clips from 2007 to 2010!Over the last 2.5 years we have covered a number of very important sport-related topics designed to help student athletes, parents, and coaches get the most from the sport experience. Some of these topics include performance enhancing drugs, mental toughness, youth sport burnout, sport philosophy, sports psychology, and playing time.  I encourage you to check out the clips that most suit your needs and interests, and feel free to link to the archive from your website or blog.www.drstankovich.com