The Sports Doc Chalk Talk

Ever since Junior Seau’s surprising suicide a week ago, the mainstream sports media has continued to rev up the coverage of false correlations suggesting brain damage, concussions, and head trauma are to blame for Seau’s (and others like him) troubles upon sport retirement.  This is surprising, especially as we have plenty of sport psychology research to examine over the last 20-30 years that actually points quite clearly to a number of inter-related psychosocial factors that are far more responsible for sport retirement difficulties.  From a personal standpoint, I have tried to reach out to a number of national outlets to help better inform people about what research has found, and not what many media folks are trying to develop as the primary reason why athletes struggle (the brain damage theory). Thus far, these attempts have been met with very little interest.

Although brain damage should certainly be considered when an athlete displays any kind of cognitive trouble, it’s also important to widen the lens and look at many of the facts we now know in 2012 to be true:

• First, millions of athletes each year struggle with sport retirement.  These athletes are sometimes from the professional level, but they are also found at the college and high school level, too.  In fact, I bet you probably know a young person who had difficulty with sport retirement, even if he/she wasn’t suicidal.
• The vast majority of athletes who have trouble with the sport retirement transition do not have brain trauma, and most come from sports that are low- or no-contact sports.  Athletes who compete in baseball, softball, soccer, basketball, lacrosse, and wrestling are at-risk, as are athletes from many other sports.  While it is true that these athletes do experience physical play, rarely do they experience concussions and/or head trauma.
• With athletes today often starting the sports careers as early as 5-6 years old, and many specializing in one sport and playing it year-round, it’s easy to see why so many develop an exclusive athletic identity that sometimes limits their self-value beyond that of “athlete.”  This paradigm has nothing to do with concussions of brain damage, but instead a product of how one perceives oneself, couple by how the world around the athlete often limits his/her worth to athletics.
• Many athletes, especially talented ones, foreclose on their future careers outside of sports and display what we call a low level of career maturity.  What this means is that they are often far behind in the “normal” career path that one takes, often having an unrealistic expectation of going pro in their sport (and as a result not very invested in looking into more realistic careers).
• Even though we know countless athletes from all different sports and age levels struggle with sport retirement, there are still very few programs available to help athletes with the sport retirement transition.  Making things more difficult is the “machismo” mindset many athletes have that served them well in sports (not asking for help but doing things on their own).  While this might make a strong athlete, it usually limits people from gaining the help they need in order to readjust to a new identity and learn more about potential future careers beyond sports.

It’s really amazing to me how the sports media continues to push a theory that at best is speculative, and at worst is incredibly irresponsible when you think of the empirical evidence we have ascertained over the last few decades.  Hopefully some of the sports media folks will begin actually talking to athletes (and not just football players) and explore the many issues they experience pertaining to athletic identity, role confusion, career maturity, future planning, and the lack of help available.  If they listen closely to retired athletes, they will see that the issues are far more tied to psychosocial variables than biological “brain damage.”

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Check out Positive Transitions for Student Athletes for more information on sport retirement and how you can help an athlete who is struggling with life after sports.

When we first wrote the book Positive Transitions for Student Athletes in the late 1990′s, our primary intention was to help college student athletes prepare for life after sports (since the reality was that most would not be continuing on with their professional sports careers).  The trend that was already in motion at that time was that increasingly more student athletes were exiting from their collegiate athletic careers confused, sometimes depressed, and often unprepared to leave their athletic identity behind and enter what some jokingly refer to as “the real world.”

Since Positive Transitions was released, the book has assisted thousands of college student athletes prepare for sport retirement by helping them better understand their unique athletic identity, the role confusion they experience when re-defining themselves, and specific tips and strategies designed to help them identify and use athletic transferable skills to help develop the self-confidence and skill set needed to excel in their future careers (similarly to how they succeeded in their previous athletic careers).  Interestingly, while the times have changed since then, the issues athletes commonly experience while exiting from sports have remained relatively stable — perhaps the biggest change, ironically, is that the same issues that were once unique to DI college (and professional) athletes have now “trickled down” into the younger ranks of sports, including small college sports (DIII) as well as high school athletics. What this means is that younger athletes, including those far less likely to move onto professional sports, still experience the same challenges when all of a sudden the identity, lifestyle, and mindset they have developed over the last 10, 15, or 20 years of their sports career is suddenly stripped away from them in a moments notice.

If you are a parent of a student athlete and your gut tells you that he or she may one day be heading toward a difficult sport retirement transition, I encourage you to check out Positive Transitions for Student Athletes. While the book was written primarily for college student athletes, I am confident that there are many tips, insights, and strategies that you can use with your teenage son or daughter in preparation for when sport retirement occurs — an inevitable transition for every athlete who competes in sports.  In the case of sport retirement, “an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure” is very true, and can make all the difference between your son or daughter using the sport experience to excel in life, or allowing it to hold him or her back because of a lack of confidence and belief in his or her talents beyond sports.

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Many athletes struggle with sport retirement, and not because they have all experienced brain damage or concussions (although that sometimes occurs).  The more prevalent reasons for difficulties experienced during sport retirement have to do with psychosocial factors, including the identity and athlete develops, as well as the lack of programming available to athletes when they are no longer able to play.  Of course, every athlete experiences sport retirement in his or her own unique ways, but on this video I discuss some of the common issues athletes experience during this abrupt and often difficult transition.

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Coaches are regularly challenged to be successful leaders and get the most out of their team (Sport Success 360).  When their team is “loaded,” they have to make sure they keep the team focused and playing up to their abilities.  On the other hand, when they coach teams with average or below-average talent, the challenge is to lead the team so that they believe in themselves and play over their heads (and over-achieve).  How a coach leads his or her team is important in both of these situations, and there are a few general rules all coaches can benefit from in order to help the team reach its full potential.  Getting the team to “buy in” to the coach’s philosophy is key — listed below are a few quick sport psychology tips to help:

• Set appropriate, realistic goals. Studies consistently show that when people set realistic, challenging goals (rather than goals that are too easy or too difficult) people are more likely to persevere and remained motivated toward the goals.  Set goals that challenge your players, and then with every accomplished goal try and set another tier of goals that are even more challenging than the first.
• Generate enthusiasm. It’s no secret that when we are excited, we are more apt to be motivated to play hard and win.  Coaches who show positive enthusiasm almost always benefit by the team picking up on this energy, and as a result the team usually plays with better focus, motivation, mental toughness, and resiliency.
• Be consistent. Coaches who treat all players as fairly as possible usually build the best team cohesion.  While it is important to motivate players as individuals, when it comes to team rules and protocols it is important to be as fair as possible in order to improve team chemistry and cohesion.
• Praise often. People are much more likely to reach goals when they are praised and shaped in positive and instructive ways.  Rather than embarrass, berate, or humiliate players into performing better,  find creative ways to praise for effort and encourage players to do a better job the next time out.
• Prepare to deal with losses. While it might sound strange to prepare for tough times, it actually makes a lot of sense when you think about it.  The reality is that most teams will lose (some will lose a lot), so preparing for dejected players and a negative locker room is very important.  As a wise man once said, “it’s not how many times you get knocked down, but how many times you get up.”  Coaches need to think about how to regain the team and move them quickly through the sadness and sulking stage and back toward the focus and motivation needed to play at a high level tomorrow.

Being a successful coach at any level is a challenging task when you think about it.  Getting a team to buy into a coach’s philosophy can be a tough sell, and then keeping a team motivated throughout the season can be an equally difficult task.  Coaches who learn about leadership techniques and work on their interpersonal communication skills put themselves in the best possible situation to create a great team environment, as well as win more games.

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Check out Sport Success 360 to help improve the overall culture of your team, athletic department, or youth league – get started today!

This week I wrote about the potential increased risk for injury associated with sport specialization, and how so many coaches and athletes search for perfection in the mechanics of their sport, while at the same time dismissing the importance of learning mental skills that help with confidence, focus, resiliency, and reducing anxiety.

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In today’s youth and interscholastic sports world, the sport specialist (an athlete who plays a single sport rather than sampling different sports throughout the year) has become an increasingly more common sighting (AHPS).  In some cases the child makes this decision, while other times parents, coaches, and other influential people encourage the student athlete to specialize rather than sample different sports.  The main reason for sport specialization, according to most sport psychologists and physicians, is to devote more time and energy toward a specific sport with the idea that more training = better athletic skill acquisition for that specific sport.

While it is likely true that most kids who specialize in a sport will get better at that sport (and at a faster rate), it’s also true that the chances for youth sport burnout increase dramatically as well.  In addition to sports burnout, kids who specialize (and train year-round) might also be running a significantly higher risk for physical injury as a recent Yahoo story revealed:

Repetitive stress injuries are also on the rise. The days of lettering in several different varsity sports are gone; instead, students are encouraged to focus on a single sport starting at a very young age — as early as kindergarten, in some places — and stick with it throughout high school and college. Sometimes, they’re urged to do so by coaches hoping to hone a particular skill. Other times, they’re pushed by parents or driven to land a rare college scholarship. But the intense training in one sport over a long period of time can take a toll, even on young and fit bodies.

“Probably the thing that we’re seeing the most right now is any type of overuse injury, from stress fractures to low-level muscle injuries,” Charlie Thompson, chair of the NATA College/University Athletic Trainers’ Committee and the head athletic trainer at Princeton University, told Yahoo! Shine. “Off-season programs start too soon after the end of a long season, and we’re not allowing recovery to happen.”

So what does this all mean for the typical American sports parent?  The short answer may be that “more doesn’t always = better,” especially if ongoing injuries prevent a young athlete from actually benefiting from specializing in one sport.  It appears as though more sports medicine physicians, trainers, and other helping professionals are becoming aware of the health concerns surrounding sport specialization, and if you are a sports parent today, maybe you should pay attention to this news, too.  As with any important decision, pros and cons should be examined within your family before deciding whether to specialize or sample youth sports.

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Sport Success 360 is designed to help you with the contemporary issues in youth and interscholastic sports – like sport specialization — check it out today!

A cue word is simply a word, phrase, or acronym that is designed to help an athlete with improved confidence, focus, and inevitably better mental toughness and future athletic success.  I encourage all athletes to develop their own cue word, primarily because they WORK!  Some athletes come up with a word that displays emotion (“explode”), others develop an instructional word sequence (“hips back”), while others use an acronym to help with future focus (“SC” stands for “state champ”).  There are many reasons why sport psychologists swear cue words work, including the following big three:

1. They help and athlete with comfort and confidence. Since the word is something the athlete has come up with by himself, it is usually a personal connection and this helps with familiarity.  When we feel at ease, our confidence increases, as does our comfort level – two very important pieces related to athletic success.

2. They are classically conditioned to a positive mood state. Remember Pavlov and the salivating dogs?  Actually, classical conditioning occurs in many more settings than just hungry dogs responding to a bell in anticipation of soon being fed – in sports, when an athlete prompts himself to think about a word previously conditioned to prompt good thoughts and feelings, the word actually serves as a “bell” (similar to Pavlov’s theory) and immediately redirects the athlete’s focus and energy back to good emotions and thoughts.

3. They serve as a distraction. Remember, as human beings we cannot think of two different thoughts at the same exact time.  When an athlete directs her attention toward a cue word, it makes it impossible (literally) to think about the last bad play, the hostile crowd, or any other negative factor.

Why sit back and watch the kids you parent or coach in youth and interscholastic sports continue to struggle with confidence, focus, and resiliency, when you can quickly learn about how to develop a cue word that can help?  For more information check out our ever-expanding line of high-performance products for athletes, only at Advanced Human Performance Systems!

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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!

This week I explored two breaking sports stories – Bobby Petrino and his indiscretions at Arkansas (which have since lead to his firing), and Skip Bayless and his claims of being a former basketball starter in high school that were later proven to be false by many bloggers and others in the sports world. With the Petrino story, how important is integrity if it serves as a detriment to winning?  And for Bayless, will this embarrassing exposure serve as a warning for others in the sports media that if they call out players, it’s possible that some players may dig into their history, too?

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Tiger Woods bombed at The Masters this weekend, even after ESPN did everything they could to manufacture his championship-caliber abilities again by promoting him far more than any of the other more deserving players in the field.  With only 1 win in the last three years, Woods was the main man in every ESPN promo of The Masters, yet still lost by 15 strokes.

I have been critical of Tiger’s excuses over the last few years as he regularly blames everything from caddies to injuries, but his biggest problem by far is probably something most sports fans take for granted – his mental toughness. Tiger Woods does something that most athletes do, and it’s actually a really big hindrance to getting better at a sport – more simply, he obsesses over a specific technical part of his game (his swing) while completely disregarding his anxiety, poor focus, and loss of confidence. Read the following from SI.com and follow up with some solid sport psychology advice (bold emphasized):

>Now his problem is his swing. He’s been reworking it with Sean Foley for more than 18 months, and it remains a work in progress.

”What’s frustrating is I know what to do, and I just don’t do it. I get out there and I just don’t trust it at all,” Woods said. ”I can get it on the range, I can get it dialed in there. We’ll work on the same things and it feels really good, and I go to the golf course and I just don’t quite trust it. It just means I just need to do more reps.”<

Woods is actually like most athletes – poor play only means more practice, right?  Surprisingly, the answer is NO! Lets take a closer look at passage above and how revealing it really is.

• First, it is reported he has been “reworking” his swing for 18 months.  While this dedication might sound admirable, it’s actually terribly counter-productive and can lead to focus and anxiety problems.  Remember, we are talking about arguably the greatest golfer of all time – his muscle memory is so refined and established that he certainly doesn’t need to rework a swing for a year-and-a-half!  A calm, focused, and confident Woods could make beautiful golf swings again (probably even blindfolded) IF he obsessed less on the swing and focused more on reducing his anxiety, improving his confidence, and refining his focus.  This is a very important message to all athletes because the common thing athletes do is practice more, even when the true skills they need to improve are actually cognitive/emotional skills, not physical skills! Sadly, most athletes simply “practice more” and never target their true areas of weakness, and the result is, in Tiger’s case, and 18-month long “search” for I don’t know what.
• Woods actually makes my point in his quote about playing well on the range but blowing it on the course.  Think about that for a moment – he gets “dialed in” when there is nobody around and no pressure, then seemingly loses it in match play.  Do you see the problem?  It’s almost impossible to “solve” an anxiety issue by simply going out and hitting tons of balls in a controlled, non-anxious condition (i.e. driving range) — is it any wonder all the old habits happen again?  You see, he hasn’t “solved” anything by playing beautifully on the range but never learning any skills to control his anxiety and sharpen his focus in real play. Take another example for a moment — lets say you have a child in Little League that is afraid of getting hit by a pitch.  Taking your child to the batting cage might help some, but batting cages throw precise pitches and usually do not present the real fear (of an errant pitch hitting the kid).  For more rapid and long-lasting improvement, the child needs to actually face his fear by gaining confidence against live pitching in real games – where there is a possibility he could get hit by a pitch.  The point is it’s tough to overcome anxiety by simply going back and practicing in very controlled conditions that do not represent the true anxious situations.
• Finally, Woods explains that the only way to improve his situation is “more reps.”  Actually, this is probably the worst way to improve athletic skills if you are really dealing with anxiety.  Don’t get me wrong, more reps won’t hurt (and it can actually help with muscle memory), but if you are anxious, unfocused, and have a tendency to get angry when making mistakes in games/matches, then you are really not addressing the true problems.  An analogy might be using a screw-driver to hammer a nail — if you hit the nail enough times with the handle of the screw-driver it might eventually drive the nail into the wood, but wouldn’t using a hammer make the job that much easier?!

Athletes who recognize their true areas of weakness and address the real problems are the ones who bounce back very quickly.  In the case of Tiger Woods, simply hitting a thousand balls a day at a tranquil driving range does little – if anything – to prepare him to make clutch shots during pressure times of matches.  Instead, a better way to go is to balance reps with cognitive/emotional skill building, like learning how to use relaxation strategies when pressure begins to set in during match play.  Unfortunately, the mindset of “more=better” still exists in sports, hence the reason why so many athletes still practice harder, not smarter – and see limited results from their efforts.

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Help the kids in your life learn how to reduce anxiety, increase self-confidence, and win more games! Check out the our line of performance products here!