We’ve all heard it before; Mindset is Everything.

Everyone knows or has likely heard that “hard work beats talent when talent fails to work hard.” Mindset involves focus, beliefs, vision, drive, goal setting, hard work, discipline, motivation, accountability, attitude, culture, etc. etc. Did I say HARD WORK?

Case in point, Tom Brady didn’t become the best NFL quarterback of all time, with six Super Bowl wins under his belt, by taking it easy. When he joined the New England Patriots roster at the turn of the millennium, he was consistently the first guy in the gym before any of his new teammates, every morning. His mindset, coupled with actions and vision, influenced the team’s culture and collective work ethic. But not everyone is a Tom Brady. In fact, nobody but Tom Brady is Tom Brady.

So, what can we do?

As coaches (or as athletes), how do we set our teams up to succeed and achieve their potential more consistently, like Brady?

Well, we all have ‘mental game’ to some degree, and we’re all good at teaching or learning sport-specific skills. Working on things like attitude, effort, discipline, and work ethic is something almost all of us do, but we can take it one step further. Have you ever heard of the ideal performance state of mind, or the flow state?

In sports, we commonly refer to performances in the flow state as being in ‘the zone.’ Brady, like most champions, plays in this ‘zone’ time and time again.

Let’s talk about flow.        

Flow is the state of mind where everything just ‘clicks,’ and you perform your best. Your sense of time fades away. Hours can pass in the blink of an eye, or sometimes it feels like everything happens in slow motion. You can lose your sense of self in these moments, or it can feel like you’ve never been more aware. It’s hard to remember what happens when you’re in ‘the zone,’ or how you got there, but you do remember it was fun!

Achieving flow looks different for different people. It’s a complex task involving the right stimulus, the right skills, the right challenge, unique neurochemistry, and a complex environment.

So, getting young athletes to hit the optimal state of flow sounds simple right?

It’s not that simple, or is it?

Teaching athletes to self-regulate and manage internal distractions can help them achieve a sort of ‘flow baseline,’ where they are better prepared to hit the peak performance zone. Recognizing the physical and mental states that compromise their mindset is critically important. When we succeed at this task, athletes make fewer costly mistakes—the ones that create a downward spiral in terms of self-confidence—and we’ll even prevent injuries in the process. We’ll build them up to the great performers they can all be.

• If you see an athlete or teammate, who’s mad, what do you tell them? Calm down? Pay attention? Or “GET YOUR HEAD IN THE GAME!” – And how’s that working out for you?
• If you see an athlete who looks exhausted, what do you do to reignite their spark?
• What about if someone looks like they’re ‘coasting’ on autopilot?

Getting athletes to regulate their mental states on their own is the ticket.

Using distracting mental states as triggers to remind athletes to keep their heads in the game and control their mindset will help them achieve peak performances more reliably. All the hard work athletes put into honing their skills will NOT be in vain.

When athletes learn the techniques to better manage their mindset, we see a boost in self-confidence, we see a massive boost in team performance, and oh yeah, with increased focus comes fewer injuries. Athlete health and longevity is affected too.

What are you doing to shift your mindset or the mindset of your athletes?

Author: Mike Shaw, Co-Founder of HeadStartPro

Contact HeadStartPro to learn about our online courses or in-person workshops.

Have you ever wondered how an athlete could get injured doing something they’ve done “a thousand times?”

Of course, some injuries are the result of poor technique, lack of experience, other players, and faulty equipment, but what about the injuries that occur when an athlete knows what they are doing?

When we begin learning a new sport, activity or task, our awareness is generally high, especially if there is risk involved. For instance, think about your first time driving. Where were your hands? They were probably gripped tightly around the steering wheel. Where was your mind? You were probably excited, nervous, maybe even a bit scared. One thing’s for sure; you probably weren’t focused on anything other than driving. How long did it take before you became complacent and your mind began to wonder? A month? A week?

Learning to jump, kick, shoot, throw, or catch without thinking is essential for any athlete. The repetition builds muscle memory and allows athletes to perform fluidly. However, as an athlete improves their technical skills, they also become more complacent. The problem is when an athlete becomes complacent their focus is compromised, exposing them to a much higher risk of injury. Fortunately, there are strategies athletes can use to combat complacency.

Looking at Others to Fight Complacency

It is easier to recognize complacency in other people than it is to recognize it in ourselves. By learning to look for complacency in others, we can use their mental state (complacency) as a trigger to bring our minds back to the moment. When adopted in a team setting, athletes and coaches can use this technique to look out for each other by giving teammates verbal cues like “mind on task” when they see their teammate getting complacent. With practice, this ‘look at others’ technique can help athletes improve focus, control the moment, and fight complacency.

Working on Habits to Compensate for Complacency

When the mind goes off task, our eyes work as our final defense against injury. However, most of us haven’t put much conscious effort into our visual habits since we were told as children to “look both ways before crossing the street.” When an athlete works on the habit of moving their eyes first before they move, it improves their chances of getting a reflex action. Working on visual habits (like moving your eyes first before moving) will help athletes compensate for complacency by keeping them visually aware and physically responsive even if their mind has drifted off.

Motivating Athletes to Prevent Injuries

Ironically, most people are not overly motivated to improve their personal safety skills unless they have recently been injured. If we hope to help our athletes prevent complacent injuries we need to find a way to motivate them. As you can probably imagine, complacency is not just a safety issue; it is also the root cause of most major performance errors (own goal, passing to the wrong player, celebrating too early, etc.). Fortunately, we can motivate athletes to improve their focus to enhance performance and in turn, prevent costly injuries.

How do you help prevent your athletes from becoming complacent?

What strategies are you using to motivate your athletes to enhance focus and prevent injuries?

Author: Hunter Visser, Co-Founder of HeadStartPro

Contact HeadStartPro to learn about our online courses or in-person workshops.

Focusing is one of the most important aspects of performance. The ability to focus is a skill that can be learned through deliberate and intentional mental training.

But what is focus?

Focusing, simply put, is the act of paying attention to particular elements of what we perceive. Energy follows the mind, so whatever we focus on we’ll give more energy to. An ideal focus state is one that is directed to relevant aspects of the performance at hand, which frees the performer to unleash their abilities (known and dormant). An ideal focus remains strong and unwavering throughout the whole performance or training session.

Evidently, we all face moments of distraction, moments where our ideal state is shaken, or broken. Distractions can be understood as focusing on something that doesn’t help enhance our performance. We can be internally or externally distracted. Some common determinants and indicators of distraction include rushing, frustration, fatigue, fear, and complacency. But we can also be distracted by what may feel like positive states such as extreme joy and confidence.

Four critical errors that often occur when we are distracted include our eyes not being on task, mind not on task, being in the ‘line of fire’ (being in the way of something or someone moving or hitting something or someone that is in your way), and finally, problems with balance, traction, and grip.

Self-triggering is an effective way to refocus when distracted and a way to avoid the four critical errors that commonly occur when distracted.

The first step to refocusing is to have an awareness of the state you’re in, to catch that you are distracted or that you are in a state prone to distraction. You can do this by periodically saying “self-trigger” throughout your performance as an intentional check-in. Then if you notice you are primed for distraction (rushing, frustrated, or fatigued) you can repeat “self-trigger” to refocus your attention to the task at hand.

To enhance the refocusing moment you can say to yourself (or a teammate) “eyes and mind on task.” Saying “self-trigger” or “eyes and mind on task” will help bring the athlete back to the moment with heightened focus, awareness, and mindfulness.

Overall, the goal of focus training is to understand the demands and opportunities of the performance context, know ones ideal personal performance state, create performance plans to help direct the performers focus, and have tools such as self-triggering in place when re-focusing is required. Having these performance pieces in place helps create performance consistency and growth.

What distractions do your athletes commonly face? How do you help your athletes stay focused?

Author: Dr. John Coleman (PhD), Sports Psychology Consultant and High-Performance Coach

Contact HeadStartPro to learn about our online courses or in-person workshops.