Sports Psychology

I went for a little run this afternoon which took me past the club and the waters I spent literally thousands of hours training on. It made me think about what I thought about at the start of a training session - and a lot of the time that was how my body felt and how ready I was for the session.

I’d do a quick scan inside my body and some days I’d really feel like an athlete and the skills would come so easily. On other days I might have been fatigued from other training and things just didn’t feel right. At those times, it became important to do what I’d call a feel warm-up. This would involve going back to the basics and opening my mind up to the full set of sensations inside and outside my body. I’d feel the boat and my body as intensely as possible and after a few minutes I’d start to get the sensations I was looking for.

I got the idea from Ric Charlesworth, Aussie hockey coach (gold in ‘96 and ‘00 Olympics). He gave his players a focused hitting drill at the start of training sessions to check on their (you guessed it) focus.

Players got in pairs and started hitting the ball firmly back and forth to each other over a small distance. Ric could tell how focused they were by how close to the other player’s feet the ball ended up. The players would then move further apart, still aiming the ball between the other player’s feet.

It’s a relatively boring and simple exercise for elite hockey players. But its purpose isn’t to practice hitting, it’s to warm up the mind for hockey and encourage the perfect execution of skills.

And if practice starts perfectly it can be easier to maintain that focus throughout.

When you go about learning a new skill, the first step is just to get a concept in your mind of what it is all about. You may have already done this by seeing experienced players on tv or by a coach’s demonstration.

The next step is to have a go yourself, because no amount of watching or thinking about it will help you learn a skill in the first place.

This first stage is very interesting. Say you’re learning archery, initially you’d just pull back the bow strong without an arrow in place to get a feel for the strength and motion needed. Next, you’d put an arrow in place, pull back the bow string, and try to line up the arrow with the target.

Let’s say you let fly and somehow the arrow hits the bullseye (this actually happened to me when I was 8!). Of course you (and I) got lucky.

The key indicator of someone’s proficiency in a skill is not the outcome of the performance per se but their ability to accurately repeat the action. To get to this stage, hundreds or even thousands of repetitions are needed to burn the movement pattern in the mind.

To be an exceptional athlete, you must also learn when and how to adjust your performance slightly and correctly for the conditions (eg, wind). In some sports this can take years, especially if your learning of the skill included learning a glitch.

For example, once young tennis players have the basics of a serve learnt they should immediately start getting used to serving fast. This is because your muscles’ memory for skills is speed-specific. That is, proficiency at a very slow-speed serve does not translate well to a high speed serve. So kids should whack the ball over the net and once the whacking is going well, emphasis should be placed on accuracy.

For more take a look at Visualization Skills (MP3), Skill Acquisition in Sport: Research, Theory and Practice (book) and/or Acquisition and Performance of Sports Skills (book).

Watching the final of the Olympic Basketball competition last week reminded me of the importance of thinking the right things before executing a skill.

Whenever someone lined up for a free throw you could see they had a moment to consider the shot, specifically to cue up in their mind and body the movement pattern that they needed to execute the skill.

It’s a matter of searching within yourself for the movement pattern you’ve learnt in training and/or bringing up the sensation of the beginning of the movement or even doing some visualization of the (successful) outcome. You may need to adapt the movement to the conditions, if necessary, and then let the ‘muscles’ memory’ take over and let it happen.

To make this all work well, the cueing up of the skill should happen in extensively in training.

For more on this topic, have a look at the excellent products over at Sports Mind Skills - Free Throw Champ and Basketball Intelligym.

The last of the Sailing events has just wound up here in Qingdao. Photo shows our Aussie Tornado sailors very wet due to heavy rain but very happy after picking up the Silver medal.

Otherwise, we’re all in a ‘pack-up, commiserate and celebrate phase’. It’s not time yet to get into a serious review of everyone’s performances; it’s time to relax and enjoy the Olympic environment!

For those continuing on as athletes, a once a year ‘transition’ phase, involving just mild exercise, fun stuff and time away from the main sport, is important to help remember why we do it in the first place.

I love Winston Churchill’s use of the word never.

Never surrender and never give up are some of the main ideas he’s famous for; here’s the text of a speech at HarrowSchool, 29 October 1941:

This is the lesson: never give in, never give in, never, never, never, never—in nothing, great or small, large or petty—never give in except to convictions of honour and good sense. Never yield to force; never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy.

The format of many sports is such that an athlete can have a significant set-back early in the event or game, leaving him or her staring at a big defeat before getting half-way through.

It might just be a little bit of bad luck combined with a bad decision or two and suddenly it seems the game has gone from your grasp. It can even leave you in a state of shock - ‘how could the one event I’ve been preparing for for years be going wrong?’

It seems to happen to sailor Ben Ainslie at each Olympics. In both the 1996 and 2000 Olympics he finished in the 20s in the first race. Then in 2004 he scored a first race DSQ in Athens. Here in Qingdao, for the Beijing Olympics he had his best first race, a 10th - another relative dud.

But he finished with Silver, Gold and another Gold in Athens. Tomorrow, with little doubt, he’ll win again.

What should an athlete do after a crap start to his or her event? The range of things athletes do do covers the spectrum - some give up and go through the motions for the remainder of the event and some try to re-focus and battle on but doubts creep in and the next bit of bad fortune is terminal.

It takes significant mental toughness to overcome a set-back early in an event. Athletes have to draw deeply on their experience and training to firstly establish whether their is a significant problem with their performance that needs to be corrected. Often this isn’t the case - skills and abilities don’t disappear overnight, but the focus to execute those skills might.

Athletes, like Ainslie, who do end up performing to their potential after an early set-back know deep down that they are the best and they let their training do the work. Nothing changes.

We’re deep into the Games now and it’s a really exciting time. There’s so much going on, both within the sport I’m working with now as well at the rest of the Olympic action. The USA v China basketball last night was a ripper and the Aussie swimmers are going well.

Right now, I’m sitting here with another 5 web pages open, refreshing them regularly to follow how our team out on the water are doing. Our team’s results have been a little less than we would have liked till now and that can make people feel the pressure, from management to coaches to athletes.

The athletes are pretty used to this though and just go about things normally. Multiple Gold medalist Ben Ainslie said it well a few days ago - “Pressure is something you just have to deal with and it doesn’t get any easier, but it is also part of the thrill of competing at the highest level.” Ben went on to say that he probably puts more pressure on himself to perform well than anybody. That way, he’s in control.

I reckon not knowing what is going to happen in a sporting contest makes it exciting - otherwise it would just be maths!

The event I’m coaching for starts tomorrow and I think my girl has done a pretty dam good job of preparing herself. The forecast looks a little sloppy though - light winds - but that’s what we’re here for!

I write this from the 20th floor of a 17 story building in Qingdao. Yes, I can fly!

Not… The Chinese probably have a greater obsession with lucky and unlucky numbers than most and so most buildings miss all floors with a 4 as well as the traditional ‘unlucky’ western number 13.

And, of course, you probably already know that the Olympic Opening Ceremony starts at 8:08 on the 8/8/08. Why?, well, the word for eight (八，捌) in Chinese (Pinyin: bā) sounds similar to the word which means “prosper” or “wealth”.

The athlete I’m coaching here drew boat number 44 in the random draw. She really wanted 13! That’s got to be lucky!

No, I don’t really think that. I prefer the sort of thinking that’s made the sayings ‘You make your own luck’ or ‘The harder you work the luckier you get’.

Sailing is a sport where luck can intrude a fair bit more than most sports, due to the unpredictably of the weather. That’s why we do 11 races rather than just one. Good or bad fortune should even out over the competition.

However, to ensure a good ‘Games performance athletes should make themselves good enough so that even on a ‘bad’ day, their performance is satisfactory, compared with his or her competitors. Making yourself ‘good enough’ will take a lot of hard work… and that’s luckier than any number!

Qingdao is putting on quite a spectacular display of lights at night these days. The marina docks are subtly lit, laser beams pierce the sky and whole buildings are covered with moving illustrations of sailboats.

The latter contrasts somewhat with the picture on the water today - the winds were very light, peaking at 5 knots. Quite a normal day really and the feeling with the Australian Sailing Team is great - everyone is fully settled in and looking forward to the start of racing (first fleets start on the 9th).

It’s been a while since a lot of sailors here have done some formal racing and it’s interesting how people go on the first day back after such a break. Personally, I have to really work on getting ready to fire after such a delay. Suddenly, there are a lot more boats on the start line, the courses are just a little bit longer and, of course, someone is keeping score for real.

This is when the motto ‘Train as you compete’ comes into its own. Simply, you’ve got to apply the same focus to training as you intend to racing. Never take training half-heartedly or you will compete the same. (Sports Mind Skill’s mental training tracks on Self-talk in Sport might help).

Getting a good sleep is difficult for some people when traveling. Last week in Hong Kong we had beds like tables. Fortunately, for the next few weeks luckily they’re like, well, beds. While you can’t travel with a bed, you can with a pillow so I always do. It just provides a familiar thing for my head to rest on even though my body might be on a not so comfy bed.

One important thing about sleep for athletes is that’s when a lot of the recovery takes place. The body releases more testosterone and repairs the microscopic damage that’s taken place during the day’s training. So for those who have trouble sleeping, any extra effort to help get to sleep and stay there is time well spent.

Having said that, I haven’t slept as well as I have here for weeks - the beds are giant singles and very comfy. Also, we’re pretty busy during the day because we’re still in an organizational mode, sorting out equipment. For those who are well prepared, the extra tasks will start to ease up now and things will feel routine again. Like a good pillow, a good routine keeps your head in the right place.