The Mental Side of a Winning Athlete

The Mental Side Of Winning

The most forgotten side of coaching athletics is mental.  Yet the mental side of coaching will yield the most positive results of any coaching you will do.  It will give positive results quicker with less coaching than any other single set of techniques.   Despite its great value, it is forgotten, often disregarded, not to mention lost and hidden behind teaching physical skills.

At its very foundation the mental side of any sport is being and thinking positive.  A word of warning: Beware of this simplistic definition because the negative often camouflages the positive.  Here is an example: In shooting free throws the athlete often approaches the task saying to himself, “I gotta make this shot” and he or she’s very positive in this affirmation.  This is, however, a negative, and is counter productive.  The chances are increased that the shot will be missed.  Instead of relaxing and letting the shot just happen, the muscles will invariably tense up and the difficulty of the exercise will increase.  “I gotta, I have to, If I don’t make this shot I’ll just die . . . “, are all negatives and are to be avoided.

On the positive side, the athlete will approach the foul line, receive the ball from the referee, then begin his or her ritual, by bouncing the ball a proscribed number of times or none at all, eye the basket, indeed, eye a particular part of the basket.  During this ritual, he will be reviewing in his mind exactly how he makes this shot, remembering successful feelings of making the shot, mentally saying “this is how I take this shot.”   He should then release the ball to the basket without allowing another thought to enter the mind.   The statistical probability of making the shot will increase dramatically depending in part on the particular skill level of the athlete.  Note, the mental side is taught.  It doesn’t just happen.  It, like all muscle memory exercises, must be repeated as often as possible.

The same mental preparedness is true of a soccer player about to kick a penalty shot or a batsman about to address a sixty-mile-an-hour curve ball.  The simple mental preparation is accomplished as the athlete reviews how he performs the task successfully.  This mental preparation in conjunction with physical repetition, i.e., doing a task perfectly, yields fantastic results.

The second and equally important portion of mental preparedness comes directly from the coach himself.  Praise profusely and loudly and do it sincerely.   Your athletes need to know you approve of them.  Every athlete has something to praise, even if it is merely showing up.  Find it, praise it loudly, and reap the results.  Athletes tend to perform up to or down to the coach’s announced expectations.

Parents Matter The Most

Success with youth athletics, be it soccer, basketball, or track starts with parents.  Most of the time kids will have fun in spite of us.  There will always be a coach that at least tries to be fair, and tries to learn the game.  But for a youth athlete, a coach, or a parent to have success the parents must know what they want their child to receive from the experience.   That answer will determine the height of your child’s highs and lows; what he or she will take home from practice and from the games themselves, and it will solidify in their minds what’s important in their lives.  Let me give you some examples.

I was coaching a group of girls aged under ten  in Ventura, California under the auspices of AYSO, a  youth soccer organization.  I had a youth athlete of average physical abilities.  Those abilities were  certainly not something to write home about.  She was just an average nine year old girl with a big smile growing new teeth, loving to run around with her friends kicking a ball.  I say average realizing of course that no child is average.  During a game she would play to her abilities, doing the best she could.  But when her dad was there to watch– and he couldn’t be there all of the time because he was in the military–she was totally different.   She played out of her shoes, out of everyone’s shoes, all because her dad showed up.  She became a class “A” athlete because she wanted to please her father, because what he thought mattered to her.  And it mattered to me.  Upon discovering this fact, I made sure he was at every “important” game.  I did this because I knew what she’d do if her father was there and I knew what she’d do if he wasn’t.  She became an all star because Dad showed up.  Well, truthfully, he did more.  Every time there was a break in play, she’d run to her father.  He’d say, “You’re doing great, Julie.”   Then she’d run out there and do great.  Truthfully, he didn’t like soccer but his daughter did and he liked her.

The point I want to make is that what you, as a parent, think, makes all of the difference in the world.   I would have liked to have thought that it was what  I, as the coach, thought, but no, the parents won and lost more games than anything I could do or have ever done.  You matter.  What you think, what you say, matters immensely.  The attitude you bring to the event carries the event for your child.

Another example: I was photographing a wrestling match at a USA Wrestling meet in Worland, Wyoming.  The youth athlete was ten years old.  His father, a high school jock who had had some major  success at that level, was his coach.  All during the lad’s match the Dad was telling him what to do and how to do it.  In between the periods of the match he was telling his son that he was a loser if he didn’t….   Well you get the picture.  The kid was a basket case.  He left crying, followed by his father telling him he was a disgrace, a real loser.  The man actually used those words.   The boy was ten years old.  He was trying his best.  He was a winner.  If his dad had only been watching.  But he went home a loser because his dad said so.  I can’t imagine that boy liking wrestling, or his dad after that.  It must have been terrible going to practices.   The point?  His dad wanted his son to be him.  He wanted to see him perform as he had as a senior in high school.  What could that kid have possible done to match up to that?  He did what he could.  He went home crying.

If you want  a positive experience for your child , an opportunity to excel, to run, to laugh and to play and eat treats after a game, you will be successful,  especially if your son or daughter knows that’s what you want.  Here are the buzz words for success:  “Do your best;”  “Have fun;”  “After the game, we’ll go to McDonald’s;”   “Boy, you sure played hard;”   “I like the way you kicked that ball;”  and  “No I didn’t see the gopher in center field.  Was it big?”