Luck: It’s A Mug’s Game

In the Spring of 2010 I worked with an Ironman as his professional Mind Coach. He was preparing for the 2010 Coolangatta Gold, an event run every summer on the Gold Coast in Queensland, Australia.

 

The Coolangatta Gold is one of the most iconic and physically challenging multi-discipline events on the world’s sporting calendar and is the longest race of its kind spanning 46 kilometres.

This test of human endurance comprises an ocean swim, surf-ski, board paddle and soft sand run… and all in the heat of an Australian summer… as a field of the world’s top athletes compete for the coveted title of ultimate Ironman.

We spent the off-season mentally preparing for the race with specific technical visualisation, targeted focus exercises, hypnosis, internal recognition to external application and a very detailed and structured race-day plan.

By the beginning of the season he had become a well-oiled machine.

Part of the race-day motivation plan comprised:

  • Mental compartmentalisation & performance accountability; and
  • A rewards process

These are designed to maintain sustained motivation and manage emotional stability.

Both these skill-sets encourage the athlete to break the performance down into specific ‘achievable’ and ‘acknowledgeable’ units.

As an athlete, when focus is on each specific unit, you can:

  1. Complete the unit;
  2. Learn from it;
  3. Reward it; and then
  4. Move on!

The power in this process is it removes emotional attachment, mental fatigue or overwhelm, a vital aspect of the endurance mental game.

I had not worked within the Ironman ‘world’ before this but I had many times worked in endurance-based sports, so understood the unique mental and physical challenges they present.

Race day arrived, I knew my athlete wasn’t a favourite to win and he was very aware he wasn’t as physically strong as the race heavyweights. However we knew the race would need to be run in his head, so we were ready!

As I stood on the beach and watched the field of 50 competitors complete their final warm up, they were indeed a spectacle of ultimate human machines. I watched these sporting elites conducting their own rituals., waxing boards, consuming energy gels, packing water into the ski and running the race in their minds and noticed:  physically, they were the fittest athletes I had ever seen… they represented the top 1% of athletes on the planet, an intimidating bunch by any standards.

I also became aware of a sudden, dark, nervous buzz. The confident strutting became edgy shuffles, the mind games instantly stopped. This invisible, negative buzz filling the beach was now spilling over into the crew tents and crowd.

What I had not seen when observing this change was the surf had grown. I had seen these modern-day warriors battle much larger waves, stronger currents and harsher beach conditions during training – so why on race day had it become an issue big enough to make them so wary? And, why did they now start talking up the surf and talking down their ability?

The more I watched and listened, the common theme appeared to be ‘luck’ – or the curse of ‘bad luck’ to be precise.

I heard the coach of one of the favourites to win telling the TV crew ‘if the big waves don’t get him he may still have a chance.’ I was shocked, I couldn’t understand why a wave would select one athlete out of 50 and go after him!

Luck: It's a Mug's GameHad I walked into the twilight zone… a place where the elements have objectives, held grudges?

Had this athlete upset the Water Gods at some point and this was his retribution?

Or was this all self manifested in their minds?

I asked the coach why he thought a whole years worth of preparation had come down to ‘luck’. He told me they couldn’t predict the surf and it was luck if they did or didn’t collect a wave that brought them back into shore or one that would stop them initially getting out.

But, I responded, doesn’t every athlete out there have the same opportunity to collect or not that same wave? Ultimately they manoeuvre themselves into the right position to collect the wave, and if they don’t it would be poor planning or poor execution– not luck!

I could see the blood drain from his face as his whole exit strategy had been exposed. The exit strategy of ‘Well, if I under-perform or under-execute the plan, I have an external force to lay the blame on.’

And the more I listened the more this cultural dependency on ‘luck’ as an excuse was evident. There was no denying these were fit guys, but mentally they had left themselves an out option. And it would appear it was part of the sport’s culture, rather than an individual athlete.

You see, psychologically having an exit strategy such as ‘luck’ lowers someone’s resistance to the physical and mental forces, and minimises their behavioural ability to keep on pushing through the tough times.

Given the option to bail out when the going gets tough becomes a very viable option when you have the ‘Bad Luck’ card to play.

Luck: It's a Mug's GameAfter working within various sporting disciplines, I had observed the exit strategy in many different forms on many different occasions. But never had I observed this phenomenon weaved within the culture of a whole sporting discipline, as this one.

In my opinion, luck isn’t a viable excuse for anything. If we allow ‘luck’ to have a hand in our performance then we hand over a large amount of control to an external force – one that only exists in our minds.

It is the athlete’s way of keeping one hand on the door handle, ready if the going gets too tough to mentally run and have an excuse to do so.

When I conduct Open Mind Nights, they are an opportunity for coaches, athletes and parents to come together and move forward as one efficient unit – I openly promote the removal of the word ‘luck’ from their vocabulary and actively hand back control of the performance to the athlete.

Despite the large seas, the race was run and my athlete got a top five finish which was a phenomenal result and one that was made possible by the mental strategies he had and utilised.

Post a Comment

Confidence: The Uncle Nobody Talks About


Confidence is a hot topic in a coach or athlete’s world and something we intimately associate with both our success and our stumbles in life.

ConfidenceOften our greatest moments are attributed to our unshakable confidence in the face of competition, our belief in ourselves and the focus in our preparation and performance. Our domination and drive is celebrated and we become the self-appointed poster child for success.

On the flip side, when we stumble, our confidence is the first to feel the emotional bruises and cop the full brunt of the blame. ‘I didn’t feel confident’ or ‘I wasn’t confident in my skills I had prepared’ – and even ‘I didn’t have the confidence in my coaches choices for the routine or play.’

So clearly our confidence is a vital aspect of our behaviour and therefore our performance. It is something to be managed just as pragmatically as our physical fitness, technical skill-set and diet.

However, some coaches and athletes treat the Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde  ‘confidence’ like the uncle no one talks about, hiding it away – viewing the psychology of confidence as a taboo subject, thinking if they don’t mention the word ‘confidence’ then it won’t break, fall down or behave inappropriately!

The truth is confidence is not a fragile or embarrassing entity to be tip-toed around – it is a system.

Confidence is simply a replicable pattern of specific neurological triggers and chemical stimulants in our bodies. It is robust and predictable. Being aware of this allows us to harness it and maximise on it for our own ultimate good.

And for this reason it deserves our full attention and respect!

In my experience, performance confidence issues are merely a lack of, or a stalling of, the positive forward momentum of recognition process.

What I mean by this very long term is – our confidence and motivation (intimately linked) is fuelled by consistent, periodic injections of acknowledgment and recognition of success – it needs to be fed in order to survive.

Like eating healthy foods, the results are not instant but gradual and cumulative. Like all sustainability – little and often is the key ingredient here for behavioural endurance.

I liken this to the frog jumping across the pond from one bank to another. In order to succeed the frog must select the path and hop from one Lilly pad to the next. This frog is unlikely to succeed by bounding all the way across in one leap, and with a couple of failed attempts may perhaps give up and settle for one side of the bank, believing it cannot reach it’s objective.

Each and every time we succeed at something (our lilly pads) – no matter how small – we are neurologically rewarded for our effort. We are rewarded with generous doses of serotonin and dopamine – this unique concoction of naturally-derived happy drugs are supplied to us by our own bodies as recognition and reward for achievement. This makes the successful action pleasurable, memorable and sustainable.

Serotonin and Dopamine, like many other natural chemicals are highly stimulating and exceptionally addictive. Our brain likes this reward system we have created and wants more and more of it, so urges and nudges us forward to the next success and reward point – eagerly waiting for the next hit. This forms a natural foundation for forward momentum.

Whilst it is our subconscious brains that have the higher understanding of what we are actually capable of – it is our conscious filtration system that normally ‘plays it safe’ and pulls us back into a conservative line. It is our conscious mind that also focuses on the failures rather than the successes, turning our attention to what we have NOT achieved rather than what we have achieved.

We know we get what we focus on – so if we continuously focus on our lack of success then our perception will be that we continue to fail more frequently, stemming the flow of rewards and thus killing off our motivation to succeed – and thus actually succeeding more infrequently.

If I asked you to turn up for work every day for the next 5-10 years and give 100% but you would never be paid or recognised for your effort how long could you sustain your motivation? If we do not recognise and reward our internal successes then we too tune out and have no reason to excel.

This natural reward high feeds our confidence, and sometimes fools our conscious mind into thinking we could, and should, take on more and more challenging tasks to gain the higher reward.

Many top athletes speak of being caught up in the moment, feeling un-stoppable and almost superhuman when at their peak. The reward driven highs becoming ‘the norm’ and a constant flooding of neural stimulants keeps them there.

(This is also part of the reason why retiring athletes struggle to maintain the stimulation in their life after sport – but that is a whole other topic we will cover in another post!)

Where the wheels fall off this neurological and emotional system is if we STOP or lose this positive forward momentum of natural rewards.

If we stop acknowledging our successes, we begin to suffer withdrawal from our happier days – like a drug addict without the next fix this begins to reinforce our subconscious doubts over our ability to ever again ‘score’ or succeed and be rewarded. The next logical step eludes us as we lose direction, focus and perspective.

The longer this period of time where our reward cravings are not met the bigger the desire is to have that ‘hit’ and the more important that next success becomes. All this does is increase our anxiety levels and feeds the emotional monster who has been focused on our failures.

This emotional cloud distorts our skill-set, our cognitive clarity and our perception in our ability to succeed.

And so a perpetual cycle of perceived failure is born – we have all witnessed it and maybe even lived it.

Breaking this slippery downward cycle and restoring forward upward momentum is a systematic process – just as the creation of the focused problem was in the first place.

After all, our confidence is fuelled by our success, acknowledgment and our neural-reward! And as this feeds the motivation engine, the strategy is simple:

1. Start setting small achievable goals, acknowledging them along the way, outwardly celebrating them and focusing on the success of what you did achieve not what eluded you.

2. Reward yourself again and again – it gains traction in the motivation game, like stoking the fire of a steam engine the more fuel you put in the better the results that come out.

Rewards do not have to be tangible, so set aside those flat screen TVs for now and focus on internal recognition, acknowledging yourself for your achievements in your session, day, week, season objective.

Begin a performance journal to enable you to follow your journey of achievement and see the patterns of success you create and duly reward them.

Confidence really is just an emotional measure of success and once we understand and respect that it can only serve us in our grander objectives.

Post a Comment

Rugby Union, Attitude and Those Who Influence It

The Right Athlete, the Right Coach and at the Right Time Will Naturally Gravitate Towards Each Other.

–  This Is Where We See Magic Happen –

As an avid rugby fan and former School and County Player (scrum half) I have found myself glued to the current Rugby World Cup 2011 in New Zealand, as many other diehards have.

As I watch the big hitters such as New Zealand dominate in their opening games, the Springboks play their usual cheeky tactics, the Australian’s scramble due to selection and injury crisis and the England team typically struggle with on and off field discipline and finding form.

I found myself strangely drawn down to the grassroots and intensely study the nuts and bolts of the Welsh Rugby team. They are only just getting the job done in most cases but doing it in such a crude yet inspiring way it is mesmerising – even my Australian wife catches herself barracking for the Welsh (fleeting though it may be, they haven’t played the Wallabies yet).

Wales versus South AfricaI mean I am passionately English through and through and will be ecstatic when Jonny Wilkinson and the boys again take out the Rugby World Cup for England! But, I started to realise there is something about the performance of the Welsh team that is very familiar to me in their attitude and approach… something that isn’t flash, spectacular or even overtly entertaining – but effective, ballsy and synergistic in drive, discipline and passion.

I should have realised this familiarity was due to a mutual connection when I saw his signature style permeate this team. It was, after all, the same person who influenced the direction of my sporting career and beyond to my chosen profession today.

Over the past few weeks as I watched this Welsh team jostle for the ball and make plays out of scrappy nothings, I found myself thinking about my own sporting career, no not my low level Rugby Union success, but International Gymnastics.

“Gymnastics?” I hear you say!

I know – it is not the most socially accepted, publicly revered, or indeed sexiest sport out there – but one I was passionate about and therefore found I excelled in.

To be honest with you, I was more physically suited to Rugby Union than I was Gymnastics: I was stocky, exceptionally inflexible, had the coordination of a three legged rocking horse and, due to a hearing disability, the balance of an intoxicated old man on a Sunday afternoon. NOT the traits of an aspiring dynamic and nimble Gymnast. However, what I lacked in talent I made up for in heart, tenacity and a willingness to learn.

All I needed was someone who was patient enough, technical enough and stubborn enough to mould me into a true sportsman!

But I had a problem (I know I had a few) but this one was huge!

I was very young, inexperienced and oblivious to what I needed…

So how would a young one like me identify and recognise that certain person who had the correct skill-set to get the most out of me; the person who had the opportunity and the drive to push me in the right direction; and the foresight to see beyond my physical shortcomings to see my passion.

Well, I didn’t know where, how or even why I needed to find that coach. That is not to say that I didn’t have the right person, because I did – only I didn’t have the maturity to recognise the right person at that stage of my life. (Funnily enough, these days as a consultant I find this scenario repeated week in week out.)

So I got to thinking as the Welsh pushed on and through their opponents in a scrappy dog fight – does the athlete select the coach or does the coach select the athlete?

As an athlete I would have said unequivocally the coach was along for the ride on the coat-tails of successful, talented and hardworking athletes. As I look back now I would have said the athlete needed the coach in order to be the athlete they have buried deep inside them… and often could not make it without them.

I think it is one of those process of natural selection: the right athlete, the right coach and at the right time will naturally gravitate towards each other, filling the void and finding their positioning.

And this is where we see magic happen. If all the stars line up and the timing is perfect, these two can create a sustainable champion, an athlete, a team even a club that is something special, something unique. It takes both sides to be shining at the same time to make them something special – and therein lies both the skill and the problem.

You see I realised what I was seeing in the Welsh Rugby team was the influence of a special coach-player dynamic, a belief and passion and a synergistic drive.

What I saw was in fact my coach – LITERALLY my coach. Yes, my Gymnastics Coach of many years ago, Mitch Fenner had recently been working with the Welsh Rugby team. The same drive, tenacity and passion he had helped nurture in me was now shining through these hard hitting, scrappy, rough-around-the-edges work horses.

Every now and then someone comes along who helps you become that little bit more than you would have been. They help you shine just that little bit brighter, for that little bit longer.

The secret is to recognise that and embrace it at the time, as together champions are forged and apart athletes are lost.

Post a Comment

Jonny Wilkinson: In Need of a Reboot

 

The Rugby World Cup 2011 rumor mill is in full swing today, hinting that England’s golden booted superstar Jonny Wilkinson is to be benched.

The talk is that Wilkinson will be replaced as England chief kicker and number 10 as England moves unconvincingly into the knockout rounds. This is a devastating blow not only for Wilkinson but us diehard England fans who know just how important a steady boot can be.

Most associate Jonny as England’s archangel from the 2003 Rugby World Cup when England secured the title in the dying moments off the tip of Wilkinson’s boot. But like most professional athletes Wilkinson’s career is defined by much more than that one moment in time. Just seven points shy of reaching the record of all-time highest scorer in test rugby, Wilkinson is clearly in a class above the average, someone who has proven that he can sustainably perform to reach career defining milestones such as this.

So why now is Wilkinson looking down the barrel of the bench, being replaced just when England could once again benefit from his cool, calm, golden touch?

Wilkinson is, without a doubt, off form. His percentage at this Rugby World Cup is at the bottom of the averages for kickers, not his usual top spot. When most performers are peaking Wilkinson finds himself falling off the conveyer belt and out of the team. This will surely be Wilkinson’s last RWC and his last chance to cement his name in the global Rugby community’s mind.

So what has happened to Wilkinson’s signature ‘crouch, shuffle, clasp, kick’ midas touch in this campaign?

The purists are blaming the new championship ball…

The knockers are saying Wilkinson has past his prime and should move over…

The players are blaming the stadium conditions and unusual wind currents…

The press are blaming England’s lack of discipline…

… and Wilkinson has said the blame rests with him!

So what is the truth?

Where should the blame (if any blame at all) lay? Or is it all just part of the peaks and troughs athletes expect to move through?

There is no doubt Wilkinson handles pressure and has proven time and time again he can put the boot to work at the right time under extraordinary conditions, and for this his technique has been studied and copied across the globe.

So could it really be the new aerodynamics of the match ball?

Maybe.

But any player of that caliber should be able to adapt and maneuver their skill-set to cope with the different reactions the shape may give. One or two kicking sessions would see them roll with the changes and be back on form, I don’t believe skill-set is that tenuous.

So, surely not – could it be that he is over the hill? Maybe, at 32 years old, but why now? He has been on form leading into the RWC and hasn’t suddenly aged significantly overnight!

Could the England teams reported lack of on and off field discipline be causing this disjointedness? Some England players certainly are gaining attention for approaching this RWC like a club tour of Spain and enjoying the after-game entertainment much more than the on-field battles. But Wilkinson, again over many campaigns, has proven he can rise above any in-house behaviour issues or lack of performance discipline.

So, that leaves us with Wilkinson! What is he doing differently, what has he changed or attempted to correct or has left out that has his historically reliable steely boot – misfiring?

When we disregard the other options we are left with performer error, Wilkinson just isn’t performing – as simple as that!

Unlike a lame horse this is not the time to have Wilkinson put down, replaced or moved to the bench. Now is the time to stop and re-evaluate, to look at where the stitching began to unravel, the point at which the tried and trusted was replaced with an inferior replica. This is the time to reboot the boot and bring back the successful pattern.

Wilkinson is a play-maker and a game winner – so Jonny if you are reading this (and I am sure you are ;) ) it is time to go back to what was working, recognise the patterns of success you had and reinitiate them. It is time to remove yourself mentally and emotionally from the whirlwind of misses and break the unsuccessful pattern and mentally REBOOT.

This all sounds a little pie-in-the-sky but it is the basics that work, the understanding of what was done to achieve, then replicate that. Disassociate from the emotions of failure and clinically assess and reapply.

All the excuses in the world ONLY allow us to blame someone or something else and not correct the issues. If we could do it before we can do it again (as long as we are physically capable of course).

So all Jonny Wilkinson needs is a mental re-boot to bring back his successful operating system.

Post a Comment

Older Entries
Newer Entries