Brain in the Game | Sport Mind Coaching Podcast
Dave Diggle
Episode Twenty-Six – Understanding and Building Performance Consistency
Hello and welcome back to Brain in the Game. Brain in the Game is a podcast specifically designed for athletes, coaches, and parents who are looking to do their sport just that little bit smarter. Brain in the Game is your weekly dose of mental cod liver oil, and I'm your host, Dave Diggle.
In this, episode 26, we're going to explore consistency, what it means, and how we get it. What is consistency? It's one of those words that coaches and athletes and parents throw around all the time. "You need to be more consistent. Once you're consistent, we'll know that you've got that skill." But it's one of those fluffy words. There's no boundaries to it. There's no defined "that means consistency, and that means inconsistency." How do we know when we're consistent?
If you ask an athlete, nine times out of 10, they'll say, "I'll know when I'm consistent." If you ask a coach, then there's a million different coaches and a million different ideas about what consistency really is. For one coach, it's "If they've done that skill five times, I now they're consistent at it," or another one, "If they go the whole season and they don't mess up that skill, then they're consistent."
In order for us to utilise consistency, for us to throw the terminology around and be efficient with it, we need to have a better understanding about what really is consistency, what it does, and how we define it. In this episode, we're going to try and unpack consistency.
We know, as coaches, that we need to get our athletes to be consistent. As a coach, we know what makes champions is consistency. It's not a one-off champion who goes out there and wins on a Saturday, and then you never see them all season. A champion, a true champion, is somebody that turns up every single time and performs. That consistent performance.
So how do we define that? How do we build that? Realistically, what is it that makes consistency so important? In the mind coaching world, and we talk about neuroscience and embedding skills and behaviours within an athlete, we talk about consistency as something being a cognitive motion that they can replicate.
Anything under five times that we do a skill, we don't have the cognitive behaviour or the cognitive imprint to be able to successfully recall that skill whenever we need to. A defined number within the world that I work in, which is the cognitive and the behavioural world, is five plus. When you've done a skill five times, you have a good enough neural pathway in your brain that you can replicate that skill any time.
It comes back down to then creating an efficient trigger to not only find, but to also fire that behaviour. Consistency within my realms is a little bit better being able to be defined as something that we can isolate, we can trigger, and then we can fire.
If we unpack that a little bit better, if we unpack that with a little bit more detail than just anything under five, not consistent, anything over five is consistent, if we look at what's going on within our brain and the frontal cortex of our brain when we're learning something new, it's still trying to work it out. "I could do it this way. I could do it that way. I'm still trying to cognitively understand how this thing works and build a system."
It's looking to build a blueprint, a pattern, that we can follow, and the first few times that we do that we are just trying to get through. We're trying to get to the outcome. We're not necessarily trying to embed a specific way of doing something.
If we take tying our shoelaces, for instance, the first four or five times that we do that, if you asked a child how they did that, they wouldn't be able to tell you. They would go, "I don't know. I just made a couple of loops, and I tucked it in, and whoa, there we go, we got laces tied,"
After about five times, they'll be able to reproduce that, when they've cognitively followed a single pattern five times to achieve something. That doesn't mean different ways. They've got to have the consistency of following a single pattern five times before the brain goes, "I've got this. I know how to do this now."
We may not be efficient at it, but we have a pattern. We have a successful pattern. Then comes building that familiarity, building that routine that goes with that, and we can follow that pattern each and every time. The trigger being we put the she on, we grab two laces. Bang, our brain goes, "I now know what to do from this point on. Two bunny ears, bunny through the hole, you've got it."
From a cognitive learning perspective, we need to be able to build a replicable process and then follow that process around five times. When I'm working with an adult or a child and we're learning a skill, I say to them, "Once you've done that five times, you own that skill." The reason I do that is because I give them a defined number, and when they've achieved that, it's kind of confirmation that "I can do this now." I'm adding the emotion, the ownership process to that.
What this does, it enables the athlete to then turn around and go, "Not only do I think I can do this, but my coach thinks I can do this too. My mind coach has turned around and said five times and I own this." It's that sense of "I've got it." We're adding a few different dynamics within that process.
Where does this work within competition? Where does this work within learning new skills? Where does this work within a coach and athlete dynamic? We need to be able to give them defined boundaries of "this works and that doesn't work as well."
The flip side of utilising a specific number is also when things aren't working, because we could embed a negative pattern just as easy as a positive pattern. If we have a bad habit, it's only because we've embedded that habit enough times for it to become a pattern in our brain. Any pattern can be embedded. It doesn't necessarily have to be a productive pattern or a positive pattern. It's whatever we choose to do frequently enough and have an emotional buy-in to.
From an athlete's perspective, what we need to be able to do is to replicate what we're after. Part of that process first comes down to understanding what it is we want. As a coach, we need to be very defined for our athletes. We need to turn around and say, "This is our objective for this skill, this routine, this competition, this season," whatever it be. We need to be very, very specific in our language that we use.
When we go out and we're teaching an athlete a new skill, we need to understand what the defining point between "yes, that's what the skill needs to look like and feel like" or "that's just in the ballpark." When it's defined and they hit it, we need to jump straight on that and go, "That's the one. Bang. Won. Now let's replicate that. It looked like this. It felt like that. That's what we're looking to replicate."
Now, from a mind coach's perspective, I understand the importance of replicating the same thing the same way in order for it to be cognitively embedded and build neural pathways. We've discussed in the past, when we've talked about visualisation, that if we ask an athlete to go out and do a skill five, 10 times, the likelihood of that athlete doing that skill identically five or 10 times is virtually impossible.
There's always going to be a nuance of difference somewhere along the line. It may feel a little bit different. It may sound a little bit more different. It may even be technically slightly different. In order for us to own that skill, it's going to take a longer period of time, so there's got to be a better way for us to embed skills.
And the first part of that is visualisation, because we can build a picture in our brain of something and then just put it on repeat. When we're repeating it in a very specific way, we can even add the emotion into that. We can add a crowd cheering our name. We can add our coach giving us a hug. We can have our parents standing on the sideline with a big grin across their face. Whatever it is that we want to add into that, the emotional buy-in that we want to associate to that skill, we can add it.
Also, we can replicate without physical or emotional fatigue. If we asked a skill to be done that's quite physically demanding, then after four or five times, we can either injure our athlete or they're just going to get physically fatigued to the point where they're not going to be able to replicate it the same way. The same goes if we're trying to get emotion, if they do two or three, and then the fourth one, they fail at, then, "Ugh, okay, we've got to go back and start that process again in order for us to get five consecutive."
Building within the visualisation world enables us to replicate without that physical and emotional fatigue. It enables us to have very precise outcomes, very technical, mechanical processes in order for us to embed that. Our brain doesn't know the difference. It's a little secret. Don't let our brains know this, but they don't know when we physically do something or when we do something with imagery within our brain. It hasn't woken up to that yet. It doesn't know the difference.
If we do the visualisation with enough stimulants around us – like I work with some ice skaters, and one of the things that we've been doing is taking them into their environment, so that we do visualisation in the cold so they can feel that sense of being in the cold. I make sure, if they're the ice skaters, that they have their music on so they can hear their music. I make sure that they wear their uniform that they're going to compete in, the dress they're going to compete in, or whatever it is, their competition outfit, so they get that sense of feeling.
I was explaining to one of the ice skaters I work with the other day that, when I, after an injury, got back into a competition, I'd always competed in my long whites as a gymnast, and I always had Speedo, which, they were a good brand, but they weren't the best brand at the time. Mizuno was, and everybody who was anybody had Mizuno, except me.
I didn't have Mizuno whites. I only had normal Speedo whites. So I remember one of the other parents who handed them down to me, and I got this pair of Mizuno whites. The first time I got to wear them was in competition. I was on the pommel horse, and I was doing double leg circles, and I was about to do a travel down the pommels when I caught sight of these really cool, very good looking whites on the end of my legs that I had never seen before. Boom. Next thing I was doing, I was looking at the ceiling. I'd been distracted by these whites.
It's important for us to visualise and become familiar within all our senses. If I'd have visualised wearing these long whites, then when I was doing my routine, it wouldn't have been unfamiliar to me. It would have been familiar territory.
The same goes for any athlete. If you visualise you doing a routine as an ice skater, and then you go out there and you start seeing a different coloured dress, or the trousers or pants that you're wearing are a different colour, that's going to detract you from the pattern that we've created. It's going to be different. So we need to make sure that all our senses are stimulated when we're visualising so it becomes familiar to us.
The other thing we need to do is create a routine, a familiarisation process, and we do that by building a framework so that we have accountability. On a Tuesday, we do this process. On a Wednesday, we do this process. On a Thursday, we do this process. We do that each and every week. What this does, it enables our brain to go, "Right, Tuesdays are this. I need to be 100% focused on that. Wednesdays are that. I need to be 100% focused on this," so that we make sure that the framework is accountable. We make sure that we have consistency within our actions.
It's pointless, us rocking up, and I see this very, very frequently where coaches say, "Right, normally today we would do four routines. What I'm going to get you to do is we're going to work on this, this, this, and this, everything other than routines, just to push you and check you and test you." Now, that's great, and often coaches think what they're doing is creating mental toughness for an athletic to handle unforeseen circumstances, and on some level, it kind of does, but not very efficiently.
There's other, more efficient ways of teaching an athlete to have mental toughness, to be able to handle unforeseen situations and circumstances. You don necessarily have to throw them in the deep end and go, "Right, now, swim," in order for them to become confident at it. Let's face it. If you throw them in often enough, they're going to fail often enough, which is not the best way to create confidence.
That's another side issue, but what we need to be able to do is build replicability. We need to be able, for the athlete, to consciously and cognitively decompartmentalise so that they be able to switch on and go, "Right, I need to focus on this section. Bang, that's finished. Now I need to focus on this section." What that does, it enables us to compartmentally move these blocks around as and when we need them.
Almost like, when I was a kid, you had Thunderbirds, and you could have Thunderbird 4 and Thunderbird 2, and you can change the pods. That's what I'm talking about. Mentally being able to be Thunderbird 2 and change the pods so that, wherever you are, wherever you're competing, whatever the skill requirement is, you can go, "Right, bang, that's that part of my brain. I need to switch that on right now."
The other positive side to that is when things don't go right, you can say, "Bang, remove that. Move on to this." We get the opportunity within that moment to leave the negative emotions with that too. The framework is very, very important. It also enables us to manage the logistics. In order for us to get the best out of our team or out of our venue or how we're feeling, we need to be able to logistically turn up and say, "It's not necessarily about being able to rock out the next day after a 20-kilometre run and say, 'Now it's sprints.'"
Our bodies need time to recover in order for us to learn the most optimum way necessary for us just to keep pushing, pushing, pushing. We want quality to be able to be embedded within our brain, within our system of neurological points of reference. I understand the physicality to pushing athletes. However, cognitively, it doesn't always go hand in glove.
The third thing that we need to do is action. Now, all of these things that we've been talking about are great, but if we don't do anything with them, we don't take action, then they're just words. They're just concepts and theories. In reality, in order to make these things work, we've got to do something with them. We've got to take action.
Action is our opportunity to create drive and determination, to do something, to take action, to actively do it. It's okay for us to have this framework built there for us to have this accountability and replicability, but if we just walk past it every day and we don't initiate it, then it's just an eyesore.
The same goes with our visualisation. If we understand the importance of our visualisation, if we rock up and we're in that cold environment, for argument's sake, for the ice skaters, and they just stand there and go, "Yeah, I should be visualising, but I'm not doing it," then it's just a waste of your time in that situation. What we need to be able to do is take action and do something with it.
I talk about drive. Drive is our momentum. It keeps us going forward. We've talked about this and about momentum in one of our previous podcasts. In order for us to create momentum and our drive, we have to have recognition. We need to recognise every single time that we've set an objective and achieved an objective.
That reward process of recognition dumps those chemicals in our brain that go, "Whoa, this is great. I want more of this," in order to keep forward momentum, to go, "Okay, we'll do that one again. I like that," and "We'll keep doing that. We'll keep doing that," and create active momentum.
The other side of this is obviously determination and discipline. People often ask me about discipline and why, in their perception, some athletes are more disciplined than others. If you're a coach listening to this, even if you're an athlete or a parent listening to this, you might go, "I know some people who are more disciplined than others, who rock up for training, and others don't rock up for training, or who, when training finishes, go and do that extra half an hour or an extra two- or three-kilometre run."
Determination and discipline are just our reasons for doing something, and those of us who are very disciplined in everything that we do, it's because we see a value in it. For those who go out and do the extra couple of K run, what they've done is they've recognised the value in doing that. In their mind, they've justified that, and it doesn't seem like a bit thing.
That two or three Ks, "It's only half an hour, but it gives me this. I get this big thing for the extra couple of Ks." Those who don't do it just haven't recognised the value in doing it, haven't seen what it can do for them, what it could give them. People who are disciplined are just acting on what they see as a benefit.
Bringing all this together, making sure that we have that consistent action, building consistency, is the secret realistically to becoming a champion at what you do. Of course, you've got to be physically and technically competent enough to be a champion. You can't just turn around and say, "Oh, I'm going to do all these things. I'm not very talented, but I'll keep doing all these things, and I'll be a champion."
Well, you might do, but in reality, you've still got to have the skills and the talent to do it. However, you can have all the skills and all the talent and not do this and still not become a champion. The secret is being able to amalgamate all of these aspects together to create that consistency, to create that framework around you that is replicable, and do it every single time, and to have the drive and the motivation to keep going forward.
I hope you found this information, this system, useful. If you're an athlete and what you do is perform inconsistently, then all we need to do is create an active framework around you, one that you're prepared to take action on, something that you can do every single day and hold yourself account for. It really is that kind of structure that's going to enable you, as an athlete, to be the best at what you can be.
As always, I'll put the transcript from this episode, episode 26, on our website, which is www.braininthegame.com.au. Until the next training session, train smart and enjoy the ride. My name's Dave Diggle, and I'm the mind coach.
Copyright 2012-2022 Dave Diggle
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