Brain in the Game | Sport Mind Coaching Podcast
Dave Diggle
Episode Eighteen – The 3D Coach - A Complete How-to Guide
Hello and welcome back to Brain In The Game. Brain In The Game is the podcast specifically design for athletes, coaches, and parents, who are looking to do their sport just a little bit smarter. Brain In The Game is a viewpoint you never thought you'd get, and I'm your host, Dave Diggle.
In this episode, we're going to look at the “3D Coach” process. In episode 13, we did the visualisation of the 5 most common mistakes made by athletes and coaches. In this episode, we looked at the different styles of visualisation. Most of you out there should know that visualisation is something I believe every athlete should be doing; something every coach out there should be extremely familiar with and use as part of their coaching strategy. Visualisation enables us to train our brain to do patterns in a specific format, without succumbing to physical and emotional fatigue. It enables us to do our routines and embed those neural pathways anywhere, without getting physically or emotionally tired; without getting injured or cold or embedding a strategy that isn't optimal. Visualisation is one of the skill sets that is vital to the athlete and their progression, and their sustainability in sport.
A form of visualisation that we didn't cover in that episode is the 3D Coach. 3D Coach is something I've devised over the years to put together an opportunity to see things from a different perspective. It enables the athlete to picture things from multiple perspectives. Today, we'll explore that 3D Coach, and the concept of purpose of visualisation.
Three of the key visualisation strategies we spoke about in episode 13 were associated, disassociated, and key point visualisation. Why do we use those three forms? Associated visualisation is looking through our own eyes; seeing what we'd see, feeling what we'd feel, and even smelling what we'd smell, as we go through our routine. It creates an emotional associate to that visualisation. That neural pathway we're cultivating is having a positive emotion associate with it. That enables us to categorise that blue print in our brain in a way that makes it memorable: something we want to revisit.
Disassociated visualisation is the technical, the mechanical, the emotion-free. “Why does this specifically happen when I put my arm in this position? How do I look to other people? Where do my feet need to be? How do I create a better rotation?” We're looking at the mechanics of how we create that routine or sequence. Disassociated visualisation enables us to see it emotion-free.
Key point visualisation is all about future pacing; building the bigger picture and placing effective strategies for going forward. When we do key point visualisation we're learning from what we've done in the past, and we're applying it to how it's going to pan out in the future. We're seeing ourselves achieving something that we can only imagine, because we haven't been there yet. It's putting a strategy in mind for when we do need it. These three visualisations are vital when creating a well-rounded athlete.
What is the 3D Coach? It's a mental and emotional leveller. A thought process deigned for you to use seamlessly these three previously-outlined phases. When you download our 3D Coach template from our website, you can see these 3 thought phases for yourself, laid out on the sheet in front of you.
The first exercise in 3D Coach is “What did I see?” When you've competed or have been through a sequence of skills or a routine, and you start to analyse what has just occurred and you look through your own eyes, you're looking through a filter of emotion. You're looking through your filtered objective. When you see what you did, what you could've done, and what could've happened, you already have an emotion associated with that. It allows you to have ownership of that, to look and say “This is what I did to get to that.” Ownership is great, but it comes with a negative. If you didn't perform the way you wanted to, your perspective is tainted by that negative emotion.
Something I say frequently to my athletes is “Even if you've done the worst routine you've ever done in your life, there will be something in there that worked.” When we do the mental debrief, the first part is to ask “What worked?” You need to see it in such a way that you learn from everything. The emotion that you see your perspective through won't allow for that, that's human nature. We all do that.
That's where the second stage comes in: what would a coach see? We all have coaches, whether we're athletes with physical coaches, or mental coaches, or technical coaches; or if we're coaches ourselves, most of us have people who coach us. Most business owners have a business coach. Everyone has someone there to help guide you. The whole concept of that is they see it without the emotion. Their role is to see it for what it is, so they can correct it. “You did ___ and ___ happened because ____.” They see that mechanical perspective. If you're self-analysing your routine, and you don't have someone to coach and say “That happened because ___”, then the 3D Coach is vital because you need to step out of yourself and look from a disassociated perspective.
When we talk about disassociation from a visualisation perspective, we become that person watching the routine from a distance, seeing the mechanics of what's going out. We're analysing what's going on, not from our own eyes and our own emotional tint. We can see “That wasn't the best routine, because I did ___”. That enables us to then go “Right, what will I do differently next time?” – the third part of the mental debrief: what worked, what didn't work, and what will I do differently? That process enables us as athletes and coaches to go “I'm not going to focus on what didn't work and let that taint everything. It happened – what do I need to do differently next time?” You need to change that from a tag of negativity to one of “It's a learning process”. To shift the athlete out of that negative space into a more productive one. Finding a solution and knowing what to do next time.
That disassociated perspective of the coach's viewpoint allows us to step out and look at it for what it really is – in the best way possible, because we are still human and looking at it through our own heads – but to be able to leave the emotion behind and recognise the different perspectives. How would a coach have seen this? What would their perspective have been?
The third step is in the 3D Coach is “How does this effect my objective?” As athletes and humans, we tend to look at our feet. What I mean by that is we're consumed with the now. “What's my next step, how did that affect me now?”, and we sometimes lose perspective on the bigger picture. If we do a routine that maybe wasn't up to the standard we're after, and we do allow the emotion to become a heavy weight on us, that makes the next step very difficult.
If we look at it from a different perspective, from a third dimension of “It didn't go how I wanted it to today, but in the big picture, it was just one routine” or “just one skill. I can do it again.” That enables us to obtain a perspective of “How do I move on from here?”
A 3D Coach is an opportunity for us as athletes and coaches to look at it in multiple dimensions. To see it through emotion, through the mechanics, and through a bigger perspective. This shift in the way we think, along with the mental debrief process, enables us to learn from something and move on. The flip side of that is, if you did do something exceptionally well and it was almost perfect, and you do a 3D Coach, it enables you to replicate. If you get a positive emotion, you're then categorising that routine in such a way that it makes it front of thought.
Then you look at it from the coach's perspective and go “Right, what made it that great routine?” It enables you to go away from the emotion and mechanics and say “___ enabled me to do ____. ___ triggered ___.” We're shifting the emotion from “It's only one step in a big process” to “Wow, how does that now influence the rest of my progression?”
In the last episode, we talked about being the “salesman”, how to sell concepts and solutions. This is no different, but we're selling to ourselves. We're seeing it in such a way that we say “That mistake was only a small mistake and I can move on”, or “That was the best competition I've ever done” and now you can sell it to yourself to replicate it. It's important to understand where the emotions play and where they influence us, so we don't just see the “now” issues, but so we can put it into perspective to see the big picture.
If you're interested in trying the 3D Coach process, then go to our website, www.BrainInTheGame.com.au . There's an area you can put your name and email address, and once you do we'll send you a link where you can download the 3D Coach and all the other templates we've talked about in other podcasts, so you can start utilising them in your program. Until the next 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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