Brain in the Game | Sport Mind Coaching Podcast
Dave Diggle
Episode Nine – A Lesson in Mental Toughness
Hello and welcome back to Brain in the Game, the podcast specifically designed for athletes, coaches and parents who want to do their sport smarter. Brain in the Game is a practical look inside the minds of the top 5% of athletes around the world and what we, the rest of us, can do to replicate that. And I’m your host, Dave Diggle.
In this episode we’re going to take a look at a phenomenon that every athlete in every sport encounters at some point, and that’s choking under pressure. So today we’re going to look at why athletes choke and three key steps we can take to alleviate that problem.
So before we get into this, I must confess, I am a tennis tragic. I love to watch tennis, I love to play tennis and, ever since I was a little boy, I always watch Wimbledon; Wimbledon has been the highlight of my tennis year. So the mental aspect of coaching athletes and coaching tennis players - I’ve been fortunate over the years to work with a few professional tennis players and I have a really healthy understanding and respect for them as athletes and the sport they’re in. And we’re currently into the first Grand Slam of 2013, which is the Australian Open in Melbourne. But what I’m going to discuss with you today isn’t a tennis-only phenomenon, it’s an every athlete phenomenon and every sport around the world, and at every level.
Australian tennis superstar Samantha Stosur recently exited the 2013 Australian Open in, well, let’s say dramatic, but sadly not unfamiliar, style. After being in a comfortable 5-2 position in the final set, Samantha lost the competition. She lost the game and, in her own words, she said she choked under the pressure. But, sadly, this isn’t the first time Sam has choked under pressure at the Australian Open. In 11 entries into the Australian Open she’s never got past round four. The other Australian big name Lleyton Hewitt was also, after winning the Kooyong Classic a week before, bundled out after the first round.
So what is it that turns these seasoned, well-established, mature athletes into ones that let the moment get the better of them? Whether it be the self-talk inside their head or the approach they’ve got to the Australian Open, every time they get there there’s a huge amount of pressure on them and they bail out really early.
So let’s have a look at why athletes choke. And Sam and Lleyton aren’t Robinson Crusoes; so many athletes on so many playing fields have this same issue time after time. In an effort to combat it the traditional coach will place a lot of emphasis on the mental toughness of their athletes; the ability to push through when others would fold; to mentally be stronger than their competitors; and to stick to a game plan, no matter what. That all sounds quality advice and it is. In reality most athletes just don’t get the mental toughness lesson, let alone how to use it. I once asked an elite athlete when I was just about to work with them what they thought mental toughness really was and their reply to me was not letting things get to them. When I asked him how would he do that he replied “Simply just don’t think about it”. But is it really that simple, just not thinking about something?
Pink elephants. Now, if I said to you, from this point forward I don’t want you to think about a pink elephant while I’m talking, how many of you can eradicate that thought of a pink elephant in your mind; any reference to a pink elephant; any thoughts, any pictures, any sounds? Not many of you could actually eradiate any reference to a pink elephant from this point forward. So simply saying “Don’t think about something” isn’t really practical. Not too many of us can just say “Don’t think about something” on cue and it’s gone from our minds.
So on some neurological level our brain has deemed the word “pink elephant” necessary to reference, be it because it’s unusual, it’s scary, it’s funny, it’s exciting; whatever it be, our brain has categorised it and stored it. So what that’s telling us is our brain has now deemed that something of importance and added an emotion to it, whether it be exciting, whether it be unusual or funny. Whatever it is, an emotion has been attached to that word “pink elephants” and so it’s there as a reference point, a neurological reference in our mind, and for us to try and focus on not thinking about pink elephants, all that’s doing is making the emotion higher. It’s referencing that pink elephant more and more, which makes us more front-of-thought with the pink elephant and more likely to think about pink elephants.
Okay, so enough about pink elephants for now. This is why an athlete just saying “Don’t think about something” isn’t going to work. And when you’re thinking about not thinking about something, predominantly what are you trying to not think about? You’re probably trying to think about not thinking about negativity, or something that’s gone wrong, or a past event that you don’t want to reference. And if you know that trying not to think about it or telling ourselves not to think about it we’re actually thinking about it more, then we’re focusing on those negatives more and more and more, be that a bad result, be it an issue with a skill, be it an opponent that could or should or has in the past beaten us, or the consequences of not performing.
So if you go out to do something and you go “Well, if I don’t do this I can’t go to the next level, I can’t get to the next round” then your focus is not on getting past this to the next round, it’s “What happens if I don’t? What are the consequences? What’s the emotion that I’m building inside myself, the anxiety levels that are growing because the consequences of me not getting through means I either don’t have a pay day, I don’t climb the ladder, or I maybe not selected for the national team”. Whatever the consequences of not getting through become far more front-of-thought than the actual competition itself, than the actual match. And when our emotions are racing and our nerves are stimulated and we’re in the heat of battle the last place we want our mind to go is to that negativity, is to those consequences of not performing, to “Last time I was here this person beat me”, to “The last 11 times I’ve been here I’ve never got past round four”.
So in Sam’s situation, it makes me wonder what is going through her mind. When she comes to the Australian Open, what different thought processes go through her mind to other competitions, to other matches that she has gone to? Sam Stosur won the 2011 US Open, so we know she can play, we know she’s a phenomenal tennis player. We know that the game, the skill she has in bucket loads. What it’s telling me as a Mind Coach is she doesn’t have the mental toughness or the mental thought process to control her skills and control her anxiety and control her emotions; they’re controlling her. It would appear a human flaw to constantly think about the “I didn’t dos” and “I don’t haves” and this focus on negativity detracts our ability to focus on the “I did do” and “I do haves”. And for the vast majority of us it’s an inherited mental process that’s not too much of a major issue, but if you’re an elite athlete and your career, your income, your livelihood is governed by the results you get each time you go out to perform then it is a major issue. It’s something that can inhibit your whole career. It can also end your whole career. I know many athletes – and I competed with some of them – who were phenomenal in the gym, who would make you look second-rate when they were training, but come competition they would choke.
And so if just saying “Don’t think about it” isn’t enough, how do we replace those pink elephants with more desirable memories?
Understanding our emotions dictate our neurological cataloguing and then this is how we select what’s most front-of-thought for us when an event occurs. When we rock up to something, whether it be the Australian Open, whether it be a national championships, whether it be Olympic Games or Worlds, we have reference points in our mind. We have a catalogue of blueprints that we choose from and these are catalogued through importance and with emotion. And if we – again, we speak about Sam Stosur here: she would have a higher emotional tag to the Australian Open, partly because she’s an Australian and she’s playing in her own backyard, but also because of the expectations placed on her because of her past form at this competition and because of the media-driven emotions that come with that and the terminology they throw around. All these things would make the cataloguing of this event for her far more emotionally-driven than probably any other.
So what would we do to combat this? How can we change the past approach to a better pattern going forward?
Well, there are three skills that we can utilise. There are three approaches that, when put in conjunction with each other, can enable the athlete to bypass the emotional patterning they’ve built over the years.
The first thing I would do is I would utilise effective visualisation, not only to build a perfect performance, not to just go out and say “This is how we hit a shot, this is what we do here”, but to build better neural pathways by associating a positive outcome, a highly stimulating emotion to that choice. So when Sam goes out to hit a ball in her mind, in the visualisation, she’s on Centre Court at Rod Laver Arena; she’s wearing the uniform that she will be competing in at the Australian Open; she’ll be playing somebody that she knows would probably give her a hard game and she’ll be dominating; she’ll be thinking about techniques; she’ll be thinking about outcome. But the most important thing that she’ll be thinking about is winning the shots most efficiently and effectively, time after time. This increase in emotion is going to build her confidence, is going to build neural pathways that are emotionally stimulated for her so they are front-of-thought when she goes to play. When she steps out for real on the Centre Court at Rod Laver Arena her brain goes “I’ve been here before. I’ve done this before. Where is it?” [chu, chu, chu, chu] go through the catalogue, “Ah, there it is. Let’s play this blueprint”.
The other thing I’d get her to do would be look at the possible consequences of different plays: what could happen? When playing certain players you know that they tend to play in a certain format. So if they’ve got a hard hitter, what are some of the consequences of having a hard hitter and what would I do to combat that? Or they could have somebody that always comes to the net. Okay, if somebody comes to the net, what would I do to combat that? Or whatever it be, if I have a catalogue in my mind of “These are possible problems” and “These are ideal solutions” and I visualise those I become more confident, I build my catalogue of approaches. This is going to lower my anxiety. This is going to make me feel far more in control. And then when I do step out for real to play any one of these people I have familiarity; I know that when they play those shots I’ve played it already. In my mind I have the solution to what they’re trying to do to me. I have an arsenal of approaches that, whatever you throw at me, I’ve been here before. There’s nothing you can throw at me that I haven’t already in my mind dealt with. What this is doing is not only allowing your anxiety and building our confidence, it’s using different neurological points of reference. So if I have played these players in the past and they have dominated my game then I’m not going out this time to play them with those reference points; I’m going to build my own. I’m going to make sure when I go out there I’m not looking for “How did I lose to that person before?” I’m going out there with “I’m playing my game, not their game”. Not only will this give us replicable positive outcomes, it will also increase our sense of confidence.
So in part one it’s all about building a desirable performance and stimulants that, when I go and step out, I have a catalogue of performance that makes me feel completely in control; that makes me feel completely confident.
The second part is we know confidence is a history of success, so why wouldn’t we want to constantly and continually reference positive outcomes? Of course, we would. So if we build on the first part, the second part is positive referencing. Again, if we think about Sam Stosur’s Aussie Open history, the amount of times that she’s gone out there and not performed will always be her reference points. They will always be her blueprints, unless she does something different. We’ve talked in section one about making sure that we’ve got positive outcomes, building potential problems and solutions. Where do you think Sam’s mental focus is at the time that she steps out onto Rod Laver Arena in the Aussie Open? Now, I’m sure she’s not thinking “Oh, I’m going to lose” but she probably is thinking “I hope this year I’ll do different” or “I’m not going to do what I did last time” or “I just need to get past round four”. Despite looking to change the outcome, what she is doing is consciously thinking about the negativity. What we spoke about before was she’s focusing on the consequences of “If I don’t do something different then I’m going to end up with the same outcome”. So where’s her mentality? She’s thinking about what she did before and then trying to do something completely different, but her focal point is on what she did wrong last time.
So how do we bypass that? Clearly the past has a distinct pattern but, as I said, in 2011 Sam Stosur won the US Open. So she knows how to play, she’s got a blueprint that works. She has something in her mind that she can call on that she’s just not referencing. Like I said, this happens to athletes in all different sports and I created a process called the Associated Disassociated Learning Process. And this Associated Disassociation Matrix enables an athlete to look at something they’ve done really, really well both mechanically - so they see the clinical step-by-step process - and the emotion and learn “How did I do that? What steps did I put in place so I could do that? What’s the mechanics that I can apply time after time?” And then “What was the emotion? What was I thinking? What was I saying to myself? How did it make me feel?” And then we cross-platform that onto “What didn’t work?”
So I will be looking at how did we get Sam Stosur to win the US Open? What did she do? What’s the behavioural patterning that she had that worked exceptionally well to make her the US Open champion? We would look at that behavioural patterning and we would look at what she did well. We would look at that from a mechanical and emotional perspective and go right, how do we then cross-platform that process into your preparation for the Aussie Open? How do you learn from what you’ve done really well and pattern that by behavioural profiling to layer that into “Okay, how do I apply that into the Aussie Open so that I have a much more reliable and replicable patterning process?” It’s not based on emotion, it’s not based on “Every time I come here I have to do something different because last time it didn’t work”. It’s “Where do I go and look for? How do I resource and reference places and times in my life where I have really performed well? When I’ve gone along and done something exceptional?” I want to be able to replicate that whenever I want. I need to go back into that mindset and apply that mental process so that it benefits me, and then I associate and build and embed an emotional tag that makes it selectable; makes it front-of-thought every single time. So whether I step on Rod Laver Arena or Flushing Meadows or Wimbledon, I can access that blueprint, that neurological point of reference when I need it, time after time after time.
Emotions shouldn’t be making our decisions for us. Emotions are categorisations; they enable us to categorise things in an efficient way and in normal life that’s great, they work fairly well. But as an elite athlete and when you’re under a competition, when you don’t always win every time, you don’t want the emotions or the past memories, the pain of the past memories, dictating how you play now. So this associated and disassociates learning matrix enables a clinical process to unpack what’s worked and then rebuild it in a way that you can apply it. And what I’ll do, I’ll put on our website www.braininthegame.com.au a link so that you can download this matrix and utilise it yourself. So the matrix is a template that enables us to both physically and mentally step our way through learning what we’ve done that’s worked and then applying that process to something that has not worked. So part two is about building a tried and trusted base. There is no need to invent the wheel, just find a wheel that works for you.
So the first two steps were the visualising, embedding desired performance and neurological stimulants. Number two was finding a pattern that’s worked in the past and cross-platforming that mechanically and emotionally into the now, into a replicable pattern that you can apply wherever you want to apply it.
And the third stage is all about self-belief, because I don’t know how many times different athletes, because of familiarity, they fall back into the old patterns. They don’t trust themselves enough to go “You know what? It didn’t work before and I’ve now got a process that’s going to work, I’m going to trust that”. So the third stage is all about self-belief, about understanding the process, what it does for you, how you’ve cultivated and crafted it and then how you apply it. It’s the application. This is something I say to people in our seminars all the time: you can learn all these skills, but what makes the difference between a champion and somebody that just ‘could have been’ is the application. When you look at the top athletes around the world, most of the time they’re doing pretty much what everybody else is doing, but the little key things that they do different they apply time after time after time. And when we talk about mental toughness it isn’t about just being strong of mind, it’s about being emotionally bought into the outcome, what the big picture is and having emotional buy-in to that.
So how do we build a better internal voice?
It needs to be specific, it needs to be unique, and there needs to be familiarity to it. Ambiguity allows for latitude and doesn’t necessarily define an outcome. And what I mean by that is, if I said to you I wanted to be a squillionaire by the time I’d died then I only become accountable for that promise to myself and the world on my death bed, because up until that point I’ve got “Well, you know, at some point I am going to become a squillionaire so there’s no pressure, I’ve always got tomorrow”. So there has to be a specificity to this, and it’s the same if I said to you “Look, I’m going to go for a run this week”. Unless I turn around and say “Monday, Wednesday, Friday at 12 o’clock I am going for a run” there’s no accountability. There’s no specificity to that commitment and up until that point I still have a “get out of jail” card, there’s no-one holding the account, including myself. So I need to get specific. I need to have a language in my head so when I go out – and again, if we talk about tennis – when I step out onto Rod Laver Arena my outcome is “Today, I am going to win and this is how I’m going to do it”. So I can hold myself accountable. I use specific language patterns that work for me. I use specific outcomes that are realistic, because if I said I was going to step out on Rod Laver Arena and I was going to beat Roger Federer then that’s not realistic. I like to play tennis, but I’m no professional player so I need to be realistic and so do the athletes. When they’re building the terminology and they’re building the process and the package in their mind, they need to know what they can achieve and how they can achieve it, and build a programme that’s specifically designed for them using their specific words, using their emotional buy-in and realistic outcomes.
The second stage of that was being unique. It has to be unique, it has to be important. The old saying, you know, “If we continue to do the same thing we cannot expect different outcomes”. Because again, if we talk about Sam Stosur, the pattern that she’s applied to the Australian Open clearly hasn’t worked. Her skillset has increased, her tennis ability has increased, but what hasn’t increased or hasn’t improved is the neurological patterning that she applies. It’s improved in other places in her tennis career, but clearly from a Mind Coach’s perspective I can see a very defined and definitive pattern there, and that needs to break. So it has to be something unique about that. We need to build that unique action plan, and the familiarity is it needs to be replicable, sustainable and consistent. When embedding a pattern we need to speak to us internally. It needs to be so personal that we take it on-board, we take ownership of it. It’s pointless reading a book and getting a stock standard affirmation of “I am going to do this, this and this”. It needs to speak to me individually. It needs to speak to you individually, so that when you listen to it, when you say to yourself, it’s like “I own this. This is what I want. The words I’m using in my head is speaking directly to what I want, the outcome I’m driving for”.
So we need to use specific and internal language patterns; we need to use our own goals and objectives; and we need to understand our core values and beliefs. When we think about all those things crafted into our outcome, our journey, our objective, then it makes it personal; we can own that; we can believe in that; and that’s going to drive us forward. That has all the emotional cocktail in there to make us go kaboom mentally. We want to make sure that our dreams, our objectives, our outcomes, our beliefs, really are ours and so we need to constantly and continually apply it. Not something that we think about just when competition season comes around, it needs to be part and parcel of our life, our process and who we are.
When I think about Sam Stosur at the Aussie Open what I, as a Mind Coach, would be saying to her is:
1. Get clearer and more specific about what you want to achieve. Utilise a multiple visualisation process: the associated, disassociated; every form of visualisation you possibly can to make it yours, to own it. And to personalise the rewards, so when you do reach your outcome it’s so personal, it’s so huge, and what this is doing is embedding the neural pathways and raising them to the top of the selection process. We’ve picture it, we see it, we hear it, we believe it.
2. I’d be saying to Sam, through the Associated Disassociated Learning Matrix let’s cross-platform what you did really well in the US Open. We can do that in the Australian Open, all we need to do is unpack it and understand what specifically did you do there that you’re not doing here?
3. And the third thing I’d be saying to Sam was internal dialogue: it needs to speak specifically to you, your goals, your ambitions. I would apply this in a way that she just believes in every ounce of her body that she is going to achieve it. She knows every single step that she’s going to apply.
The only other thing that I would do with Sam, what I would do is deep hypnosis but that would only be after I’d built this whole three-step process.
So if we think about those three steps again, it was visualise and embed the desired performance for the neurological stimulants; it’s find a pattern that’s worked in the past and cross-platform it; and the third part really is about self-belief. Every athlete gets impacted by their emotions and, if unchecked and uncontrolled, it can lead to choking. So if we don’t manage the fall out and, better still, immunise against it happening in the future then it really can be a career ender.
And this brings me to the end of yet another episode of Brain in the Game. I hope this has given you tangible resources to manage and avoid the mental doubts that can cause competition choking. As I said before, I’ll put the links to download the Associated Disassociated Learning Matrix on our website which is www.braininthegame.com.au and I will also put the show notes to this episode on that website too. So please go along to iTunes and subscribe there and like us so that we can continue to do what we do and bring you these podcasts and, until the next episode of Brain in the Game, train smart and enjoy the ride.
My name’s Dave Diggle and I am the Mind Coach.
Copyright 2012-2022 Dave Diggle
https://www.smartmind.com/
