Brain in the Game | Sport Mind Coaching Podcast
Dave Diggle
Episode Five – Brain Triggers – Our sporting habits, rituals and behaviour
Hello and welcome back to Brain in the Game, the podcast specifically designed for athletes, coaches and parents who want to do it smarter. Brain in the Game is a practical look inside the complex minds of today’s elite and professional athletes and I’m your host, Dave Diggle.
Today we’re going to look at behavioural patterns and habitual actions, the two things that these athletes choose to build into their programme in order to get better results. We’re also going to look at some of the really bizarre superstitions that some athletes choose to do in order to try and predict the outcome of their performance.
So we know we are triggered by an event and when we get triggered by an event our brain goes into its mental database looking for a past event and a blueprint to follow. What it’s doing is looking for familiarities, looking for “Have I been here before? Have I done this action before? What did I do last time that I can do again this time?” It’s trying to be efficient and effective. It’s looking for a neurological point of reference, a reference based on our past and our history and our memory.
We explored in episode three building confidence and managing our fears, and understanding that our memories and our emotions dictated how we responded to our pressures and anxieties. The same way that that impacted on what we saw our options were is the same way our behaviours are impacted too. The more we follow a path, the more emotionally invested we are in that, the more familiar we become with as being our chosen option. The more we have an embedded emotion, the more we buy into this, the more we choose that, the more front of thought it is when we get faced with a similar situation. When our brain flicks through that Rolodex, goes through that memory database looking for a response or a reaction and it comes up with something that we’ve chosen more frequently or we have a higher emotional value to, it’s going to choose that first time, every time. But that may not be our best action. It may not be our best option. It’s where we create our habits though. Our habits are almost without thinking. We do them because we’ve done them before, they’re familiar to us, they’re a known blueprint, but they don’t always serve us the best way. We can’t change our past, but what we can do is manage the emotional association we have to those memories. We can create a better option and make it far more attractive, far more productive for us and far easier for our brain to go “You know what? I’ll choose that one, that’s a far more desired outcome for me than what I did in the past” and we do that through effective use of both associated and disassociated visualisation.
But there’s more to it. The higher the tag, the more front of thought it is. We know that. So our behaviours are merely a response or reaction to the current situation based on our past experiences, unless we choose to do it smarter. So how does this play out in a competitive environment? It’s like going into a competition without preparing. So if we don’t train the way we want to compete, when we rock up to a competition we essentially get there without preparing, without an effective neurological point of reference, without that blueprint of knowing what we need to do. So as the anxiety rises, the expectations get greater, the competition environment and buzz gets under our skin and we get ready to compete, if we don’t know what’s required of us and we have to go back to a past event, we’ll go back to a past event where it had the highest emotional value or tag to it, and that may not be how we want to compete this time, it may not be what we want to do this time. That may be emotionally invested or emotionally charged based on having a fall or coming last or not performing the way we wanted to. But because it’s an emotion, because it’s the most front of thought for our brain, it’s what we will choose as a blueprint.
So what we want to be able to do is obviously get to a competition and have the most efficient, effective blueprint and we train the way we want to compete. But there’s more to it than that, there’s more to it than just rocking up with this blueprint and with this training. And this is where athletes dive into superstition, they dive into doing stuff hoping that they can create an outcome based on this trigger. We know that we get triggered and then we get a blueprint, so if we can get an association between a good trigger and a good blueprint then that’s what we’re going to do. And they do that by creating some really bizarre superstitions. I’m going to relay to you some of the most bizarre ones I’ve come across in this research and what I’m going to ask you to do is I’m going to ask you to listen for the patterns. Because essentially that’s what I do as a professional mind coach, I look for patterns: why people do things and when they do things and see what the associations between the two are. So as we go through these, think what are these athletes trying to achieve, how are they trying to get the outcome by following these superstitions?
So before I ask you to look for a superstition, I guess I best say what is a superstition. For me, I would say it’s a habitual action conducted to initiate a predictable response. Put simply is, this is the trigger, this is the outcome. Something like wearing a lucky T-shirt or lucky socks, or wearing the same undies; entering through one door and exiting through another; only eating specific food types on competition days; or sometimes you see an athlete spin a racquet a certain amount of times one way and a certain amount of times another way. It’s about the trigger.
The first one we’re going to look at is a baseballer called Wayne Boggs. Now, Wayne would have 150 ground balls during practice before a game. Now, that’s not one more, not one less, he would make sure that he always had 150. There’s an ice hockey player called Bruce Gardiner who would dunk his stick in the toilet right before he went out on to the ice to play, would flush the toilet and say at the stick that he’s the boss, he’s in control. There’s another ice hockey player called Patrick Roy who would stand there and talk to the goalposts and ask them for help and support in trying to stop the puck coming in during a game. Tiger Woods would only wear a red T-shirt on the final day of play, which is normally a Sunday, so every single final day he would have a red T-shirt on. Tennis player Rafael Nadal would have two water bottles on court always, with different temperatures of the drinks inside – that one’s not too bizarre but what is bizarre, he wouldn’t drink from them unless they were both facing the same direction. Staying on tennis, you’ve got legend Andre Agassi who wouldn’t compete in a major tournament wearing underwear. Björn Borg would always grow a specific style of beard and wear the same Fila T-shirt at Wimbledon. Serena Williams bounces a ball five times before her first serve and twice before her second serve, each and every time. And she has a specific way of tying her shoelaces on tournament days.
What’s the pattern here? What have all of these athletes got in common? What are they trying to achieve? I would say they’re trying to control the outcome. They’re trying to have a specific trigger that enables them to control or predict the way that they perform. In their highly manufactured worlds of elite and professional sport, where everything is managed for them - the time they train or how they train, the style of training they’re doing, the food that they eat, the competitions that they attend, the equipment that they use - this is their opportunity, their way of controlling, it’s them taking back some control. From a behavioural perspective, they’re putting the triggers to try and create and obtain the blueprint, the neurological point of reference that they want. Let’s face it, most of these athletes got into the position of being a professional or elite athlete because of the skillset that they have and the better they get, the less control they have over that. When they first started off in their sport and it was all about them and they did everything for themselves, they knew that if they performed they did that. If they didn’t perform, they did that. Now, when they don’t perform, there’s so many other variables that could have impacted on their performance, so they lose that control, they lose that ability to have the outcome that they want, use the blueprint that they desire, and these are where the superstitions come into play, the habits.
We create the habits by following the same path and being rewarded time after time after time. So as somebody who manages behaviour, I see why some of these athletes would buy into these superstitions, I can understand, I can even see where they come from. So when they’ve done something really, really well, they’ve got an outcome that they really wanted, they’ve won a championships, they’re going to look back and say “What did I do different?”. So Nadal could have had the water bottles sitting facing a specific way and he’s associated the win with the water bottles. Certainly Björn Borg had a certain type of beard and wore the Fila T-shirt when he first won Wimbledon, and every single time he went back to play at Wimbledon he replicated that, he had the same triggers, and clearly it worked for him: he won five times. Tiger Woods, who was previously the best golfer, obviously he associated wearing the red T-shirt on the last day as his opportunity to maybe control his nerves, he saw it as his opportunity to finalise the game because he had a familiarity, he had the system, the structure in place.
Whereas I understand why they do it, how it’s evolved, I’ve got to ask myself “Is it the smartest way to do it?” and I think probably not. Because if you choose to believe that having two water bottles facing the same direction is going to have an impact on how you perform and somebody comes along and knocks the water bottles over or somebody moves the water bottles, what’s that doing to you mentally, what’s that doing to your emotions? That’s just going to raise your anxiety, that’s just going to make you start thinking about something other than playing your tennis. If you get to play the last day of finals and you’re Tiger Woods and you go to put your red T-shirt on and someone’s not packed it, does that mean that you’re going to go out and not be able to finalise, to finish, to get the conclusion that you know that you can do? So there has to be a much smarter, a much more productive way of creating that familiarity, creating the structure, and firing very specific triggers to choose very specific blueprints.
So how do we give athletes far more control over their outcome? How do we enable them to craft and create and manage and manipulate their environment to best perform?
• If it’s outside competition season or outside of competition preparation, the easiest and most effective way of doing that is giving the athletes some kind of input in the creation of their programme, so they get to sit there with their coaching staff and say “Right, this is what works for me. I’d like to put this in, this is how I get the best results” and that gets built in; the athlete gets that sense of control, that sense of input.
• Frequent debrief sessions, so they get that sense of feeling heard. “You know what, when I trained last week, the outcome was great but I was really tired, so can we do it differently?” or “You know, I didn’t feel like I was pushed last week, I actually felt like I could have gone further. Let’s up the ante by doing this.” Those kinds of inputs enable the athlete to feel far more heard and in control of their training, their performance and their triggers.
• You can also give them an aspect of their preparation that’s theirs; they own it, they build it, they structure it. Whether it be their stretch, or their strength and conditioning, or their nutrition. Whatever works for them. Is it their uniform? Something that they can own, they’ve got that trigger process that they can fire off. When they put this uniform on it means training or when they put this one on it means competition. When they eat this specific kind of food it means it’s competition season, or when they eat this one it means it’s preparation season. And enabling them to have that kind of control, have that kind of structure, gives them back ownership.
At the Smart Mind Institute, we also have a competition process too. What we’ve done is we’ve created this funnel structure that gives the athlete a visual representation of their preparation. They get to fill the funnel with what they need in order for them to perform. So when we look at their preparation and we look at their performance, we say “When you get to competition day, day one, what needs to have happened for you to get here?” and the first part of the session is called 7to2, because that’s day seven to day two. And we try and get the athlete to identify everything that needs to go into their preparation and then we hierarchy it and categorise it, and we try to put as much in from day seven to four as we possibly can. What we’re trying to do is create the funnel of focus all the way down to having just one or two things to do on day two. That enables the athlete to tick boxes. It enables them to say “Right, everything that could be done has been done. Everything that I want to build into my programme so that I can compete perfectly on day one has been done. I’ve done it, I’ve ticked it”. The serotonin levels go up because they’re getting rewarded, they’re getting acknowledgement. They know they’re feeling great about doing everything. The anxiety levels go down because they know that everything has been done. They can see it, there’s a structure there to it. The process enables them to tick boxes.
The second stage of that is day one, competition day, and that whole 7to2 process is just condensed into competition day: what do I specifically need to do today? Because no-one wants to turn up for a competition thinking “I haven’t got my uniform, I didn’t pack my uniform. What would have happened if I had done this? Maybe I should have done more training sessions here. I should have done an extra strength and conditioning session in there” or “My massage didn’t happen yesterday so I need to try and squeeze it into competition day today, limiting my amount of hours for me”. Having control in the box-ticking process in 7to2 and then having competition day where it’s completely about the outcome of the competition knowing everything else has been done, is the same concept as having the superstitions. It’s giving the athlete the control, it’s giving them back the preparation. As a coach, what I would do is I would sit there and say “Right, let’s build this funnel. Have you thought about this, have you built this into it too? What does this give you? Does it give you the outcome you want? Okay, where does that fit?” because there’s no point in having something on day seven and then come to day two and it’s worn off or if it was a massage and the muscles are then tense again; where does it best fit? Crafting this preparation not only physically prepares the athlete for day one of competition, it mentally prepares them too. Tick, tick, tick, tick, tick. This fits here, that fits there. This works best for me on day four, that works best for me on day two. All these aspects of control are not giving over the control to a couple of bottles sitting on the side of a court, hoping they’re facing in the right direction.
Creating a funnel is vital for every athlete who wants to perform, who wants to get the best out of them, who wants to have their mental headspace purely and simply about the outcome of the competition. Not worrying about their parents. Not worrying about their partners. Not worrying about their kids, or work, or have they done enough of this, have they done enough of that, what if they’ve done too much of this? The preparation enables them to be replicable. Look back on the past and what has worked, build that in. Look back on the past and what hasn’t worked, replace that. It’s a living document, it’s constantly breathing and growing and it can be changed. It can be adapted and tweaked. It can be managed, but it becomes replicable. You know that’s how your system builds. You know that’s how you get the best out of who you are.
So when you think about your preparation, when you think about the habits and the behaviours that you have and the superstitions that you have too, how efficient and effective are they? Could you be doing it better? Is there something that you’ve done in the past that you’ve got the result, that you could possibly tweak and do it better? If there’s something in the past that habitually goes wrong? Are you invested in that? Look at what you do and why you do it and what you’re hoping to get from it, and think “Okay, how can I structure this so that I get the best out of me, as an athlete, as a performer?”
And that brings us to the end of yet another episode of Brain in the Game. I hope that this has not only entertained you with some of those very bizarre superstitions, but has also given you an opportunity to look at how you can do things better and to realise that, although following superstitions or following rituals isn’t taboo, there is a smart way of doing it. There is a more efficient and effective way of getting the trigger fired and the blueprint selected. And if you go to our website which is www.braininthegame.com.au what I will do is I’ll put, as always, the transcript from this episode onto our website and if you sign up to our information we’ll send you that transcript, we’ll send you any exercises we describe in any of our podcasts, and we’ll give you the opportunity to see what’s coming up, our training and our other products.
So until the next training session, 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
