Building a Positive Outlook

Happiness is something that is strived for, but often the pressure to perform and focus on the result impacts enjoyment and overall experience. Repeatedly athletes and coaches base success and often enjoyment on the results of our performance (e.g., wins and losses).  The competitive nature of sport often leads many to focus more on the negative aspects (i.e., what is not achieved). This is something that has been engrained in our society, and often unrealistically impacts how we measure success and contentment.

Emotional regulation is a key component to managing individual performance. It is not uncommon for an athlete to go through highs and lows throughout their performance. Understanding how to manage adversity and successfully regulate emotions can aide in a better performance (McCarthy, 2011). Some common disruptive negative emotions are competitive anxiety, frustration, and stress. These emotions can cause changes such as rapid heart rate, sweating, and an altered breathing rate. Many of these physical states interfere with optimal athletic performance. Creating a friendly competitive environment that encourages competition as well as creates realistic performance pressures can help make negative emotions and their subsequent physical changes more manageable in actual performance. It creates a sense of familiar understanding for athletes that can then be carried over to actual performance. How you react and push each athlete may be different, but understanding how the athlete’s receive the information and its impact is important. Some may need a more supporting role so developing a support system within the team is crucial early on. Having performance partners (i.e., share goals and experiences) within the team that they feel safe discussing their experience with can make for a better overall experience and create unity.

Contrarily, positive emotions are linked to “subcomponents of performance such as motivation, self-efficacy, and perceived control” (McCarthy, 2011, p.50). How can we inspire athletes to perform at a high level, but also enjoy what they are doing and stay motivated? First, what must change is individual thinking and judgment in what makes an athlete successful. Being able to move past mistakes, slumps, plateaus, and adversity is a valuable skill. Altering a mindset can take work and personal awareness. John Wooden was known for pushing his athletes while never focusing on the result. He developed a unique coaching style that focused on improvement without regard to wins and losses. This kept performance in its raw form. This allows athletes to focus on continuing to build on individual strengths and the significance of work ethic. It is easy to become consumed by records and ignore development and success. Each athlete is unique and may have a different balanced ratio of negative and positive takeaways from their performance that allow them to feel successful and stay motivated. It is important to find, even in the worst performance, a positive that can be taken away. How coaches communicate to their athletes is a strong influencer into how they respond. Both verbal (e.g. word selection, tone, melody, and prosody) and nonverbal communication (e.g. facial expression, body language and posture) can influence how the message is received (Lambrecht, 2014). Failure to understand cues can lead to irritation, poor social interaction, aggression, and feeling misunderstood (Lambrecht, 2014). Coaches with flexibility and awareness of different personalities and learning styles within their athletes are more positively received.

Overall, coaching style, support systems, and emotional regulation can contribute to how athletes feel about themselves and their performance. Forcing ourselves to find one positive in a mistake or performance can help build awareness and focus on positive elements. Taking it back to the basics as to why we do what we do can rekindle our desire to perform. Keeping performance aspects raw and in the present tense and not becoming caught up in the result to rank our performance is fundamental.

References:

Lambrecht, L. (2014). Gender differences in emotion recognition: Impact of sensory modality and emotional category. Cognition & Emotion, 28(3), 452-469.

McCarthy, P. J. (2011). Positive emotion in sport performance: Current status and future directions. International Review of Sport and Exercise Psychology, 4(1), 50-69.

Bouncing Back From Adversity

Every day we are exposed to multiple types and levels of adversity and with each exposure we have to decide how to respond. From an athlete’s perspective, adversity might be stimulated by teammates, opponents, coaches, officials, the environment, or competitive arena. Predictability, having a sense of control, and possessing effective coping strategies are key to successfully overcoming adversity.

Coaches can play an influential role in enhancing an athlete’s ability to feel in control and effectively cope with adversity. Setting realistic expectations and standards for performance can help athletes better gauge their performance. How coaches react and view adversity can either add or take away excess pressure and stress. This response may also trickle down to how teammates support and respond to pressure and adversity. If a coach is very negative than athletes may be very critical of one another in their interactions: no one wants to be viewed as the weak link.

Athletes often experience the fear of failure, which can cause an athlete to become distracted, stressed, and exhibit counterproductive behavior during competition (Petitpas, 2008). This fear can cause an athlete to experience stress, anxiety, and exhibit avoidance behavior in fear of a negative response. This type of response limits an athlete’s performance, becomes worse over time, and leads to a self-fulfilling prophecy—what the athlete fears most becomes reality.

How can we increase a sense of control and evoke a positive coping response to adversity? One way is through replicating an environment with stimuli faced in competition. This allows athletes to receive exposure to potential negative consequences and work through them. Frustration and failure may occur, but enables an athlete to manage these emotions (Bell, Hardy & Beattie, 2013). Replication may be adding a consequence or additional pressure that creates a competitive level of stress. If one team wins they receive a bonus (e.g. break) whereas the losing team does pushups before their break. This type of environment allows athletes to be exposed through simulation training, which aides in desensitizing them from their fear of failure (Bell, et al., 2013).

Setting a goal each training or game can enhance focus and motivation to push through adversity. These goals must be specific, realistic, and challenging. Goals provide direction and can increase a sense of control. Saying these goals out load can increase the desire to achieve them and accountability. Ex: not diving in by keeping a defensive stance and watching the ball. Pairing this with learning how to breathe in stressful situations can help manage anxiety levels as well as provide clarity and focus. Taking (e.g. three) deep breathes with an emphasis on a longer exhale can slow down the body’s natural fight or flight response often exhibited when experiencing higher levels of stress. This helps an athlete refocus themselves and potentially feel more in control.

Coaches are strong influencers and have the ability to enhance and support an athlete’s sense of control and ability to cope under pressure. Getting creative with drills and tactics to expose athletes to competitive performance levels of pressure will benefit an athlete’s response to pressure and management of their fear of failure. Implementing goal setting into training and competitive tactics as well as awareness through deep breathing can aide in a more positive response to adversity.

References:

Bell, J. J., Hardy, L., & Beattie, S. (2013). Enhancing mental toughness and performance under pressure in elite young cricketers: A 2-year longitudinal intervention. Sport, Exercise, And Performance Psychology, 2(4), 281-297

Petitpas, A. (2008). Fear of failure in the context of competitive sport: A commentary. International Journal of Sports Science & Coaching, 3(2), 193-194.

Creating Psychologically Resilient Athletes

Possessing a mental edge can take athletes to the next level, but what separates good from great athletes is their ability to bounce back. Mistakes are inevitable, but great athletes are able to recover and bounce back because they have built up their psychological resilience. Psychological resilience encompasses ‘‘the capacity of individuals to cope successfully with significant change, adversity or risk’’ (Lee & Cranford, 2008, p. 213). In a sporting context this entails the ability of an athlete to successfully overcome adversity and maintain a stable mindset while performing at a consistently high level. Coaches can play an influential role in supporting their athletes to become psychologically resilient and to positively adapt when facing adversity.

Athletes will face various forms of adversity. Some may range from a minor level (e.g. making a bad pass) to a more severe level (i.e. suffering a long-term injury). Adversity is typically associated with the demands of competitive performance, preparation, level of competition, and outside stressors (Sarkar & Fletcher, 2013). These experiences can impact the level of stress an athlete undergoes as well as create unnecessary pressure or distractions. This makes it difficult to perform at a constant high level if they are not psychologically resilient and understand how to positively adapt.
Evoking positive qualities out of athletes can aid in their ability to adapt. Helping athletes to remain optimistic, persevere, feel in control, exhibit self-efficacy and seek social support encourages positive adaptation and thus become more resilient (Sarkar & Fletcher, 2013). How do we promote these characteristics? Sometimes time is a factor so making sure that there is a balance between corrections and encouragement is key. Corrections should never done in a belittling way and always provide reassurance. Coaches should make sure their corrections are clear so that the athlete can make them. For example telling an athlete to “stop diving in” is less beneficial than saying “make sure that you focus on the ball, keep your defensive stance, and wait for the opponent to make a mistake and then tackle.” Often we focus so much on the negative elements of performance and neglect to find the positive or learning outcome in the situation. This may be finding one positive takeaway from the situation (i.e. a loss; mistake). For example, how the team persevered until the final whistle and left it all on the field.

Creating drills and specific environments that challenge and prepare athletes for performance under pressure can aide in the development of psychological resilience. Preparation through creating potential distractions or types of environments (i.e. time of day, weather, uniforms) can aide in positive adaptation. Creating a pre-performance ritual that encourages athletes to mentally switch gears from a practice to competitive mindset may enhance mental performance as well. This may be performing a specific warm up and having a certain amount of free time to individually prepare before team preparation. The final significant element is creating social support through team building from the top to the bottom. Overall, you are only as strong as the weakest link and creating a positive and supportive environment will help everyone to work through adversity and positively adapt. These are some of the ways to build up psychological resilience in athletes and teams.

References:

Fletcher, D., & Sarkar, M. (2013). Psychological resilience: A review and critique of definitions, concepts, and theory. European Psychologist, 18(1), 12-23.

Sarkar, M., & Fletcher, D. (2013). How should we measure psychological resilience in sport performers? Measurement in Physical Education and Exercise Science, 17(4), 264-280.

Welcome to M.B.C. OC

Hello and welcome to the first blog post for Mind Body Connection OC. This will be a place where thoughts, ideas, news, and resources around the world of sports and mental skills will be shared. I am excited to begin the following blog posts with a three piece series around resiliency. I hope everyone enjoys and I look forward to all of the comments and thoughts.
Au revoir!
Lauren
“The secret of getting ahead is getting started.” –Mark Twain