The Five Most Important Things I’ve Learned as a Sport Psychologist
Everyone feels pressure.
I think there are a lot of misconceptions out there with youth, high school, and college athletes when it comes to the perception of who feels pressure. They’ll look at professionals and Olympians and think It’s amazing how confident they are, they’ve got it all figured out.
What they don’t see behind the scenes is that those athletes and high-level performers feel pressure just as younger and less-skilled athletes watching them do. There are certain times and situations where they feel it more (and less, just like all athletes), but they do feel it.
What’s great though is that as you get to higher levels of sport, you’ve got more reps under your belt on how to handle that pressure. High-level athletes naturally get better at embracing the feeling of pressure and still reaching the level that they need to perform at because they’ve done it so many times.
Pressure is a funny thing. You’ve probably told yourself to relax when you’ve experienced pressure in sport and/or life. Yet that can actually make things worse.
Think of it this way…when you’re golfing and you tell yourself Don’t hit it in the water, don’t hit it in the water, guess where you’re probably going to hit it? In the water.
Your attention is on the water. If you start feeling pressure and tell yourself to relax, your attention is on your current state of mind, which is tension…instead of the task at hand.
When the pressure hits, bring your attention back to a common routine or behavior that will help recenter your mind to the task at hand.
Confidence is an incredible benefit to high-level performance…but it’s not a requirement.
When people are worried about confidence, I tell them Hey, you’re not always going to feel confident, but you still can hit the putt, you can still take the shot.
There are a lot of athletes that go into sport and say I want to be confident because when they’re confident they feel less anxiety. Yet as the great Joe Montana once quoted, confidence is one of the most fragile things on the football field. That aligns exactly with what we’re finding in athletes.
Confidence is an emotion; it ebbs and flows…and it’s hard to conjure up emotions. If you’re not angry and try to become angry, it’s difficult to do. Similarly, it’s awfully hard to force yourself to be happy when you’re not happy.
Confidence, like all emotions, comes and goes and emotions are not meant to be conjured up. Emotions are created by what we attend to, how we behave, and where we place ourselves in situations from a behavioral standpoint.
Those things are much more controllable, and if we focus on those instead of the emotion itself, we put ourselves in the best space for peak performance.
Most collegiate and professional coaches haven’t had a lot of training in leadership development.
Most coaches will coach the way that they were coached…or the exact opposite of how they were coached if they had a negative experience. When I started, I figured these great coaches would have tons of high-level tools to motivate and engage their athletes. A lot of times they don’t and could really benefit from them…and it’s no fault of their own- it’s not the norm at these levels.
A lot of coaches will read books on leadership, development, and growth to be self taught, but often miss on some of the context or jump from one book/strategy to the next, especially if things aren’t going well. They often don’t consider their limitations, weaknesses, and blind spots, which results in falling in the same holes over and over again.
I think the great coaches of today’s era are starting to embrace leadership development and learning more about emotional intelligence and some of the constructs that we know make great leaders. That’s far from the old-school coaching approach that is still often seen in today’s world. Some of the most forward-thinking and successful next-generation coaches are taking the lead and seeking out executive coaching and leadership development training to help manage themselves at the highest level alongside their staff and players.
If you look down the road at Target Corporation, they invest millions of dollars to develop their mid-level managers. What do most pro and elite college teams do to invest in their coaches? Very little…and that’s a problem.
Let’s take a look at a high-level division one coach in today’s world. You’re not only asking that person to be incredible with the X’s and O’s, but to manage their student-athletes’ mental health, oversee overall security and a safe environment for their team, engage in challenging conversations where old-school discipline is far from the only and/or correct answer…the list goes on.
Coaches in today’s world are put in a tough spot and many of them are really feeling it and could strongly benefit from additional support.
Very few athletes prepare for adversity…the great ones envision working through it.
The thought of visualizing your mistakes sits uneasy with athletes and is rarely talked about. It’s because it’s uncomfortable.
A number of years back I was working with an NFL quarterback who was vying for the number two spot on the depth chart. It was just prior to training camp and a lot was on the line; this athlete was finally starting to see consistent playing time and was preparing for a potential contract year with millions of dollars on the line; long story short, this was the moment he had trained his whole life for.
The athlete made it very clear that he wanted to work on the mental side of his game so I started by telling him to visualize himself throwing an interception.
“Let me get this straight, you want me to picture myself throwing an interception? Are you the worst sport psychologist ever?
I responded with “Only if you’re never ever going to throw a pick for the rest of your career. Because if there is even the slightest chance that you’re going to throw an interception, I want you to be ready.”
We don’t need to prepare very much for when things go well because we’re cruising. What we need to prepare for is how we’re going to respond when things don’t go as planned. Most of us don’t like to visualize that because it’s uncomfortable…very uncomfortable. But if you’re not ready to handle the uncomfortableness while you’re sitting around or relaxing and thinking about the week ahead, then good luck dealing with the discomfort out on the field or court.
It’s the same concept that is done with our special forces. We get them ready for every piece of adversity and discomfort that they may face, so that they can still do the task at hand under pressure, on demand, when fatigued.
The key driver to peak performance is focus.
Where we put our attention is the ultimate determinant of whether or not we will be successful. I’ll dive deep into this next time.
Dr. Justin Anderson is the co-founder and CEO of Premier Sport Psychology in Edina, Minnesota. After working in the field for nearly 20 years, Justin has worked with athletes ranging from youth and amateurs to professionals and Olympians spanning all major sports leagues.
