2000 Pan American High Performance Coaching Course February

2000 Pan American High Performance Coaching Course February 10 – 15, 2009 Hamilton, Bermuda Course Conductors: FIH Coach Grade 1 – Shiaz. Virjee (Canada) FIH Coach - William (Bill) Gaudette (USA), FIH Coach Olympian - Jorgelina Rimoldi (Argentina)

Mental Skills Building the Mental Skills William F Gaudette 111 Ph. D FIH Coach

Mental Skills Why is it that so much talent comes into our top level programs and often fails, there are lots of ideas, but no studies We commonly sit around the table and we all have an opinion, staff has ideas, med have input, management has ideas but everything is very objective. Off the back of function is the training model, skills training revolves around this area.

Mental Skills Talent Entry and failures – Why? Staff Opinions from table – objective Back of function is my “training model” Encompass skills training Players must maximize potential – less objective Player Potential is Dynamic – growth Your “Mind Set” is a skill, learned Mental Skills need to be in place to achieve Excellence. Test Physically, technically and Mentally

Mental Skills Development self analysis, self awareness Debrief success and failure Getting better? Self Improvement. Force Debriefing and you’ll force improvement Your belief in yourself

Mental Skills Mindsets – Fixed and Growth Fixed Mindset – talented players believe in their skills “LES” Surrounded by supporters Degrade other players Self belief in talent Embarrassed to be seen Result – no growth effect

Mental Skills Growth Mindset – proactive mentally Challenges for development and improvement Top Achievers – limitless Challenge to turn the fixed mindset player

Mental Skills Muhammad Ali Great boxer Big fists Big chest Great lung capacity Fixed or Growth Explored neighborhoods of opponents

Mental Skills Michael Jordan Knew he was great 2 hr practice daily Self debriefing Fixed or Growth

Mental Skills

Mental Skills John Mc. Enroe Strong self believer Doubles contender Difficulties experienced – sore back, over training, under training, over weight, broadcaster caused excessive stress. Many players they don’t like

Mental Skills

Mental Skills Tiger Woods Reached peak at young age Plateau Changed swing Fixed or Growth

Mental Skills

Mental Skills Mental Toughness –ever hear a coach tell a player that he needs to toughen up mentally? 4 C’s Commitment – Staff must buy concept of Mental Training. Player who have this stick to their plan, their goals Control – emotions do not run wild, control life, Player makes the decision, not his coach nor family or peers. Challenge – fixed players see danger in a problem, they are just fine where they are. Challenges are opportunity to develop. Confidence – worth while players

Mental Skills Motivation Traits – Impact a players development. Structure interview to capture data. What motivates your player and what language is most successful. Reactive player or Proactive Player Reactive – studies concept and executes Proactive Player – specific language motivates. Direct result by your words. Requires key words, understanding of player

Mental Skills Keen on players maximizing potential. Tired of sitting around the table. The Potential of a Player is Dynamic – it should not be the same in 6 months as it is today. Mind set is a skill – a skill that can be developed. Mental Skills need to be in place to achieve excellence Testing Physically and Technically, and mentally?

Briefing and Debriefing We need to develop a players self analysis, our players self awareness. Debrief success and failures, not only at the end of the game, but at the end of training sessions. How are you going to get better, searching to improve yourself. By forcing yourself to debrief yourself you are forcing self improvement Belief – a belief is something from past experience that you go by and believe in.

Mindsets Fixed Mindset and Growth Mindset Fixed Mindset: is commonly found in talented players, they believe in their ability and believe in their skills, that their skills are so good that this will produce success. This often generates a “Low Effort Syndrome” They are told by their peers, family, press, all that surround them, how good they are!! The Low Effort Syndrome player often ignores other players or even may degrade players who are lesser, but on an improvement path for elite success. They believe that their incredible talent is enough, not caring to show others that they too need to improve sprinting and conditioning, in learning new skills, etc.

Mental Skills They are kind of embarrassed for others to see that they may not be good enough. Some of the better players don’t want to work at getting better, they know they are already talented. This eventually is the route to stagnation. Growth Mindset – proactive mentally, see problems as a place to learn for long term growth and development. Although they know they are talented, they also know they can get better Top Achievers – many top achievers don’t believe it when people say to them that they have limits.

Mental Skills Opportunity – A fixed mindset player needs to be turned into a growth mindset player. Muhammad Ali – A great boxer, big fists, big chest, great lung capacity. He knew he was a great boxer, but he was a growth mindset person. He even went to many of the neighbors of his opponents to learn more about them!! Michael Jordan – he knew he was great, but every day before school he spent 2 hours shooting hoops by himself, debriefing himself every day.

Mental Skills John Mc. Enroe – A fixed mindset, believed that if his talent was not good enough he was not going to play so when he lost a key doubles match, he stopped playing doubles for over 15 years. He always had an excuse for losing, sore back, over trained, under trained, over weight, broadcasters cause too much stress. You can see it on the pitch where a player sees someone else who is better than they, they don’t like them or show disdain. Tiger Woods – Changed his swing 4 years ago, hit a peak, changed swing just to get to another level.

Mental Skills Mental Toughness – you hear coaches say a player needs to be mentally tough but what is it and how do you do it? ? 4 C’s – these 4 C’s can come into play here. Commitment – you need an understanding from everyone on your staff to buy into Mental Training. Have an aura of stick ability in face of adversary and keep going. Control – Keep emotions in check, feel that they are in control of life, they direct where they are planning to go. They will make the difference, not some external influence.

Mental Skills Challenge – Talented players with fixed mindsets are not striving to develop themselves. See a problem as a threat, not a challenge. A challenge should be looked at as a form of self development. Confidence – Owing to their abilities, these players feel they are worth while. Motivational Traits – these can have a huge effect on players development. Structured interviews. You can get an understanding of what motivates him and the language that motivates the player.

Mental Skills Reactive or Proactive player? The reactive player takes things on board, thinks about them before executing. The proactive player needs different language to motivate him. So when you talk to a player you are able to direct your language to get an understanding. Key words pop up, this take time,

Mental Skills Case Study – talented player

Mental Skills Training – Thinking correctly under pressure, the event does not cause pressure, the individual thought process causes this pressure and performance drops, on and off field. Solution – need Thought Stopping – negative phrases replaced with positive Reflection – game focusing mind, Monday AM need to know he felt during the game and post game.

Mental Skills and Toughness Training Your mind is linked to performance 50% of performance is related to state of mind. At the National Level, it is closer to 90%, Mental Training Skill sets are misunderstood as they relate to preparation for competition. The revolution in Mental Skill Training has not yet happened as material is not yet readily transferable to the field hockey player. Time? Mental Skills Training is shrouded in mystery and we need a structured approach in order to integrate into training plans.

Mental Skills Ever hear: “Stay Loose”, “be tough”, “hang in there”, “concentrate, focus” - useless terms 2 States: Flight or Fight State It is not the situation rather how we view or perceive the situation that is the cause. Performance in execution is impacted even by the smallest irregularities in breathing Digestive system dysfunction

Mental Skills Peak Performance State – baseball pitcher Everything going your way, on a high 4 areas of composition Composure Concentration Confidence – a composed player is a Confident Player Commitment – Mental skills strengthen your commitment and motivation, commitment to do nothing less than your peak performance. .

Mental Skills Exercises for Composure – Symptoms: muscular tension & short breathing patterns Neck – close mouth – show teeth 6 sec Need to get muscles in optimum length – tension relationship. Body Scan –

Mental Skills Peak Performance Breathing – when anxious or during skill execution we have a tendency to breath shallow, faster. When you hold your breath you raise heart beat, breath from upper chest, hold your breath. Eventually these things draw attention to themselves and our focus changes to our breathing patterns. A 2 second hold to execute a skill is good but longer immediately impacts performance Correct breathing patterns- 1 – 2 second holding of breathing at skill execution

Mental Skills Peak Performance Concentration – you can only focus on one channel at a time Audio channel, visual channel, taste channel, touch channel, visual channel, imagination channel, touch (body feeling) channel Channel Surfing – like on a TV – you have the illusion that you are in more than one channel at a time. Body feeling channel – your back against the chair, you feet on the floor, the pressure on you upper hamstring where you are sitting (are you a bit more focused now on how you feel in your chair? )

Mental Skills Audio Channel: inflection in my voice, surrounding sounds, silence has its own sound Visual Channel – where sport is played Baseball player – 2 outs and 2 strikes turn on your mental TV, 2 weeks ago you struck out in same situation, this plays over and over again several times in less than a second so imagination channel takes over so you say stop and your inner screen switches to inner voice channel, you see wind up of pitcher and you switch to visual channel, you feel your breathing patterns change and you switch back to body feel channel

Mental Skills When your mental TV screen is switching channels the coach yells, concentrate Bob and again your channels osculate to audio channel and then back again to visual channel. All this channel surfing causes lack of concentration in visual channel where you want to be, In order for the visual channel to stay on, breathing skills, composure skills and many others must be honed. Then within the Visual Channel there is a broad focus and a narrow focus. The broad focus enable you to se much of the pitch and the narrow focus is right about the ball or the man

Mental Skills Visual clues See all the objects, then see one object, then see one part of one object, now focus on an even smaller part of the but have someone talk with you or distract you in some way. Se it believe it: when you see an image or skill being executed you actually feel it, images have a powerful impact on performance – this is visualization Relax and see it See it from within 75% Feel it with all 5 senses, If image is incorrect – erase it Enjoy the process