How can you get peak performance from your athletes? In this post you will get a tool to assess their current level of Peak Performance

These thoughts on clutch performance are from Spencer Wood Icebox Sports Performance Resources.

Click the link below to see his Mental Toughness Edge website. There are some articles on mental training and other resources as well. Mental Toughness Edge

By Spencer Wood

Ask any athlete, coach or sports fan ‘of all the athletic attributes, which is the most important?’ Even the most casual athlete, coach or sports fan will provide an answer that in some way relates to the mental toughness, potential and power locked away in our mind. Yet, for so many coaches and athletes, unlocking the incredible athletic potential and power held in our minds is sometimes as much a mystery as it is a source of constant heartache and frustration. Many teams and individual athletes know what it feels like to bring their ‘A’ game against one program one day, and then almost unexplainably, they bring their ‘C’ or ‘D’ game against the very next program. Even worse, for those athletes who have experienced a major performance or skills slump in a big game or even over the course of a season – the frustration can feel like a slow death. Unfortunately, far too many coaches and athletes know this feeling all too well. For the progressive coach the response to these challenges is more than just extra running or longer practices.

The smart response then is to develop a mental skills and toughness training program that pinpoints the particular components of mental toughness that resulted in a lack of execution FOR EACH ATHLETE. Better still, coaches who proactively put such a plan in place before the start of the season will experience greater consistency and a significant competitive edge.

So how does a coach and team begin to implement a mental skills and toughness training program for clutch performance? It has been said that “sometimes things do not go according to plan because a plan did not exist in the first place.” For mental skills this plan begins with an honest assessment of each athlete’s mental skills and toughness strengths and weaknesses. But what kind of mental skills and toughness traits should you assess? While a seemingly endless stream of words and phrases can be used to broadly describe mental skills and athletic toughness traits, a useful summary traces each of these traits to one of more of the 4 C’s of Peak Performance – Composure, Concentration, Confidence and Commitment.

The 4 C’s of Peak Performance

Together, these “4 C’s of Peak Performance,” Composure, Concentration, Confidence, and Commitment – work like a model of a 3 leg stool. The first 3 C’s of Peak Performance – Composure, Concentration, and Confidence are like the legs of the stool. Lose one or more legs and the integrity and balance of the stool is compromised. Translation – our performance suffers. And the 4th C of Peak Performance – Commitment – is the seat or platform of the stool that takes our weight and sustains us. No commitment or motivation, no stool. Each of these 4 C’s of Peak Performance profoundly affects the others. Developing tremendous composure allows us to better perform our concentration skills. A composed athlete who is able to effectively concentrate whenever necessary, will be a confident and highly effective athlete. And finally, a fully committed athlete will have harnessed the necessary drive and motivation to passionately pursue their mental and physical potential – committing to the necessary physical and mental training, maximizing their composure, concentration and confidence, and striving for Peak Performance. The “4 C’s Stool” diagram illustrates this Peak Performance Model.

4 C’s of Peak Performance

The Peak Performance Assessment examines current levels of practice and competitive composure, concentration, confidence and commitment, in addition to a number of other factors that can profoundly affect each of the 4 C’s of Peak Performance. These questions are scored on a scale from 1-10. A score of 1 = a “strongly disagree/very low” score. A score of 9 = a “strongly agree/very high” score. A score of 10 is a very rare “near perfect” score and should only be used sparingly. Encourage each of your players to complete the Peak Performance Assessment with complete honesty. Great athletes are great because they work on their strengths AND their weaknesses.Only complete honesty will allow your players to objectively identify these strengths and weaknesses before they are able to effectively improve these skills. The coach should also complete an assessment on each player, and should be compared with the player’s self-assessment in a one-on-one meeting with each player.

Any question with a score below a 7 should send up a ‘red flag’ and you should strongly consider working on this weakness with the athlete in question and turning the weakness into a future goal for improvement.

Developing a mental skills and toughness training plan for your team will certainly involve a time commitment. But this critical skill set will add a new, challenging and fun component to your practice schedule. In addition, the more you continue to train your team’s competitive mental muscle and refine your player’s mental training skills, the closer you will come to your team’s real potential. The pay-off in consistent peak performance, individual player improvement and your overall win column can be significant.

The article was provided by Coaches Network

High school athletes come in all different shapes and sizes and personalities.  Successful high school athletes do have one thing in common, though: They share a commitment to being the best they can be and focusing on what they can control, not worrying about the things they can’t control.

“They set high, realistic goals for themselves and train and play hard,” Jack Lesyk, Ph.D., the director of the Ohio Center for Sports Psychology, writes in an article on the center’s website . “They are successful because they are pursuing their goals and enjoying their sport. Their sport participation enriches their lives and they believe that what they get back is worth what they put into their sport.”

Lesyk believes there are nine specific mental skills that contribute to success in sports. They are all learned skills and can be improved with practice and instruction.  The states that successful athletes:

•  Choose and maintain a positive attitude.

•  Maintain a high level of self-motivation.

•  Set high, realistic goals.

•  Deal effectively with people.

•  Use positive self-talk.

•  Use positive mental imagery.

•  Manage anxiety effectively.

•  Manage their emotions effectively.

•  Maintain concentration.

•  Mental Skills Training

Lesyk created the pyramid below which represents the relationship of the nine skills to one another. Each of the higher levels incorporates and is based upon the skills of the preceding levels.

Lesyk’s article details each of these nine mental skills.

1. Maintaining a Positive Attitude

Successful athletes realize that maintaining is a positive attitude is a choice, and that no matter what, playing the sport is “an opportunity to compete against themselves and learn from their successes and failures.” Lesyk believes that athletes should pursue excellence and not perfection because no one is perfect.

2. Staying Self-Motivated:

By identifying their own form of motivation, athletes are able to “persist through difficult tasks and difficult times, even when these rewards and benefits are not immediately forthcoming.” Lesyk said that successful athletes understand many of the benefits of playing sports come from their participation and not the results.

3. Setting Realistic Goals”

Athletes should establish both short-term and long-term goals that are measurable and have an opening and ending timeframe.  Because they are extremely committed to achieving their goals, successful athletes have an easier time carrying out the demands of their training program than others.

4. Having Effective People Skills

Lesyk believes that winning athletes “understand they are part of a larger system that includes their families, friends, teammates, coaches, and others.” They can communicate their feelings easily to members of their support group, and listen to the advice that’s given to them.  Yet, these athletes have mastered the skills to deal with conflict, criticism or difficult opponents.

5. Positive Self-Talk

This is a key tool that successful athletes rely on to get through tough stretches in training or during competition. Lesyk says they “talk to themselves the way they would talk to their own best friend, and use self-talk to regulate thoughts, feelings and behaviors during competition.”

6. Positive Mental Imagery

Winning athletes imagine themselves performing well in competition by creating detailed, specific and realistic images.  This skill is not only used to prepare for competition but as a way to recover from poor performance during a game or race.

7. Dealing Effectively with Anxiety

Lesyk believes that successful athletes understand anxiety is part of sport, and “some degree of anxiety can help them perform well.”  They also know how to reduce anxiety when it becomes too strong, without losing their intensity in performance.

8. Dealing Effectively with Emotions

Winning athletes accept that excitement, anger, and disappointment as part of the sport experience, and they develop the ability to use these emotions as ways to improve, rather than having them serve as blocks to performing well.

9. Mental Skills Training

Successful athletes have the special ability to concentrate in every game situation.  They “have learned how to maintain focus and resist distractions, whether they come from the environment or from within themselves, and are able to regain their focus when concentration is lost during competition. They have learned how to play in the ‘here-and-now,’ without regard to either past or anticipated future events.”

Click here to read the full article.  The Ohio Center for Sport Psychology helps people develop the important skills necessary for high-level performance in sport and non-sport performance situations.

This article may also  be found at The Coaches Toolbox,  a collection of resources for coaches of all sports

You probably don’t agree with all of these and would change the wording on some of them, but my hope is that this stimulates your thinking on how you can more clearly define and list for your athletes what you feel leads to success.

We all have our own definition of success. I like John Wooden’s definition: “Success is peace of mind which is a direct result of self-satisfaction in knowing you did your best to become the best you are capable of becoming.”

Or, you could use some of these as ideas for your athletes in a system similar to Jon Gordon’s One Word concept from his book One Word That Will Change Your Life

A starting point for creating your own list…

DRIVE: Desire to win or be successful; sets and maintains high goals for themselves in athletics; responds positively to competition. Desires to attain athletic excellence.

AGGRESSIVENESS: Believes one must be aggressive to win; will not allow others to push them around in competition.

DETERMINATION: Willingness to practice long and hard; often works out willingly by themselves; persevering, patient, and unrelenting in work habits. Works on skills until exhausted.

GUILT-PRONENESS: Accepts responsibility for own actions; accepts blame and criticism even when not deserved; willing to endure physical and mental discomfort.

LEADERSHIP: Enjoys the role of leader and may assume it spontaneously; attempts to influence or direct others in a postiive way.

SELF-CONFIDENCE: Have unfaltering confidence in themselves and their capacity to deal with things; handles unexpected situations well; speaks up appropriately for beliefs to coaches and players.

EMOTIONAL CONTROL: Tends to be emotionally stable and realistic about athletics; will rarely allow feelings to show and performance is not affected by them; not easily frustrated by bad breaks, calls or mistakes.

MENTAL TOUGHNESS: Accepts strong criticism without feeling hurt; can bounce back quickly from adversity; does not need excessive encouragement from the coach.

COACHABILITY: Receptive to coaches’ advice; considers coaching important to becoming a good athlete; accepts the leadership and cooperates with authorities.

CONSCIENTIOUSNESS: Tends to be exacting in character, dominated by sense of duty; will not attempt to bend rules and regulations to suit own needs; places the good of the team above personal well being.

TRUST: Accepts people at face value, believes what the coaches and teammates say and does not look for ulterior motives behind their words or actions; tends to get along well with teammates.

The Way to Victory

Victories of life are won not on the fields nor in the marts where the deci­sive struggle takes place, but in the obscure and forgotten hours of prepara­tion. Success or failure lies in the hands of the individual long before the hour of final test comes.

In the higher fields of success there are no accidents; we reap precisely we they have sown and nothing else; they do well precisely what they have prepared to do and they do nothing else well.

The world puts its force into us when we put ourselves in right relation with it: Experience makes us constantly wiser if we know how to rationalize it: Time deposits all manner of treasure in our imagination and memory, if we hold the doors open.

Nothing is lost upon a person who is bent upon growth, nothing wasted on one who is constantly preparing for their work and life by keeping eyes, mind, and heart open to nature, people, books, and experience. All things that we have seen, heard, known and felt come to our aid at the critical moment to make our thought clear and keep our illustration luminous, our speech eloquent and inspiring.