This article is also posted on the Coaches Toolbox, a collection of  resources for coaches of all sports.

These thoughts on clutch performance are from Spencer Wood Icebox Athlete Sports Performance Resources. Click that link to see his Mental Toughness Edge website. There are some articles on mental training and other resources as well.

According to a study based on professional athletes in the NBA, NFL, and NHL, the following eight traits were found to constitute the ultimate athlete:

1. Ability to work hard and sustain intensity.
2. Competitiveness.
3. Athletic ability.
4. Sacrifice for the team.
5. Coping with criticism, failure, and success.
6. Clutch performance, poise, and focus.
7. Ability to execute game strategy.Passion
8. for the sport and commitment to excellence.

Five of the above traits are mainly mental attributes.

There isn’t a coach in America who would say that mental skills and toughness isn’t critical to clutch performance. But how many coaches devote fifty percent of their time developing mental skills?

Misconception that mental skill and toughness only need to be worked on if there’s something wrong.

We must give our athletes an actual skill set to work on. A crisp definition of what is expected.

Mental Toughness = The Four C’s:

1. Composure.
2. Concentration.
3. Confidence.
4. Commitment.

What happens to the brain under stress?

Perceived threat leads to a fight or flight reaction.

1. It’s important for our athletes to realize that this process is common.
2. Not too many athletes are going to acknowledge they’re nervous.
3. Take time to talk with your athletes about what happens to your mind and body in clutch situations.

Four things occur in clutch situations:

How does this effect performance?

Emotion Arousal (EA):

1. Coming out of the locker room before a game, or coming out of a key timeout in a clutch situation, an athlete’s emotional arousal level increases.
2. As emotional arousal increases, performance potential increases. However at a certain level, emotional arousal reaches a level where performance potential is maxed (as identified by the dotted line in figure 1).
3. Once this level of optimum emotional arousal is passed, performance potential tanks.

The following is from Inner Drive, a mental skills training company. The article is about performing under pressure and managing your nerves in competition. The article is written to help students with test anxiety as well as for athletes preparing for competition. Many of you are getting your athletes ready for their biggest competitions of the season. Thought this might be helpful.

A student writing their exams share similarities with an athlete competing on match day. Both require the ability to perform under pressure. Both require turning months, if not years, of hard work into a one-off performance. Both can make people nervous.

It is interesting to consider that the techniques used by students to manage nerves, can also be used by athletes. The context and situation may be different, but the strategies implemented to manage their emotions can be the same.

Here we look at 5 techniques that either students can use before an exam, or an athlete can use before a match, in order to manage their nerves:

Self Talk – How you talk to yourself can have a huge impact on how you think, feel and perform. For example, asking yourself questions instead of saying statements (‘Will I do well?’ v ‘I will do well) has been found to help improve insight. It is thought that asking yourself questions is an effective technique when adopting new behaviours or when in unfamiliar situations. These sort of questions are especially helpful when developing metacognitive skills (a skill that we recommend all athletes develop and one that has also been proven to help disadvantaged students).

As well as asking yourself questions, research has found that telling yourself what to do can help athletes improve attention and perform better under pressure. For students, this technique can help improve their self-control, as well as their ability to plan and prepare effectively. This can include ‘what do I need to do now?’, ‘what has worked well in the past?’ and ‘am I on the right track?’

Picture Perfect – Picturing yourself performing an upcoming task really well has been found to increase confidence. Spending just 15 minutes (which when you think about it, is just 1% of a day) imagining yourself successfully completing a task can help reduce any potential nerves. However, be careful. Too much time spent visualizing can quickly translate into too much time procrastinating. This blog looked at 7 ways to avoid procrastination. If you have already done the hard work, spending a few minutes picturing it going well should ensure you get all the psychological benefits, without any of the negative consequences of daydreaming the day away.

Face your fears head on – Psychologists state that there are three type of coping strategies. Avoidance, Emotional and Problem Focused. Let’s say your car has run out of petrol. You could decide to never drive again (avoidance), or convince yourself that not being able to drive anywhere isn’t that bad (emotion focused) or you could go to the petrol station and fill up your tank (problem focused coping).

The issue is that avoidant coping may offer short term relief, and emotional coping may make you feel a bit better, but problem-focused coping is the only option that addresses the problem head on. If you are nervous about an exam or a football match, then do something about it. Getting better at something is one of the most effective ways at improving your confidence. This will therefore help reduce your nerves about it.

Reframing – How do you see an upcoming event; as a challenge or a threat? You are more likely to view an event as a threat if you a) focus on what it is you stand to lose, b) feel the situation demands too much from you and c) worry about looking bad. On the flipside, if you focus on what it is you stand to gain, feel you have the resources and skills necessary to meet the task and focus on mastery, then you are more likely to view the event as an opportunity. This differentiation can have a significant impact on how you think, feel and perform. There is some exciting research emanating from psychologists at Staffordshire University on this. You can read about their work here, and is something some of our future blogs are going to look at in more detail.

Know that everyone gets nervous – The ‘Spotlight Effect’ describes how people tend to overestimate how much attention other people are paying them. You feel like all eyes are on you. This was demonstrated in a study that had students wear an embarrassing t-shirt to a lecture (for the record, the t-shirt that was chosen was one that just had Barry Manilow’s face on it).  The participants predicted that 50% of the other students would notice the t-shirt. In reality, less than 25% did.

A similar situation applies to nerves. It is easy to think that you are the only one who gets nervous. That these feelings are unique to you. That everyone is always calm and confident and they are judging you for being nervous. This could not be further from the truth. Every athlete gets nervous at some stage. Every student has moments of self-doubt. Remind yourself that these feelings are normal. They are natural. And they happen to everyone else as well.

There are many skills that a Track and Field coach must teach.  Running mechanics, starts,  jumping technique, fundamentals of the throwing events and relay exchange are just a few of the skills that track athletes must be taught. As coaches it is our task to teach those skills to the athletes that will benefit the most. Throwers need not concern themselves with getting out of the starting blocks. Distance runners need not worry about how and when to drop the pole in the vault.  Sprinters do not need to learn the glide or rotational technique in the shot. Not every athlete can benefit from all of these skills.  There is, however, one skill that every track and field athlete can benefit from, yet very few coaches teach it. Great coaches understand that focus is a skill. In fact it is the single most important skill in sports and like all other skills it can be taught.

In the video clip below Rick McGuire, University of Missouri, 30 year NCAA Division 1 Track & Field Coach and nationally recognized leader in Applied Sport Psychology, discusses the five key skills that are components of focus.

If you are interested in learning more about Coach McGuire’s program, click on the link Teaching Track & Field Athletes the Skill of Focus and get more information  about purchasing DVD that this clip came from.

The YouTube video below has sound, so please make sure that your sound is turned on and that you have access to the site. Some schools block access to YouTube

 

Five Key Skills in Focus

1. Time orientation – athletes need to be in the present. They should be thinking about what is going on right now, right here

2. Positive self talk – The conversation they have with themselves must be positive with lots of affirmations.

3. Composure – Athletes need to know what is their optimal arousal level and how to maintain it during competition.

4. Concentration – Finding out what information is relevant to your competition and pay attention to only this information. There will be lots of other information that is not relevant and it must be ignored. Pay attention to only the things that are relevant.

5. Confidence – Athletes must believe they can be successful. They must also believe that confidence is a choice. They can chose to be confident in themselves. It is critical that they believe this.