Helping Athletes Assess Their Mental Skills
Editor’s note: This is an article written for athletes in any sport in general, and the principles especially apply to golf, perhaps the most mental game of all.
Introduction
During those times when you and your athletes reflect on what they need to do to improve their overall performances, remember that it’s not only what they do physically that matters, but it’s what they do mentally that matters more. It is during these periods of reflection that decisions are made about what’s necessary to move forward, including rest, developing a new training regimen, or revitalizing old training regimens. It’s during these periods of time that you and your athletes rate whether or not they are reaching their goals, and if they aren’t, what is it that they need do to train physically harder, faster, and longer. The reflection, rest, and development are important to being an athlete, but training physically harder, faster, and longer is not always the key to getting better. The key is developing a mental training program.
What is Psychological Skills Training (PST)?
PST is a systematic approach for developing a mental game plan. It is designed to help athletes acquire and practice psychological skills that have been shown to be useful for improving performance and enhancing enjoyment of sports. Research has shown that PST can give athletes an edge over competitors.
Step One – Where to Begin
Think about how much of your sport is mental. Next, compare how much is mental with how much practice time you spend training mental skills. What did you come up with? Generally, most coaches and athletes find that their sport is pretty demanding mentally, yet they spend virtually no amount of time practicing the necessary mental aspects.
Step Two – Mental Skills Worksheet
Now that you are aware of how much of your sport is mental and how much time your athletes spend practicing mental skills, it’s time to begin creating a mental action plan. The next step in your action plan is to use the mental skills worksheet to determine what psychological skills your players think are necessary to be successful. Let the player circle all the ones that seem important. From all the skills circled, have your athletes narrow them down to the top five necessary mental skills and write those down in order of importance.
Step Three –
Performance Profiling Take the player’s top five mental skills for success and place them in the performance profile template (a nsheet of paper works just as well). Across the top of the performance profile is a rating scale of 1-10, with 1 having a meaning of “not at all” (I am not at all positive) and 10 having a meaning of “very much” (I am very positive). To be most effective, bring colored pencils, markers or crayons, and have some fun with your athletes. Have the athlete choose three different colors.
• First, have each player decide where he is currently with each of the mental skills they listed. Choose a color for “current skill level,” and put an X in the box corresponding with where he feels he is with each of his skills. For example, your player feels he is pretty positive, so he may put an X in box 8.
• Second, have each player decide where he thinks he wants to be to further succeed. Choose a color for “success” and put an X in the box corresponding with where he thinks he needs to be with each of his skills. For example, although your player is currently an 8 on positivity, he may feel he needs to be a 10 to excel.
• Third, have each player use a third color to draw a line between what his “current skill level” is and where he thinks “success” is. This determines the difference from where he currently is to where he wants to be.
• This will give you an idea of what your player thinks are the most important mental skills, where he thinks he is, and where he wants to be. This exercise not only gets your athletes to think about the mental skills necessary to excel, but it gives you, as their coach, an opportunity to talk to your athletes about what they’ve chosen, and whether or not you agree with those choices.
How Does Your Athlete Use This Information?
Hopefully, going through this exercise gives your athletes some mental goals to strive towards. Since your athletes can’t possibly work on everything at the same time, and more than likely they’ve not worked on any of them prior to this, have them start with the first one on their list. Let’s use the positivity example from above as the first one on your athlete’s list. How does your athlete get from an 8 to a 10 in positivity? Perhaps at an 8, your athlete has recognized that he feels challenged with negative self-talk before, say, attempting a putt. What does that look and feel like? How does it play out? How does it affect his performance? Go deeper with him or her into why they feel they are an 8 on positivity. This will help you figure out how to help them move past an 8 and closer to a 10.
Goal Setting
Use goal setting as the method for improvement on the skills listed in your athlete’s performance profile. The benefits of goal setting are to improve performance, improve the quality of practice, clarify expectations, and relieve boredom, increase pride, satisfaction, and self-confidence. When written realistically, goals also allow your athletes to see their successes, which lead to increased motivation.
For goals to work really well, the research suggests
using SMART goals:
1. Specific (versus general) – A specific goal has a much greater chance of being accomplished than a general goal. It includes who, what, where, when, which, and why.
2. Measurable (performance versus outcome) – Establish concrete criteria for measuring progress toward the attainment of each goal you set: How much, how many, and how will I know when it is accomplished?
3. Adjustable
a. Goals should change as your players reach them so that they continue to advance and stay motivated.
b. Some goals are a little out of reach and need to be changed to something more realistic.
c. Your players’ goals should be within their control, and if not, then they need to be changed.
4. Realistic (versus unrealistic)
a. To be realistic, a goal must represent an objective toward which your players are both willing and able to work. Be sure that every goal represents substantial progress. A high goal is frequently easier to reach than a low one, because a low goal exerts low motivational force.
b. A goal is probably realistic if your athletes truly believe that it can be accomplished. Additional ways to know if the goal is realistic is to determine if your players have accomplished anything similar in the past, or ask yourself what conditions would have to exist to accomplish this goal.
5. Time-based (long-term versus short-term) – A goal should be grounded within a time frame. With no time frame tied to it, there’s no sense of urgency. Goals are meant to motivate your athletes and are an indicator of progress. Goals can be written and reassessed every day, week, month, or a year, as long as your athletes are flexible and understand that they will change as time passes.
Common Problems with Goal Setting
• Failure to convince athletes of the importance
• Setting only outcome-oriented goals
• Failure to set SMART goals
• Setting too many goals
• Not knowing which goals are the priority
• Failure to adjust goals
• Lack of support
Other Benefits of Setting SMART Goals
• Goals direct attention to important elements of the skill being performed
• Athletes learn what’s in their control
• Empowerment
• Satisfaction
• Self-confidence
• Increased focus
• Increased motivation – intensity and direction
Final Thoughts
Have your athletes remember when they first started to learn to play their sport. Most, if not everything, felt new, difficult, and sometimes frustrating. Have your athletes remember how much physical practice it took to get to where they are today. The time it took them to get from where they were when they first started to wherever they are right now included hard work, dedication, evaluation, failures, successes, motivation, focus, etc. It took practice and work to change, improve, and succeed. In order to excel, their mental skills deserve that same attention and dedication.
Let’s think about this in another way: You can’t succeed at anything without your mind. If your athlete works or goes to school, walk him or her through one of those experiences. They can’t do either without mentally figuring out how to work through the different aspects of their experience, right? They would never just start talking to random people and participating in random activities to get work done. When working on a project, they would think through the process in order to get the project completed effectively and efficiently. Every sport needs mental attention, and in that way they are no different than school or work (or even relationships). Unfortunately, most athletes don’t think through the game, and they end up falling prey to negative thoughts and anxieties about themselves and their games. Mental training allows players to understand their mental and emotional barriers and come up with a game plan for dealing with those things when they arise.
Dr. Cleere’s passion is unlocking the power of the mind so that elite performers can play better and happier. She has helped hundreds of athletes who compete in sports that require a high degree of mental endurance and toughness such as tennis, golf, triathlon, marathon, cycling, biathlon, and beach volleyball. She has also worked with concert musicians, entertainers, and business executives. For more information on developing a mental training plan or performance- related challenges, visit Dr. Cleere’s website at DrMichelleCleere.com, or for a free consultation contact Dr. Cleere at drmichelle@drmichellecleere.com
