Is it impossible or do you just think it is?

At Condor Performance we love our golf analogies. In fact, we often use golf examples to explain concepts to performers from other sports. For example to our rugby league and union goal kickers and our soccer penalty takers we use the example of putting. Man (or women), ball, target. In fact, golf is such a mentally demanding game I’ve often thought about getting non golfers of others sports to play it as a form of mental workout. Maybe that’s why some many of them do?


But my favourite golf example is used to try and get performers to redefine the concept of “impossible” (e.g. it’s impossible for us to come back from 3 – 0 down, it’s impossible for me to train in these conditions etc). If you ask a room of golfers if it’s possible to score a hole in one on a par 5 they will unanimously say NO.

But they would be wrong (use the internet to find out how and post your reply here). Interestingly, such a score is called....you guessed it....a CONDOR.

Australian Tennis - thoughts?

In case you missed it or didn't know it was on there was a rather revealing documentary about the state of tennis in Australia on Monday night on ABC television. You can watch it online by clicking on the below link.


www.abc.net.au/4corners/

Please use the COMMENT box or link below to give your opinion. I'll add my thoughts as I respond to yours. GJM

How young is too young?

Last week we ran another of our free Q&A sessions (email info@condorperformance.com to attend the next one).This time for some local tennis coaches and one of the questions was 'how young is too young to start work on the mental side?'


The answer we gave on the day was 'our youngest private client is 8 years old' which is true but could imply that is the minimum age of performer we will work this. Earl Woods began working on Tiger’s mental game at about the age of three – where he would famously try and distract his son during his new backswing (Harder Practice) and play games like 'see the putt' (classic visualisation).

The great thing about sport psychology is the ideas need to be simple to be of any use and therefore the only factor that determines the minimum age to start work on the mental side of sport / performance is the creativity of the sport psychologist teaching the mental skills. I often think of mental toughness like speaking a second language. Imagine you spoke English and Japanese from a young age and you knew thinking in Japanese would make you perform better under pressure. Now, who do you think is more capable of actually learning a second language – a 3 year old or a 23 year old? The obvious answer is the 3 year old. Tiger Woods' father knew this.

This is no minimum age to start improving the way you think and do things – which in a nutshell is all we, as sport psychologists, are trying to do. Cheers, GJM

How Fabio Capello changed England

One of clients had just forwarded us a link to a very recent article about the mental skills the current England football / soccer manager has used to improve the team's performances. Regardless of if you follow soccer or not it's well worth a read and if you do please put you comments up on the BLOG for others to read:

http://soccernet.espn.go.com/world-cup/feature?id=732672&cc=3436&ver=global

My one comment would be how the top coaches are actually more like informal sport psychologists now than technical coaches. Things will get really exciting when this “old school” mental conditioning is combined with the new, science based principles (that we and other qualified sport psychologists use). Cheers, GJM

Which sports need the most amount of mental toughness?

Two questions we get from time to time are “how mentally demanding is my sport” and “which sports need the most amount of mental toughness”? First, as scientists we try and answer these types of question using evidence rather than guesswork. However, the literature has yet to try and answer this question. So in turn we do the next best thing...make a hypothesis as experts.


There are two ways of looking at this and I’d be interested to hear you opinion on which sounds the most sensible. Theory One is that all sports and performance areas have variables and these variables change the amount of mental toughness required. For example, how long a match lasts for is a variable with the 100 meter sprint at one end and test cricket at the other. Then if you know which side is mentally harder you can start doing some maths. So in the previous example the sports that take longer are mentally harder as they require greater concentration and there’s more time to think. If this is correct then on the variable of duration test cricket would be mentally more draining that a 100 meter athletics race. Other variables would be number of teammates, risk of injury, potential earnings, task complexity, environmental factors, how winners are picked (judged by people or measured by machines), speed of tasks etc.

Before you sit down and try and work out how your pursuit rates on all of the above compared to other sports you might like to consider Theory Two. What if all these variables cancel one another out so that in the end all sports and performance endeavours are equal in terms of mental requirements to reach the top? For example, maybe there is much more pressure on the 100 meter sprint that the test cricketer because he / she will not have time to correct any errors made. An error made by a test cricketer on day one can virtually be forgotten by the time the match is over.

As sport psychologists it suits us to operate as if this second theory is correct as it allows us to treat all of our clients equally and not compare a formula one driver with an ultimate Frisbee player. Both just want to get better, don’t they?

Cheers, GJM

There are no magic days and dates

Non magic days and dates are all the times when we use a specific day or date or holiday or time of year to sabotage our efforts. The most common are “weekends” when people say things such as “I work all week, I’m not going to do anything on my days off…it’s just more work”. Birthdays, public holidays are all dangerous but we’re heading into the most dangerous of the all…the Christmas break. We call them non magic days because of the irrational belief that many people have that these days are ‘special or magic’ in that the normal facts and rules don’t apply. Well they do. Christmas day is a 24 block of time in which going for a jog or a swim will have the exact same effect as if it were any other day of the year. With that in mind, the Condor Performance team hopes that you have much more than just a happy Dec 25th. Cheers, GJM

Practice makes permanent, not perfect

Practice makes perfect is a myth as perfect is unobtainable. Much more accurate is practice makes permanent in that the motor skills you’re practising become so ingrained and natural that nothing can get in their way. One of the biggest dilemmas we face in sport is that to get something to become truly permanent you have to practice it A LOT (estimations suggest around 20 hours a week) and yet doing the same thing over and over will soon become boring. The solution is not to compromise on the amount you practice but vary the types and intensity of the training blocks. One of the simplest ways of doing this is to introduce some mental rehearsal into each practice session where you are either watching clips of how to do it correctly or imagining the same.


Another excellent way of preventing boredom is make sure every training session is challenging. If you don’t already know how to do this then I suggest asking how to add Pressure and Harder Practice to your current regime. It’s gold. GJM