Mental Skills for Athletes

A Workbook for Competitive Success

Elizabeth L. Shoenfelt

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781000007008
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: History & Theory in Psychology
• Index: Psychology

Mental Skills for Athletes: A Workbook for Competitive Success is a step-by-step guide for developing a toolbox of mental skills. In this user-friendly workbook, Dr. Betsy Shoenfelt compiles materials from over 35 years of experience as a performance psychologist working to achieve competitive excellence, creating the go-to resource for athletes and coaches in any sport and at any level.

The book includes succinct, easily understood explanations of key mental skills based on the science of performance excellence. It discusses both cognitive and physical skills to ensure competitive success, covering a range of topics including focus, confidence, resilience, mindfulness, motivation, role clarity, problem solving, team values, and strategic goal setting. Shoenfelt includes over 25 different exercises to ensure the reader can readily apply these skills across a variety of sports and across all levels of competition, from high school to Olympic athletes. Worksheets encourage a hands-on approach and provide structure to guide the appropriate implementation of mental skills for each athlete. Examples of completed worksheets help demonstrate to the reader how to best utilize these resources.

This book is essential for early career sport psychology practitioners across the globe, as well as aspiring graduate students. The book is an invaluable resource for coaches and athletes at all levels.

Part I

Introduction

An Introduction to Mental Skills

1

Welcome to Mental Skills for Athletes: A Workbook for Competitive Success! As a performance psychologist, I frequently hear statements such as:

• “I want my athletes to be mentally tough.”
• “Can you help me work on my mental game?”
• “I need to get out of my head.”
• “Golf is 90% mental.”

All of these statements reflect a recognition that there is an important mental component to athletic performance. Mental skills give you an edge in competition. When two teams or two athletes equal in skill and ability compete, the mentally tough one wins virtually every time. When an underdog overcomes a more talented opponent, it likely can be attributed to focus, intensity, and tenacity; that is, mental skills.

Although some may believe that 90% of performance is mental, that is not the case. If you are an athlete performing at a high level such as intercollegiate or as a pro, in reality, mental skills can improve your “game” by about 10%. Performing at a high level requires a combination of ability, proper technique and mechanics, strategy, a lot of practice/training, and, yes, mental skills. The 10% improvement in performance that can be accomplished with mental skills means a golfer shooting 80 can improve his game to the low 70s; a swimmer clocking a 75 second 100 meter butterfly can cut her time to 68 seconds; a batter hitting .250 can improve to .275, a basketball player shooting 68% from the free throw line can improve to 75%. In virtually every sport, a 10% improvement is significant. Athletes at all levels can improve their performance by using mental skills. Accomplished athletes with sound technique and mechanics, good strategy, and a strong work ethic can move to the top of their sport. Beginner, intermediate, or advanced intermediate performers can achieve the 10% improvement with mental skills, but also need to attend to mechanics and strategy. These athletes should work closely with a coach – just as elite athletes do. Deliberate practice in which an athlete has guidance and feedback from a sport specific coach(es) and the willingness to practice over the long haul is prerequisite for mental skills to enhance performance.

This workbook will help you develop a toolbox of mental skills based on the science of performance excellence. You will learn cognitive (thinking) skills as well as physical (doing) skills. In any competitive situation, it is important to pull out the appropriate tools/mental skills for performance success. Sport psychologists speak of the mind–body connection. As you will learn, this important connection means that the mind influences the body and the body influences the mind. We need to learn how to control this influence so that we can optimize performance.

Control is the essence of mental skills. In a competitive situation, there are many things we cannot control. We cannot control the referees or umpires, whether we are competing at home or away, the weather, the fans, the competition, your coach, etc., etc. Mentally tough athletes control the controllables – the things you can control or influence. The one thing you should always be able to control is yourself – how you respond to the situation. Mental skills enable us to choose how we respond in even the most stressful situation. When you are not in control of your response, you enable your competition, the situation, the referees, etc. to control you. When you are in control, you determine how you respond. You may choose to respond in a calm manner or you may choose to respond with a high energy response. The important thing is that you, not something or someone else in the situation, determine how you respond. Mental skills enable you to be in control of your response in any high demand, competitive situation. Staying in control and responding with pride, determination, and resilience is the essence of mental toughness. It should be noted that along with personal control comes personal responsibility and accountability. That is, you are responsible for your response – behaviorally and mentally, even in a tough, challenging situation.

Mental skills, just like other performance skills, require practice. This workbook provides succinct descriptions of key mental skills for individual and team performance. This workbook also provides worksheets that, in essence, are homework that will enable you to practice the mental skills you will be learning and to track your improvement using each mental skill. It is important to practice each of the mental skills you wish to add to your toolbox. You would never attempt to dribble a basketball, swing a golf club, pass a football, hit a baseball, serve a volleyball, or execute any specific skill in competition without many hours of practice. Likewise, for mental skills to be optimally effective in improving your performance in competition, you must practice using them. I recommend that you keep all of your mental skills worksheets in a binder or, if you are an electronics fan, in a well-labeled folder on your computer. Retaining and reviewing your worksheets will allow you to see the gradual progress you make over time.

The first major section of this workbook (Part II, A) focuses on The Mind, or cognitive skills. These are the mental skills that involve thinking and using our head to enhance our performance. As you will learn, what we tell ourselves about a situation and our ability to perform effectively in that situation greatly influence our performance, either in a negative way or a positive way. Cognitive skills help to ensure your thoughts and perceptions have a positive impact on your performance; these skills are essential in developing resilience. First we will address positive self-talk, probably the most foundational of all mental skills. Positive self-talk naturally combines with focus and confidence, so these skills are addressed together. Second, you will learn the skill of goal setting, a straightforward technique that, when done properly, will direct your efforts and improve your performance. Imagery or visualization is another important cognitive skill many athletes find helpful. The final cognitive skill we will address is problem solving. That is, how do you combine the various skills in your mental skills toolbox to deal with challenges or the unexpected? Experience tells us there will be challenges when competing. Learning to expect the unexpected and developing the resilience to deal effectively with each challenge will make success more likely.

The second major section of this workbook (Part II, B) focuses on The Body, or physiological skills and the mind-body connection. First, you will learn to control your physiological response by learning relaxation techniques that, when paired with positive self-talk, enable you to control performance anxiety. Then we address the important role of automaticity, a motor-learning based phenomenon that optimizes our performance when we are fatigued or stressed and helps make our performance more efficient and effective. Automaticity underlies routines (e.g., shot routine in golf or free-throw routine in basketball) and is the reason repetition is such an important component of practice.

The final major section of this workbook (Part III) deals with Team Skills and Special Situations. First, a structured technique for clarifying roles for individual team members is provided. Identifying team values and strategic team goal setting are addressed next. Finally, we will revisit confidence for the big event and how to deal with the distracting role of context.

In each chapter in this workbook, you will be presented with a short, but precise explanation of a mental skill, an example of how successful athletes have implemented the skill to improve their performance, and worksheets to direct your efforts and to track your progress in developing the skill. It is likely that all mental skills in this workbook will not be equally attractive or useful for your particular situation. However, identifying the relevant mental skills and working to develop them and implement them in competition is sure to improve your performance. Developing an array of mental skills will provide you with the tools needed for mental toughness in difficult competitive situations. With this workbook, you will learn a number of mental skills to keep in your mental toughness toolbox. Remember that mental skills require practice – just as any skill does. It is up to you to practice these skills until you are comfortable with them so that you can pull them out and use them when the going gets tough in competitive situations.

Part II

Mental Skills

A. The Mind (Cognitive Skills)

Positive Self-Talk, Confidence, and Focus

2

The first mental skill we address is Positive Self-Talk, likely the most foundational of all mental skills. Being positive involves intentionally stopping negative self-talk and replacing it with positive self-talk, using positive self-talk to build confidence, and focusing on the controllables – those aspects of the situation we can impact. These three mental skills of positive self-talk, confidence, and focus are so interrelated, they are presented together.

Mental Skills: Self-Talk – The Power of Positive Thinking

We constantly talk to ourselves, whether we realize it or not. Most of us don’t do this out loud, but we are continually thinking and evaluating. What we tell ourselves about a situation is called “Self-Talk” and is a very important influence on our behavior. Positive self-talk is key for successful athletes. Positive self-talk leads to confidence. Winners tell themselves “I can do it. I can prevail in this situation.” We need to learn to replace negative self-talk with positive self-talk to develop confidence.

What do you tell yourself in a tough situation in competition? Do you think – “This is awful; I can’t stand this; I will never be able to hit the ball; this just isn’t fair; I am such a loser to have hit that shot.”? These are examples of negative self-talk. Negative self-talk stems from: (a) awfulizing – thinking in terms of how bad or tragic the situation is; that you cannot tolerate the situation; (b) thinking in terms of absolutes – always/never, total failure/complete success rather in terms of degrees; or (c) condemnation of others (or yourself). Negative self-talk prevents you from being effective. Even though responding with negative self-talk in difficult situations is human nature, it is not rational or realistic and causes an athlete to doubt his/her ability, which leads to tentative performance, which leads to more poor performance, which leads to further self-doubt. This progression is called the “downward spiral.” To stop and reverse the downward spiral, an athlete must stop negative self-talk and replace it with positive self-talk.

Positive self-talk focuses on what you can do, what is right about the situation. Positive self-talk recognizes that there are issues and challenges, but focuses on the best-case outcome in a difficult situation. Tell yourself – “This is a difficult shot, but I can make it. I prefer not to compete at this site, but I can deal with it. This is not fair, but life is not fair and I can handle it.”

To gain perspective, ask yourself, “What is the most awful thing I can imagine happening?” [Stop and really think of the most awful thing that could happen in your life right now.] What did you think of? Most people think of a tragic accident where a loved one is hurt or killed. That is truly an awful event. Now, ask yourself, “If that is 100% bad, then how would I rate missing the shot, hitting a ball out of bounds, losing a point, even losing a game?” It doesn’t even compare. Unfortunately, we may encounter some truly awful situations in our lives. Even our worst performance in competition is not that awful compared to a truly awful event.

Save awfulizing for truly awful events. When talking to yourself about a tough situation, replace emotionally hot words such as “terrible,” “horrible,” or “awful" with emotionally cool words such as “bad,” “inconvenient,” or “hassle.” If the ball goes out of bounds, don’t think – “Oh no, this is terrible. I can’t win if I hit the ball out of bounds; this will absolutely ruin my game. I know I am going to lose.” Instead, use positive self-talk and think – “I don’t like this situation, but I handle it as well as anybody, and I can deal with it. I can recover from this. I can cope with this situation and still have a good game.”

Analyze your own self-talk in competition. Negative self-talk is a habit developed over time. It likewise takes time (days or even weeks) to learn to replace negative self-talk with the productive habit of positive self-talk. Instead of focusing on the negative (i.e., what you can’t do or what is wrong), focus on the positive (i.e., what you can do; what you want to do; what is right). Not only will this focus on success, it will build confidence and positively impact your performance.

Mental Skills: Use Positive...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Part I Introduction
• Part II Mental Skills A. The Mind (Cognitive Skills)
• Part II Mental Skills B. The Body (Physiological Skills and the Mind–Body Connection)
• Part III Team Skills and Special Situations
• Part IV Epilogue
• Index