Performance Pride - Article: Success Is Earned

Article: Success Is Earned

Recently, an athlete walked into my office and repeated a familiar story. In reviewing a recent event he declared, “My coach told me that I was not ready. He told me that I was not focused.”

As we began to examine this, it became apparent that he, like many other athletes was actually unaware of what it meant to be ready, what it meant to be focused, and of course, how to get there.

In any athletic performance, concentration is the key to excellence. Hundreds of hours of work at practice can be wasted if the athlete does not systematically include a commitment to developing championship focusing skills. The power of targeting your aim with an “active focus” on the challenge at hand helps consolidate all of the athlete’s hard work, and enables him/her to achieve a peak performance.

In point of fact, athletes are always focused. But the relevant question is, “On what, and where?” At any moment, our attention can be in one of three time zones; the past, the future, or of course, the present. While eating a meal, how many bites do we most often taste? Every bite, every-other, one? For most of us, the answer is two-the first and last. The reason is simple. As we eat, our mind wanders, to “distraction” as it is known, perhaps moving to thought about what occurred during our day, or what is to come. In order to taste our meal, we need to aim our attention to the present time zone, in the “Here and Now.” And once in the correct time zone, we need to actively focus it on the optimal target.

To perform at your best, you actively focus on the “Here and Now” during warm-ups as well as throughout every moment of your event. Controlling your eyes and ears before and during competition is the key! Athletes need to learn how to direct their attention to what readies them for peak performance, to what helps them feel confident and secure. Focusing on your opponent’s superior record, what happened to you in this tournament last year, or the fact that you have not played well in these conditions all year, only increases tension and the chance of failure. Instead, while readying for your event, focus on how comfortable your muscles feel, and how well prepared you are. And as you walk into the arena you might repeat a personal cue such as “this is my match.” In this way, your mind and body are in the same place, the same time zone, as you remain focused, calm, and in control.

As Phil Jackson professed in Sacred Hoops, “Of course, it’s no accident that things are more likely to go your way when you stop worrying about whether you’re going to win or lose and focus your full attention on what’s happening right in this moment.

Athletes will consistently accomplish more when they learn to turn down the chattering in their heads and simply trust their body's innate wisdom. It seems like a paradox, but in actuality, an athlete’s effectiveness will increase by letting go and not getting lost in thought. This does not mean being stupid; it means becoming completely immersed in the moment and allowing your body to do instinctively what it has been trained to do without the mind getting in the way. Athletes who are actively focused do not get distracted by external conditions, the quality of their opponent’s performance, or momentary failure. When you are successfully “in the zone”, the mind and body are completely at sync, freeing you up to implement that perfect technique you had all week during practice.

Mental toughness skills, like any skill, are learned. For best results, these skills need to be developed during the off-season, and then implemented on a daily basis during the season, both at practices and events.

An important first step for athletes is making an honest assessment of focusing skills, and then making the full commit to developing them in a systematic way.

Success is earned.