Mental Training (part 3/5 Inside the Mental Game of a State Champion)

Having a built-in expert in sport psychology is rare and is something that not many teams, let alone high school teams, have. But just having access isn’t enough. Coaches traditionally like full control of what goes on with their teams, and have trouble trusting an outside source to teach and implement new skills that they may know little to nothing about. Fortunately for the Franklin HS boys soccer team, Oregon Coach of the Year Ty Kovatch trusted me enough to allow me the time and freedom to implement the mental training plan I have always dreamed of putting into place.

As the assistant coach, I did my best to support the vision the coach had for the team. I was a basic assistant coach: supporting practices, running some drills, training small groups, and more. Within each of these, I tried to bring an element of mental training in the area of focus, positive mindset, communication and more. For the pure mental coaching piece, we did regular classroom sessions and various activities throughout the year.

Positive Culture is essential to Mental Training

A strong mental game starts with a strong, positive culture and positive coaching as I wrote about in Part 2. To have a strong culture though is to actively embody it. We hve to live the traits we espouse. And part of that was having the right mentality. Here are some of the mental training elements that were essential to our run to the state championship.

1) Process over Results

Just about every team’s goal at the start of a season is to win a state championship, but only one gets to achieve that goal. So it’s important to set process and performance goals and not just set the outcome goal. I asked each player during the preseason what their goals for the team were. As I mentioned in Part 1, we knew we had enough talent to go deep into the playoffs, so not surprisingly the most common answers were: State Championship, PIL Championship, beat Cleveland (our rival who has historically pretty much owned the series), and to go 14-0.

This is a good starting point, but again, most teams have these goals at the beginning. In sport psychology, the outcomes they listed are considered out of your control. What’s in your control is how hard you work, your attitude, your preparation and other things. So, to not to let the goals just sit in outcome mode, my next questions were “How? How are we going to do this? What is the focus day-in-and-day-out that will get us those results? What are the things we need to be and do ‘No Matter What’?”

The photo below shows the process the team decided to follow and the results they hoped to achieve.

2) Apex Soccer Journal

Consistency throughout a season is crucial especially the mental game. Throughout the season players used The Apex Soccer Journal to set personal goals each month and each week. We had them check in on their goals regularly to stay focused and self-motivated. The book served as the perfect tool, and the players were expected to have it with them at all times like any other piece of equipment!

After each game, the journal guided the players through a self-evaluation and also an evaluation of the opponent they had just faced. This helps by making sure they learn from as many details as possible throughout the season. Not only that, but we ended up facing three teams in the playoffs that we had seen in the regular season. Because of this, the players had an extra bit of preparation as they could read over their own notes about that opponent’s strengths and weaknesses. In the regular season we were 1-0-2 vs those teams. In the playoffs we were 3-0.

3) Team Building

We did team building in two ways. The first thing we introduced was 6am Saturday practices. No teenager wants to get up at 6am on Saturday. It makes them miserable. But nothing brings people closer quite like being miserable together. Several players I spoke with admitted as much: ‘we hated that you made us do that, but we all saw the results’.

The second thing we introduced was road trip challenges. On our bus trips, instead of just allowing the kids free reign, we implemented structure and reserved the first 30 minutes as time without phones or music. The goal was to get the kids talking and interacting, to ensure cliques didn’t form over the course of the season, and to talk face to face without screens and without distractions. During that time we created collaborative and competitive challenges to complete. These activities helped the players not only get closer as the season went on, but to stay focused on those long road trips. As a result, we only lost one game on the road all season.

4) Visualization

During the season all the players had access to the Sports Mindset Audio program. They could listen to these at anytime on their phone. As a team I led various types of visualization exercises throughout the season. Before games we might do skill building visualizations like seeing themselves making a tackle or scoring a goal. After games we often did recovery visualization to allow dedicated time to process mistakes and dwell on positive things they did in the game. Before training we sometimes did a few short mindset visualizations: to transition from a school mindset to a soccer mindset. All of this practice culminated in a 10 minute visualization in the locker room at Hillsboro Stadium before the championship game that got everyone calm, confident, and on the same page. There’s no doubt that that final mindset shift helped tie everything together.

So there you have it – a general view inside the mental game of a state championship team. The consistency and attention given to the sport psychology training did not make these soccer players great, but it did allow them to have a certain freedom of mind in the most pressure-filled situations. The next two parts of the series will focus on adversity and “living up to the cliches.”

Positive Culture and Positive Coaching (part 2/5 Inside the Mental Game of a State Champion)

Positive Culture and Positive Coaching

As I addressed in Part 1, the 2019 Franklin High School men’s soccer team had tons of talent and depth coming into the season, but you can never really tell how the chemistry is going to be. To fuse the talent with the heart, it takes the right environment, the right balance between structure and freedom, and a place where everyone feels valued. In other words, it would take having a positive culture.

According to m-w.com, culture can be defined as:
the set of shared attitudes, values, goals, and practices that characterizes an institution or organization

Build a Positive Culture and Evolve it over time

Culture doesn’t happen overnight. And it never really ends either. It’s always a work in progress. Finding and shaping shared attitudes, values, goals, and practices is constantly changing and evolving. I don’t want to give away all of our secrets, of course, but I do want to share some of the general ingredients to creating a winning culture.

So what made this team’s culture so powerful? In a word – Positivity.

First of all, Franklin High School is not an athletic powerhouse. The school opened in 1914 and had produced but two state championships in over a century (boys basketball, 1959, and boys cross country 2019). The boys soccer team had only once made it past the first round of the playoffs. So there was no “championship culture” to speak of. However, the culture had been built slowly by a couple dedicated coaches over the past 12 years or so.

Enter current head coach, Ty Kovatch, this year’s Oregon Coach of the Year, who joined in 2014. Here is my take on some of the key elements on how he has taken the program to the next level, and has built the culture of a state champion.

A Positive Culture Attracts Positive People

Over his five years, Ty has built a culture that is overwhelmingly positive. It’s a program that people want to be a part of. When you intentionally set a culture, one of the big benefits is that you attract the right kind of people to the program, people who embody those same attitudes and values. Part of Franklin’s lack of previous success was that good players wouldn’t come out for the team because it wasn’t worth their time. This is definitely not the case anymore.

This is true not only of the players, but of the coaches who have come on board. Each coach has come in because it’s an environment they want to be in. For example, when I joined the staff last year, I wanted to implement my sport psychology knowledge and be not just an assistant coach, but the team’s mental performance coach. That’s been added to the culture of the program – a strong mental game, with time and focus dedicated to mental training. But more on this later, in Part 3.

And this year it showed up beyond just the players and coaches. As I mentioned in Part 1, many friends, acquaintances, and neighbors have commented to me about how fun it was to watch our team play. That fans came to watch us play (including our semifinal match, which drew over 2500 fans! *see photo below) was a byproduct of our culture.

Culture of Inclusion
One of the attractive qualities of the FHS program is it’s culture of inclusion. There are 4 teams (Varsity, JV, JV2 Grey and JV2 Maroon) – that’s nearly 80 players in the program. There aren’t many schools who have more than 3 teams. We had just under 100 boys try out each of the last two seasons. Instead of cutting half of them, Ty created another team.

And it’s not just a place to play, it’s a place where you can contribute and find success. On top of the varsity team winning a state title, our other teams had success too:

JV went 11-1-2 and had a stretch of 7 1/2 games without giving up a goal.
The JV2 Grey and JV2 Maroon teams had success as well, often playing and holding their own against more talented opponents.
JV2 Grey and JV2 Maroon played a season finale game in the stadium, under the lights, with JV players as referees
At times during the season, players were able to move up or down to give more playing time.

A culture of inclusion also includes how to handle conflict, academic, attitude, or behavior issues. When players make mistakes off the field, we do our best to include and not exclude. We give players second chances but are firm with expectations moving forward.

Culture of Ownership

Ownership basically means that every player on the roster feels valued and has a role on the team, and that their opinions matter.

All of the coaches are available to the players for questions and for feedback. Many players end up taking advantage of this throughout the year. We don’t always use the player’s ideas, but they always feel listened to. And that is extremely important for effort and buy-in of what we are trying to do. One example of player feedback that was implemented this season was that they didn’t like the pre-practice warm up. After a discussion between the team captains and the coach, the players took over the warm up. Giving players ownership makes the whole experience more intrisincly motivating.

Giving players ownership helps the balance between freedom and structure. Soccer is a game of solutions: Too much structure, and players won’t be able to come up with their own solutions. Too much freedom, and they won’t play together as a team. Teams whose culture is too structured, more of a dictatorship, aren’t typically as adept at solving problems when the pressure is on. This team was very easy to motivate game in and game out, because they mostly did it on their own.

Ty makes sure that every guy on the roster feels like he has a role in the team, and like they always have opportunities to prove themselves. And they delivered! Over the course of the year, 25 players got playing time on the varsity level. 15 players scored at least one goal. 13 players notched at least one assist. Here are some of the big moments in the playoffs:

Game winner in overtime of the second round came from a player playing out of position
Won the quarterfinal without our two leading scorers (injury) and our leading assist man (red card in previous game). Non-starters provide both the goal and assist in the game’s only goal.
3 JV players saw action in the quarterfinal
Backup goalkeeper scores game winner in overtime of the semi final
State Championship opening goal came from a player who hadn’t scored all season
State Championship game winner with 6:42 left in the game, the assist and the goal came from players who didn’t start most of the season.

The best part? No one cared who got the glory, because they all had ownership in how they played, in the outcome of the games.

Franklin players celebrate the game winning goal in the 2019 OSAA 6A Championship game.
*Photos by Leon Neuschwander, for The Oregonian/OregonLive*

Positive Coaching

This one seems obvious. Ty is a positive guy. He’s a high energy guy. And the boys feed off of his energy. And so do the coaches. We strive to be encouraging and enthusiastic in our communication. I can count on one hand the number of times that the players were punished by extra fitness, which is extremely rare in my experience with soccer. But I want to make it clear that positive coaching is not just “rah-rah,” “you-can-do-it!” positivity. That’s only a small part of it.

Positive coaching is more about setting expectations, having clear goals to work toward, and problems to solve. It’s about a culture that brings people together. It’s about not only creating, but living the positive culture you are trying to set.

Positive coaching is about using all the tools available for players to succeed. For Franklin, we give all our players access to video of our games through Hudl so they can study film. We do mental training all season. We put them in uncomfortable situations in practice to prepare them for uncomfortable situations in games. One example is the 6:15am Saturday practice. Which seems negative. They all hate it. But, they hate it together. It’s uncomfortable. But it’s uncomfortable together. And bringing a team together? That’s positive coaching.

A side note on Positive Coaching: In this day and age, negative coaching and negative cultures still exist. I really don’t get it. There are amazing organizations out there from AMPlify Sport Psychology and other mental performance coaches, there’s Positive Coaching Alliance, and Changing the Game Project, and Proactive Coaching. All of them teach how to build a positive culture that athletes are strongly motivated to be a part of. They teach not only why positive coaching is important, but give the tools to do it. But so many coaches still use the shortcuts of yelling at players, being demanding and negative, blaming referees and everyone else for their failures.

One of the things I am most proud of is not that we won a State Championship, but it’s that we won it the right way. That’s positive coaching. And. It. Works! I don’t know why more coaches don’t do it. Not only is it effective, but it’s FUN!

So that’s the culture that has been built at Franklin. It’s not all of it, but it’s the basics, and all you really need to know. The rest is up to the coach or the leader to determine what’s right for their program.

What’s Next?

On a final note, I’ll go ahead and say it: we have most of the pieces back for another year. Returning will the Oregon Coach of the Year, the Oregon Player of the Year, 2 All State players, 3 All PIL players, and tons of experience. This will be the first time playing a season as defending champions, and the expectations are sure to be sky high. It will be the first time that every opponent we play will be excited to play us.

So our culture from last year will need to be updated to match. We can’t just sit back and say “we’re good, let’s just do what we did last year.” I am looking forward to the challenge of growing and evolving our positive culture.

In Part 3 of the series, I will go more into the sport psychology of our team.

Inside the Mental Game of a State Champion (a 5 part series)

This year I had the pleasure to coach the Oregon 6A State boys soccer champions. I served as an assistant coach and mental performance coach for both the varsity and JV teams. As I write this, it’s exactly a month later, and I am still feeling the glow of the title. Friends and acquaintances I run into in the neighborhood stop me to say congratulations. Most of them tell me just how fun the team was to watch, how much heart they played with.

Thinking back and reflecting on everything that went into it has been a really valuable experience. Not just the outcome, but the journey we took to get there. It’s an experience that I want to share: How did we have so much success? How did a 14 seed make a run through the playoffs that included winning 3 overtime games? How did we manage after losing our captain and leading scorer 2/3 of the way through the season and our next leading scorer for the semi and final matches?

I could come up with dozens of reasons, but here are the top 5:

1 – Talent

2 – Positive Culture/Positive Coaching

3 – Mental Training

4 – Facing Adversity

5 – Embodying the cliches

I will write 5 sections based on these. So, let’s start with #1: Talent

Let’s face it, without talent, coaching can only take you so far. Sport psychology and the mental game is great, but confidence can only take you so far… you have to have the skills, the sports IQ, and the athleticism to compete at the highest level.

And we had an embarrassment of talent. We knew this coming into the season. We were strong from player 1 through player 22, including arguably the best goalkeeper in the state, and 7 returning starters from a team that went 9-5 the year before. Plus two extremely talented newcomers. Many of our players train at high level clubs like Eastside Timbers, River Plate, and Portland City United.

Not only that, but we had 6 JV players who trained with us fairly consistently, 4 of whom saw minutes on varsity in the playoffs. That JV team went on to go 11-1-2 including 7 ½ straight games without giving up a goal. We knew we had the talent and depth to win the whole thing.

Some teams have a ton of talent, but lack the chemistry, drive and heart it takes to go all the way. Some teams have all the chemistry, drive and heart, but lack the talent to match. This team had both. It takes more than talent to win. It’s what you do with that talent that makes the difference. It takes the right coaching, the right environment, and the right mindset.

Next time, I will talk about the Positive Culture within our program, and the Positive Coaching style that helped fuse the talent with the heart.

Anger and Performance: Sport Psychology Techniques for dealing with extreme emotions

“Anybody can become angry — that is easy. But to be angry with the right person, and to the right degree and at the right time, and for the right purpose, and in the right way — that is not within everybody’s power, and is not easy.” —Aristotle

An essential element of sport psychology is dealing with the emotions that come with competitive athletics. Whether you are an athlete, a coach, a referee, a parent, or a fan, the higher the level of competition, the higher the emotional level can become. And the higher the emotional level, the more important it becomes to control and manage those emotions.

One exercise I lead my athletes through is to identify which emotions help their performance and which emotions hurt their performance. For a vast majority of my clients, there are more emotions that negatively affect how they play than positively affect. This awareness is key to developing strategies to handle the negative emotions, and even use them for your benefit.

There are some emotions that athletes identify that sometimes help and sometimes hurt their performance. Among them: aggressiveness, caution, stubbornness, and surprise. But by far, the most common is anger.

Athletes describe it this way: “Sometimes I get angry and it makes me focus and play better. Sometimes I get angry and it makes me play erratic and out of control.”

That is important information to know, and to come up with a plan to make sure you harness your anger for positive, instead of letting the anger control you and your actions. If we take Aristotle’s quote above, let’s examine these questions:

Who Are You Angry With?
This is a big factor in whether anger is good or bad for performance. Typically, if the anger is directed inward, towards yourself, that could result in higher work rate and focus if positive self-talk is employed. Or, it could result in lower work rate and withdrawing from the game if self-talk is more negative. That being said, athletes need to use positive self-talk.

If you are angry at someone else — opponent, referee, coach, etc. — that rarely works in your favor. This typically leads to lack of effort and to reckless and unsportsmanlike behavior. Athletes should be able to re-focus their anger away from someone who is not in their control and toward something positive, and controllable.

To What Degree Are You Angry?

Are you just a little mad, or do you become irate or enraged. The difference being how in control of the emotion you are. Being enraged could mean the anger is too intense, and can control you. Athletes can use positive self-talk and circle breathing as a way to calm their emotions to manageable levels.

When Do You Become Angry?
Is it after a mistake, a perceived bad call, or an opponent talking trash? Know yourself and your tendencies, and the situations in which you are likely to become angry. Having a pre-performance routine to prepare is a very helpful sport-psychology tool.

Why Are You Angry?
Typically, it is because you are focused on the wrong thing. You are focused on something you cannot control. Mentally tough athletes focus on the controllable aspects as much as possible, and have tools to re-focus when they get distracted.

How Do You Handle Your Anger?
The question may not be: “Will you get angry?” More likely, “How will you handle yourself when you get angry?” Using sport-psychology techniques that you have practiced and honed until they become second nature is the way to go. Here are the sport psychology techniques that I have mentioned above:

Pre-Performance Routines
This is a mental warm-up, with action items for athletes to check off before starting practice or competition. It can include going over goals, visualization, positive self-talk, listening to music, and more. The goals are to clear the mind of distractions and to perform with a positive mindset and confidence.

Positive Self-Talk
Also referred to as “self-coaching,” this technique is a way for athletes to look at any situation in a positive light. Athletes can coach themselves up by focusing on the right things, being optimistic, and circle breathing — one of the simplest and effective sport-psychology techniques. This is a slow, deep, controlled breath in through the nose and out through the mouth. It is a way to calm your mind, body and emotions, so that you can make good decisions.

Re-Focus on What You Can Control
You can control attitude, effort, preparation, and the present moment. These are factors that sports participants have 100 percent control over, and are less likely to be stressed or let anger turn negative. The ability to re-focus your attention to the right thing at the right time is a key element in controlling anger.

About the Author

Brian Baxter is the director of the Sport Psychology Institute Northwest in Portland and a prior US Lacrosse Convention (LaxCon) speaker.

https://www.uslacrosse.org/blog/anger-and-performance-sport-psychology-techniques-for-dealing-with-extreme-emotions

5 Things Amazing Sports Parents Do

Brian Baxter with older son, Hawk

Raising a young athlete can be at the same time: rewarding and frustrating, exhilarating and boring, energizing and exhausting! A few years ago, I wrote about Being a Student of Parenting – really taking this crazy world of youth sports and making it about learning how to be a better parent.

Since 1999, SPINw has worked with thousands of youth and high school athletes to help them build or re-build confidence, improve focus, set goals, and deal with the pressure of elite level sports. This process always involves the parents! As the young athlete learns new techniques, the parents are their best support system, and also need tools to help.

So, read on to find out 5 Things Amazing Sports Parents Do:

1 – They keep the BIG PICTURE in mind

Sports parents most important insight is perspective. For a young athlete, every game is the biggest game of their lives – which can bring with it extra stress, pressure and anxiety. “What is I don’t play well?” “What if all that hard work and training doesn’t pay off in this competition?” “What if I let someone down?” The last thing a parent wants to do is add on to that stress level in any way.

If you were an athlete growing up, hopefully you will have some perspective on things. You will be able to separate the “must win” game from a learning experience. You know that, as important as this game seems now, in the words of John Popper from Blues Traveler: “It won’t mean a thing in 100 years.” Even if you weren’t an athlete growing up, you most likely experienced similar situations in other areas of life, such as music, performing, or simply in your career life.

An amazing sports parent has the proper perspective on the BIG PICTURE, which is – what is my child gaining from this experience? What, from each and every day of training or competition, will my child learn that will help them later in life? Amazing sports parents keep this in mind at all times when involved in their child’s sporting life.

2 – They know their role

Sports parents are just that – parents. They are not the coach – please do NOT coach your kids from the sidelines. This goes against the BIG PICTURE. There may be times when coaching from the sidelines will help in the short term. But it’s robbing them of crucial things! Like learning from their mistakes (see #3), learning how to be coachable and communicate with their teammates, sharpening their decision-making skills, and just simply figuring things out on their own.

They are not the referee. There is no making a scene at a perceived bad call or blaming a loss on the officials. Young athletes must be able to deal with adversity, and know how to play with sportsmanship. This growth is stunted by bad examples set by parents and coaches who focus too much on the referees.

Most importantly, they do not live vicariously through their kids. Ultimately, it’s the kids’ game, not the parents’.

3 – They allow space for their athlete to learn through mistakes and failure

Amazing sports parents can avoid the classic traps of being a “helicopter parent” or a “lawnmower parent.” That is, they do not come to the rescue every time there is a problem. If a young athlete gets cut from the tryout, or makes a key mistake in a key moment, they are going to feel terrible. It is in our DNA as parents to comfort and make things okay for our kids. But amazing sports parents do not go overboard in this area. They are supportive and available, but they do not actively try to fix things.

In any athletic competition, an athlete goes through an emotional rollercoaster. And so does the parent watching from the stands. Amazing sports parents allow space for their athletes to emotionally process their successes and failures. They do not pile on with “woulda, coulda, shouldas”, nor do they deny their kids the opportunity for their own emotional processing. Rather, they allow the appropriate time and space for their athlete to make mistakes, and learn from failures.

Brian with younger son, Zavier

4 – They help foster internal motivation in their athletes

Amazing sports parents know that external motivations such as winning, incentives (financial or otherwise), and coaches, parents and other people, do not last over the long term. They know that internal motivation, such as self-improvement and mastery, being a part of something bigger than themselves, is the more sustainable motivation for life.

One way to do this is to approach communication with your athlete from a “growth mindset” perspective. That is, to praise controllable elements in performance such as attitude and effort. And to not praise athletes based on their talent or athleticism. Amazing sports parents know that if an athlete attributes his or her success to work rate and positivity, they are likely to continue living these qualities.

5 – They create a peaceful environment on the car ride home

This is the most tangible piece of advice for sports parents, based on feedback I generally receive from them. Many of you have probably read this study about the 6 words to say to your athlete after a competition. This strategy sums up the other 4 items in this list, and puts it into a practice action item, which goes like this:

Amazing sports parents, on the car ride home, simply let their athlete know; “I loved watching you play.” or “I really enjoyed that game, it was fun.” no matter what the result or how good or bad the performance. Then they wait for their child to initiate any further conversation.

This is BIG PICTURE thinking! You are not overanalyzing or dissecting the day. Not making it any bigger or smaller than it was. In the big picture, hopefully, it was fun watching your child compete, succeed, fail, learn, communicate, listen, and grow! If not, you definitely need to ask yourself why? What is getting in the way?

If your child doesn’t say anything on the ride home, they are emotionally processing what has happened. No matter how happy or sad they are, these emotions will eventually pass, and translate into learning and growth. Amazing sports parents do not interfere with this! Also, it’s important to not that the parent has just gone through an emotional experience. So, amazing sports parents allow themselves the same emotional processing time.

Of those 5 things, how many of them do you do consistently? Which areas do you feel like you need work on? Like with anything else, self-improvement comes from awareness, a desire to change, knowledge, and application of knowledge. And in this case, you are not only helping yourself, but you can help your young athlete as well. You too can be an amazing sports parent!

Developing a High Performance Lifestyle (part 1)

Developing a High Performance Lifestyle (part 1 – avoiding burnout)
By Jimmy Yoo, MA Sport Psychology

As a mental skills coach at SPINw, I help athletes attain a consistent high performance mindset through sport psychology techniques like focus, goal setting, visualization. A high performance mindset is not something that is turned on one minute and off the next. It is more consistent than that. Therefore, I help athletes dedicate everyday to a high performance lifestyle, both on and off the field. Lifestyle can be defined as “the typical way of life of an individual, group, or culture.” It’s basically your habits – how you do things under pressure.

Some of my athletes are professionals, who make a living at playing sports. But most are only part-time athletes, who are also students, parents, performing artists, doctors, teachers, etc., and often many of these. It’s good to bring your “A-Game” everyday – not necessarily that you will win every time at everything, but that you consistently perform at a high level. Anyone can benefit from developing a high performance lifestyle, both on and off the field.

This doesn’t mean perfection: that in every moment of your life, you are competing to be the best at everything you do, like being being the best student, athlete, or employee at all times. This type of focus is not ideal because you are constantly comparing yourself to others. This type of focus is out of your control. If you are too focused on comparing yourself to others, being the best, being perfect, you are not focusing on the necessary skills and strategies to effectively perform the task at hand. To achieve a high performance mindset each day, it is important to focus on the little things that help you in the present moment or on the things that you are able to control right now.

As a professional ___________________(fill in your job here), it is easy to move from one task to the next without stopping or taking a break. There can be a tendency to concentrate and stay focused on things till we become mentally and physically exhausted. As a result, habit becomes “work till I can’t work anymore” or work till my body forces me to take a break, like when you just fall asleep doing a simple task. The more this happens, the more risk of experiencing burnout. To prevent this, I work with athletes on comprehensive goal setting plans that include “planned breaks” as an essential part of high performance over the long run.

Burnout can cause us to react with negative emotional responses. For example, a director of a non-profit that I work with recognized she was experiencing burnout and decided it was time to talk to someone about it. For purposes of confidentiality, I will call this person Josie. Josie was a former collegiate athlete and still liked to play sports as a means to stay active. For the past four months, Josie had not been able to play sports or even find time to exercise due to the demands she had at work. Her goal was to find a way to get back into playing sports and exercising.

When we met, she mentioned that she was experiencing emotional highs and lows that would result in her snapping at employees when they did not perform a task to her expectations, or making sarcastic remarks to customers that she felt were being rude and obnoxious. She was also feeling angry and sad because she did not feel supported by her boss and others in her life, like family and friends. She knew she was experiencing burnout, but did not know how to change things.

During one of our sessions, Josie came in feeling really angry. She stated that she really hated her co-workers that smoked. She felt as though they were always leaving the office to go outside and take a smoke break. Even worse, she hated the fact that there were two or three of them that would always leave together to have a cigarette. In that discussion, she recognized that she wasn’t mad at them, she was actually jealous of them because they were able to take time, be it every hour or every few hours to take a break, talk with colleagues, and just get out of the office to get some fresh air. While she had no desire to start smoking cigarettes, she decided it was time that she started taking “Cigarettes Breaks” of her own. She made it an expectation to take a 10-15 minute break every few hours, and do something active like take a walk in the building or outside depending on the weather, or just go talk to a colleague and keep the conversation to things not related to work. She also made it a point to physically leave her desk to eat lunch. She found that leaving her mobile phone at her desk, as well, made it more of an enjoyable lunchtime because she could either eat peacefully by herself or spend time with co-workers, just talking to them rather than texting or looking at things on her phone.

Josie admits that forcing herself to take a lunch break and frequent breaks throughout the day was extremely challenging. But, once she was able to do it, she started to feel less stressed and more energetic at work. This small shift to her daily routine also helped motivate her to leave work at a reasonable time so that she could start playing sports again. In the end, Josie realized that making small changes to her day helped her to find more balance in her life, which in turn, allowed her to develop her high performance lifestyle.

Like Josie, you can also take a step toward developing a high performance lifestyle by identify things that you can different each day, like getting more sleep at night, eating better, taking breaks, and finding a life balance of work, exercise, personal relationships, recreational activities, and just taking time to unplug from technology so that you can enjoy a moment of peace and quiet. Taking the first step is always challenging, so if you need some extra support, find a buddy that you can start doing things with, or schedule a session with us at SPINw!

How to prevent hazing in your organization

A recent google search for “hazing” in the news turned up 128,000 hits this morning. I’ve been asked a few times about hazing and it’s impact: Is it happening more now than ever? Is there a difference between physically, mentally and emotionally abusive hazing? What can coaches and organizations do about the problem? It’s got me thinking about the subject and doing a little research.

From my own experience, as a freshman in college back in the early ’90s I was hazed. Both as a member of the soccer team and a fraternity. And I also doled it out as an upperclassman. I suspect I am like millions of people for whom hazing did not have much of a lasting negative effect. So little effect that I never really considered that I was “hazed” until I started writing this article. However, it is safe to say that there are countless others for whom hazing has had a seriously negative impact.

My situation is not unique. In one study, 47% of high school athletes reported being hazed, but only 8% identified the behaviors as “hazing.” While hazing did not have a negative impact on me, it definitely has the propensity to get out of control and have severe negative effects, such as emotional trauma, physical injury and in rare cases, death. As athletic directors, coaches, and parents, we need to make sure that this doesn’t happen.

Before we discuss how to stop the overblown types of hazing and it’s negative effects, and replace with positive team building rituals, we have to understand why it happens in the first place. What is hazing? Why is hazing even a thing in the first place? What do athletes get out of it? What need is it serving a team?

What is hazing? Hazing can be defined as embarrassing, ridiculous, cruel, and sometimes abusive rituals and events used to initiate new members into a group. Hazing is most frequently known to happen among high school and collegiate sports teams, fraternities and sororities, social clubs, gangs, the military and other groups.

Why is hazing even a thing?

“Love born from pain is the real thing” – Matisyahu “Love Born”

As the song lyrics above infer, sometimes negativity does bring people together. Going through pain and hardship together and surviving it does build a bond. Doing challenging tasks together can promote solidarity, conformity, and social identity, all important qualities for athletic teams. Hazing plays on the human need to be part of something bigger than ourselves. And not only that, but the harder it seems to join a group, or the more a member has to do to earn entry, the more perceived meaning membership in that group has. In other words, belonging to a groups means more to the members when it’s harder to join.

What makes hazing so dangerous? So hazing’s origins got started with good enough intentions: rituals for new members to go through to prove themselves worthy of the group, conform, and build bonds with the other members. But we know where good intentions can end up.

Hazing rituals become traditions over time, where, once a new member goes through the process, they are “in.” Then the following year, they are on the other side, have gone through the ritual, and get to apply it instead of being subjected to it. The most negative of mutations of these rituals occur when a once-hazed freshman now has the power. And why just keep doing the same old boring rituals when I thought of this newer, better, version? And it escalates until you have something tragic happen.

Teams want unity, they want bonding, and they want to feel ownership and belonging. So it is up to leaders: athletic directors, coaching directors, head coaches, assistant coaches, and parents to provide these things for their teams.

How do you know if hazing is happening within your organization? Chances are there is some type of team rituals or hazing going on, whether it is completely benign or downright illegal. Here are some of the main challenges for athletic directors, coaches and parents:

1 – Most hazing occurs in secret, without the coaches’ knowledge – this is part of the allure – bonding between the members of the team without the authority figure.

2 – New members of the team are likely to be afraid to report it, due to alienating themselves from the team or being seen as soft, weak, or not down with the team.

3 – Groups may see it as team building or team bonding, but not hazing (there could be a fine line between the two).

4 – Some players (maybe the majority) aren’t phased by it so “what’s the big deal?”

How can leaders stop hazing within their organization? Like most issues that a team faces, it depends on the culture and the context in which it’s happening. How can a coach break a cycle of hazing within a program? Some hazing rituals are built into the fabric of the school or program for generations – can a coach stop it?

1 – Know it likely exists in some form or another within your team. Don’t be an ostrich, with your head in the sand, hoping that it’s not going on.

2 – Create and promote a positive culture through Vision, Mission and Core Values. A culture where hazing is not needed because you fill the need it serves!

– Provide plenty of positive team building, create your own challenging, yet safe and positive rituals

– Provide an environment where the team has ownership

3 – Communicate your Vision, Mission, and Core Values to all members of the team

– Communicate frequently with team leaders and more experience members of the team

– Provide communication lines and protocols between coach and players so that everyone feels a responsibility to the health of the team

3- Continually evolve your culture to meet the need of the players.

It’s up to the leaders to create a culture where athletes learn, grow, improve, thrive, and build character on an individual level. And a culture that promotes team unity, leadership and communication. Hazing is without question a huge threat to individuals and teams. To pretend it doesn’t exist, or to deal with it only on a reactive basis is not a good plan. Be proactive, and model the behaviors and traits you want to see in your athletes, teams, and organizations.

For more information on how to build a winning culture from top to bottom, check out our AMPlify program.

Sports, Peers and Injury

Hello all!

The next couple blog posts I really want to dive into the idea that sports culture and teams work the same way as any cultural group. I want to talk about what psychological aspects of human nature lead to various sports phenomenon and how we can use this information to deconstruct the way we compete.

-Jake Sivinski

Sports, Peers and Injury

My background in competitive skiing has meant that the threat of serious injury has never been far. This is a reality that strikes many different athletes as they progress in their sport and push to perform at higher and higher levels. But why does this have to be so? Why does the threat have to progress as our game does? What sort of psychological processes lead to this increase?

One possible answer takes us to the field of social psychology and various facets of social identity theory. In short, social identity theory states that we define who we are by looking to the people around us and the groups we belong to. For example, I identify myself as American because that is where I live and most people I interact with are also American. This theory not only describes our identities as social constructions, but also as being fluid and subject to change. This means that over time the extent to which we identify as one thing or another can wax and wane and change based on the environment in which we exist. In the context of athletes social identity theory would predict that the more time you spend playing a sport and the better you get at it, the more valuable it becomes to your identity.

So how does this relate to increased likelihood of injury? Well, to understand that we need to learn about a second social psychology theory known as “Social Proof.” Social Proof essentially states that as a member of a group, we look to others to inform our behavior and we try to copy the behaviors that we deem as correct. In the realm of athletics, this means that we look to our friends or teammates who are the best at their respective sport and try to copy their behavior. So essentially as our identification with a sport increases, so does our value for the sport, therefore causing us to spend more and more time trying to copy the behavior of people we look up to as athletes in that sport.

Now we are at a place where the threat of injury starts to get larger and larger. In a sport, where higher levels of play leads to higher levels of risk, it is not hard to see how this happens. Say I am a young kid who spends his whole day thinking about skiing (I once was), I am going to spend a lot of time thinking about the tricks and stunts that pro skiers are doing. As a young kid I neither have the ability to do them safely nor the strength to walk away from a serious fall. Now I am in a headspace that could lead to me behaving dangerously and injuring myself.

Having athletic idols in a sport that we can learn from and respect is not always a bad thing. Pushing ourselves to try and be like the best is something that is valuable to our progression as athletes. However, it is best if we try to do this in a controlled manner in which we never step so far out of our own ability that we expose ourselves to undue risk. This is where good training and guidance becomes essential. We need to be able to know not only how to push ourselves, but also when we are ready to push. This is one of many lessons that a person can learn through better understanding how their own psychology affects their athletic life

Meet Jake Sivinski – SPINw’s fall intern

Hello world! My name is Jake Sivinski and I am a new intern here at SPINw! I’m super excited to announce that I will be updating the SPINw blog every week. My background as an athlete lies primarily in the winter sports world. I was a competitive freeskier for 7 years competing internationally all over the continent. My background in athletics and my passion for psychology has led me to SPINw, and for that I am grateful. For my first post I would like to tell the story about how I came to know about the field of Sports Psychology and the profound positive impact it has had on my life. Hope you enjoy!

-Jake

There’s something pretty weird about skiing in July. Every time I do it I feel like I am cheating nature, like stealing a cookie from winter’s proverbial cookie jar. But when the opportunity to ski in one of country’s national parks pops up, sometimes you just have to take it. The date was July 1, 2009 and I was 15 years old. I was young and excited and coming off one of my best winters to date: a dangerous trio. To make matters even more dangerous I was with a large group of other 15 year olds who felt the exact same way. We had just built a nice big jump and were all attempting to learn new tricks in the soft summer slush on Chinook Pass in Rainier National Park. The trick of the day was a frontflip and nobody wanted to be the first to try it. Finally, I decided to go first, and well, it didn’t go very well. In fact, it ended in a fracture of both my tibia and fibula and a four-hour ambulance ride down the mountain. To make matters worse, I ended up breaking my L2 and L3 during my recovery, adding about three months to the process.

To say it lightly, thoughts about that day and the injury haunted me for years. Every time I would step up to do something scary and push myself, doubt would always be there. To this day I still have the perfect memory of my feet above my head and the sinking feeling in my stomach that I was not going to complete the rotation. The doubt I inflicted on myself dogged me for three competition seasons. During that time I never performed at the level I knew I could. I remember so much frustration and anger during those years and always feeling that I was letting myself down. Finally my senior year of high school, one of my coaches turned me onto a sports psychologist who had been working with various members of the US Ski Team. The moment I stepped into his office I could feel the doubt start to recede. He coached me through a wide variety of visualization exercises and helped me replace the doubt I had in myself with positive visualization. Almost overnight my skiing changed, and the following season was my best ever. I found it so much easier to push myself and I finally was able to push aside the doubt and focus on making sure I delivered the performance I knew I was capable of.

While I may not ski competitively anymore (homework is something that nobody can make disappear) I still feel the positive effects of visiting my sports psychologist. And the great part about it is those effects are not just limited to skiing. The techniques I learned are applicable to so many different things and anytime I may have a flicker of self doubt I can use them to calm myself down and think more rationally. Now that I am in college, I have made it my goal to learn the skills necessary to help other young athletes perform to the best of their ability and improve their mental game. That’s why I am so grateful to get to work the premier sports psychology practice in the city of Portland! I look forward to sharing more information and stories with you all over the next few months! Thanks you all so much for reading.

This is Your Brain on Sports – book review

“We’ve spent the preceding chapters trying to make the case that there are rational underpinnings for all the supposed craziness and unusual behavior that sports seem to trigger. That is, that “your brain on sports” is really just your regular brain acting as it does in other contexts.”

Sound interesting? This is how Wertheim and Sommers sum up their latest book, This is Your Brain on Sports. From a sport psychology perspective, it’s a great book in the same vein as classics like “Freakonomics” or “Outliers.” The authors take common ideas and phenomena in sports and put them under the sociological and psychological research microscope to explain certain peculiar behaviors and that are common not only in sports, but in life in general.

Each chapter explores a unique idea from sports, examines the research, and relates it to real life. Beginning by promising answers to Why questions: “Why Hockey Goons Would Rather Fight at Home” to “Why We Need Rivals” to “Why Our Moral Compass is More Flexible than an Olympic Gymnast” these chapters offer excellent insights into how the mind works, how people relate to each other through the prism of sports, and uncovers why things that seem bizarre are actually quite common.. The conclusion is that sports isn’t so much different than life. Although, they do go on to explain: “…sports and athletic competition are fertile ground for scientists across disciplines to test their hypotheses about basic aspects of human nature.”

There’s a lot in here to relate to sport psychology and the mental game. For instance, popular theory says that sport psychology was founded in 1898 by Norman Triplett, who noticed that he rode his bicycle faster when he was with other people. In the chapter “Why We Need Rivals,” the authors explain how Triplett created a “competition machine” to test in a lab setting if people did in fact ride faster against someone else as opposed to against the clock. His theory proved to be true, and was used in further studies by other psychologists on how athletes compete against rivals – something that seems to make sense, but now backed by research.

One of my favorites was the chapter that was in essence about goal setting. “Why Running on a Treadmill is Like Running a Business.” In it the authors talk about “the power of the finish line” and how very important to performance setting milestones is. In my experience at SPINw, one of the reasons goal setting fails is that there are not enough measurable milestones on the way to a long term goal. There is some compelling anecdotes and evidence here explaining why this is the case. This chapter, like many others, should prove to be a powerful tool for athletes and especially coaches, to use goal setting for motivation and increased effort.

Overall, there is something for everyone in this book, whether you are an athlete, a coach, a sports fan, or even someone who is just interested in psychology and how the mind works.

Click here to check it out on Amazon.

Mental Training (part 3/5 Inside the Mental Game of a State Champion)

Positive Culture is essential to Mental Training

1) Process over Results

2) Apex Soccer Journal

3) Team Building

4) Visualization

Positive Culture and Positive Coaching (part 2/5 Inside the Mental Game of a State Champion)

Inside the Mental Game of a State Champion (a 5 part series)

Anger and Performance: Sport Psychology Techniques for dealing with extreme emotions

5 Things Amazing Sports Parents Do

Developing a High Performance Lifestyle (part 1)

How to prevent hazing in your organization

Sports, Peers and Injury

Meet Jake Sivinski – SPINw’s fall intern

This is Your Brain on Sports – book review

Sport Psychology Services

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