Sports Psychology: 10 Mental Skills To Enhance Your Performance Part 2

Training the mind is just as, if not more important than training the body! It is for that reason that we teamed up with sports psychologist, Dr. Dave McIntyre , to bring you part 2 of our series on mental skills to enhance your performance no matter your sport! If you haven’t read part 1 yet, please do so and then you will be ready to master the next part of the list! Here are the rest of Dr. McIntyre’s mental skills to improve your mind:

Power of Preparation

Preparation lays the foundation for success in athletics as well as all other aspects of life — without it, you're not being as thorough as you could be. Many people fail to realize the power of preparation or they minimize how much time and commitment it takes to be great.

Dr. Anders Ericsson, a professor of psychology at Florida State University, specializes in the science of peak performance.  He notes the sole reason the good athlete doesn’t become an elite athlete is because the athlete hasn’t participated in the process he calls “deliberate practice.”

According to Ericsson, deliberate practice involves stepping outside your comfort zone and trying activities beyond your current abilities. While repeating a skill you've already mastered might be satisfying, it's not enough to help you get better.

Moreover, simply wanting to improve isn't enough — people also need well-defined goals and the help of a coach who makes a plan for achieving them.  Ericsson's work on deliberate practice formed the basis for the "10,000-hour rule" featured in Malcolm Gladwell's book, Outliers:

Put in about 10,000 hours of practice, and you'll become an expert.  Unfortunately, Ericsson says Gladwell misinterpreted his research and that 10,000 hours of merely repeating the same activity over and over again is not sufficient to catapult someone to the top of their field.  In his book, “The Art of Learning” author, Josh Waitzkin, elite Chess master, said he frequently modified his training routine to challenge himself to improve his focus under harsh conditions.

Extreme Responsibility

Taking ownership of your own performance is an integral part of being the best athlete that you can be. Being responsible means showing up for training on time, listening to your coach, not allowing yourself to become distracted by daydreams or worries, being as prepared as possible, and giving it your all.  

Whether you play a team sport or an individual one, being responsible means handling winning and losing with grace, humility and responsibility. So, when you lose or don’t perform to expected standards, who do you blame? To take extreme responsibility you ought to take a look in the mirror rather than your coach, team mates, referees, opposing teams or anyone or anything else.

In his book, Extreme Ownership, Jocko Willink, former Navy Seal commander, encourages leaders and athletes to “Own everything in your world, blame no one else, admit mistakes, and develop a plan to overcome them.”

Imagery and Visualization

Imagery and visualization are powerful tools that every athlete who's reaching for the stars should have in his or her toolbox. Most Olympic champions acknowledge long before they made it to the Olympic medal podium, they visualized themselves on the podium years before they were awarded an Olympic medal.  

Sports imagery training helps athletes manage pre-race jitters, relieve anxiety during tough competitions, improves overall focus whether the task at hand is a practice day or a competition, and even helps identify goals.  

If you're sidelined due to an injury or illness, imagery can help you stay engaged with your sport during the healing process. Imagery is a skill that requires careful cultivation in order to achieve optimal results. A good sports psychologist can introduce you to the benefits of visualization and imagery and help you develop the most effective techniques.

Gratitude

Recent research in sports psychology has proven that nurturing an attitude of gratitude has the potential to benefit overall health as well as increase athletic performance. Keeping a gratitude journal provides an excellent way to get in touch with things you're grateful for on a daily basis.  

It is common to see professional athletes thank their family, coaches, or teammates as they are being interviewed after winning a championship or winning the Heisman trophy.  Rather than waiting until you win the Ironman Triathlon, why not show gratitude to your people today. 

Don’t stop there, take a look at yourself. Gratitude can be cultivated in many ways… being grateful you have a body that can perform at a high level, grateful you have the resources or sponsors to pursue your dreams, or grateful you have the resilience to train as hard as you train.  

Writing down your gratitudes will make you a stronger person and a better athlete. Even if you don't have time to keep a daily gratitude journal, count your blessings every night before you go to sleep.

Implementation Intention

A technique particularly helpful in working with athletes recovering from an injury is a technique that helps us to “script” our intended actions in more specific terms by deciding exactly how, when and where we are going to accomplish each of our tasks. Peter Gollwitzer, a psychologist who has done research on this, calls those plans implementation intentions. It is a strategy of self-regulation. The idea is that we should not just form goal intentions (“I intend to achieve X”), but form implementation intentions instead (“I intend to perform specific goal-directed behavior Y when I encounter situation Z”). The more we dial in the specifics and tie them to specific behaviors the more likely we will follow through on our plan. This has been found to be especially useful when having unpleasant or challenging tasks ahead of us, such as doing painful physical therapy exercises related to recovering from knee or shoulder surgery.

We hope you found these tips helpful. Have you ever used these mental tips? If so, did you find them helpful? What are some other mental skills you have worked on to bring your mind to parity with your body? Let us know in the comments!

Successful swims are built with Endurance!

About The Author: Dr. Dave McIntyre

Dr. Dave McIntyre received his Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology in 1992 and completed his residency with the United States Air Force (USAF).  In 1997 he became board certified through the American Board of Professional Psychology.  During his service he provided performance psychology skills training to USAF Fighter Pilots, Flight Crews and Emergency Response teams as well as leading behavioral health response teams responding to national and international disasters such as the Indonesian Tsunami, Hurricane Katrina, Hurricane Ivan, the Sandy Hook, Newtown Connecticut School Shooting, and several suicide cluster responses to Indian country.  He was highly decorated, having been named USPHS Psychologist of the Year, the Arizona Suicide Prevention Coalition Trainer of the Year, and received over 30 decorations from the U.S. Army, U.S. Air Force, U.S. Navy, and the United States Public Health Service.  He retired from active duty at the rank of Captain (O-6) after having provided 30 years of service.  Following his retirement from the uniformed service Dr. McIntyre expanded his Sports Psychology work into a full-time practice, Untapped Potential Sports Psychology LLC.  The practice serves amateur to professional athletes looking to optimize their performance by applying psychological principles to overcome obstacles, strengthen their mental game, and facilitate injury rehabilitation.  Dr. McIntyre and his staff serve athletes around the globe in pursuit of their performance goals.  For a free consultation, reach out to Dr. McIntyre at drmc@untappedpotential.coach.