The importance of sports psychology in elite athletics was briefly touched upon in our last issue, its importance emphasized by MMA phenom Randy Couture. We therefore sought out sports psychologist Bill Cole, who has been coaching and consulting in sports psychology for 30 years.

Cole is the founder of the International Mental Game Coaching Association, and has worked as an NCAA Division I head coach, a sport psychology coach for the Stanford University Baseball and the Israeli Davis Cup Tennis Team and the mental game consultant for the Irish National Cricket Team. Cole has served as a sports psychology consultant for various elite level athletes, including 2006 Olympic Gold Medalist and two-time world curling champion Russ Howard and the Performance Menu’s own Aimee Anaya. “I am a much calmer and more consistent lifter, thanks to him,” she said.

Cole answered some pressing questions about the importance of psychological preparation for athletic performance in this interview, which will continue in our next issue.

Can you describe some of the research you’ve done on mental readiness?

Mental readiness in sport is analogous to a funnel lying on its side. The broad end represents your normal life, and everything you have in it-school, work, family, social life, friends, hobbies, etc. The narrow end represents your sport in action, whether it’s practice or competition. As you move closer to your sporting event, you need to let go of all thoughts and concerns about your “real life” and enter the world of your sport experience. Sometimes this is termed “putting on your game face” or “stepping into the bubble”.

Mental preparation is comprised of long-term preparation (training) and short-term preparation (pre-event routines and rituals). Short-term mental preparation includes psyching up strategies the day before, the morning of, just before the event and during the event. These four phases are vital to handling performance anxiety, focusing you on your upcoming tasks, keeping you positive-minded and in providing energy to drive your performance.

Everyone has a story about how great preparations lead to great performances. The key is realizing that you have control over how you prepare.

Athletes, sales people, teachers, public speakers, media people and anyone else who "officially performs" successfully uses pre-performance routines or rituals. You can use routines to help you relax, focus and prepare mentally and physically for an upcoming event. A ritual is a systematic series of steps undertaken prior to the execution of a task designed to help you sharpen mentally, emotionally and physically. You may have things you like to do ahead of your event that make you feel optimistic, confident and energized. This is your ritual. You want to perform tasks ahead of time that contribute to your focus and organization. You should have routines you use to keep you calm, in the proper mood and frame of mind.

There are two times to use your rituals. One is used for mental preparation just prior to the start of your event and the other is used during the event, but during breaks in the action, to re-focus or re-energize. In addition, there are two broad styles of rituals. If you enjoy focusing specifically on the upcoming event and organizing details, thinking about it, imagining yourself performing well and can see yourself completing the event successfully, you use an associative style of preparation. If doing all that makes you nervous, and you'd rather not focus on what is about to happen, and instead prefer to distract yourself by listening to music, reading, viewing television or the like, then you use a dissociative style of preparation. Both styles are valid and appropriate. The key is to know which one works best for you and to consistently apply that ritual. Remember that even not thinking about the upcoming event is a legitimate style of preparing if you use it consistently across all your performances. This is your customized way of preparing to perform your best.

Ultimately, it may be best to work with a mental game coach to be able to purposively focus on the upcoming event so you can iron out any performance issues and to prepare as fully as possible using the associative approach.

Having a ritual does not mean you are obsessed with its completion. Your ritual exists to serve you, not the other way around. We hear about professional athletes who have superstitious, elaborate rituals they must perform to feel ready to play. We hear of sports stars that may not shave the week of a big event, may eat the same meal at the same restaurant and may wear the same clothes for each event. This is extreme, but it does make them feel secure and confident. Even for professional athletes, the ritual should be easy to perform, take no longer than a few minutes, always be under your control and not require any special equipment. This way you can always perform your ritual.

Can you describe your approach for helping people relax more and perform better?

Oddly, sometimes athletes are too relaxed, and perform badly. I coach one jiu jitsu player who competed at the US Open this year and did very well, but his previous years, before he called me, were terrible. He was too relaxed. He would go his events, sit in the locker-room and meditate and get all Zen, then go out and be flatter than a pancake. He was not afraid; he just had no energy. So the trick with him was to add energy, add some edge. We worked out a pre-event process that got him pumped up to the exactly perfect level. That’s called psyching up. But yes, the majority of athletes who compete need the opposite, psyching down. They are already too keyed up. That’s where relaxation training comes in.

To help athletes either relax, focus or handle stress and pressure I use a range of modalities. Relaxation training, mental and muscular, are both part of our training. I use elements of both of these disciplines. These are important parts of a mental training program, but they address only one segment of an overall training plan.

I utilize both Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) and self-hypnosis and hypnosis techniques in my coaching. While some sports psychology practitioners use these two modalities exclusively, I use a far wider range of approaches to help people improve. Even though some of the same techniques and approaches may be shared in both disciplines, the focus, purpose and outcomes diverge sharply. Sports psychology coaching is mental training, an educational process. I teach mind skills for learning and performance under pressure.

There is homework I suggest they complete, and how much they do is based on their motivation, their goals, and how fast they want to progress. I want them to reflect on the coaching session, to make notes about their reactions to my advice and strategies, and how they performed in their sport. I ask that they maintain a mental training journal and do mental game techniques I present and then return with reports about how they worked. In short, I want them to be engaged in the coaching process as a co-partner.

My Master Plan For Peak Performance In Sport

1. Demanding, smart, realistic game-like training to build deservedness to win.
2. Self-image consistent with the task ahead.
3. Self-discipline to build mental toughness.
4. Comfortable, trusted mental readiness system before the contest.
5. Consistent pre-action readiness routines in the contest.
6. Trust in solid, repeatable, reliable technique.
7. Smart strategic game plan with contingencies.
8. Contest management plan.
9. Focus in the present.
10. Continuous monitoring of stress signals and alleviation of those symptoms.
11. Continuous monitoring of thoughts and images with redirection of negative thoughts to a positive mindset.
12. Supportive, confident self-talk and images.
13. Give yourself permission to win.
14. Create a supportive, smart coaching team.
15. Recall memories of past successes and apply them to the present situation.

Key Concepts In Mental Training

Self-coaching: The set of skills that allow you to learn, perform and achieve to your abilities, in a self-contained manner.

Self-Reflective Skills: Looking back on your performance and learning situations so you can extract additional wisdom, learning strategies and focal points for continued excellence.

Self-Monitoring: Actively becoming aware of yourself as you learn and perform, in the moment, and after the fact.

Sport Is Not A Game Of Perfect. It’s A Game Of Adjustment: The concept that perfectionism has limited powers in achievement, and carries damaging effects to your focus and ability to get in the zone. Rather, it is adjusting performance parameters that gets you closer to your goal, and keeps you there.

Self-Regulation: The ability to monitor, adjust and control mental, emotional and physical processes so learning and performance is optimal.

Non-Mental Factors That Masquerade As Mental Issues: The phenomenon of faulty technique, strategy, nutrition, and other training and performance factors that either cause mental problems, or to mask mental issues.

If someone doesn’t have a sports psychologist, what are some steps they can take to break past their own mental obstacles or limitations?

There are athletes who make it big who don’t “believe in” sports psychology. But they are practicing its tenets every hour of every day. They just don’t know it. They may not be able to even explain what they are doing mentally. But they still do it. When an athlete is positive minded, determined, sets goals, does not allow set backs to deter them, believe in themselves, and push themselves past normal limitations, this is mental training par excellence!

On the flip side, far too many athletes practice what I call “accidental mental training”. This is where they allow negative images in their mind, talk about themselves in less than positive terms and don’t take charge of what is in their minds.

But for many athletes, mental training as a do-it-yourself project is not all that easy and simple. But for those who want to begin a mental training program I suggest reading books and inspirational quotes. Here are a few quotes now:

“There comes a time in every race when a competitor meets the real opponent, and understands that it's himself.” -Lance Armstrong

“If you're trying to achieve, there will be roadblocks. I've had them; everybody has had them. But obstacles don't have to stop you. If you run into a wall, don't turn around and give up. Figure out how to climb it, go through it, or work around it.” -Michael Jordan

“To succeed... You need to find something to hold on to, something to motivate you, something to inspire you.” -Tony Dorsett

Studying the mental game pays dividends far beyond the value you get from applying it in your sport. It can raise the quality of your entire life.

What are some common mental games people play with themselves, or thought patterns that can limit people?

More athletes would realize their potential if they could just “get out of their own way”. This means that somehow the person is blocking their own performance, that they are engaged in self-destructive behavior, that they are shooting themselves in the foot. If they only would stop harming themselves, their naturally brilliant performances would simply come forth, as if on command.

For experienced performers, who possess solid skills in their discipline, if they can do the activity well in practice, but not in a competition or performance, then very possibly they may be blocking themselves or standing in your own way of success.

Why is this not true for inexperienced performers?

These folks very likely have actual technical flaws in their skills, or lack well-formed habits that allow the natural flow to occur once in the performance. These people become tortured souls when their skills collapse under pressure, and they then announce
to themselves and others: “I am a choker. I am mentally weak.” Not so. Their actual SKILLS are weak, not their minds.

Years ago, I was a young tennis pro teaching on the staff at the World Headquarters of the Vic Braden Tennis College in southern California. Vic Braden used to say this about mental skills versus physical skills: “People who have lousy physical skills, but who have a positive mental attitude are STILL just going to be happy losers.”

If your skills are suspect, you will always doubt your abilities under pressure. If you are not too sure your skills will hold up, you will not trust them at crunch time. If you know your skills are flaky, your mind will be also.

Now back to the skilled performers and how they DO get in their own way. What are some of the ways skilled performers block themselves?

1. Lack of trust.
2. Trying too hard.
3. Self-distraction.
4. Poor focus.
5. Over-analyzing.
6. Thinking too much.
7. Thinking at the wrong times.
8. Showing off.
9. Conscious performance.
10. Wanting to succeed too badly.
11. Focusing on the outcome, not the process.
12. Worrying about what others think of them.

If your skills hold up in practice, but not a performance, you must ask yourself, “What is different about the performance?” Discover what that “thing” is, and remove it. THEN, you will stop getting in your own way.

Here are the real answers of how to achieve peak performance under pressure:

1. Make your skills solid enough to withstand the levels of pressure to which you will subject them.
2. Let go of thinking, self-instruction, self-doubt and trying too hard during your performances.
3. Realize that you do NOT need to think your way through your performances, if you truly know what you are doing.
4. Learn to LET GO of over-controlling and trust your skills. If you can do them at a high level of skill in practice, believe that you can do this in a competition also.
5. Seek consistent excellence, not perfection.
6. Relax, enjoy and learn from the competitive experience. You are there to be a student of the game, as well as to have a favorable outcome on the scoring side of things.

You’ve heard confident people brag about their abilities? If you can do it, it ain’t bragging.

Whenever I compete (typically in BJJ), I always feel like I’m on drugs. Everything seems slow motion, I get tired quicker, everyone feels heavier than they are. Can you give some tips on how to handle that?

This disconnected, surreal, numbed-out experience you describe is common, and comes from the shock of competition. You can train yourself out of it. Aside from my usual interventions, these seem to be key to correct this malady:

1. Become more tournament tough. Play more events and each one will seem to be less pressure-packed. You will see competing as “normal”.
2. Make an overall game plan.
3. Make back-up and emergency contingency plans.
4. Stretch and exercise to burn off excess nervous energy.
5. Visualize your success in the event.
6. Warm-up everything you will use in your performance.
7. Watch your best performances on video tape, if you have them.
8. Be around people who support you and make you feel confident.
9. Be around people who are excellent models of mental toughness.
10. Know your opening strategy cold so it is automatic.
11. Focus primarily on your strengths and leave practicing your weaknesses to your long-term training.
12. Plan your day so as much as possible you avoid stressful situations or conflicts that drain your energy and focus.
13. Avoid over-training and scheduling any last-minute panicky practices that drain your confidence.