 Three Key Tasks As Competition Time Approaches:
TASK ONE: DEVELOP AND COMMIT TO A PLAN
"I would rather have a good plan today than a perfect plan two weeks from now."
- General George S. Patton
In the last few weeks before an Olympics, the time to develop a plan is now. These days, most top athletes and coaches have already considered the issues that are components of a high performance plan. Most would also say they “have a plan”. But often when pushed for details, they say, “well, we are waiting to find out this,” or “we have two options for that,” or “we can’t know that until we get to Beijing.” What we have here is not an inability to consider the key variables, but a failure to commit to a plan of action!
As General Patton’s quote suggests, waiting for the perfect plan keeps people in a holding pattern, and can create a kind of paralysis that leads to defeat. At some point, you need to commit to a plan based on the information you have. That time is now, when you are just weeks away from your biggest competition. For the perfectionists out there, this requires you to accept the hard truth that no plan is perfect. If you can accept that, then you can move to action.
If it is too hard to commit to a plan without knowing everything for sure, you need to ask yourself, what is riskier, staying frozen or moving forward with incomplete information. The closer you get to competition, the greater the risks of inaction. In addition, you need to understand that for your athletes, not committing to a plan leads to increased stress, decreased focus, and loss of energy. Making a plan is important. Commiting to the plan and moving into action is critical. Of course you may need to adjust some details. Isn’t that what coaching is all about?
TASK TWO: BUILDING CONFIDENCE
Coaches and athletes universally endorse confidence as a critical factor in big-event performances. Yet, when asked what they are doing to build their confidence, most athletes respond with silence. The reality is that most people think of confidence as something that happens, something you have, rather than something you develop. In the last weeks before a major competition, however, one of the most important tasks of an athlete is to build and maintain confidence. There are a number of strategies for achieving this.
Strategies to build confidence in the last few weeks before a major event:
1. First recognize that confidence is a job, not a gift. Most athletes simply don’t think of confidence building as something they can work productively towards. Once you accept this, the rest becomes easier.
2. Know your strengths. In the last few weeks before a major event, doubts, worries and self-criticism tends to increase in frequency. Therefore, this is an ideal time to remind yourself how good you are. This is not the time to be delusional, but a time to make note of reality-based strengths that might get lost in the anxiety and doubt of the last few weeks. Two techniques for this are:
First, make an explicit list of your best attributes. Simply have athletes take 30 minutes to brainstorm about all of the things they are good at. This can be in sport, in school, in life. The only rule for this exercise is that athletes use the “better than average” test to add it to the list. If they are a better than average student, or some aspect of their technique is better than their average competitor, it goes on the list. No attribute is too small to add to the list, but all strengths must be based in reality.
Second, work on the ability to call up imagery of your best performances. Provide and structure time in and out of practice for athletes to remember their very best performances, in as much detail as possible. Simply by “seeing” how good they can be, an athlete is reminded that their ability is real.
3. Make building confidence a daily discipline.
Techniques include:
- Start a daily accomplishment log. This is a very quick but powerful daily activity. Have one line for each day, and require that athletes list one positive accomplishment for each day, leading up until the big event. No exceptions, no matter how tough practice was.
- Structuring training to produce success. Build a practice structure that allows daily successes. This doesn’t mean everything is easy, but every day should have at least one moment of success that is highlighted, even if it is only two minutes of a two hour practice.
- Insist on daily goals, agreed to by athlete and coach, that are controllable “task goals”.
TASK THREE: AIRPLANE SKILLS:
Once an athlete actually starts travelling to the big event, he or she must begin to shift into a pure high-performance mode which is qualitatively different, from normal operating mode. It helps to remind athletes of five important steps:
- Begin to “Free up memory” by compartmentalizing. This requires making sure that all the other elements of life outside of sport are dealt with, but not actively present in the mind. School, work, relationships- Decide on action plan, then let go. Begin letting go of irritations with coach, teammates.
- Manage worries effectively. This is most easily accomplished by referring to the performance plan mentioned above. A commitment to this plan helps remind an athlete that everything is taken care of, and completing a few simple tasks will ensure success.
- Shift mind from outcome to process. Outcome goals (winning an Olympic Gold Medal) have their place for all athletes, but the closer an athlete gets to a big event, the more outcome thoughts can create stress, anxiety, and distractions. There are exceptions to this rule, but generally, in “airplane mode” focusing on how to win is more important than focusing on the outcome of winning. Process goals, or task goals, are very useful in the last few days before a big event.
- Be “Mindful”- Practice Staying In The Present. Athletes who perform well in big events are generally excellent at keeping their thoughts in the here and now. Have your athletes feel the energy and positive mood that comes from connecting to “RIGHT HERE, RIGHT NOW”. Athletes can literally use the cue of buckling their seat belt on a plane to start a five-minute exercise of being in the moment.
- SIMPLIFY, SIMPLIFY, SIMPLIFY. Less is more in the last few days before competing. Things, relationships, appointments, stuff, worries, and everything else in the athlete’s life become potential drags on an athlete. Simplifying means mentally making the call that it is too late to add anything else, and it is in fact the time to start eliminating everything from your life that doesn’t help performance. In this multi-tasking world, it is useful to remember that excellence is only achieved with focus on “Singletasking”. The Olympic medal goes to the best single-tasker, not the one keeping the most plates spinning in the air. While multi-tasking may feel like the right thing to do in today’s complicated world, it is a recipe for mediocrity. Simplicity and focus is a necessity for athletes. How about coaches?
Talent alone won't make you a success. Neither will being in the right place at the right time, unless you are ready. The most important question is: 'Are you ready?'
- Johnny Carson
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