The Part-time Athlete: Balancing Sport and Family

One of the nice things about working with young athletes is that for the most part they have uncomplicated lives. They eat, sleep, go to school, practice and compete. However, with older athletes life gets a whole lot more complicated. Careers take hold, families materialize and leadership demands are extracted – sometimes with a pound of flesh or two. In other words, our attention begins to get pulled in many ways and something has to give.

During my years of competitive karate training, I never had enough hours in a day to do everything. I would disappear to my basement workout room during every spare moment I could find. Child asleep – head for the basement. Wife reading – hit the streets jogging and doing wind sprints. Feeding my young daughter – dive into visualizations. Karate class at the dojo finished – head to the 24-hour grocery store. If I wanted to compete and be competitive and still be a husband and dad, I had to be efficient and squeeze every last drop of time out of a week.

How to Become an Emotional Coach in Your Child’s Sport

In a previous blog I wrote on the topic of coaches being the emotional ballast for their athletes and I’m now tackling another a key players in the process—parents.

I’m very supportive of parents of young athletes because I am both a parent and a coach.  I know what they go through.  They spend more time with their athlete than the coach does, and yet they often feel undervalued by both the coach and the athlete.  They also get blamed for the many behavioral sins of their child.

Parents have very dramatic ways of getting around this—they stay home or watch  covertly from behind pillars.  Neither is necessary or appropriate, so this blog post is aimed at parents who wish to overcome any parental stigma, but more importantly,  be of huge benefit to their child’s game.

Not just a Spectator

One of my athletes has traveled widely in the U.S. to competitions.  For one competition he traveled with his dad, another with an aunt or an uncle.  On two specific occasions he traveled with his coach.  Over the course of several tournaments a pattern developed.  Whenever he traveled with his family he struggled and performed poorly.  When he traveled with his coach, he won–big.

Think about the differences.  The family trip to the competition was mostly about sightseeing and expectations, along with the usual family squabbles and grandma’s troubles and the cost of the sport and the price of gas and the business call on the cell phone.  On the other hand, the “team” trip with the coach was mostly about competition goals, past successes, passion for the sport, the anticipation of winning and a bright future.

When you compare the two experiences, it is easy to see that the trip with the coach better prepares the athlete mentally for the competition.  It wires his mental circuitry for success. How could any parent compete with that?  The answer is: don’t even try.  You most likely do not have the technical skills or experiences that relate to becoming a skills coach, but you do have the maturity and life experiences that relate to becoming an Emotional Coach.

Become your Child’s Emotional Coach

The way to become an Emotional Coach is learn to stay (as one of my coaches says) in your “happy place”.  Athletes refer to this place as the Zone.  It involves a simple rule that says, “If I stay in the Zone my child will.”  And the easiest way to get there is to think about your best sporting experience and notice how good it feels.  That is your Zone and you need to stay there, no matter what.

How many times have you seen your child in a meltdown?  And how many times have you felt bad for them?  Ask yourself the question, “Who is leading whom?”  If you want to be an Emotional Coach, you simply can no longer empathize with your child on the field, court or rink.  Close your eyes and think “happy place”–the impact will be huge.

After stating this rule in a workshop, two moms approached me and one asked,   “You mean we can’t just be a spectator?”

I told them that they could be spectators but they also had a choice.  They could be part of the problem (a meltdown) or could remain emotionally in the Zone for both the good and the bad parts of competition (it is simply leadership).  It is very empowering to be helping your child perform well.   Being an Emotional Coach is a huge challenge, but the parents who have tried it rave about the positive effect it has had on their children.

I’m going to challenge you as parents to draw a line in the sand and make YOUR meltdown and YOUR anxiety a thing of the past.  At your child’s next competition:

• See how much laughter you can create in the car on the way to the event.
• See how tall you can get your son or daughter to walk by walking tall yourself.
• Maintain your happy place at all times even as other parents fall apart around you.

If I stay in the Zone my child/athlete will

You have a powerful tool to help your child–yourself in the Zone.  Use it to help them prepare for practices.  Use it to help them in competitions.  When you do, you hand your young athlete over to their coach in a powerful state of mind and the coach will love you for it.  Hey, here’s a thought, why not use it all the time to help your children in all of their activities?  It sure beats hiding behind a pillar.

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The Olympics are almost here

Coaches – no last-minute changes please
Athletes get the medals; not coaches.  Coaches get their rewards as an offshoot of their athlete’s success.  The individual athlete or team players get the limelight; the coach gets the supporting role or honorable mention.

Coaches accept this reality as a part of their creed or handbook.  Most of their work is done in the four to eight years leading up to an Olympic Games.  In the days and weeks before the Games they mostly play a guidance and monitoring role to ensure athletes taper (do less intense training), strategize and prevent/manage injuries.  During the Games, they continue in a guidance and monitoring role.  Even in team sports such as soccer, the role is guidance, strategy and the utilization of personnel.

Athletes need to allow their subconscious minds to do the work

The biggest mistake that some coaches make—and I’ve seen it time and again—is feeling they still need to be teaching or adjusting the technique of their athletes right up to competition time—a week, day or even minutes before the event.  Whether this is perceived as beneficial or simply the coach wanting to feel useful, little if anything will be retained as any new skill takes time to become automatic. 

Worse, it gets the athletes thinking—and thinking leads to meddling with the subconscious mind, which—by this time—needs to have the athlete’s full trust.  Athletes need to relax, have fun, and keep their conscious minds out of the way so their subconscious minds work efficiently.   Last minute technique changes messes with this process. 

The coach is more than a trainer, cheerleader or strategist

I teach coaches a hugely important role that makes them more than just organizers, cheerleaders or strategists at the games.  I teach them to be the emotional ballast and in this respect they have the very important role of ensuring their athletes get into and stay in the Zone—mostly by getting into and staying in the Zone themselves.  This needs to be practiced, but in Olympic or professional sports coaches get caught up in the moment and become spectators.  However, this is one of the most important roles (skills) of the coach and the practice for this occurs well before the Olympics.  When coaches stay in the Zone, they create an emotional synergy with their athlete.   Athletes coached by these coaches have a huge advantage.

So, at any level, Olympic or otherwise, pump yourself up with adrenaline just like you did when you competed, find your Zone, and stay in it for your athletes.  It is one of your most important roles, especially once the training is done.

A salute to Olympians and coaches around the world

In this countdown time to the London Olympics, I and many others around the world, will be looking forward to cheering on our country and our favorite athletes. I salute the athletes and their support teams for their dedication to their sport and their country.  The training has already been done and now it’s time to get into the Zone, have fun and play – you’ve earned it!

About the Author

Bob Palmer is CEO and High Performance Strategist with SportExcel.  Bob teaches a mental training system to athletes and coaches from around the world that has produced winning results at the Olympics, PanAm and Commonwealth Games as well as other international, national and regional competitions.

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POST TRAUMATIC GROWTH IN YOUR SPORT

What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger

How long can an athlete endure the humiliation of defeat in an attempt to get it right?  This human, competitive nature and willingness to accept “pain” is very intriguing.  And with all the stresses caused by putting it all on the line, athletes must have some very powerful tools of resolving performance issues that you can learn too.

Competing in sport is very similar to performing on a stage, especially as a stand-up comic.  There are four things in common.  When comics miss a joke the result is immediately evident.  They have hecklers (sometimes merely imagined but not always).  They require good timing (skill).  And, importantly, the only way to learn how to perform is to get up there and try to fail.  The more times the better.

Learning on the job

The only way to get realistic feedback is to learn on the job.  Initially, comics tell jokes poorly or misread the audience and get heckled.  Initially, athletes display poor skills or misread a situation or make a mistake and accept barbs from coaches, spectators or peers.  Both put their honor, pride, self-esteem and man/womanhood on the line each time. There is no other sensation quite like it—when they’re on and, unfortunately, when they’re not.

“What is a grown man like me doing standing up here in front of my peers making a fool of myself?” is the question I remember asking myself when I got back into competing as a martial artist.  Coupled with this self-talk was the churning stomach and sweat-soaked, adrenaline saturated body.  It felt like trial by fire, something I discovered that has a name–Post Traumatic Growth (PTG).  This is the opposing side to Post-Traumatic Stress, where trauma is perceived as bad.  In PTG, trauma actually helps make you stronger.  In sports, PTG justifies our putting ourselves in “harm’s way” with the expectation (hope) that we will eventually get that personal best, win or perfect score.

Post-traumatic growth can be transforming

“Post-traumatic growth is a process people go through in the aftermath of experiencing trauma,” said Dr. Robert Tedeschi, Professor of Psychology at the University of North Carolina Charlotte to the Command and General Staff College students and staff at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas.  “It’s also an outcome of trauma.  It’s a series of changes people experience themselves that they label as valuable, or beneficial, maybe not right away, but in the long run.  Traumatic experience can be transformative in some people, putting them on a whole new life path.”

What this suggests is that people have the ability to learn from their experiences, no matter how traumatic.  The quote from Friedrch Neitzsche, “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger,” comes to mind.

Losing in a sport event is traumatic; taking the flak from your friends is traumatic; being embarrassed is traumatic; wasting away at a plateau or doldrums is traumatic.  Perhaps these are not on the scale of the human trauma that Dr. Tedeschi is talking about, but it is the same process, and one uses the same strategies to grow beyond it.

Perspective

In essence we need a strategy that will give us perspective and help us to resolve  problems, over and over, time and again.  Thus, I call this strategy ‘Perspective’, and it involves reflection and self-coaching in a positive manner and allows you to evaluate your performance, no matter how bad the pain is.  It has three viewpoints that help you to better accept advice from others, but especially from yourself.

Viewpoint 1.  The Goal:  The first viewpoint of Perspective involves knowing what YOU want.  Entering a competition has nothing to do with your spouse, your friend or your competitor.  Nobody exists but you.  (If they do, you are in trouble.)  Ask yourself what is reasonable and go for it.  I mean GO FOR IT.

Viewpoint 2.  Coach’s view: The second viewpoint of Perspective is to KNOW what a coach might tell you.  Here you gain his/her point of view by imagining stepping into the coach’s shoes.   The “stepping” process tricks the brain into taking on the coach’s viewpoint and his/her way of thinking.  The quality of information can be spectacular, usually instantaneous.  It imitates how we learn from others naturally.

Viewpoint 3.  Spectator’s view:  The third viewpoint is the bird’s eye view that the spectator sees.   You can stand back, disassociate from emotions of the problem and view your performance with new eyes so you notice what is possible.  You can watch yourself engaging in your game.  And you can apply what you learned in Viewpoint 2 and immediately see how your goal is more of a possibility.

Change in performance can happen quickly

Perspective can result in changes to your performance in a short period of time.  It is a loop—Viewpoint 1 tells you that you are (or are not) achieving what you want.  Viewpoint 2 gives you some advice.  Viewpoint 3 gives you the bird’s-eye view to implement that advice.  This loop corkscrews upward—trauma turned to growth.  Lose or win, Perspective helps you to figure out your game and allows you to grow in your ability to perform.  When it becomes automatic, athletes move to a whole new level of playing.

So, whether you are getting people to laugh as a stand up comic, or getting them to stop laughing as an athlete, you need to understand the potential for growth from the pain.   To quote Dr. Tedeschi again, “It’s not the trauma that changes people, it’s the struggle.”  In the world of competitive sport, we all need to embrace PTG in our quest to “Own the Zone”.

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Reference:  Dr. Robert Tedeschi, Professor of Psychology at the University of North Carolina Charlotte to the Command and General Staff College students and staff about “Post Traumatic Growth and Combat: Seeing possibilities for growth and ways of promoting it” in the Lewis and Clark Center’s Eisenhower Auditorium, Fort Leavenworth, Kansas.

http://www.army.mil/-news/2010/04/09/37139-expert-discusses-benefits-of-post-traumatic-growth/

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Hey, don’t think, just swing the club. A system test-driven by champions

As a high performance strategist and trainer with Olympic medalists in two sports, lots of international and national champions and twenty years of experience, I thought I’d introduce myself to the golfers who read this blog so that you have an idea of who Trainer Bob Palmer is and what he has to offer as compared to most “off the shelf” books or programs on mental performance.

I am a martial artist, a fourth degree black belt, and, while I love the game of golf, I am not a proficient golfer.  Shocked?  Well, I am also not a snowboarder, and one of my snowboarders won silver in Vancouver 2010.  Nor am I a professional surfer and one of my surfers reached the podium recently in Australia at the Australian Open.  I also don’t compete in Ironman competitions and one of my athletes recently had a podium finish in Brazil.

I’ve worked with athletes for over a decade, from North America—Canada, USA and Mexico to India, Australia and Great Britain.  What do they see in me?  Great results, podium finishes, cash prizes and a reconnection with the fun of the game.

How am I different?  Well, here is a scenario of the typical golfer before he works with me.  His round is about to begin so he follows the advice of a mental game book he purchased. (Pick any book, as they are all saying pretty much the same thing.)  It told him to be positive so he smiles and struts his stuff.  It said to use positive self-talk and he repeats over and over, “I am a great golfer and I’ll do well and I’ll par this hole.”  He tells himself, “It is one shot at a time, one shot at a time.”

…He thinks about shooting birdies and winning the club championship, but he read that this was the wrong thing to do and he remembers…one shot at time…process rather than outcome.  He remembers to be positive and struts again and then he says, ‘I’m great-just shoot.”  He remembers to calm himself by a deep breath that is a part of his pre-shot routine.  He steps between the tee blocks and hits a nice butter shot that travels smack dab in the middle of the fairway.  He struts again and tells himself, “One shot at a time,” but the club championship thought creeps in and he shuts it down by remembering to breathe.

…Over and over, hole after hole, same pattern and he stays even.  This is working!  On the eighth hole, the thought of winning creeps in and he remembers to say, “one shot at a time.”  And to strut…And to be positive…And to say, “I can do it.”  He pars the ninth hole with a lucky shot out of the rough.  Phew.  This is working.  On to the 10^th hole.  Strut some more, breathe, “I’m good, I’m good.  I can do it.”

I don’t know about you, but writing that last paragraph exhausted me.  That kind of mental approach, although typical, is way too much thinking and way too much to remember.  But that is the kind of advice you get for your mental game, and I can’t imagine playing all 18 holes this way, or, for that matter, three or four competitive rounds—plus sudden death play.

This kind of approach is not sustainable.  Shooting each shot like it is the only one, using positive self-talk and trying to think positive are the fastest ways down the tubes in any sport.  I know.  I’ve worked with over twenty different sports.  There has to be another, better way.  And there is.

The Other Way – Don’t Think

All this confusion around the mental game was created by observations of professional athletes who often learned to be high performers with very little idea of how they did it.   So they either make it sound easy—just do it—or difficult—it is a lot of hard work—without actually giving any strategies on how to get there.

It is actually quite easy to improve your golf game, if you follow one basic rule.  It is…  don’t think.  Following all the “thinking” advice of various books will exhaust you.  It might work for a round, but you will start thinking so much it’ll affect the technical side of your sport—stance, grips, yardage perspective, putts, etc.

I’ve been teaching a non-psychology, non-thinking approach for more than twenty years and athletes in many, many sports have put my system to the test.  One is Daley Byles, a young athlete playing Division 1 golf.   He has put my system to the test.   He told me that he was already using the types of tools I was teaching him, but my system allowed him to use them sooner, to refine his game and to have no doubt as to whether he was in his high performance mode or not—without thinking.

As elite athletes and how they think (don’t think) are the model for my high performance system—football, hockey, baseball, snowboarding—athletes like Daley are an important test.  So I’d like to rewrite that earlier paragraph—remember my exhausting paragraph with all that thinking above that came out of reading books on the mental game?  Well, here it is from the point of view of Daley as he steps between the tee blocks:

Daley: [nothing to report here]

I have to apologize for such a short paragraph for Daley, as he is intelligent and he does have a lot to say when he is off the tee.  Rather, his routines are so ingrained that he does no conscious thinking when on it.  None.  And to him, sometimes it even seems like he is along for the enjoyable ride and that his body is just a ball-hitting machine.  No deep breathing, no self-talk, no being positive.  He just IS and he DOES consistently par holes.

If you find this in any way interesting, I suppose that you’d like to learn to be a hitting machine like Daley.  Well, stay tuned, as you are about to find out with some of the strategies that make my system so powerful and easy to use.  In the next article, I’ll get you started and teach you how to NOT think, right from the get-go in on the first green.  In the interim, enjoy your golf, and I look forward to helping you to improve your game.

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The Indispensable Athlete: How to make the cut on your sports team

This tip from Bob Palmer, high performance expert with SportExcel, is for athletes of any age who have a desire to win, and need to take charge of the direction of their training. It is especially for athletes in the face of situations where the coach might be a bully, disinterested, distracted by their cell phone or playing favorites, etc.

There is something you can do so that they don’t ruin your year or your career.   That’s because, in most cases, the coach may only need a nudge from you to make positive changes. Most coaches are simply doing the best job they can. They may be technically superb, but teaching/coaching is a skill and a very specific skill that they may not have. So you have to help them, just a little. No one has told you that before, I’m sure!

Now, quite literally, the squeaky wheel gets the grease. On your team or in your club, you may just be getting less attention because you are not squeaking loudly enough. The trouble in sports is that you’ll get put off the team if you squeak and bother the coach, so this is not an option.

There is another way. One of my clients found that way by making himself indispensable. He had to, as he was always cut because his coaches picked taller players with less skill. So, by design, he became the spark plug for any team he played on. He set himself up to be the motivator, the dynamo, the instigator.  If he wasn’t playing, the team played poorly.  If he was playing, the team was fired up and played well.

He learned to trigger his own passion and that of his teammates. He even learned to trigger the passion of his coach. Yes, when he played, his coach coached better. And he has rehearsed this role over and over and over, especially in situations where he really needed it, such as where his team fell behind in score.

The result is that he consistently makes the team, consistently plays well and now he has the opportunity to play at the highest levels.  And he is not done yet.

You too, have to find your Zone – you have to rehearse it in all game situations over and over and you have to be able to get it back fast if you lose it. Build that Zone and you’ll drive your team and be indispensable to your coach.

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When the Coach is in the Zone

Hockey playoff season is happening right now and this tip is for hockey coaches as well as coaches in other sports.

Coaches set the tone and the example for the team in terms of posture and physiology. If the coaches loses the Zone, the players do. If the Coach stays in the Zone–no matter what the score–the players will as well. You cannot tell what the score is by looking at a great coach during a game.

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